DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

WEEK 6
Session 6
Discourse Analysis &
Intercultural Communication
 Discourse Analysis &
Intercultural Communication

1. Discourse and DA in intercultural

communication
2. Intercultural communication and cross-
cultural communication
3. The coming together of DA and IC
4. Culture and language 1
5. Key elements of intercultural communication
 DA & IC

5. The Viability of the Concept of “Culture” in

IC
6. Different views of culture (essentialist and
reductive)
7. Approaches to IC studies
8. IC at work
 DA & IC
• Discourse and discourse analysis in
intercultural communication (Scollon &
Scollon, 2001):
• Discourse: Socially shared habits of thought,
perception, and behavior reflected in
numerous texts belonging to different genres
• Discourse Analysis (DA): Close linguistic
study of texts in use = analysis and
interpretation of texts in use
 Intercultural communication (IC) and
Cross-cultural communication (CC)
(Scollon & Scollon, 2001)

- Intercultural communication: the study of

distinct cultural or other groups in interaction
with each other.
- 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

- Intercultural communication takes place when

individuals influenced by different cultural
communities negotiate shared meanings in
interaction.
- What counts as intercultural communication
depends in part on what one considers a
culture, and the definition of culture itself is
quite contestable.
 IC
- Some authorities limit the term “intercultural
communication” to refer only to
communication among individuals from
different nationalities.
- Other authorities, in contrast, expand the
notion of intercultural communication to
encompass inter-ethnic, inter-religious, and
even inter-regional communication, as well as
communication among individuals of different
sexual orientations.
 IC
- In this sense, all interactions can be arrayed
along some continuum of “interculturalness.”
- Interactions are most highly intercultural when
individuals’ group identities are most salient in
determining the values, prejudices, language,
nonverbal behaviors, and relational styles upon
which those individuals draw to the degree that
interactants are drawing more on personal or
idiosyncratic values, personality traits, and
experiences, the interaction can be
characterized as more interpersonal than
intercultural.
 IC
- When individuals from different cultural
backgrounds become more intimate, their
interactions typically move along the
continuum from more intercultural to more
interpersonal, though intercultural elements
may always play a role.
- For casual or business communication,
sensitivity to intercultural factors is key to
success.
 IC Competence
- The foundation of intercultural
communication competence is the capacity to
avoid ethnocentrism.
- Ethnocentrism is the inclination to view
one’s own group as natural and correct, and
all others as aberrant.
- We tend to think prescriptively, that all
groups should behave as our own group
behaves.
- And we are naturally proud of our own
group and distrustful of others.
 IC Competence
- Obviously a person who is highly ethnocentric
cannot adapt to diverse people, and cannot
communicate in an interculturally competent
manner.
- Some authorities hold that some degree of
ethnocentrism is inevitable, and even functional
for the preservation of distinct cultural groups.
- Competent communicators simply learn to
suppress their natural ethnocentric reactions in
order to better understand others on their own
terms.
 IC Competence
- Alternatively, it may be possible for
individuals to evolve beyond ethnocentrism, to
become ethnorelativistic.
- The Developmental Model of Intercultural
Sensitivity (DMIS) is frequently used in
intercultural training and assessment to chart
individuals’ progress toward ethnorelativism.
- The model posits six stages:
 IC Competence
1. Denial—The individual refuses to
acknowledge cultural differences.
2. Defense—The individual begins to see
cultural differences and is threatened by
them.
3. Minimization—While individuals at this stage
do acknowledge cultural differences, they see
human universals as more salient than
cultural distinctions.
 IC Competence
4. Acceptance—The individual begins to accept
significant cultural differences first in
behaviors, and then in values.
5. Adaptation—The individual becomes more
adept at intercultural communication by
shifting perspectives to the other’s cultural
world view.
6. Integration—Individuals at this stage begin to
transcend their own native cultures. They
define their identities and evaluate their
actions in terms of multiple cultural
 Intercultural communication
and Cross-cultural communication
(Scollon & Scollon, 2001)

• Intercultural communication is distinct from

cross-cultural communication, which examines
the communicative behaviour of people within
their own culture and compares this with the
communicative norms of other cultures.
 Intercultural communication
and Cross-cultural communication
- Cross-cultural communication study: the
independent study of the communicative
characteristics of distinct cultural or other
groups.
- The members of the distinct groups do not
interact with each other within the study but
are studied as separate and separable entities.
- The distinctiveness of the groups under
analysis is often presupposed.
 The coming together of DA and IC

