The Pragmatics of International and Intercultural Communication_ Selected Papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17-22, 1987. Volume 3 and the Ghent Symposium on Intercultural Communication

THE PRAGMATICS OF

INTERCULTURAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Pragmatics & Beyond

New Series

Editors:

Jacob L. Mey

(Odense University)

Herman Parret

(Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)

Jef Verschueren

(Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp)

Editorial Address:

Linguistics (GER)

University of Antwerp (UIA)

Universiteitsplein 1

B-2610 Wilrijk

Belgium

Editorial Board:

Norbert Dittmar (Free University of Berlin)

Bruce Fraser (Boston University)

John Heritage (University of California at Los Angeles)

David Holdcroft (University of Leeds)

Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (University of Lyon 2)

Beatriz Lavandera (University of Buenos Aires)

Marina Sbisà (University of Trieste)

Emanuel A. Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)

Paul O. Takahara (Kobe University)

Sandra Thompson (University of California at Santa Barbara)

Daniel Vanderveken (University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières)

Teun A. van Dijk (University of Amsterdam)

6:3

Jan Blomrnaert and Jef Verschueren (eds)

The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication

THE PRAGMATICS OF

INTERCULTURAL AND

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Selected papers of

the International Pragmatics Conference,

Antwerp, August 17-22, 1987 (Volume III), and

the Ghent Symposium on Intercultural Communication

edited by

JAN BLOMMAERT JEF VERSCHUEREN

University of Ghent University of Antwerp

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

1991

PRAGMATICS & BEYOND NS 6

Vol. 1: Pragmatics at Issue, edited by Jef Verschueren

ISBN 90 272 5014 6 (Eur.)/l-55619-106-5 (US)

Vol. 2: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation, edited by Jef Verschueren

ISBN 90 272 5015 4 (Eur.)/l-55619-107-3 (US)

Vol. 3: The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication,

edited by Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren

ISBN 90 272 5016 2 (Eur.)/1-55619-108-1 (US)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

International Pragmatics Conference (1987 : Antwerp, Belgium)

The pragmatics of intercultural and international communication : selected papers of

the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17-22, 1987, and the Ghent

Symposium on Intercultural Communication / edited by Jan Blommaert and Jef Ver￾schueren.

p. cm. - (Pragmatics & beyond. ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser. 6:3)

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Pragmatics — Congresses. I. Verschueren, Jef. II. Title. III. Series.

P99.4.P72I58 1987

306.4'4~dc20 91-22067

ISBN 90 272 5016 2 (Eur.)/1-55619-108-1 (US) (v.3; alk. paper)

ISBN 90 272 5013 8 (Eur.)/l-55619-101-4 (US) (set; alk. paper) CIP

© Copyright 1991 - John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or

any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

Table of contents

Preface vii

Intercultural and international communication: Introduction 1

Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren

How much culture is there in intercultural communication? 13

Jan Blommaert

Accident and method in the study of intercultural communication:

Colonial description of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo 33

Johannes Fabian

Understanding in intercultural encounters 51

John Gumperz and Celia Roberts

Talking a person into interethnic distinction: A discourse analytic

case study 91

Volker Hinnenkamp

Verbal listening behavior in conversations between Japanese and

Americans 111

Laura Miller

Fieldword as a form of intercultural communication 131

Rik Pinxten

Intercultural dimensions of pragmatics in film synchronisation 145

Susanne Niemeier

Objectivism in pragmatics as a hindrance to intercultural

communication 163

Hans Julius Schneider

Foreigner talk revisited: Limits on accommodation to nonfluent

speakers 173

Sara W. Smith, Nadia Scholnick, Alta Crutcher, Mary Simeone,

and William Ray Smith

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

A pragmatic perspective on international communication 187

Jef Verschueren

References 211

Index of names 233

Index of subjects 239

Preface

During the 1987 International Pragmatics Conference (Antwerp,

August 17-22), literally hundreds of papers were presented which all belong

in a field of pragmatics widely defined as the cognitive and social science of

language and communication. These three volumes of proceedings (Prag￾matics at issue, Levels of linguistic adaptation, and The pragmatics of inter￾cultural and international communication) only provide a partial, though

largely representative, picture of the scholarly substance of the conference.

