175-108 Cross-Cultural Communication

Formerly available as 175-006. Students who have completed 175-006 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

This subject involves the main components of communicative events across cultures, the main linguistic approaches to analysing them, how they vary in a range of cultures from around the world, and the difficulties and misunderstandings these differences create in inter-cultural communication. Specific topics include body language, titles and respect, turn-taking and turn maintenance, narrative structuring, intonation, requests, disagreement and criticism, information seeking, politeness, and business negotiation. Topics will be illustrated with case studies of half-a-dozen speech communities from around the world, such as French, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Anglo-Australian, and Aboriginal Australian.

• increase their understanding of social, ethical and cultural context;

• develop their written communication through essay preparation and writing.

Two 1500-word research assignments (due mid-semester and end of semester) 70%, a 1-hour examination (during the examination period) 30%.

• C Kramsch, Language and Culture. Oxford University Press 1998.