The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication

The Routledge Handbook of

Language and Intercultural

Communication

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication constitutes a comprehensive

introduction to the multidisciplinary field of intercultural communication, drawing on the

expertise of leading scholars from diverse backgrounds. The Handbook is structured in five sec￾tions and covers historical perspectives, core issues and topics, and new debates in the field, with

a particular focus on the language dimension. Among the key themes addressed are: the con￾tested nature of culture; the language and culture nexus; the complex relationship between

language, culture, identity, agency, power and context; conceptions of intercultural (commu￾nicative) competence; English as the principal medium for intercultural communication; and

developments in intercultural communication research and praxis, among others. The Handbook

includes an introduction and overview by the editor, which provides readers with an indication

of the focus of each section and chapter.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication is an essential resource for

advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students of applied linguistics as well as those in

related degrees such as applied English language and TESOL/TEFL. It will also be useful

for researchers and students in other fields such as speech communication, cross-cultural

communication, psychology and sociology, and anyone interested in language and intercultural

communication.

Jane Jackson is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The Routledge Handbook of

Language and Intercultural

Communication

Edited by

Jane Jackson

First published 2012

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2012 Selection and editorial matter, Jane Jackson; individual chapters, the contributors.

The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the

authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78

of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any

form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,

including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication / edited by Jane

Jackson.

p. cm. – (Routledge handbook of applied linguistics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Intercultural communication–Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Language and culture–

Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Jackson, Jane, 1954-

P94.6.R68 2012

400–dc22

2011007373

ISBN: 978-0-415-57254-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-80564-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of illustrations ix

List of contributors xi

List of abbreviations xvii

Acknowledgements xx

Introduction and overview 1

Jane Jackson

SECTION I

Foundations of language and intercultural communication 15

1 The history and development of the study of intercultural

communication and applied linguistics 17

Judith N. Martin, Thomas K. Nakayama and Donal Carbaugh

2 Culture, communication, context and power 37

Adrian Holliday

3 Language, identity and intercultural communication 52

Kimberly A. Noels, Tomoko Yashima and Rui Zhang

4 Interculturality and intercultural pragmatics 67

Istvan Kecskes

5 Conceptualizing intercultural (communicative) competence and

intercultural citizenship 85

Michael Byram

v

SECTION II

Core themes and issues: verbal/nonverbal communication

and culture 99

6 Linguaculture and transnationality: the cultural dimensions of language 101

Karen Risager

7 Intercultural rhetoric and intercultural communication 116

Dwight Atkinson

8 Nonverbal communication: the messages of emotion, action, space,

and silence 130

David Matsumoto and Hyi-Sung Hwang

9 Speech acts, facework and politeness: relationship-building

across cultures 148

Winnie Cheng

Language, identity and intercultural communication 165

10 Gender, language, identity, and intercultural communication 167

Xingsong Shi and Juliet Langman

11 Cultural identity, representation and othering 181

Fred Dervin

12 Other language learning, identity and intercultural communication in

contexts of conflict 195

Constadina Charalambous and Ben Rampton

13 Intercultural contact, hybridity, and third space 211

Claire Kramsch and Michiko Uryu

Understanding intercultural transitions: from adjustment to

acculturation 227

14 Beyond cultural categories: communication, adaptation

and transformation 229

Young Yun Kim

15 Acculturating intergroup vitalities, accommodation

and contact 244

Howard Giles, Douglas Bonilla and Rebecca B. Speer

Contents

vi

Intercultural communicative competence: multiple conceptual

approaches 261

16 Language: an essential component of intercultural communicative competence 263

Alvino E. Fantini

17 Understanding intercultural conflict competence: multiple theoretical insights 279

Stella Ting-Toomey

18 The intercultural speaker and the acquisition of intercultural/global

competence 296

Jane Wilkinson

19 World Englishes, intercultural communication and requisite

competences 310

Farzad Sharifian

SECTION III

Theory into practice: towards intercultural (communicative)

