LINGUIST List 8.1031

Fri Jul 11 1997

Sum: Intercultural communication

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Christiane Meierkord, intercultural communication

Dear colleagues!

Some time (or rather a long time) ago, I posted a query to the list
asking for information on research activities regarding intercultural
communication. Please excuse me for writing this summary so late, but
two kids have been keeping me rather busy. I would like to thank all
respondants for the valuable information that was supplied to me. As
almost everyone expressed their wish to get into contact with others
working in this area, I have included your e-mail addresses in the
following summary.

Anne Barron <abarronollamh.ucd.ie> (University College Dublin,
Ireland) is doing a PhD, studying the effects of a year abroad on the
development of pragmatic competence among second language learners of
German and is interested in the development of pragmatic competence in
general.

Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta <sangeeta.bagga-guptahoe.se> (University of
Linkping, Sweden) has done an ethnographic description of the
communication environment at the NGO, where women from different
linguistic and cultural backgrounds are employed.

Christine Anthonissen <canthoniartsn.uwc.acz> (University of Western
Cape, South Africa) is co-author of a book titled "Communication
Across Cultures in South-Africa - toward a Critical Language
Awareness", which she uses to teach undergraduates.

Laura Chao-Chih Liao <ccliaofcusqnt.fcn.edu.tw> (Feng Chia University,
Taiwan) has published several books and articles on different aspects of
intercultural communication, contrastive pragmatics, discourse analysis
and gender differences, all related to Chinese and American English.

Peter Kistler <pkbdgibm.net> (Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung,
Indonesia) applies ethnomethodological conversation analysis to
German-Indonesian conversations. He is especially interested in
"critical incidents" and discourse structure.

Tom Koole <tom.koolelet.ruu.nl> (Utrecht Institute of Linguistics,
Netherlands) has published articles relating to intercultural
communication in team discourse and business negotiations.

Susan Meredith Burt <burtvaxa.cis.uwosh.edu> (University of Wisconsin
Oshkosh, USA) is working in the area of native / non-native
interaction, particularly on issues of linguistic accomodation by
native speakers to non-native speakers.

Hannes Kniffka <ssp01rs1.rrz.Uni-Koeln.de> has published a book
titled "Elements of Culture-Contrastive Linguistics", which
summarizes empirical and practical consequences for analyses of
intercultural communication, especially related to the cultures of
Saudi-Arabia, China and Maroc.

Laura Hartley <hartleylpilot.msu.edu> (Michigan State University,
USA) focusses on linguistic details of politeness in the speech act
situation of complaints.

Sally Hunt <lishwarthog.ru.ac.za> (Rhodes University, South Africa)
has completed an MA thesis on interaction in small group teaching at
university, focussing on gender and culture, and how these two factors
affect the amount and kind of participation of the various students.

Alain Dawson <orfqenordnet.fr> (University of Paris, France) is doing
research on the mutual intelligibility of Slavic languages, especially
on "how Russians understand texts written in other Slavic languages
without having learnt them."

Shikaripur N. Sridhar <ssridharccmail.sunysb.edu> (State University
of New York at Stony Brook) will be happy to provide information on
"International varieties of English" and "Non-native
intitutionalized varieties of English".

Melanie Siegel <siegeldfki.uni-sb.de> (Deutsches Forschungsinstitut
fuer kuenstliche Intelligenz, Saarbruecken, Germany) did a PhD thesis
on translation mismatches in Japanese-German translations.

Anita Fetzer <Anita.Fetzerpo.uni-stuttgart.de> (Universiteat
Stuttgart, Germany) has written her PhD thesis on negative
interactions. She has developed a model which explains linguistic
preferences regarding refusals, and she has tried to apply this model
to second language teaching.

Patricia Haegman <fte.haegeman.palpha.ufsia.ac.be> (University of
Antwerp, Belgium) teaches courses in intercultural communication, both
in interpersonal and business talk. She has written her PhD on
"Business English in Flanders, A Study of Lingua Franca Telephone
Interaction."

Bernd Mueller-Jacquier <mue-jacphil.tu-chemnitz.de> (Technische
Universitaet Chemnitz, Germany) is head of the department for
intercultural communication at Technische Universitaet Chemnitz, where
several courses on different aspects of intercultural communication
are being tought. You can visit their homepage, which also includes an
interesting bibliography at http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/ikk/

Myself, I completed my PhD "English as a Medium of Intercultural
Communication: An Analysis of Non-Native-/ Non-Native Speaker
Discourse" in 1995. I analysed discourse structural (topic
development, turn-taking etc.) and politeness phenomena. Currently, I
am doing two projects both in the area of intercultural
communication. One investigates gender and culture as possible factors
influencing the ability to successfully communicate in intercultural
situations. This study focusses on Japanese, Korean and German
speakers using English as a lingua franca and examines discourse
structural as well as politeness phenomena. In a second project, a
Japanese colleague (Yuko Sugita <yukophil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de>)
and myself take a look at more formal situations, i.e. intercultural
interaction in Japanese companies. We hope to find out about the
linguistic differences between Japanese and German business
communication and the way these influence Japanese and German
speakers' use of English as a communication tool.

I hope to be able to update this list from time to time. So, if you
happen to know anybody, who wants to share her/his knowledge on
intercultural communication with others, please ask her/him to send me
an e-mail. This list will also be accessibly via my homepage
(http://www-public.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de/+meierkor) in about a month.

Best wishes to everybody

Dr. Christiane Meierkord

Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf
Modernes Japan
Universitaetsstr. 1
40225 Duesseldorf
Tel.: +49 (0)211 - 81-14709
e-mail: meierkoruni-duesseldorf.de