Interdisciplinary Perspectives in CrossCultural Communication

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1 Interdisciplinary Perspectives in CrossCultural Communication Edited by Adam Bednarek LINCOM ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

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3 PREFACE Dear Reader, thank you for taking interest in this publication. Today to an even larger extent than in the past centuries, communication frequently takes place between individuals and institutions representing different national and cultural backgrounds. This has resulted in a vast body of theoretical discussions on the relation between language, culture and discourse, as well as in the emergence of empirical research on intercultural encounters. The authors have decided to focus on discourse functional and pragmatic analysis of social communication and refer to the status of functional linguistics in relation to such disciplines as sociolinguistics, anthropology, social psychology, cognitive linguistics and culture studies. The following volume is thus a collection of papers, which I find crucial to the matter at hand. Scholars from Poland, Taiwan, Germany and the Netherlands have agreed to participate in the project. The Lodz International Studies Academy is member of the International Communication Association and we have attempted to deal with the issues presented above during previous conferences and thus far we have published the following volumes: The Media and International Communication Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk Barbara / Pludowski Tomasz / Tanno Dolores Valencia (eds.) Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, pp., num. fig. and tables ISBN pb. Intercultural Europe: Arenas of Difference, Communication and Mediation Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk Barbara / Pułaczewska Hanna (eds). Stuttgart: ibidem Interdisciplinary Approaches to Communicaton Studies Bednarek Adam / WitczakPlisiecka Iwona (eds). Wydawnictwo WSSM, Łódź 2011 The present volume is a continuation of our endeavours to study communication and organization of various parameters of analysis. I believe that it will prove to be an important addition in the growing field of cross-cultural communication. These are my fondest wishes. Adam Bednarek Ph.D. January,

4 ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Adam Bednarek, University of Łódź; LISA, Poland Adam Bednarek received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Łódź in 2008 with his dissertation focusing on the intricacies of Canadian English, with emphasis on the lexical level. He is currently affiliated at the Lodz International Studies Adcademy and the University of Lodz. His scientific interests revolve around translation studies (computer applications in particular), dialectology and sociolingustics. He has published a series of papers plus three books and co-edited one volume on intercultural communication. Dorota Biadala, University of Heidelberg, Germany (dorota.biadala@slav.uniheidelberg.de) Dorota Biadala, holds a Ph.D in linguistics and specializes in teaching German as a foreign language. German and Slavic studies researcher and faculty at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. She is a graduate of German and Polish studies and law. Her primary work focuses on german-polish comparative linguistics and the issues of specialized texts. Her major publications include: Zum Ausdruck der Temporalität im Deutschen und im Polnischen. Agata Blichewicz, Radboud University, the Netherlands(a.blichewicz@gmail.com) Agata Blichewicz studied Modern Greek and English Philology in Warsaw. She was also an Erasmus student at the University of Crete. Lately she graduated in Linguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen. During her master there she did an internship in the Nijmegen Gesture Centre under Asli Ozyurek's supervision. She studied the functions of the Greek pragmatic gestures and helped with other gesture projects. She also worked as a student assistant in the Max Plank Institute in the Evolutionary processes in language and culture group, on the motion events in Indo-European languages. Łukasz Bogucki, University of Łódź; LISA, Poland (lukasz.bogucki@gmail.com) Prof. Łukasz Bogucki teaches translation and interpreting theory and practice at WSSM and Łódź University. A freelance translator and long-time teacher of English, he has written three books and over twenty papers on various aspects of translation and linguistics; he has also edited and co-edited two volumes. His main academic interest is in audiovisual translation, particularly subtitling. He is a member of the editorial board of JoSTrans, Journal of Specialised Translation. Elżbieta Jendrych, Koźmiński University, Poland (jendrych@kozminski.edu.pl) Elżbieta Jendrych is the Head of the Languages Centre and the Director of the Business Studies in English Postgraduate Program for Teachers. She graduated from Warsaw University and got her Ph.D. degree in linguistics there. Her research interest is in business terminology, phraseology and in corpus studies for teaching purposes. Elżbieta Jendrych is the author and co-author of 10 books and numerous articles on corpus studies, teaching 4

