Videoconferencing and community of practice interaction. Semantic, pragmatic and intercultural aspects of students’ communication in English language classes

Alena Hradilová; Hana Katrňáková; John Morgan; Libor Štěpánek

Videoconferencing and community of practice interaction. Semantic, pragmatic and intercultural aspects of students’ communication in English language classes

Vol.4,No.1(2011)

Alena Hradilová Hana Katrňáková John Morgan Libor Štěpánek

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This paper explores samples of community of practice communication in multicultural videoconferencing (VC) classes between English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Speciﬁ c Purposes (ESP) students at Masaryk University and their counterparts at Aberystwyth University. It comments on a number of pragmatic and semantic issues that have arisen during the videoconferences in addition to situations caused by a lack of intercultural awareness. Examples of students’ performances show how face-threatening acts are perceived to have been produced by non-native speakers of English. Differences in the reactions of native and non-native speakers of English are then exempliﬁ ed. The paper further examines the difﬁ culties in distinguishing levels of formality, directness and politeness and the misunderstandings which arise from the use of certain ‘loaded’ expressions or metaphors without knowledge of cultural differences and sensitivities. To conclude, the authors suggest the importance of teaching pragmatics and raising intercultural sensitivity in international professional communication, where English is used as the lingua franca.

Keywords:
video-conferencing; intercultural communication; sources of misunderstanding

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