competence and citizenship 323

20 An intercultural approach to second language education and citizenship 325

Peih-ying Lu and John Corbett

21 Intercultural communicative competence through telecollaboration 340

Robert O’Dowd

22 Critical language and intercultural communication pedagogy 357

Manuela Guilherme

23 Intercultural training in the global context 372

Kathryn Sorrells

24 Multiple strategies for assessing intercultural communicative

competence 390

Alvino E. Fantini

SECTION IV

Language and intercultural communication in

context 407

25 Second language teacher education 409

Michael Kelly

Contents

vii

26 The English as a foreign or international language classroom 422

Phyllis Ryan

27 The multicultural classroom 434

Jennifer Mahon and Kenneth Cushner

28 Education abroad 449

Jane Jackson

29 Business and management education 464

Prue Holmes

30 Professional and workplace settings 481

Martin Warren

31 Translation, interpreting and intercultural communication 495

Juliane House

32 Culture and health care: intergroup communication and its consequences 510

Bernadette Watson, Cindy Gallois, David G. Hewett and Liz Jones

33 Legal contexts 523

Christoph A. Hafner

34 Tourism 537

Gavin Jack and Alison Phipps

SECTION V

New debates and future directions 551

35 A global agenda for intercultural communication research and practice 553

Malcolm N. MacDonald and John P. O’Regan

Index 568

Contents

viii

Illustrations

Figures

2.1 Aspects of cultural reality 44

8.1 The seven universal facial expressions of emotion 132

8.2 An example from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games 134

8.3 Graphical representation of the relationship between individualism and overall

expressivity endorsement 135

8.4 Examples of culturally unique emblems 138

14.1 The process of cross-cultural adaptation 235

14.2 The structure of cross-cultural adaptation 235

15.1 Berry’s (1980a) acculturation framework 246

15.2 A new intergroup model of accommodative processes in intercultural

encounters 252

15.3 The contact space: a two-dimensional model accounting for variation in studies

of intergroup contact 254

16.1 A hierarchy of terms from general to specific 264

16.2 The relationship between language, culture, and worldview 266

16.3 The four dimensions of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) 272

16.4 Quadrant of multiple assessment strategies 274

21.1 Inventory of reasons for ‘failed communication’ in online exchanges 350

24.1 Continuum of social variables 392

24.2 The gemstone model 394

26.1 The components of intercultural communicative competence 429

Tables

4.1 The dynamic model of meaning 75

8.1 Cultural norms associated with expressivity 142

9.1 Realizations of positive, negative and off-record superstrategies 151

9.2 Realizations of positive and negative impoliteness superstrategies 159

15.1 Toward a communication-relevant typology of acculturation 249

16.1 Time commitments for learning various languages 268

19.1 Sociolinguistic approaches and their objectives (based on Bolton 2005) 311

ix

21.1 Cultura: A comparative approach to investigating cultural difference 344

21.2 Overview of telecollaborative task types 345

31.1 Five dimensions of German-English differences in communicative styles 505

34.1 Tourism myths 545

Illustrations

x

Contributors

Dwight Atkinson is an applied linguist and second language educator at Purdue University,

USA. He specializes in second language writing, second language acquisition, culture theory

and qualitative research approaches. His edited volume, Alternative Approaches to Second Language

Acquisition, will appear in 2011.

Douglas Bonilla is a doctoral student in communication at the University of California, Santa

Barbara, USA. His research interests are primarily in intergroup communication with a focus on

gang, police and civilian interactions as a function of race.

Michael Byram is Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Durham, UK. He

specializes in language education including the education of linguistic minorities, foreign

language education and language education policy.

Donal Carbaugh is Professor of Communication, Chair of the International Studies Council,

Director of the Graduate Program and Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellow at the University of

Massachusetts Amherst, USA. His recent book Cultures in Conversation demonstrates his long￾standing interest in developing an ethnographic approach to all aspects of communication,

international and intercultural interactions.

Constadina Charalambous is a research associate at the Open University of Cyprus, where

she is currently researching the obstacles and possibilities for peace and reconciliation pedagogies

in Greek-Cypriot schools. Her PhD (King’s College London) focused on other-language

learning in Cyprus.

Winnie Cheng is Professor of English and Director of the Research Centre for Professional

Communication in English in the Department of English at The Hong Kong Polytechnic

University, the Hong Kong SAR. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, professional

communication, discourse analysis and intercultural pragmatics.

John Corbett is Professor of English Studies at the University of Macau and an Honorary

Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow. He has published widely on intercultural lan￾guage education and corpus-based language study. He is the author of An Intercultural Approach

to English Language Teaching (Multilingual Matters, 2003) and Intercultural Language Activities

(Cambridge University Press, 2010). With Wendy Anderson, he co-authored Exploring English

with Online Corpora (Palgrave, 2009). He directs the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech and

xi

the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (1700–1945) projects, funded by the Arts and

Humanities Research Council of the UK (www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk).

Kenneth (Ken) Cushner is Professor of Education at Kent State University, USA. He is

author or editor of numerous publications in the field of intercultural teacher education, and is a

founding fellow and past president of the International Academy for Intercultural Research.