5 Business English, designing materials for ESP and teacher training. She works as an English teacher and a teacher trainer. She is an examiner for English for Business exams (LCCI) and a reporter for Pearson Longman. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk University of Łódź; LISA, Poland (blt@uni.lodz.pl) Prof. Dr habil. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk is professor ordinarius of English language and applied linguistics at the University of Lodz, where she holds the position of Chair of English Language and Applied Linguistics. She is also professor at Lodz International Studies Academy (WSSM) and Chair of British and American Studies. Her research interests are primarily in semantics and pragmatics of natural language, corpus linguistics and their applications in translation studies, lexicography and discourse analysis. She has published a number of books and papers in those areas and organized numerous international conferences and seminars. Over the years prof. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk has been invited to read papers at international conferences and to lecture and conduct seminars at European and American universities. Anna Pałczyńska University of Łódź, Poland (a.u.palczynska@gmail.com) Anna Palczynska is a PhD student in the Department of Pragmatics at the University of Lódz a. Her master s thesis was on the cultural side of multimedia translation and during her doctoral studies she decided to concentrate on social aspects of language. Currently she is working on issues connected with language and gender. Tatiana Szczygłowska, University of Bielsko Biała, Poland (tania_n@op.pl) Tatiana Szczygłowska is a university teacher with over 10 years of teaching experience. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of Bielsko-Biała, specializing in translation studies. Her research interests also include contrastive discourse analysis, with special focus on written academic discourse. Jerzy Tomaszczyk; LISA, Poland (tomas@uni.lodz.pl) Jerzy Tomaszczyk has been on the faculty of the Lodz Academy of International Studies since He has taught courses in history of English and historical linguistics, European Studies, and translation. His academic interests are in lexicography, bilingualism and language contact. Louis Wei-lun Lu, National Taiwan University of Taiwan, Taiwan(wllu@ntu.edu.tw) Louis Wei-lun Lu received his Ph.D. in linguistics from National Taiwan University in 2011, and is currently a visiting researcher at Leiden University. His research focuses on the cognitive-functional aspect of language (Chinese and English), with evidence from authentic linguistic corpora. Lily I-Wen Su, National Taiwan University of Taiwan, Taiwan(iwensu@ntu.edu.tw) Lily I-wen Su received her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Hawaii, and has been teaching at National Taiwan University since she came back to Taiwan. Besides cognitive pragmatics, she is interested in syntax and semantics, and also in applying her linguistic 5

6 knowledge to language teaching. Her recent research in metaphor and subjectivity convinces her that it is possible to combine what she studies to her life. Halina Wisniewska, Koźmiński University Halina Wisniewska works at Kozminski University, Warsaw, where she is the head of International Business Communication Section and a lecturer. She teaches Business Studies in English and International Business Communication to undergraduate and post-graduate students. Her current post-doctoral research is focused on various aspects of cross-cultural business communication, yet her professional interests include also issues related to teaching materials development, testing and assessment in ESP classroom, CLIL in tertiary education, and teaching adult learners. She is the author and co-author of content-led ESP textbooks, an e-learning course and articles on ELT. 6