- Bateson (1935;1972):
- 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.
 The coming together of DA and IC

- Gumperz (1982), Tannen (1984, 1986) brought DA to

the service of solving problems of interracial,
interethnic, and intercultural communication, i.e.,
DA has to analyze these problems as revealed in
language (vocabulary, grammar, information
structure, turn-taking, etc.)
- This line of thought was the first to seek to bridge the
gap b/t DA and intercultural communication, (e.g.
seeking to analyze the production of social,
economic, and racial discrimination in and through
discourse as situated social practice).
 Culture and language
- The relationship between language and
culture is two-way.
- Language represents and is influenced by
culture but language also shapes culture.
- Linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
Gumperz, J. and Levinson S., 1996):
- Language will influence our interpretation of
the world.
- Different languages will have different world
views.
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
1. Focus on the production of complementary
schismogenesis:
- the processes in social interactions by which
small initial differences become amplified in
response to each other through a sequence of
interactional moves and ultimately result in a
rupture in the social interaction (Bateson,
1972).
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
2. Contextualization cues:
- the meta-communicative cues (especially
paralinguistic and prosodic features such as
tone of voice and intonation) by which
primary communication is interpreted
- Complementary schismogenesis arises from
differing uses and interpretation of
contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1995).
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
- Because these contextualization cues are
normally less explicitly referenced in
communication, they are more difficult to
address by participants, and therefore their
intention to repair the schismogenic
interaction remains out of conscious reach of
people engaged in communication.
- Socially given stereotypes brought to the
process of communication are major factors
in the interpretation of contextualization cues.
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
3. Inequality in intercultural communication
-There are pre-existing relationships that must
be considered when trying to understand
intercultural encounters and how
discrimination works with them.
-Most importantly, people from different
cultures rarely meet as equals, and much of this
inequality is not personal, but due to power
differences in the cultures they come from.
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
- In England, for example, South Asian
migrants have less power than native Anglos,
and they are expected to accommodate to the
dominant culture.
- This kind of power asymmetry is almost
universal in immigrant situations, but also in
colonial and post-colonial situations.
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
4. Prejudice in intercultural communication
- It is particularly important, where we feel that
much intercultural communication is marred
by prejudice, to be able to take apart and undo
this prejudice.
- The emphasis is not only on people with
different nationalities, but also with other
senses of belonging, whether community, class,
occupational, gender and so on.
 Key elements of intercultural
communication
- Successful communication will take the form
of disciplines about what to be aware of in the
process of intercultural communication.
- These disciplines will not be based on what a
person from culture X is like and therefore
how we should communicate with them.
 Otherization in IC
- Otherization means imagining someone as
alien and different to “us” in such a way that
“they” are excluded from “our” “normal”,
“superior” and “civilized” group.
- Developing strategies for intercultural
communication
+ Identity: how identity is constructed and how
individuals define their own identities.
+ Otherization: how to avoid the trap of over-
generalization and reduction when describing
and interacting with others.
The Viability of the Concept of “Culture”
in IC
- Since the early 1970s, the concept of culture
has been progressively reconstructed into
other units or discourses which are seen as
instantiations of social practices.
- Within discourse analysis and intercultural
communication, cultural units have been
dissolved into boundaryless forms of
intertextuality and interdiscursivity.
The Viability of the Concept of “Culture”
in IC
- Culture, in the sense of “Chinese culture” or
“European culture” might be used as one of a
very wide range of discourses at play in any
particular instance of discourse.
- Culture is difficult to define, it is not
something we can touch or quantify.
- It involves the behaviour, beliefs and values of
a group of people.
 The Viability of the Concept of
“Culture” in IC
- It is both conscious and subconscious.
- It functions on many levels from the
individual, to local communities, to wider
social groups and institutions.
- It is changeable and negotiated, not fixed.
Essentialist and reductive views of culture
- By essentialist we mean presuming that there
is a universal essence, homogeneity (as
opposed to heterogeneity) and unity in a
particular culture.
- By reductive we mean reducing cultural
behavior down to a simple causal factor.
- The principles will thus be basic principles
about understandings which need to be
achieved in order to interact with different
individuals in different contexts.
Essentialist and reductive views of culture

- Intercultural communication should grow

from an understanding of people, culture and
society generally.
- It does not really matter which nationality or
group they come from, as the aim is not to
describe what someone from a particular
culture is like and then suggest how to
communicate with them.
Essentialist and reductive views of culture

