Communication as Culturally Contexted Practice: A View from Intercultural Communication

Abstract

This paper explores the interrelationship between culture, language and communication and examines dimensions of the impact of culture on the act and process of communication. It will argue that instances of language use in communication (linguistic acts) are inseparable from the cultural context in which they are created and in which they are received. Culture impacts on communication at a number of levels. It constitutes a frame in which utterances are conveyed and interpreted: what is communicated depends as much on the cultural context in which the communication occurs as it does on the elements from which the linguistic act is constructed. Culture also influences how the linguistic act itself is constructed, affecting text types and the properties and purposes of textual structures. Aspects of communication such as sequencing, recipient design and impact are read within a framework of cultural understandings about valued and appropriate language use. In addition, culture has an impact on understanding the purpose of a linguistic act in instances of communication. It influences perceptions of the communicative purpose associated with particular types of linguistic acts at particular moments of interaction and also of the interactional and interpersonal value of linguistic acts. Finally culture is a feature of the form of the language which is used to construct linguistic acts. Languages are, at least in part, culturally constructed artefacts which encode conceptual understandings of the world at various levels of embeddedness. The culturally contexted nature of communication therefore imposes a problem of inter-translatability for actual instances of communication across languages and cultures and necessitates a level of particularity for each actual instance of communication.

Keywords:

• Communication
• Culture
• Intercultural

Notes

¹

²The current discussion focuses on language and its relation to culture and so no systematic account inclusion will be made of other semiotic systems (images, symbols, etc.), however, grosso modo, the ideas presented here about language may be applied to other semiotic systems.

³Text is used here in the sense of any form of language production, whether spoken or written.

⁴The relatively recent English literary technique of close reading is similar in its approach, especially in its application to Biblical exegesis, but does not necessarily have the same textual structures or communicative purposes.

⁵The word ‘digression’ used in English to translate terms such as the German Excurs has a pejorative connotation which is not present in the original term. The translation of such rhetorical practices as ‘digression’ therefore introduces the evaluative parameters of English.

⁶The contemporary use or otherwise of kishoutenketsu structures varies according to disciplines and other contexts which influence values and perceptions of text (Liddicoat 1997a).

⁷My thanks to Chantal Crozet for providing this piece of data.

⁸One context in which such tu-form conditionals are found is in chatrooms or blogs in which tu is used regularly, even by those communicating for the first time, in a form of anonymous egalitarianism. In such contexts, the hyper-politeness of the conditional may offset the interpersonal closeness implied by tu.

⁹Although the number distinction is marked by either optional features (all of you) or in some dialects as a grammaticalized plural such as youse or you all.

¹⁰There is in addition a fifth possibility yaru which is used for giving from a human to a non-human, as in giving dogs bones or plants water. Moreover, the discussion here refers to the ‘normative’ or ‘canonical’ explanation for the use of verbs of giving. Actual practice in Japanese is more complex. For example, kureru may be used with others who are status-equals, while the verb itadaku is commonly used with others who are of higher social status. These verbs can also be used strategically, so, for example, one can use itadaku with a friend (status-equal) if receiving a particularly important favour, not to signal status per se, but rather to convey one's appreciation (Haugh 2008 personal communication).