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8 Barbara Lewandowska Tomaszczyk Lodz International Studies Academy, University of Lodz, Poland Blurring the boundaries : A Model of Online Computer-Mediated Communication Activities (OCA) 1. Introduction What can be witnessed in the contemporary digital world when compared with more traditional modes of communicating is the blurring of the boundaries between various parameters in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). The so-called traditional media, frequently available on-line, and new media in different forms such as posts which interpret and evaluate the materials in the traditional media, blogs or on-line social networking and discussions on the internet fora are exemplary instances. Another facet of the hybridity is observed with respect to the traditional division of the communication act, particularly with respect to the relationship between the Sender (Author) and the Addressee (Audience) of the message. The present research is conducted within a European Concerted Research Action designated as COST Action IS0906: Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies, and the Polish project Przemiany w postrzeganiu rzeczywistości i język nowych mediów Changes in the perception of the reality and the language of new media, particularly the Working Group which focuses on the Information Communication Technology and the use of computermediated communication with reference to the identification of new types of the Author(s) Audience(s) relationships, as well as evolving social relationships in contemporary times 1. New methods of the analysis of CMC materials, involving an integration of qualitative and quantitative methods, are presented in the paper. They combine language corpus study with the cognitive and pragmatic perspectives on language. The concept of Interconnectivity is proposed and explored here (see Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010b) and added as one of the essential parameters of the CMC user s On-line Activity measure (OCA Model). Samples of the materials are analysed, which come from two main sources: traditional media and new media (internet editions of the news, blogs and posts), and refer to current political events. 2. Properties of CMC Contacts among people are growing via CMC. Due to the increasing frequencies and range of 1 The present research is supported by a Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education grant Przemiany w postrzeganiu rzeczywistości a język nowych mediów Transformations in the perception of reality and the Language of new media, correlated with a European Concerted Research Action designated as COST Action IS0906: Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies. 8

9 contacts individual and cultural differences in communication get more and more obliterated. This is also strengthened via the internet media language and emerging transcultural codes, identities and conventions. And yet, the entrenchment of group norms and culture-specific preferences is clearly visible. The differences surface when the same political events are reported in the media and CMC users post their comments and opinions. As will be argued further, a discussion of sheer content transmission, without recourse to the political, religious, economic, etc. norms, is simply untenable (cf. Hinnenkamp 2009:189). Audiences have been experiencing major transformations of their media and communication environment. Researchers have stressed these tendencies while contemporary technological devices reinforce and extend these movements and there is no limiting line to them. Herring (2004a, 2004b, 2007) lists a number of medium properties, which distinguish CMC from other types of communication. They include synchronicity, message transmission, persistence of transcript, size of message buffer, channels of communication, anonymous messaging, private messaging, filtering and quoting. Each of them is characteristic of some type of CMC, which can be either synchronous or asynchronous, one- or two-way in one-toone, one-to-many and many-to-one and many-to-many configurations, the text can be stored or deleted, limited or unlimited as to the size. The user can post verbal, visual, audio messages or combinations thereof. Messages can be anonymous or signed, can be private or public as far as the addressee is concerned. The messages can be filtered or not and other users can employ the quotation system in their responses. 3. Classical models of communication Any transfer of information from the Sender (S) to the Receiver or Addressee (A) is referred to as communication. The sending and receiving of information take place in a special, basically cybernetic arrangement, which involves sending a signal which causes a change in the environment (E) and, in turn, affects the system (SYS) itself via feedback (F). This causes the system to adapt to new conditions (see Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010a:15-16). The schema can be graphically simplified as follows (Fig. 1): S A SYS F E Fig. 1. A communication model When the S wants to convey a message about an aspect of the outside reality such as e.g. I m cold in her s/he can encode the message in terms of a verbal system. Then the message is transmitted to A via a Channel of Communication. When the message reaches the A, s/he decodes it. In order for a message to be comprehended both S and A must use the same code or form (e.g. natural language). What should be emphasized is the fact that in the natural language interaction the S s intended message may not always be identified as such by A. The context or situation as well as the knowledge of the world may be different for the sender and for the addressee of the message, which influences its interpretation. The same sentence I m cold in here then can be uttered with a different intentional load e.g.: as a simple informational statement, as a request to, say, close the window, as a suggestion to leave the place, or, on the contrary, to stay in, etc. The disclosing of the S s intentions is not always simple or straightforward for the A. 9