Since papers were considered individually for publication, the present

spin-off of the meetings does not bear a direct relationship to the thematic

sessions which were organized. Therefore, except for the third volume

which brings together papers from the special topic area (problems of inter￾cultural and international communication) with papers from the Ghent

Symposium on Intercultural Communication, these volumes of proceedings

are not thematic in a strict sense. Yet, the first two volumes form relatively

natural units. Pragmatics at issue collects those papers which focus mainly

on fundamental questions such as: the relation of pragmatics to grammar

and semantics, intentionality, communicative success, the status of literal

meaning, the nature of utterances in conversation, the notion of argumen￾tation, the acquisition of reference and conversational skills, the problem of

the computational processing of communication. Taking the view that

speaking consists of the adaptive making of choices, Levels of linguistic

adaptation provides a spectrum of different levels of linguistic structure at

which adaptation processes operate; the range represented here includes:

intonation patterns, morphemes, particles, modal auxiliaries, anaphoric

relations, reference and deixis, possessive constructions, topic construc￾tions, adjacency pairs, discourse and conversation, text, style, language

varieties, language.

These volumes could not have been produced without the practical

help of Ann Verhaert (for the first two) and Gerd De Keyser (for the

third). For the organization of the Ghent Symposium on Intercultural Com-

VIII PREFACE

munication, we should thank Prof. Dr. Marcel Van Spaandonck for his sup￾port as Dean of the Faculty of Letters. For the organization of the 1987

International Pragmatics Conference the following people and institutions

should be thanked: Alessandro Duranti and Jan Nuyts, co-organizers; the

Belgian national Fund for Scientific Research, for its financial support; the

University of Antwerp (UIA), for financial and logistic support, the John

Benjamins Publishing Company, and the many individuals who took care of

all the practical arrangements during the conference, whose names have not

been forgotten but whom we might not be able to list exhaustively.

Intelcultural and international communication:

Introduction

Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren

University of Ghent Belgian National Science Foundation

University of Antwerp

1. Universality, human variability, and individuality: How to define a

field

In The quest for Self-determination, Dov Ronen (1979, 9) says:

"Until future research proves otherwise, we ought to take for granted only

two basic human entities: individuals and all humanity. All entities

between these two, save a mother and a new-born child, are arbitrary for￾mations created by our perception of ourselves vis-à-vis others".

This observation is clarified as follows:

"One's religion, mother tongue, culture, also one's education, class, sex,

skin color, even one's height, age, and family situation are all potentially

unifying factors. Each factor can also be ignored as irrelevant in the forma￾tion of an "us". Various unifying factors, such as language, religion, and

color of skin, seem "natural". I propose that none is. Language, culture, a

real or assumed historical origin, and religion form identities for an "us" in

our minds, and only so long as they exist in our minds as unifying factors

do the entities of "us" persist". (Ronen 1979, 9)

It is not difficult to fill in this picture with examples. There is indeed an

indefinite number of parameters along which human beings differ. Yet

there are no objective criteria to set apart "natural groups": their role in

establishing group identity depends entirely on their historical and socio￾cultural definition. Thus "race" is of the utmost importance in South

Africa, but much less so in Brazil. "Religion" has lost much of its impor￾tance in present-day Western Europe in the interaction between religious

2 JAN BLOMMAERT & JEF VERSCHUEREN

and non-religious segments of the population (a contrast which was a dom￾inant political parameter until recently), whereas it has assumed renewed

vigor in defining relations between a christian majority and muslim

minorities. "Language" is seen as a unifying factor in relations between

Flemish Belgians and the Dutch, whereas it serves as a divisive force

between the Serbians and the Croatians in Yugoslavia, even though the lan￾guage differences are comparable: in both cases, slightly variant forms of

the same language are spoken. "Descent" is crucial for membership in the

Jewish community, whereas it is of secondary importance in the definition

of Catalan identity.

This is exactly why it is so difficult to identify issues of intercultural and

international communication. They are located at the level of interaction

between members of such ever-shifting entities intermediate between

humanity and individual human beings: communities, cultures, ethnic

groups, nations.

