Communication as culturally contexted practice

1
Communication as culturally contexted practice

• Anthony J. Liddicoat
• Research Centre for Languages and Cultures
  Education
• School of International Studies
• University of South Australia

2
Language, culture and communication

• Communication is not simply an act of language
  use.
• Communication occurs in a context.
• Context is both linguistic and non-linguistic.
• Culture is a contextual factor which shapes
  language and communication.

3
Culture impacts on communication at a number of
levels
Source Crozet and Liddicoat (1999)
4
Culture as frame

• Culture constitutes a frame in which meanings are
  conveyed and interpreted.
• Culture gives specific, local meanings to symbols
  and associations connotations with denotations.

5
Culture as frame

• Sacred Site
• Anthropological discourses e.g. a location with
  ritual significance.
• Political discourse ownership.

6
Culture and text

• Culture also influences how the linguistic act
  itself is constructed
• text types
• the properties of textual structures
• the purposes of textual structures.
• Aspects of communication such as sequencing,
  recipient design and impact are read within a
  framework of cultural understandings about valued
  and appropriate language use.

7
Culture and text

• Different ways of organising text are valued in
  different cultures these norms for organising
  text affect how people perceive the text
  aesthetics, logic, coherence, clarity.
• In French academic writing, digression shows
  depth of knowledge, in English it shows lack of
  focus.
• In German academic writing, the text works from
  less important arguments/information to more
  significant arguments/information, in English
  this order is reversed.
• In Japanese kishoutenketsu ???? style involves
  introducing a point (ki ?), elaborating the point
  (shou ?), changing to a tangentially related
  sub-theme (ten ?) and concluding (ketsu ?). This
  structure is elegant in Japanese, but the ten
  section seems an irrelevant tangent in English.

8
Culture and text

• Different cultures place the responsibility for
  text comprehension on different participants in
  the discourse writer/speaker or reader/listener
  (Hinds 1987).
• Writer responsibility (English) the writer is
  responsible for ensuring that the text is clear,
  coherent and comprehensible to the reader more
  overt structuring, more establishment of shared
  knowledge.
• Reader responsibility (Japanese) the reader is
  responsible for making meaning from the writers
  text less overt structuring, greater assumption
  of shared knowledge.

9
Culture and purpose

• Son Hi Mum thanks for picking me up.
• Mother Thanks for picking you up! Did you think
  I wasnt going to come? But Im your mum, of
  course I was going to come. Its dark and youre
  little. Of course I was going to pick you up.

• Mother French
• French understanding thanking in family contexts
  is done for things which are extra, the sons
  thanks is heard as a criticism.

Son Australian Australian understanding
expressing appreciation for a kindness (polite).
Mothers reaction is unexpected.
10
Culture and purpose

• All languages use routine and formulaic
  utterances in social interaction.
• E.g. English How are you?
• Routines often have conventionalised responses.
• Eg. English Okay/Fine. Departures from the
  conventions are subject to social
  interpretations Not so good/terrible and have
  interactional import.

• A routine in one language may not be a routine in
  another Did you have a good weekend? cf Tu as
  passé un bon weekend?

11
Culture and form

• Linguistic acts are made up of meaningful
  elements lexicon, morphology, syntax, etc.
• Meanings are culturally contexted and are
  realised in culturally specific ways.

• Llámame cuando llegas. (indicative)Call me when
  you arrive.
• Llámame cuando llegues. (subjunctive)Call me
  when you arrive.

• English you
• French tu, vous
• Spanish tu, usted, vosotros, ustedes, vos

• English give
• Japanese kudasaru ???, kureru ???, ageru ???,
  sashiageru ?????.

12
Language, culture, communication and translation

• Communication involves the use of a culturally
  shaped code in a culturally shaped context.
• This leads to problems of translatability it is
  possible to translate at the level of code from
  one language to another, however the meanings
  communicated vary because of the new layers of
  cultural shaping.