Dear VAR-L,

     The discussion of cultural differences in communication style and intercultural communication patterns is a topic that is certain to never go away; and, as globalization progresses, it becomes increasingly important.  The idea in the Goddard-Haugh project of studying actual naturalistic recordings is a great one.  Without such grounding, we would have to rely on weak measures such as self-evaluation inventories.  But if these recordings are not made public, along with the interesting analyses they engender, then it seems to me we can fall back into a closed circle of stereotypes.  Even if the stereotypes end up having validity, I think multiple researchers coming from different perspectives need to be able to see how these forces play out in individual segments and dimensions of face-to-face interaction.  

    More generally, have people like the Scollons, Kasper, Tannen, Trudgill, or others famous for their work on such issues ever made data available (password-protected or whatever) that would allow other researchers to see these patterns?  The creation of such public materials for sociolinguistic analysis is the theme of an upcoming LSA workshop on "Sociolinguistic Archival Preparation"  (http://www.lsadc.org/info/meet-annual12-sociolinguistic.cfm).  It seems to me that the time has come for sociolinguists to take the issue of data-sharing seriously.  

   Are there already projects out there (preferably with associated media) that are willing to open up their data for general use by researchers?  I have composed a general list of materials of interest to sociolinguists – some open, some not – at this URL: http://talkbank.org/SocioBank.  The corpora there listed as in TalkBank are freely available.  Those in LDC are available, but only to paying subscribers.  Many of the others are not easily available.  If any of you know of any materials I could add to this list, or corpora that can be shared, please tell me.

Many thanks,

-- Brian MacWhinney, CMU  [log in to unmask]

On Nov 19, 2011, at 4:36 PM, Adam Schembri wrote:

This news item from the latest Australian Linguistics Society newsletter might be of interest: 

Cliff Goddard and Michael Haugh of Griffith University, along with American partner investigator Donal Carbaugh (U. Mass), were awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery project: Australians and Americans talking: culture, interaction and communication style. The 100-word summary read as follows: "Despite the similarities, there are important differences in how Australians and Americans conduct everyday verbal interaction: in self-presentation, face work, sarcasm and joking, use of religious language and swear words, and other areas. Combining interactional pragmatics, semantic analysis and cultural discourse analysis, this project will study face-to-face interaction between Australians and Americans. It will identify and explain communication style differences, linking them with cultural values and attitudes. Using naturalistic recordings and corpus data, the project will also develop improved methodologies and advance empirical standards in intercultural communication studies generally."

Adam

-- 

Assoc. Prof. Adam Schembri, BA DipEd, MLitt, PhD
Director | National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Language
La Trobe University | Melbourne (Bundoora) | Victoria |  3086 |  Australia
Tel: +61 3 9479 2887 | Fax: +61 3 9479 3074 |http://www.adamschembri.net/webpage/Welcome.html

From: TRUDGILL Peter <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:50:31 +1100
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: US/UK differences

This is all very true, and has been commented on anecdotally and informally many times - see my book "Coping with America: a beginners guide to the USA" (Blackwell). As far as academic discussion is concerned, yes, there is that too by scholars working in e.g. the ethnography of speaking and inter-cultural communication etc., though I've no idea how systematic it has been. No doubt people more knowledgeable than me will be providing references very soon. But I would like to ask: is this just the US vs the UK, or is it rather the US vs, well, most other places?

Peter Trudgill

On 19 Nov 2011, at 08:09, Dorothy Bishop wrote:

A question from a psychologist with little knowledge of sociolinguistics.

Can anyone point me to information on UK/US differences in language used for self-presentation.

Impression is that in UK there is this aversion for self-promotion or talking about one's achievements, which is not found in US.

I'm interested in idea that normal discourse by Americans can come across as boastful/insincere to British, whereas British can come across to Americans as dysfunctionally insecure losers.

 

Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology,
Dept of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, OX1 3UD.
tel +44 (0)1865 271369; fax +44 (0)1865 281255;
WEB: http://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/oscci/
Blog: http://deevybee.blogspot.com/

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_____________________________________________

Peter Trudgill  FBA 

Prof. of Sociolinguistics, Agder Univ., N; 

Adjunct Prof., RCLT, La Trobe Univ., AU; 

Prof. Emeritus of Eng. Linguistics, Fribourg Univ, CH;

Hon. Prof. of Sociolinguistics, UEA, Norwich, UK

New book: Sociolinguistic typology: social determinants of linguistic structure and complexity. OUP. 2011. 

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