In the light of these observations, the rise of the European-type nation￾state, and especially of the nationalistic ideology used to justify the pursuit

of particular political goals, can hardly be adduced as examples of Western

"rationality". Nationalism as an ideology proceeds from the assumption

that relatively homogeneous populations can be brought together in inde￾pendent, territorially bounded states, and that the resulting homogeneity

for a state population is a norm, a natural condition of social and political

life. Though originally a particularistic movement aimed at reinforcing

diversity by giving "nations" full authority over their own public affairs, the

relative success — in Western Europe — of finding a consensus on the

definition of sociocultural homogeneity (usually with language as the prime

marker) and of creating corresponding political entities, have resulted in

strong forms of autonomy (which are now gradually crumbling in practice

though they are hard to ban from people's minds) which have left inhabit￾ants of European nation-states virtually unprepared for the recently grow￾ing population diversity. The paradox of nationalism is that while it origi￾nated in respect for individuality at the level of identifiable population

groups, the resulting "separateness" may have reinforced ethnocentrism

and intolerance.

Other cultures are readily interpreted in terms of one's own concepts.

In other words, one's own (culture-specific) experiences are seen as maxi￾mally representative of the corresponding universal experience. Hence,

pre-nationalistic universalism-as-ideal was replaced by universality-as-fact.

INTRODUCTION 3

Ethnocentric views of universality, furthermore, have been responsible in

the past for evaluative redefinitions of human diversity, contrasting primi￾tive cultures, societies, and languages with developed ones by imposing a

supposedly universal (but in fact highly culture-specific) norm on them.

In the past, this attitude has pervaded much of our (i.e.: Western sci￾entific) thought and action vis-à-vis the non-Western part of the world. In

this volume, Johannes Fabian demonstrates such ethnocentrism in colonial

linguistic approaches to Swahili in the former Belgian Congo. Linguistics,

as a scientific form of intercultural interaction, was firmly embedded in

what can be called Western colonial ideology, and most of its products were

therefore, from a present-day point of view, instances of intercultural com￾munication failure (cf. also Blommaert 1989).

Unfortunately, similar attitudes still characterize many approaches in

the social sciences. Thus, G. Macdonald and P. Pettit's (1981) philosophical

recommendation for coping with issues of cross-cultural understanding is

that the interpreter — the social scientist — should "minimise a certain sort

of disagreement, specifically disagreement which we find unintelligible"

(p.29). By recognizing that this principle is tenable only on the assumption

that people everywhere are essentially similar and that cultural and cogni￾tive relativity must be rejected, they provide the ultimate justification for

ethnocentric approaches (see Verschueren 1984 for further discussion).

Similarly, practical guides to problems of intercultural communication

(such as Brislin et al. 1986; Asante et al., eds. 1979) often take a naïve and

completely untenable view of the universal validity of the "critical inci￾dents" in terms of which many of them try to provide training. Further, less

practice-oriented surveys of differences between cultures (such as Hofstede

1984) usually define cultures entirely in terms of values to be situated along

dimensions selected on the basis of a "theory-first approach" (Hofstede

1984, 56), rather than on the basis of empirical investigations taking into

account the unbreakable link between observed behavior and the

frameworks of culture-specific concepts in terms of which the behavior is

interpreted by the participants. Such surveys, moreover, tend to quantify

over basically unquantifiable parameters (because they are strongly con￾text- and situation-dependent), and the major research instruments are

questionnaires, "notes and queries", which are themselves susceptible to

cross-cultural misinterpretation. In the case of Hofstede (1984) this is

further aggravated by the assumption that it is possible to define "national

cultures", not only for the relatively homogeneous European nation-states,

4 JAN BLOMMAERT & JEF VERSCHUEREN

but also for countries such as India, Indonesia, Zaïre or Nigeria, where the

national populations are divided into numerous religious, ethnic, linguistic

and social factions (which makes "nation-building" into such a critical fac￾tor in development in, e.g., Tanzania: cf. Blommaert 1989, 284ff).

Any approach to intercultural and international communication, there￾fore, should start from the amazing complexity and the dynamics of crucial

notions such as "culture", "nation", "society", "race" or even "group".

