175-420 Advanced Cross-Cultural Communication

Completion of 175-108 Cross-Cultural Communication and 37.5 points of second/third-year subjects in linguistics and applied linguistics for third-year students, and admission to the postgraduate diploma or honours in linguistics and applied linguistics for fourth-year students.

This subject explores cultural variation in communication patterns and expectations, and examines how communication takes place across cultures. It asks students to use their knowledge of linguistics and their understanding of other cultures to study the relation between cultural values and discourse and to apply this to workplace-based research. The subject will cover paradigms for this study such as sociolinguistic issues in language choice; cultural variation in speech acts; turn-taking rules and formulaic patterns; and cultural variation in the organisation of oral and written discourse (including academic discourse, meetings, letters). On completion of the subject students should be sensitive to inter-cultural variation in communication patterns and expectations; be able to analyse such patterns and expectations; and know what questions to ask about communication patterns in an unfamiliar culture.