Wai-chung Ho
A Cross-cultural Study of Preferences for Popular Music Among Hong Kong and Thailand YouthsAbstract
The main purpose of this study is to explore popular music preferences among young people in Hong Kong and Thailand. The survey was conducted between June and November 2003. It includes a short questionnaire concerning participants' musical habits, a listening test comprising fifteen excerpts from popular songs in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Spanish, and English and interview questions about musical preferences and influences. The correlation between the language of songs and the subjects' native language was significant, although Korean songs were rated highest and Mandarin lowest in the listening test. Most respondents admitted that they had pop idols and that they preferred mainly local singers. Whilst most respondents believed that a good singing voice was the most important consideration, some said that good looks, good dancing, unique character, and a good image were also important. Subjects engaged in higher education in both places had a greater preference for classical and Western music generally. The results of this study indicate that generalizations about musical preferences must take into account the specific cultural and educational background of the subjects concerned.
Keywords: Hong Kong; Bangkok; popular music; consumer behaviour; social and cultural influences.
Back to startSine Just
Communicative prerequisites for diversity - protection of difference or promotion of commonality?Abstract
A basic dilemma faces the student of intercultural communication: Should communicative norms that protect substantial differences guide intercultural encounters? Or should formal rules of communication be promoted regardless of the interlocutors' cultural backgrounds and group affiliations? In this article arguments for and against these two positions are presented through a review of the discussion between Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas. It is argued that the theoretically irreconcilable positions may in practice be less than contradictory: in actual communicative encounters interlocutors with different cultural backgrounds do reach agreement on specific issues while preserving their cultural differences. On the basis of this insight, a communicative model that both protects differences and promotes commonality is proposed.
Keywords: intercultural encounters, protections of differences, promotion of communality, formal rules of communication, contextual models of communication.
Kaisu Korhonen
Developing Intercultural Competence as Part of Professional Qualifications. A Training ExperimentAbstract
The internationalization and globalization of working life sets specific requirements on professional education including professionally integrated foreign language education, the overall goal of which should be intercultural competence.
The paper discusses a training experiment in intercultural communication, especially the effectiveness of training in developing the various components of intercultural competence. The training experiment included both a face-to-face tuition period and a self-study period with a multimedia- and Web-based Culture-General Assimilator consisting of a number of critical incidents. The participants of the experiment were 117 Bachelor of Engineering students at Kajaani Polytechnic, Finland.
Besides assessing the effectiveness of intercultural training, the experiment aimed at mapping out what kind of communicators the students are and would like to be, whether they are motivated to develop their intercultural competence, and what they think about intercultural competence as part of their professional qualifications.
Keywords: component of intercultural competence, assess of effectiveness, the Culture Assimilator, training experiments, professional qualifications.
Back to startChristopher M. Schmidt
The relevance of culture-specific conceptualisation for organisational management: a cross-cultural study on the difference between German and Swedish organisational concepts pdf-fileAbstract
The article deals with the question how culture-specific ways of conceptualising (thinking) play a role in organisational and management theory from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Not only does this paper question the widespread idea that the language of science and economics is universally the same and that communication across cultural borders can be managed just by means of a lingua franca. This paper also shows by comparison of central verbal and non-verbal image-schemata in Swedish and German organisational theory how non-propositional image schemata are used in the above mentioned cultures. It is shown how cognitive linguistics (namely metaphorological analysis) can give insights into culture-specific knowledge. This is examplified through the kind of fundamental differences in the ways in which German and Swedish management deals with questions concerning hierarchies, leadership behavior, the ways of organising work processes, and the role of the individual in the organisational whole. It is argued that through culture-specific, non-propositional basic image schemata, interculturally relevant knowledge can be obtained for multicultural management.
Keywords: organizational management, cognitive linguistics, cognitive theory of metaphors, culture-specific knowledge, non-propositional image schemata, centrifugality and verticality, centripetalism and horizontality.
Back to startIngmar Söhrman
Intercultural communication or parallel cultures? The Swiss example with special regard to the Rhaeto-Romance situationAbstract
Politically correct terminology often fails to describe actual reality. Switzerland is commonly held up as an example of accomplished multiculturalism and multilingualism. Although appealing, this image is also fairly erroneous as the German majority and French "dominant" minority seem to live separate lives. Likewise, Italian and Rhaeto-Romance are generally marginalized and rarely either spoken or understood by the French- and German-speaking Swiss - creating the so-called "2 and ½-lingualism".
This article does not pretend either to "prove" or "reject" Switzerland as a good example to follow. The domestic intricacies of each and every country demand home-grown solutions, and those solutions may or may not incorporate outside experience and practice. The intention is to discuss the difference between political will (and prejudice) and pragmatic arrangements in an attempt to identify what promotes multilingualism (and multiculturalism) in some places and what leads to coexisting languages and cultures that follow separate and parallel paths in others. The central hypothesis is that while a country may be multilingual politically, having embedded this intention in law and having organized the local community according to these laws in order to facilitate the usage and utility of the different cultures and linguistic varieties, this political arrangement may have little reflection in more complicated practice, with linguistic and cultural populations choosing to follow parallel and separate paths
instead. The central issue is whether intercultural communication actually does exist, to what extent it exists, and what promotes it in a world that is turning its back on other national cultures and languages.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, multilingualism, parallel languages, multiculturalism, geolinguistics, Rhaeto-Romance, Switzerland.
Back to startJonas Stier
Intercultural Competencies as a Means to Manage Intercultural Interactions in Social Work pdf-fileAbstract
In the last century Swedish society has become increasingly globalized and multicultural. Today about 20 per cent of the country’s population of 9 million people is of foreign decent. Recently questions of immigration, integration policies and multiculturalism have received much political attention. This fact, in the unmerciful light of a deconstruction of the welfare state coming to terms with these issues, constitutes an enormous challenge to the public sector as a whole. And for single social workers this requires somewhat new sorts of professional competencies – where intercultural competencies appear among the most important.
Drawing from the inherent paradoxes and cultural dimensions of social work, the article singles out and discusses several qualities of intercultural competencies that seem useful for social workers. These are referred to as content-competencies and process-competencies. It is concluded that intercultural competencies are preconditions for successful social work in the future.
Keywords: social workers, discourse awareness, professional competences, content-competence, process-competence.
Back to startIgor Z. Zagar
How "refugees" became "illegal migrants": Constuction, Reconstruction, … DeconstructionAbstract
In 1998, Marjeta Doupona Horvat, Jef Verschueren, and myself published a booklet The pragmatics of legitimation: The rhetoric of refugee policies in Slovenia. The book discusses an episode in Slovenian public rhetoric, historically situated roughly as a one-year time span from April 1992 to March 1993, and topically defined in terms of "refugee policies". The approach was a pragmatic text analysis in a tradition of empirical ideology research, paying special attention to implicit aspects of meaning construction, in interaction or in contrast with explicitly voiced perspectives and with rhetorical goals and constraints.
In the present paper, I would like to re-examine and re-interpret some of these eight years old data in the light of the latest "refugee crisis" that culminated in the first months of 2001. This time the "problem" weren't the Bosnians refugees who chose Slovenia as their final destination, but refugees from the former Soviet Union, Asia, Middle East and Africa, mostly seeking refuge and asylum in the West, and therefore using Slovenia only as a transit state.
The aim of the paper is to show how their "identity" was (re)constructed in Slovenian media, and to uncover implicit mechanisms (and techniques) behind these constructions.
Key words: refugee policies, pragmatic text analysis, meaning construction, reconstruction of the identity, implicit aspects, xenophobia.