Culture and identity in critical remarks
A case study of Russian and Israeli academic classroom discourse
Awareness of cultural specificity in current classroom discourse is particularly important in an educational
setting that has become largely multicultural due to globalization, migration and academic mobility. Drawing on the intercultural
and cross-cultural pragmatics, and cultural studies, this paper explores the speech act of critical remark in Russian and Israeli
classroom settings, focusing on students’ view of its degree of conventionality and admissibility. Data were obtained from a
student survey questionnaire (undertaken between 2017-2019). Highlighting similarities and differences, we argue that both Russian
and Israeli classroom settings exhibit critical remark as not uncommon, though varying in acceptability. Findings show that
critical acts need not be limited to the merely conflictual, but may even be perceived positively, and may moreover exert varying
levels of illocutionary force and be interpreted differently by different cultural groups.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Context, identity and speech act
- 3.Semantics and pragmatics of critical remark in cross-cultural perspective
- 4.Data and methodology
- 5.Data analysis
- 5.1Students’ perception of the frequency of critical remarks in Russian and Israeli classroom settings
- 5.2Acceptability of teachers’ critical remarks
- 5.3Situations in which critical remarks are acknowledged as offensive
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
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