- Examples of IC show one or two people

struggling with their differences, perceived or
real, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing,
sometimes understanding, sometimes falling
into an essential trap.
 A non-essentialist view of culture
- 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.
- When people are in a difficult, strange
environment, they can exaggerate specific
aspects of their cultural identity.
 A non-essentialist view of culture
- Different cultural resources can be drawn
upon and invoked at different times
depending on the circumstances.
- What people say about their cultural
identity should be read as the image they
wish to project at a particular time rather
than as evidence of an essentialist national
culture.
 Discourse as Constitutive of Cultural
Categories
- 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 rather than
seeking an explanation of how given identities and
meanings are communicated or fail to be
communicated, what is sought is an understanding of
how identities and meanings are constituted in and
through the interaction itself.
 Discourse as Constitutive of Cultural
Categories
- The role of culture and other a priori
(deductive) categories in this model is as
historical and cultural archives of tools
through which social actions are taken by
participants.
 Discourse approach to IC (Scollon and
Scollon, 1995)
- Inter-discourse communication
- In any actual instance of communication we
are multiply positioned within an indefinite
number of discourses or within discourse
systems.
- These discourse systems would include those
of gender, generation, profession, corporate
or institutional placement, regional, ethnic,
and other possible identities.
 Discourse approach to IC (Scollon and
Scollon, 1995)
- As each of these discourse systems is
manifested in a complex network of forms of
discourse, face relationships, socialization
patterns and ideologies, this multiple
membership and identity produces
simultaneous internal and external
contradictions.
-
 Discourse approach to IC (Scollon and
Scollon, 1995)
- How a particular person in a particular action
comes to claim an identity over against the
other multiple identities also contradictorily
present in his or her own habitus (Bourdieu
77, 90)?
- Try to come to understand any two individuals
as positioned as culturally or ethnically
different from each other.
 IC Approach to DA (Scollon & Scollon,
1995;2001)
- 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 Approach to DA (Scollon & Scollon,
1995;2001)
- This might be derived from business or
diplomatic concerns practically or from an
anthropological or social psychological
perspective theoretically.
- Experimentally designed studies or quantitative
survey studies would be set up to test
differences in values, perceptions, the typical
structures of genres, rates of speaking and of
turning over turns, gestures and other
nonverbal communication systems, or of world
view or ideology.
 An intercultural/interactional
sociolinguistic approach
- This approach would identify people from these
different groups who are in social interaction
with each other.
- Through a close analysis of the discourse
actually produced, the analyst would first
identify breakdowns in communication, then try
to find the sources of the breakdowns in the
language used was well as in the
misinterpretation of contextualization cues.
 An intercultural/interactional
sociolinguistic approach

- Differences between the participants would be

most likely understood as arising from a history
of socialization to different groups and therefore
a misunderstanding of contextualization cues in
the actual situation of communicating with each
other.
 Mediated discourse approach
- A mediated discourse perspective shifts from a
focus on the individuals involved in
communication, and from their interpersonal
or intercultural or even inter-discursive
relationship, to a focus on mediated action as a
kind of social action.
- The central concern is now not persons but
social change.
 A mediated discourse approach
- This approach would begin by asking why
the problem was posed in the first place as a
problem in communication between
members of different cultural or other
discourse-based groups.
- The primary question would be: what is the
social action in which you are interested
and how does this analysis promise to focus
on some aspects of social life that is worth
understanding?
 A mediated discourse approach

- This concern with social action would

treat the group identities of the participants
as problematic only to the extent that such
membership can be shown to be productive
of ideological contradictions, on the one
hand, or that the participants themselves
call upon social group membership in
making strategic claim within the actions
under study, on the other.
 A mediated discourse approach
- Thus the analysis would not presuppose cultural
membership but rather ask how does the concept of
culture arise in these social actions.
- Who has introduced culture as a relevant category,
for what purpose, and with what consequences?
- In this sense a mediated discourse analysis is a way
of erasing the field of intercultural communication
by dissolving the foundational questions and
reconstituting the research agenda around social
action, not categorical memberships or cultural
genres.
 A mediated discourse approach

