Discourse and DA in intercultural communication

Discourse analysis

Discourse is socially shared habits of thought, perception, and behavior;

Discourse analysis is a close linguistic study of texts in use or analysis and interpretation of texts in
use

A good discourse analysis will interpret language in the appropriate

● Social

● Cultural

● Political

● Historical

background so as to draw out its meaning.

Intercultural communication and cross-cultural

communication
Definition

Intercultural communication is the study of distinct cultural or other groups in interaction with each
other

Individuals influenced by different cultural communities...

● Interaction

● Negotiation

● Adjust

meanings in interaction.

The analyst’s role is to stand outside of the interaction and to provide an analysis of how the
participants negotiate their cultural or other differences.
IC Competence

Four strands of communicative competences:

● Linguistic competence: ability to create accurate sentences;

● Sociolinguistic competence: Ability to create sociolinguistically appropriate responses
● Discourse competence: ability to produce coherent and cohesive
● Strategic competence: ability to solve problems when they arise.

IC competence refers to the ability to effectively communicate and interact with people from
different cultural backgrounds.

>> This includes the ability to:

● understand and appreciate cultural differences,

● communicate across cultural barriers,
● adapt to new cultural contexts.

The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) is frequently used in intercultural

training and assessment to chart individuals’ progress toward ethnorelativism.

IC vs cross cultural communication

The coming together of DA and IC

DA must develop an analytical language by which differences between cultures or groups would be
analyzed as mutually co-constructive.
E.g.: In order to understand the processes by which groups (co-existing in dynamic equilibrium) in
conflict could become more harmoniously engaged

Culture and Language

Language-culture relationship

1. Language expresses cultural reality: The words people utter refer to common experience -
facts, ideas, events referring to knowledge about the world that people share together.
2. Language embodies cultural reality: People create experiences through languages;
3. Language symbolize cultural reality: Language has a cultural value in and of itself;

Language relativity

The theory that languages affect the thought processes of their users

The hypothesis denotes that the structure of the language one habitually uses influences the manner
in which one thinks and behaves.

Language does not determine our thinking, it does influence the way we think.

Key elements of IC
Focus on production of complementary schismogenesis:

Schismogenesis: breakdown, the creation of separation

The processes in social interactions by which small initial differences become amplified in response
to each other through a sequence of interactional moves & ultimately result in a rupture in the social
interaction

It happens when people’s different styles leading each other to exaggerate their own style.

→ The more you do A, the more I do B

Contextualization cues

refers to the fact that linguistic signs need embedding in a context in order to be fully interpretable
Contextualization cues: contexts are not given but are said to be invoked, or made relevant, by
participants through contextualization cues.

Index or evoke interpretive SCHEMAS or FRAMES within which inferential understanding can be
achieved.

Contextual clues help construct the contextual ground, when processed in co-occurrence with other
cues and grammatical and lexical signs, for situated interpretation and thereby affect how particular
messages are understood.

Help interactants make inferences about TURN-TAKING and FLOOR MANAGEMENT, on the one
hand, and about what actions or activities are being carried out, how they are being carried out, and
how this might impinge upon participants’ face, on the other.

Inequality

a lack of equality or fair treatment in the sharing of wealth or opportunities

Focuses on re-existing relationship between cultures & power difference

Prejudice

Negative attitudes based on faulty and inflexible stereotypes.

The Viability of the concept of “Culture” in IC
Culture in IC

Culture is both conscious and subconscious.

Culture is changeable and negotiated, not fixed.

Culture functions on many levels from the individual, to local communities, to wider social groups
and institutions.

Check Hofstede’s cultural values.

Identifying cultural values helps us understand broad cultural differences, but it is important to
remember that not everyone in a given society holds the dominant value.

Different views of culture

Essentialist view

By essentialist we mean presuming that there is a universal essence, homogeneity and unity in a
particular culture

➔Cultural essentialism is the practice of categorizing groups of people within a culture, or from
other cultures, according to essential qualities or national cultures.
The essentialist view sees national culture as a concrete social phenomenon which represents the
essential characters of a particular nation

Reductive view

- Reduction is where the different aspects, the variety of possible characteristics and the full
complexity of a group of people are ignored in favour of a preferred definition

- By reductive we mean reducing cultural behavior down to a simple causal factor.

E.g.: “He is a liar because he is a man.”

Essentialist and reductive views can limit our understanding of cultural diversity lead to
misunderstandings and biases.

=> Should find alternative approaches to understand culture & recognize its complexity and
diversity, avoid generalizations and stereotypes, acknowledge the historical, social, and political,...
contexts in which cultural practices and beliefs develop.
Non-essentialist view

A non-essentialist view of culture focuses on the complexity of culture as a fluid, creative social
force which binds different groupings and aspects of behavior in different ways, both constructing
and constructed by people in a piecemeal fashion to produce myriad combinations and
configurations

This says that ‘culture’ is a movable concept used by different people at different times to suit
purposes of identity, politics and science…people from different origins use ‘culture’ and
‘community’ to refer to different things at different times, depending on who and what they are
talking about.

The non-essentialist view of culture therefore allows social behaviour to speak for itself. But it does
not impose pre-definitions of the essential characteristics of specific national cultures.

- Non-essentialist view recognises that culture is used by people as their own resource for self-
presentation.

- Statements about culture are themselves artefacts of how people see themselves and others, and
how they wish to be seen.

The non-essentialist view is free from national pre-definitions

➔It avoids ethnic, national, international stereotyping and reductive statements

Discourse as Constitutive of Cultural Categories

A unifying theme of discourse analysis and intercultural communication is that all communication is
constitutive of cultural categories.

The focus has shifted away from comparison between cultures or between individuals to a focus on
the co-constructive aspects of communication.

=> This means that instead of people’s orientation, nation, culture,...in this view, their identity/
characteristics/ ego are defined through their discourse, how they negotiate, describe and identify
themself using verbal language.

Verbal language/non-verbal in discourse is considered as a combination of aspects of

communication, or in other words, we analyse communication as constitutive of cultural categories

Approaches to IC studies
Discourse approach to IC

Individuals are members of different cultural groups and their communication can be studied as a
problem in communication through a discursive analysis of the characteristic communication of
members of those groups.

- An intercultural approach would begin with the problem that a German was to communicate with a
Chinese

IC at work