10 An analogous situation takes place in CMC and can be considered even more difficult to interpret as the author of a message (S) may be distant and more often than not remain not visible to the A (audience). Therefore the contextual clue or body signals will not be within the addressee s range of perception and interpretation. Inaccessibility of paralinguistic signals of the message, even if mediated more and more often by a growing set of iconic symbols in CMC, as well as the parameters of anonymity, play against the prototypical interpretative system of information exchange. 4. CMC functions of language Language is used to perform different communicative functions (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010a: for an interpretation and examples), which are all present in CMC. The following major language functions have been proposed in linguistic literature: Referential Function, in which language is used to point to objects and events in the actual world context or in the universe determined by the participants of a verbal interaction, as e.g. in Tom is a painter. The Emotive Function is shown when a language user talks about an emotion (emotion language) or displays it verbally (emotional language). The Conative or Persuasive Function presents tools to make addressee inclined to do something, while the Poetic Function attracts the addressee s attention to the form as much as to the meaning. The Metalinguistic Function signifies using the same system for description and for investigation, i.e. using language to explain linguistic phenomena and the Performative Function is related to performing frequently ritualised acts via using language, in other words doing things with words, to quote the classic Austinian definition. Even though all these functions can be observed in CMC, commonly in combinations, other new functions are evolving, like what I dub the Luddic Function, when the user employs the medium to play and get entertainment. 5. User-generated content With the advent and development of CMC a new type of language user has been evolving a hybrid, or blending, between the Author and the Addressee. One aspect of this process has to be more fully explained at this point. No proposal is made here that in the classical type of communication no interchange of these roles is observed. On the contrary, in his design features of language Hockett (1958) lists interchangeability as one of its major properties, shared not only among humans but within the entire animate world of primates. And yet, there exists some special aspect of blurring of this boundary in CMC. The communication world of the art and media in particular has been typically divided into those who are authors and the others who constitute their audience. In other words, active language providers and fairly silent audiences. This distinction imposes a passive image of a typical language receiver, which has been monopolizing the scene for centuries not only in the world of drama, then film or television, but also in the circles of novelists and poets and their captive audiences. The internet CMC technologies dramatically change the picture. The official journalists in the press, radio and TV, start being interrupted and negated, their contributions compromised and what used to be passive receivers are transforming into active actors/audiences. Hybridisation, rooted also in anonymity, has its harvesting and uncovers true reception of the content officially generated. User-generated content challenges mainstream truths. However, even in such a context the question of the extent to which new media are a truly empowering tool for 10

11 new audiences remains not fully understood yet. CMC audience is not one uniform social stratum. Even though it goes without saying that it is the younger rather than older, somewhat better educated and with higher financial resources that constitute the core of CMC users, at least in Poland, this is not the case that they form a single undifferentiated social class. One can also conjecture that different technological parameters such as sychronicity, type of message transmission, persistence of transcript (duration), size of message buffer, channels of communication (oral, written, visual, aural, or their combinations), anonymity, privacy and filtering (cf. Herring 2004a, 2004b, 2007), all contribute in various ways to the diversification of the audience and contribute to differences in computer-mediated discourse, or, in fact, discourses, if we want to be more precise. 6. Oral and written discourse: a hybrid What have been observed for a few decades now on the stage of the media are different types of the blurring of the boundaries not only between the functions of the Author and the Audience, referred to in the last section, but also between the language modes spoken and written, between types of genres such as a conversation, narration or description, the blurring of the boundaries between private and public domains, between the real and the virtual worlds. At present, various web tools combined with mobile information and communication technologies not only reinforce these tendencies but are probably the original strongest sources of these hybridisation processes in the media. 7. Message re-conceptualization and CMC users identities The investigation of the role and function of the Addressee in the theory of communication, has uncovered a different reality than that which had been proposed before. As was mentioned above, in the place of a patient viewer, reader or a conversational interactant, there emerges an active participant who does not passively receive the message but who contributes to the incoming knowledge, shapes it and gives the receiving message the final form. In other words, the recipient does not simply decode the incoming message, s/he constructs it anew and the final effect is a re-conceptualization of the message received (LewandowskaTomaszczyk 2010c). The re-conceptualization has a number of sources. They are both the addressee s knowledge of the world, the social and cultural parameters of the interaction, an immediate context, and, last but not least, the intentions of the addressees to construct their identities. In the case of CMC, the identities projected in the virtual world. The media landscape is constantly changing, which affects the user s practicies. Web tools, mobile information and communication technologies, the original sources of these hybridisation processes in the media, stimulate the user s manipulation with their selves projected in the net. However, what can be observed simultaneously, is certain anchoring of CMC participants in one s own system of beliefs and convictions, reluctance to change, which seems a fairly unexpected property considering the fast running changes in the landscape created or portrayed in the web. 8. On-line CMC Activity (OCA) Model To represent Computer-Mediated Communication what is proposed in this section is a Model of Overall Online CMC Activities (OCA). It involves a number of quantitative and qualitative parameters. The quantitative parameters comprise an Interconnectivity Value (IV), which 11