- Conversation or narrative or talk itself is not

given pride of place.
- Discourse is just one of the ways in which
social action may be mediated, albeit
commonly a very significant one.
- Thus culture is possibly relevant when it is
empirically an outcome or means of actions …
 A mediated discourse approach
• …taken by social actors, but to start from
cultures or intercultural or inter-discourse
memberships is to start with a theoretical
commitment to groups which is not a primary
conceptual entity in mediated theory; groups
such as cultures are taken to be the outcomes
of social actions and of histories but to have no
direct causal status in themselves.
 IC at Work (Clyne, 1994)

• Speech acts in IC discourse

• IC breakdown in spoken discourse
• Written discourse across cultures
 Speech acts in IC Discourse
- Austin (1962); Searle (1969)
1. Assertives: stating: Where S is committed to the
truth of P
2. Directives: Commanding, requesting: where the
onus is placed on H to do something
3. Commissives: Promising and offering: where S is
committed to a future act A
4. Expressives: thinking, forgiving, blaming: Where S
makes known his/her attitude to H
5. Declaratives: baptizing, naming, appointing, sacking,
which bring about correspondence between the
propositional content and reality
 Speech Acts in IC Discourse

- Examples of Speech acts in IC discourse:

•Complaints/ whinges
•Directives
•Commissives
•Apologies
•Small-talk
 Complaints: behabitive & exercitive
- Complaints are speech acts in which
disappointment or a grievance is expressed.
- Behabitives = ‘statements of reaction’ (Austin,
1961: 13).
- A behabitive complaint (or a whinge =
Australian-American word for a long or
repeated expression of discontent not intended
to change or improve the unsatisfactory
situation)
 Whinges
- Whinges are a regular feature of general and
workplace conversation in Australia,
especially between equals and near-equals.
- Anglo-Australians frequently attribute
whinges to English immigrants, who are often
stereotypically described as ‘whingeing porns’
because it is claimed that they find many
things in Australia disagreeable.
 Whinges
- Whinges provide an outlet for emotions and
can be regarded as a type of phatic
communication/communion which establishes
and maintains solidarity between colleagues.
- Whinges are not directed towards achieving
any particular goal.
- No justification is required in this type of
complaint.
- It is conceivable that a complaint and a whinge
may use the same words in an utterance.
 Whinges
- An example of this kind of discourse is
EVERYTHING WENT WRONG, where
Boba, a Croatian woman, and Quoc, a
Vietnamese man working with her at the
Education Office, whinge cooperatively about
the boss, the computer, and the evening staff
stealing pens.
- Here, as in many whinges, there is fairly
symmetrical communication between the
participants.
- Quoc sometimes offers some advice.
 Whinges
• Boba: I don’t know if she needs me to type it
or not
• Quoc: I now have the waitlist you know half
an hour already came in eight thirty
• Boba: it’s that slow
• Quoc: and tried to get into the computer and
still now I have…
 Exercitives
- Exercitives occur where someone is exercising a
power.
- Exercitives are usually part of complex interactional
sequences which begin with an explicit or implicit
accusation.
- They can be complaints about, or to, another person.
- Where the accused is present, there will often follow
a defense or justification.
- The sequence will essentially include at least one
directive (request for action) which usually will be
explicit, but sometimes implicit, in the accusation.
 Exercitives
- A return accusation is an optional part of this
complex sequence and an apparent
disclaimer/denial may appear as a rhetorical
device.
- Often an apology is part of the complex
complaint sequence with either the accused or
the accuser making an unjustified complaint
apologizing.
 Directives
- Directives include both requests and
instructions.
- Directives can be positive/ negative/ explicit/
implicit
- Explicit: Hey, don’t use the bowl for the sauce
(Fijian-Indian man)
- Implicit: Your fax is here (Croatian woman,
meaning go and collect your fax); Are you
going to repair them? (Fijian-Indian man)
 Directives
- In some cases, grammatical conventions are
employed for implicitly expressing a directive:
- I was wondering if I can have … (Maltese man,
meaning: Give me…)
- Negative directives direct someone not to do
something: From now on I don’t want to see
anybody who is competent with solder (welding
substance) to do the cleaning.
 Cultural and gender variation in
directives
- Directives are imparted overwhelming by
men, especially European men, often to
women.
- Directives and complaints are both important
in gaining and maintaining control and power.
 Commisives
- Commisives are those in which, by promising
and offering, Speaker S is committed to a
future act A.
- I will give you a lift home tonight (Quoc to
Boba)
- As with directives and complaints, the
distribution of commissives indicates power
relationships as well as cultural differences.
- Commissives tend to be performed by women
rather than men and by South-east Asians
(often in dialogue with European men).
 Apologies
- Apologies fall into Searle’s (1969) category of
expressives in which S makes known feelings
to H.
- Apologies: three acts: Regretful
acknowledgement of failure or fault;
assurance of no offence intended; explanation
or vindication.
- Apologies are very much concerned with face
saving.
 Apologies
- It is important to consider, for each apology,
how it is initiated, by a complaint or a
situation in which S feels that it is his/her
interests to apologize, and how the apologized
is performed.
- Most apologies are performed by the super-
ordinate to the subordinate.
- They are intended to vindicate the speaker
and/or to offer an explanation.
 Apologies
- The hearer has no option but to accept the
apology, which in some cases, is no real
concession to the aggrieved.
- The apologies are largely from Europeans,
both male and female.
- Some of them are quite lengthy because the
apologizer employs several schemata to
apologize and requires or presupposes some
kind of reassurance.
 Apologies
- South-east Asians, especially women, who
rarely apologize sometimes try to terminate
an apology.
- Europeans apologize in such a way to avoid
losing face.
- This puts both Europeans and South-east
Asians at variance with Anglo-Australians,
who occupy the middle ground in that they
tend to apologize as a formality according to
conventions of politeness but do not make a
big deal out of it.
 Small talk
- Small talk, though thematically considered
unimportant, is an essential aspect of
conversation in that it provides a means of
easing things along.
- Some use small talk to initiate a conversation
on a work topic.
- Small talk is found in the discourses of people
from most cultures.
- It is particularly prevalent in communication
between people of the same gender or those
from a similar cultural background.
 Transcription conventions
- Spelling: British English spelling is used.
- Punctuation: New utterances begin on a new
line with no capital letter.
- Capital letters are used for pronoun ‘I’ and
proper names.
- Apostrophes are used for abbreviations e.g.
don’t, haven’t.
- = = The utterance on one line continues
without a pause where the next = picks it up
 Transcription conventions
- (?) = inaudible
- (xxx) = uncertain that word is
correctly transcribed
- /xxx/ = unsure who the speaker is
- ((laughs)) = Non-linguistic features of the
transcription
- (.) = brief pause
-… = longer pause
- {} = longer timed pause
 Transcription conventions
-[ = overlapping or interrupted speech,
-- = A hyphen after an initial sound
indicates a false start
-~ = extension of final sound
- Participants: Jake = J and Noel = N
(Pseudonyms)
 Session 6: Workshop on Analyzing texts
- Your analyzing texts in the workshop could
be used for your final assignment.
- Select one text or, for your own purposes,
two/three/four texts of approximately 2,000
words each.
- The texts can belong to any genre,
preferably academic.
- The texts can be downloaded the from the
internet or taken from any source of your
preference (newspapers, books, novels, etc.)
 Analysing texts
- You are expected to talk about one of the
following aspects of the text selected:
1.The lexical/grammatical
features/cohesion/coherence of the text
2. The information structure of the text, both at
the sentential level and the discourse level.
 Analysing texts

