Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Culturally speaking Managing rapport through talk across cultures ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey
This volume has the goal of introducing readers to research on cross-cultural and intercultural interaction, concentrating on two major approaches, social psychology and intercultural pragmatics. Fourteen papers are divided among five major sections: Two sections concentrate on theoretical concepts and models, two on empirical studies, and the final section discusses methodology. There is also a brief introduction.
In the first section, Helen Spencer-Oatey (‘Rapport management: A framework for analysis’ [11–46]) gives a synthesizing overview of theoretical approaches such as accommodation theory and the different politeness theories of Geoffrey Leech and Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson; the chapter shows how these approaches overlap in interest but not how they differ in underlying assumptions. Michael H. Bond, Vladimir Žegarac, and Helen Spencer-Oatey continue the attempt at theoretical synthesis in ‘Culture as an explanatory variable: Problems and possibilities’ (47–71), using Geert Hofstede’s dimensions of culture, Leech’s politeness principle, and the notion of scripts.
The second section has three articles on cross-cultural differences. Noriko Tanaka, Helen Spencer-Oatey, and Ellen Cray, in ‘It’s not my fault! Japanese and English responses to unfounded accusations’ (75–97), contrast the responses of Japanese, British, and Canadian students on a production questionnaire eliciting apologies. Helen Spencer-Oatey, Patrick Ng, and Li Dong similarly contrast the evaluation of responses to accomplishment compliments by British, Mainland Chinese, and Hong Kong respondents (‘Responding to compliments: British and Chinese evaluative judgements’ [98–120]). Finally, Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou (‘Telephone conversations in Greek and German: Attending to the relationship aspect of communication’ [121–40]) shows that Greeks prefer more phatic talk in openings and longer closings in telephone conversations than Germans do.
The third section of the volume concentrates on intercultural rather than cross-cultural models. Juliane House (‘Understanding misunderstanding: A pragmatic-discourse approach to analyzing mismanaged rapport in talk across cultures’ [145–64]) constructs a model of intercultural communication, using it to analyze instances of rapport failure between American and German students. Vladimir Žegarac and Martha C. Pennington, in ‘Pragmatic transfer in intercultural communication’ (165–90), cite previous studies to argue that pragmatic transfer is a case of general knowledge transfer rather than of linguistic transfer. Virpi Ylänne-McEwan and Nikolas Coupland provide a helpful, complete overview of accommodation theory and its implications for intercultural interaction (‘Accommodation theory: A conceptual resource for intercultural sociolinguistics’ [191–214]).
Turning to the section of empirical studies of intercultural interaction, in ‘Argumentation and resulting problems in the negotiation of rapport in a German-Chinese conversation’ (217–39), Susanne Günthner shows how Germans and Chinese students in Germany employ different strategies to signal disagreement in conversation, resulting in mutual misunderstanding. Along similar lines, Laura [End Page 353] Miller (‘Negative assessments in Japanese-American workplace interaction’ [240–54]) shows how Japanese and American colleagues may fail to recognize each other’s strategies for disagreeing politely. Karin Birkner and Friederike Kern continue the focus on disagreements, showing how East Germans’ and West Germans’ ‘perspectives on self-presentation’ (258) cause them to react differently to potential employers’ challenging questions (‘Impression management in East and West German job interviews’ [255–71]). Finally, a combination of factors, from corporate entertainment budgets to an elaboration of the notion of ‘face’, emerge as contributing to ‘A problematic Chinese business visit to Britain: Issues of face,’ by Helen Spencer-Oatey and Jianyu Xing (272–88).
The section on research methodology has two papers: William Gudykunst (293–315) discusses social psychological research design in the light of Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. Gabriele Kasper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the variety of data-collecting methods used in intercultural pragmatics research (‘Data collection in pragmatics research’ [316–41]).
While the attempt at synthesizing social psychological...