This, of course, does not eliminate the methodological problem of dealing

with these ever-changing entities in terms of linguistic pragmatics. The chal￾lenge is to find an answer to the following question: If we observe particular

properties of communicative behavior in an intercultural or international

setting, how do we decide whether these communicative properties derive

from a universally definable (or at least: internationally generalized) setting

type (such as, e.g., "politics"), or whether they are culture-specific or

merely individual in nature? In other words: Can a pragmatic analysis

clarify the way in which dynamic entities such as "culture" or "nation" enter

into discourse, either as a presupposition, or as an element of interaction

style, or as an issue? A clear answer to this question will not be formulated

in this volume, though the contributions by Hinnenkamp, Gumperz &

Roberts and Verschueren present steps in that direction. The question

itself, however, will be formulated and re-formulated in its practical and

theoretical implications in most of the contributions presented here (e.g.

Blommaert, Fabian, Gumperz & Roberts, Schneider, Verschueren). Ulti￾mately, the question may prove to be an empirical one.

2. Human variability and language

In spite of the above problems, language can be shown to have a

relationship — however vaguely defined in some cases — to group forma￾tions and group perceptions of various kinds. In relation to the problems

sketched, pragmatics (or a pragmatic perspective; cf. Verschueren 1987)

forces us to ask at least two questions. First, does communication itself con￾tribute to the creation and maintenance of perceived population units or

"group identities", and how? Second, are there any communicative corre￾lates to defined or definable units or group identities (beyond those which

help to establish the identities)? And, what kind of influence do these com￾municative correlates exert on concrete processes of interaction, i.e. are

they stable, a-prioristic features of communicative behavior that could be

INTRODUCTION 5

taught and in which one could be trained cross-culturally, or are they situa￾tion-dependent, unpredictable and detectable only after the fact?

We have to be able to answer both of these questions (which, as is

clear from their formulation, are not strictly separable) in order to be able

to talk about inter-group communication (which will be done in this intro￾duction in the process of answering them). For approaching these questions

it is, moreover, essential to realize that the processes we are talking about

always manifest themselves in specific small-scale communicative contexts.

This is the point of Joel Sherzer's (1987) claim that the language-culture

relationship (and the corresponding form-function relationships) only

becomes significant in discourse (or in the way in which it gets used in

specific linguistic and communicative settings).

While the theoretical implications of this stance are far-ranging, so are

the practical conclusions. Traditional statistical sociology, for instance, may

provide crucial data with respect to minority problems in terms of housing,

employment, education, health care, access to justice etc. But whatever

policies are adopted on the basis of such data, implementing them will

always involve face-to-face encounters between members of minority

groups and gatekeepers implementing the policy in the field. These encoun￾ters are the most crucial moments in the process: a job interview, a social

service interview in view of acquiring better housing facilities, doctor￾patient interaction, courtroom proceedings etc. If communication breaks

down during such encounters (some examples of which are analyzed by

Gumperz & Roberts' paper in this volume), the communication failure is

either naively blamed on deficient language competence on the part of the

minority member or — and this is the more common case — on the minor￾ity member's attitudes, abilities, personality, or intelligence, as they were

perceived through his interactive behavior during the encounter. As a

result, racial, cultural or ethnic prejudices will be reinforced (see e.g. Giles

& Johnson 1986), while the minority member will feel discriminated

against, even if there were only good intentions on the part of the majority

member. Discrimination in such cases is therefore less "real" (i.e. inten￾tional) than "perceived" on the basis of failure in the communicative pro￾cess. One social fact, i.e. sociocultural variability in communicative

behavior, leads to another, discrimination or ethnic prejudice. An innocent

element of social differentiation can thus have grave social consequences,

as Gumperz & Roberts (this volume) point out, "Perceived discrimination

can be as damaging as real discrimination".

