Negotiating Understanding in “Intercultural Moments” in Immigrant Family Interactions

Abstract

This article aims to advance an interactionally sensitive, emic view of intercultural communication by exploring the organization of “intercultural moments” in conversation—moments during which cultural and linguistic differences between people become exposed. Field video recordings of ordinary face-to-face interactions in Russian–American immigrant families are analyzed using the methodology of conversation analysis. The article focuses on sequences in which participants deal with actual or anticipated understanding problems and examines how participants' assumptions about their asymmetric cultural and linguistic expertise are revealed in their actions. Some interactional payoffs in adopting the role of a cultural expert vis-à-vis a novice are described to show how an ostensible non-understanding is both a participants' problem to be solved and a resource for social action.

Keywords:

• Intercultural Communication
• Conversation Analysis
• Repair
• Language and Social Interaction
• Immigrant Families

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jeffrey Robinson, Chase Raymond, and Anita Pomerantz for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

[1] This is not unlike the treatment of intercultural communication processes as intergroup communication by communication adaptation theorists (e.g., Gallois, McKay, & Pittam, 2005).

[2] No language proficiency testing or surveys were administered. In this, the study adopts an emic prospective on language expertise. What is important for this study is not a measured or reported language proficiency, but how interlocutors themselves observably orient to each other's language abilities in particular interactional moments.

[3] Since conversation analysts inevitably deploy their own cultural expertise in analyzing data, it may need to be pointed out that the author shares much cultural background with the participants, especially those belonging to the “parents” generation (having immigrated from the former Soviet Union at the same time period, at approximately the same age).

[4] Kilechka (sprats) are small fish, similar to sardines, usually distributed smoked and canned.

[5] It is not uncommon for Russian immigrants to assume that Americans do not know how to mend clothes. Leading into this story and, again, following this excerpt, Grandma says that “here” (presumably, in the USA) one does not need to darn because clothes are readily available in stores, which was not the case in Belorussia. In this way, darning is treated by the participants as both nationality- and generation-bound activity.

[6] The first element of the job title sekretar’ is a close cognate to the English secretary—and is thus understandable to somebody who has a basic Russian proficiency. However, the second word mashinistka may, in fact, be confusing to a language novice as it invokes the English word machinist rather than typist.

[7] In the literature on immigrant communities, the terms broker, language broker, or mediator are often used to refer to an individual who routinely takes on the task of translating or mediating between others, such as a bilingual child mediating between monolingual family members and institutional representatives (Del Torto, 2008; Morales & Hanson, 2005). Following Bolden (2012), the term language broker is used here for a (transient) role bound to the activity of resolving (or averting) an understanding problem.

[8] The activity of explaining a common cultural reference (such as “communal apartments”) is, in itself, a practice for ascribing cultural novicehood to the recipients of the explanation (see the following section). Luba's intervention with a translation further downgrades the recipients’ expertise by ascribing language novicehood to them as well.

[9] Although it may be true that participants in these data have their language preferences or tendencies (e.g., Lena may “prefer” or be more comfortable in English rather than Russian), a choice of one language over another at a particular moment is guided by the speaker's assessment of what the addressee will or will not understand. For instance, in my data Lena tends to speak English to her parents and Russian to most of her grandparents, and, in making these language choices, conveys her expectations about her recipients’ language competencies.

[10] Note as well that Grandmother, in asking Lena to repeat the English word “fractions” (line 16), adopts an identity of an English language novice and ascribes to Lena English language expertise.