Book Description

Did you know that, to get a job in Australia, it is important to use the right balance of informal and formal language during the interview? Did you know that student advising in Wu Chinese (spoken around Shanghai) is not a face-threatening activity, contrary to general perceptions about the nature of advice giving? Did you know that the use of minimal eye contact and flat intonation by Japanese speakers is interpreted by native English speakers as a lack of interest and willingness to communicate? Did you know that French and Australian English speakers show a surprising number of similarities in the way they use conversational humour in social visits? Think you know how to address your Italian lecturer or tutor? Think again! These are some of the findings arrived at in this exciting new collection of papers from an array of international scholars who represent different theoretical perspectives, but who all study communicative behaviour across languages and cultures, including English, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Wu Chinese. Adopting a comparative or cross-cultural approach, the majority of the contributions draw on authentic examples from a wide range of corpora, including social visits among friends, advising sessions involving recent high school graduates and/or their parents, simulated employment interviews and interactions involving second language learners. Contributions of a pedagogical approach offer practical assistance to the cross-cultural learner through a range of classroom activities. These include: a cross-linguistic comparison of conceptual metaphors; an applied ethnolinguistics framework; and ethnographic critical cultural awareness and reflexivity exercises. All of these activities are designed to equip the learner to study the communicative behaviours and cultural values of the target language. This edited volume is an important contribution to the growing body of work dedicated to better understanding the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of cross-cultural competence required for successful communication across cultural boundaries. It will appeal to readers interested in linguistics, interactional styles and communicative behaviour, cross-cultural pragmatics and intercultural communication.