12 equals the number of interacting participants and the number of jointly constructed discourse turns. Furthermore, OCA is additionally estimated by the length of each S s utterance in each turn, measured in terms of a number of words, their type:token ratio, the keyness of each author s lexical repertoire, i.e. the frequency of the words used in all posts by a given author, measured with respect to a reference corpus. Additionally, the number and type of evaluation responses (support vs non-support votes), drawn from the internet materials, contributes to the value. The qualitative parameters explore the lexical patterns, lexical choices, syntactic structures and discourse behaviour preferences of a given participant, his/her figurative language uses, and, together with the quantitative values of each of the qualitative factor, they constitute a CMC user s Online Discourse Activity (ODA). Apart from the linguistic discourse behaviour, CMC users employ various visual and acoustic systems which are all responsible for a user s overall CMC activity (OCA). OCA then covers both a user s ODA as well as other semiotic resources (vocal, visual), which complement the former. Interconnectivity designates the strength of connection of each individual user with all other users in the same topic domain (thread). Interconnectivity can be calculated from raw quantitative blog data as a sum total of turns with respect to each participant (see (5) below). Dedicated visualization software can be used to receive CMC Interconnectivity visualisation graphs. Graphs in (1), (2), (3) and (4) below were generated by Piotr Pęzik and Łukasz Dróżdż (Lodz University) with the use of Gephi an open source graph visualisation and manipulation software. 2 2 Note form the editor: Due to the emmence difficulty of presenting such detailed elements within a single picture frame, the quality may not be satisfactory. 12

13 Graph 1 13

14 In (1) a graph shows all interconnectivity links with respect to all single-authored blogs researched, while (2) is one interconnectivity detailed instance of one randomly selected post ((1) and (2) are generated from the blog by Joanna Senyszyn, a Polish left-wing politician). Graph 2 14

15 Graph (3) illustrates all replies as appeared in one blog (by Janusz Korwin-Mikke, a Polish radical right-wing politician) Graph 3 15

16 The graphs illustrate the complexity of the Interconnectivity parameter and can be analysed in a more fine-grained format (4). Graph 4 16

17 The nicks of the top bloggers active in the blog in and the frequencies of their responses, i.e. respective Interconnectivity Values, are given in (5). The total number of the authors and commentators, who participated in this blog till March 31, 2011, comprises 3507 users. All the data in the blog serve as the basis for calculating the individual Interconnectivity Value and the Interconnectivity Profile of each of the users. (5) Top users and numbers of turns in the blog of Janusz Korwin-Mikke comment_author response_to cnt ~Hodyn JKM 36 ~Jarun JKM 36 ~Hodyn ~Hodyn 23 ~wins Law JKM 19 ~FJS Southampton ~FJS Southampton 18 ~HubertP JKM 18 ~Jacekzarazek JKM 14 ~FJS Southampton JKM 14 ~troll JKM 13 ~gay friend JKM 13 ~barawok JKM 13 ~ja JKM 12 17