6 JAN BLOMMAERT & JEF VERSCHUEREN

Let's get back to the first question: Does communication itself contri￾bute to the creation and maintenance of perceived population units or

"group identities", and how? There are at least three communicative

phenomena relevant to this issue. The first one is to be situated at the high￾est level of linguistic structuring at which (taking the pragmatic perspective)

choices have to be made from a variable and negotiable range of pos￾sibilities: language choice. There is abundant evidence in the literature that

choosing to communicate in a particular language, such as French vs. Eng￾lish in Canada (see Monica Heller 1978) or Catalan vs. Spanish in Bar￾celona (see Katherine Woolard 1989), functions as a strong marker of iden￾tity. Second, while language choice is often a very conscious strategy

inspired by sociopolitical motives (see Fabian 1986 and this volume; also

Mey 1985), it assumes a degree of automaticity under conditions of gradual

shift, which turns it into an altogether different phenomenon. Thus, Gum￾perz (1982) describes a slow but identifiable shift away from Slovenian in a

Slovenian-German bilingual community in Austria. This shift is shown to

be related to changing patterns of social networks which find their expres￾sion in network-specific communicative conventions. The choice of Slove￾nian, in this context, may function as a signal of stronger involvement. Thus

an overall shift to a different language does not necessarily destroy group

identity, since identity can be explicitly underscored by still using the lan￾guage which, generally speaking, is on the way out.

A third communicative process, to be situated on the same continuum,

is code-switching. One form of code-switching is the alternating use of dif￾ferent languages in one conversation, one turn, or even one sentence.

Rather than being marginal, this is a normal everyday occurrence in biling￾ual or multilingual societies. To the extent that one language gets replaced

by another (as in the Slovenian-German example), the switching between

languages may shift to switching between language varieties (e.g. standard

vs. dialect) while preserving much the same functions. One function may be

self-categorization; in particular, by switching to a group-specific variety

(e.g. Black English) the speaker establishes or underscores his or her iden￾tification with the group. Another function is other-categorization. Thus

Volker Hinnenkamp's article "Talking a person into interethnic distinc￾tion" describes the case of a German beggar who, in a conversation with a

Turkish guestworker, suddenly lapses into foreigner talk (a phenomenon

described in its own right by Smith et al. in this volume) to put the immig￾rant "in his place". Hinnenkamp describes how this switch suddenly turns

INTRODUCTION 7

around the status relationship between the beggar and the immigrant. In all

cases, whether the switching is between languages or between varieties of

the same language, whether it serves the purpose of self-categorization or

of other-categorization, it carries a symbolic meaning related to speaker

involvement, anchoring the discourse in a socio-cultural context, and

influencing inferential processes.

The relation between communication and group identities is not only

relevant as an object of study, it is also relevant for the praxis of social sci￾entific research in an intercultural setting. Since the social sciences are

essentially ideologically marked forms of discourse, the question as to the

role of the investigator, his or her own contribution to the communicative

processes that are investigated, and how this influences the knowledge

which is scientifically obtained, is of great methodological importance. This

issue is explicitly discussed in this volume by Blommaert, Fabian, Pinxten,

and Schneider. Pinxten's paper completely focuses on the intercultural con￾versational nature of the ethnographic field interview. Criticizing more

objectivistic approaches (e.g. Werner & Schoepfle 1987), he proposes a

view of the ethnographic field interview as a double-biased process of

interactional accomplishment, in which the power to construct and legiti￾mate knowledge is shared by both the researcher and the object. The same

emphasis is found in Fabian's and Blommaert's papers. Both start from the

observation that "older" views of the nonwestern interlocutor are man￾ifestly wrong. Fabian then concentrates on the way in which the scientific

products of colonial linguistics themselves allow a reconstruction of the

specific sociocultural and historical repertoire of intercultural communica￾tion in a specific area. Blommaert relates the shortcomings of older notions

of the "other" to a mistaken conception of the notion of "culture" in com￾munication. He then attempts to reconstruct a differentiated view of "cul￾ture" as a communicatively salient feature, based on an interactionalist

stance similar to Pinxten's. Schneider, finally, shows how fundamental sci￾ence-philosophical options (i.e. objectivism) bias and constrain much of

what is done in pragmatics with regard to intercultural communication.

These four papers display a remarkably similar undercurrent. It is

argued that pragmatics, as a discipline, is just not fit for the study of inter￾cultural communication, unless some fundamental changes in the dominant

methodological frameworks are made. Interdisciplinarity is a major issue

here. Not surprisingly, three out of the four papers just mentioned (namely

Pinxten, Fabian and Schneider) were written by people who would object