Crosstalk and Culture in Sino-American Communication (review)

592 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 minorities are those areas most severely affected by poverty, it would seem fitting to include this issue in such a study, as it affects the level of socioeconomic development not only of these areas but of the nation as a whole. Shelly K. Habel University of Hawai'i Linda W. L. Young. Crosstalk and Culture in Sino-American Communication . Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics, 10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xxiii, 215 pp. Hardcover $49.95. This book-length study ofSino-American cross-cultural verbal communication is an expansion and extension of the thesis postulated in an earlier article by the author (Young 1982). Young identifies some typical Chinese behavior in verbal communication that Americans find "inscrutable" in making arguments or expositions . The Chinese tend to start offby compiling a series of causes, reasons, evidences , motivations, or justifications, but wait only toward the end to reveal the point or message they try to get across. To Americans, the absence ofa preview statement at the onset makes the main point seem delayed and buried in a mass ofinformation. This Chinese communicative pattern may cause serious social consequences: Americans may be led to believe that the Chinese are weak in reasoning processes, and thus stupid; or, they may be led to believe that the Chinese are "beating around the bush," and thus deceitful. (Counter stereotypings ofAmericans by Chinese exist as well, due to the same communicative misunderstandings .) These perceptions are rooted in the cross-cultural differences in our sociocultural and sociolinguistic expectations, which are easily obscured by the use ofa supposedly common language code (i.e., Chinese speakers using English to communicate with Americans, or Americans speaking Chinese with Chinese people). Young clarifies these misunderstandings by analyzing how talk is conducted in taped verbal exchanges and by interviewing native speakers for their reactions to these interactions. Based on the assumption that second-language speakers are typically influenced by the structure and the communicative patterns of their native language, Young offers an account of the "delayed main point" phenomenon ofHawai'i Presspartly in terms ofthe Chinese politeness conventions and partly in terms ofthe typological features of the Chinese language. Chapter 1, "The Ps and Cues of Chinese Inscrutability," presents an overview ofthe problem and the theoretical orientations , plus a summary of the later chapters. Chapter 2, "Deceptive Cause," Reviews 593 analyzes data and discusses the differences between the Chinese and American cultures with respect to the notion ofcausality and the ways it is communicated. In chapter 3, "Missing Links," the author suggests that the tendency for Chinese speakers to present supporting materials for the main point before they explicitly deliver that point is parallel to and influenced by the linguistic structure ofChinese at the sentence level, where the "because" clause precedes the "so" clause. In chapter 4, "Backforwardly Speaking," the author resorts to Chinese classics and philosophy to expound on a tradition ofrhetoric that favors a roundabout, suggestive , and indirect way to express ideas. In chapter 5, "Effacing Talk," she elaborates on how power structure and social status influence the way we speak in everyday discourse and how the latter reflects, reinforces, and creates the former. In chapter 6, "Mistaking Turns," she further illustrates, by analyzing incidents of cross-cultural encounter, that different beliefs and practices in what should be verbalized and how it should be verbalized can have immediate and far-ranging effects. Chapter 7, "Parting Words," is a concluding summary. My only reservation regarding Young's proposed account concerns the parallel she draws between the "delayed main point" communicative pattern and the "because . . . so . . ." grammatical pattern in Chinese. Young deserves our commendation for her attempt to relate how language is used with how language is structured. However, the linguistic assumption she uses to support her parallel, namely that in Chinese the "because" clause precedes the "so" clause, is not always attested to be true by authentic data. In everyday conversation, the most common context in which a language is used, it is found that the "reason" part of an argument or an exposition, prefaced by the Chinese causal marker yinwei, overwhelminglyfollows the point or the message that the speaker is trying to...