- At the sentential level, analyze the underlying

reasons for the use of a construction,
canonical or non-canonical, preferably non-
canonical.
- Include in your analyses discussions of the
ordering of the information distributed in the
sentence, the given-new status of the
information, and the context that constrains
the given/new status).
 Analysing texts
- At the discourse level, analyze the textual
pattern of the text and the rhetorical features
of the text (directness/ indirectness;
explicitness/implicitness; reader/writer-
responsible; awareness of the audience’s prior
knowledge and expectations or any other
features that are of your interest).
 Analysing texts
3. The evidence of using language to negotiate
differences in culture in the text.
- Issues to be included in your analyses and
discussions:

• Power in intercultural communication: the

language use showing the inequality among
people from different cultural backgrounds
 Analysing texts
• Schismogenesis: how is the language used to
avoid total communication breakdown due to
differences in cultural backgrounds
• Prejudices against others (people from
different cultures) revealed in the language use
• How is the language used to negotiate
differences in cultures/to preserve one’s own
culture while being tolerant to others’
 Analysing texts
• Meta-communicative cues in intercultural
communication as evident in the text
• Suggested strategies to communicative
successfully in intercultural communication
4. Racism, sexism, or any other CDA topic of
your preference.
5. Cultural variation in speech acts (complaints,
apologies, directives, etc.)