Fred Dervin is Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Eastern Finland and

Adjunct Professor of Language and Intercultural Education at the University of Turku, Finland.

He is Docteur ès Lettres from the Sorbonne (Paris, France) and Doctor of Philosophy from the

University of Turku, Finland. Dervin has published extensively on issues related to intercultural

communication and education within the contexts of academic mobility, migration, binational

couplehood and language learning and teaching. Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/freder/

Alvino E. Fantini (PhD, anthropology and applied linguistics) is Professor Emeritus at World

Learning’s SIT Graduate Institute in the USA. He has worked in intercultural communication

and language education for over 40 years. He has conducted significant research, published

widely and served on a National Committee to establish Foreign Language Standards for US

education. Fantini is past president of SIETAR International and recipient of its highest award.

Most recently, he was an invited lecturer at Matsuyama University in Japan; he now serves as an

international consultant.

Cindy Gallois (PhD, Florida) is Professor in Psychology and Communication at the University

of Queensland, Australia. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and

the International Communication Association (USA). Her research interests encompass intergroup

communication in health, intercultural and organizational contexts.

Howard Giles is Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara,

USA. His research and theoretical interests span a wide variety of intergroup and intercultural

settings. He is past president of the International Communication Association.

Manuela Guilherme is Associate Professor and a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Education,

Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon. She has published widely

internationally and coordinated international projects funded by the European Commission.

She is now participating in a large scale EC funded Europe–Latin America Project.

Christoph A. Hafner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, City University

of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong SAR. His research interests include legal discourse, academic

and professional literacy and educational technology. Trained as a lawyer, he has acted as a tutor

on legal writing and drafting courses for novice lawyers in professional legal training in Hong

Kong.

David G. Hewett, MBBS, MSc, FRACP, is a gastroenterologist and Senior Lecturer at the

University of Queensland School of Medicine in Australia. His work examines communication

between health professionals from an intergroup perspective, and also looks at the impact of

identity and intergroup communication on the quality of patient care. His other interests

include bowel cancer screening, implementation science, medical education and simulation

training.

Contributors

xii

Adrian Holliday is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University,

UK, where he supervises doctoral research in the critical sociology of language education and

intercultural issues. The first half of his career was spent in Iran, Syria and Egypt as a curriculum

developer.

Prue Holmes is Senior Lecturer in International and Intercultural Education at Durham Uni￾versity, UK. Before coming to Durham, she taught intercultural communication for 10 years at

the Waikato Management School, University of Waikato, New Zealand. Recent research

includes intercultural competence and intercultural dialogue.

Juliane House is Professor Emerita of Applied Linguistics at Hamburg University, Germany,

and a senior member of the German Science Foundation’s Research Center on Multilingualism.

She has published widely in the areas of translation theory, contrastive pragmatics, politeness,

intercultural communication and English as a lingua franca.

Hyi-sung Hwang is a research scientist at Humintell, LLC, USA. Her research interests

include emotion, nonverbal behaviour and culture.

Gavin Jack is Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Management, La

Trobe University, Australia. He researches in the area of critical management studies, and his

books include (with Alison Phipps, 2005) Tourism and Intercultural Exchange: Why Tourism

Matters.

Jane Jackson is Professor in the English Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

in the Hong Kong SAR. Her research interests include intercultural communication/prag￾matics, identity (re)construction and education abroad. Recent monographs include Language,

Identity, and Study Abroad: Sociocultural Perspectives (Equinox, 2008) and Intercultural Journeys: From

Study to Residence Abroad (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). She is a fellow of the International

Academy for Intercultural Research and a member scholar of the International Institute for

Qualitative Methodology.

Liz Jones (PhD, Queensland) is an Associate Professor in Organizational Psychology at Griffith

University, Australia. Her research interests include intergroup communication in health and

organizational contexts. She is also interested in organizational change and health care service

improvements.

Istvan Kecskes is Professor of Linguistics and Communication at the State University of

New York, Albany, USA. He is the founding editor of the linguistics journal Intercultural

Pragmatics and the Mouton Series in Pragmatics published by Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/

New York.

Michael Kelly is Professor of French at the University of Southampton, UK. He publishes on

French cultural history and language education policy. He led a study of language teacher

education in Europe for the European Commission (2002–4) and is editor of the European

Journal for Language Policy.

Young Yun Kim is Professor of Communication at the University of Oklahoma, USA.

She has researched and published extensively in intercultural/interethnic communication and

Contributors

xiii

cross-cultural adaptation. She is a fellow of the International Communication Association and

the International Academy for Intercultural Research.

Claire Kramsch is Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, where

she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in applied linguistics. She has written extensively

on language, discourse and culture in the teaching and learning of foreign languages.

