Data, communication styles & stereotypes: Corpora and the teaching of cross-cultural communication

Textbooks on cross-cultural communication (e.g. Samovar & Porter, 2004, Levine & Adelman, 1993) almost invariably cite the well-known taxonomies and scales of cross-cultural comparisons: Hofstede’s value dimensions, Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck’s value orientations, Hall’s high-/low-context orientation, etc. Very few (if any) such textbooks, however, offer authentic discoursal data that bear out the truth of such classificatory schemes and dimensions. This paper presents an evaluation of the use of some real corpus data in the classroom to illustrate the utility or otherwise of these cross-cultural stereotypes. Thai undergraduate students at a university in Bangkok and a mixed group of international MBA students at a university in Japan were given lectures on the stereotypical characteristics of American culture and then given transcripts of conversations from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) to examine for evidence of the typical American cultural values. The paper will present observations that were obtained, and the reactions of the students to the use of the discoursal data. Pedagogical implications will be examined and questions raised about the utility of the standard analytical paradigms that are commonly taught in global business communication courses.ReferencesSamovar, L. & Porter, R. (2004). Communication between cultures (5th edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Levine, D. R. & Adelman, M. B. (1993). Beyond language: cross-cultural communication (2nd edition). Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall Regents.