18 ~Bogdan liczy JKM 11 ~JKM ~JKM 11 ~Jarun ~Jarun 11 ~Karol Kobylarz JKM 11 ~FJS Southampton ~Hodyn 11 ~Bael JKM 9 forumowy_paul@onet.eu JKM 9 ~hubert JKM 9 ~obiektywny JKM 9 ~JKM JKM 8 ~... ~... 8 An additional quantitative parameter of the CMC activity refers to possible support nonsupport marking as indicated by the users. They are most representative of and concordant with the users ideological and political profiles. To reassume what has been discussed in this section, (see (6) below for a diagrammatic representation), it is proposed that a model of overall Online CMC Activities (OCA) should subsume all quantitative discourse and non-verbal activity of all and each of the users, qualitative parameters of discourse of visual and acoustic type, which cover patterns of verbal and non-verbal behaviour, and combine the parameters to present an overall online CMC activity. (6) Model of Overall Online CMC Activities (OCA) 18

19 * QUANTITATIVE Parameters Online Discourse Activity (Quantitative ODA) - Interconnectivity Value (IV) - Length of utterance in each turn (number of words), - Type/token ratio (repetitions) - Item Frequency - Keyness (vs. a reference corpus) - Support/Non-support frequency Online Non-verbal Activity (visual, acoustic) (ONA) * QUALITATIVE Parameters Online Discourse Activity (Qualitative ODA) - Lexical Choices - Lexical Patterns - Syntactic structures - Discourse behaviour - Figurative uses (absolute frequencies, variance) - Ideological preferences (marking) Online Non-verbal Activity (visual, acoustic) (ONA) OVERALL CMC Activity: Quantitative ODA Qualitative ODA O Non-verbal A 19

20 9. Materials and Research Methodology 9.1. Methods On the methodological level, CMC analysis represents an integration of qualitative and quantitative factors as well as the cognitive and pragmatic aspects of the language used. In the section to follow of the present research an attempt is made to show how to integrate the frameworks applied so far and encompass both micro and macro-level analyses of language (see Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & Dziwirek 2009, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & Tomaszczyk 2010) CMC corpora The materials used in this research comes from two main sources: traditional and new media. Thus, among other sources, members of the PELCRA team of the Chair of English Language and Applied Linguistics of Lodz University have access to a vast collection of digitized newspapers as well as television and radio transcripts (cf. Pęzik 2011, Walinski & Pęzik 2007). We have also been collecting the Polish Usenet archives and have access to large resources of English Usenet archives. The name Usenet is used to refer to a heterogenous system of computer discussion groups. Its users participate in discussions by sending s, i.e. posts, to one or many named newsgroups, initiating a discussion on a new topic or replying to posts by other users. It is important to note that the newsgroups, while divided in thematic hierarchies eg. soc.politics.uk or sci.physics. The posts are not moderated in any way, and no other message filtering is used. Any user can post any content, not necessarily related to the name of the group, so they are likely to present authentic, unsupervised opinions, in which framing is more subtle and not readily identifiable. It might be mentioned that Usenet as a medium provides the researcher with an extremely large and comprehensive collection of readily accessible texts stored in a consistent, well-described format and structured thematically (as of 2010, the 10 largest of the over active newsgroups would receive over messages per day). Stylistically, Usenet and other types of post exchanges present a corpus of largely informal language, with many features specific rather to conversational, spoken discourse. At the same time, its language bears all marks of so-called internet speech, exhibiting traits characteristic chiefly of this new medium as discussed in the sections above. The contents of the conversations reflect the language, as a mixture of different voices, which range from almost professional advice on niche topics to highly polarised opinions on politics and current affairs to mere banter, not infrequently with slang, vulgar and abusive uses. Other materials used here in the present study are blogs and posts published in response to the traditional media articles, which will be discussed in the sections to follow. 10. CMC & political events An example of CMC discussed in the present paper comes from English and Polish discussion fora. The objective is to identify the strategies users apply to express their perception of a selected political event and to construct their on-line identity in this particular internet 20