Juliet Langman is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Bicultural–

Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio, USA. Her research interests focus on

minority youth populations in multilingual settings, exploring the intersection between

language use, language learning and identity.

Peih-ying ‘Peggy’ Lu (PhD, University of Glasgow) is Associate Professor in the Center for

General Education, Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan. She has published articles on

intercultural language education in Taiwan and the use of art, literature and problem-based

learning in medical education. Her research involves the integration of intercultural language

education and the medical humanities with preclinical and clinical medical training.

Malcolm N. MacDonald (PhD) is Associate Professor in the Centre of Applied Linguistics at

the University of Warwick, UK. His main areas of research are intercultural communication,

critical theory and pedagogic discourse. He is editor of Language and Intercultural Communication

(Taylor and Francis). He has taught ESP (the Seychelles), EAP (Kuwait), business (Singapore),

human sciences (Scotland), applied linguistics and language education (the Universities of

Stirling, St Andrews and Exeter) and postgraduate TESOL courses (Malaysia).

Jennifer Mahon (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Sociocultural Education at the University of

Nevada, Reno, USA. Growing out of the critical tradition, her work focuses on the develop￾ment of intercultural awareness among educators, especially how notions of conflict affect

understanding.

Judith N. Martin is Professor of Intercultural Communication at Arizona State University,

USA. She has authored and co-authored many research publications on the topics of cultural

adaptation and sojourner communication, ethnic identity and interracial communication,

intercultural relationships and new media and intercultural communication.

David Matsumoto is Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University and Director

of Humintell, LLC, USA. His research interests centre on emotion, facial expression, nonverbal

behaviour and culture.

Thomas K. Nakayama, Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Northeastern

University, USA, has authored and contributed to publications on racial, national and sexual

identities and critical intercultural communication. He is the first editor of the Journal of

International and Intercultural Communication.

Kimberly A. Noels is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta,

Canada. Her research focuses on the social contexts of language learning and the implications

of intercultural communication for ethnic identity, psychological well-being and intergroup

relations.

Contributors

xiv

Robert O’Dowd teaches at the University of León, Spain, and is the University’s Secretary for

International Training. He has written a book, Telecollaboration and the Development of Intercultural

Communicative Competence (2006), and edited the volume Online Intercultural Exchange: An Intro￾duction for Foreign Language Teachers (2007). He has coordinated national and international

projects on telecollaboration and two Eurocall Regional Workshops on the topic. Homepage:

http://www3.unileon.es/personal/wwdfmrod/

John P. O’Regan is a Lecturer in Languages in Education at the Institute of Education, Uni￾versity of London, UK, where he leads the MA in World Englishes. He is also co-editor of the

international journal Language and Intercultural Communication.

Alison Phipps is Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies and Co-Convener of the

Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Immigration Research Network (GRAMNET) at the

University of Glasgow, UK, where she teaches languages, comparative literature, anthropology

and intercultural education. She has published numerous books and articles on critical and

intercultural theory, identity, intercultural communication, critical/modern language pedagogy

and tourism. Her first collection of poetry, Through Wood, is with Wild Goose Publications

(2009).

Ben Rampton is Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics and Director of the Centre for

Language Discourse and Communication at King’s College London, UK. He does interactional

sociolinguistics, and his interests cover urban multilingualism, ethnicity, class, youth and edu￾cation. He has written Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents (Longman, 1995/St

Jerome, 2005) and Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School (CUP, 2006),

co-authored Researching Language: Issues of Power and Method (Routledge, 1992) and co-edited

The Language, Ethnicity and Race Reader (Routledge, 2003).

Karen Risager is Professor in Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her main

research areas are the structure of the relationship between language and culture in a global and

transnational perspective, including the concept of linguaculture, especially as it relates to lan￾guage and intercultural learning, and to language hierarchies and policies at the international

university.

Phyllis Ryan is Associate Professor (retired) in the Centro de Ensenanza de Lenguas Extra￾njeras, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico. She has taught in the graduate

programme of applied linguistics and advised PhD student research. Her main interests include

multilingualism and intercultural communication.

Farzad Sharifian is Associate Professor and Director of the Language and Society Centre

within the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University, Melbourne,

Australia. He has published widely in international journals in various areas of applied linguistics

such as intercultural communication, World Englishes, English as an international language and

pragmatics.

Xingsong Shi is Associate Professor in the School of International Studies at the University of

International Business and Economics, Beijing, China. Her main research areas include inter￾cultural communication, language socialization, business communication and second language

acquisition.

Contributors

xv