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

PDF

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

References

Baron, N. S. (1998) ‘Letters by phone or speech by other means: The linguistics of
e-mail.’ Language and Communication 18, 133-170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(98)00005-6

Coles, M. and Hall, C. (2001) ‘Breaking the line: New literacies, postmodernism and the
teaching of printed texts.’ Reading 35(5), 111-114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9345.00172

Crystal, D. (1987) The English Encyclopaedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hunston, S. and Thompson, G. (eds) (2000) Evaluation in Text. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Johns, A. (1997) Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Katrňáková, H., Ashe-Jones, M., Budíková, B., de Felice, J., de Haaff, J., Eastlake, J.,
Hradilová, A., Morgan, J., and Štěpánek, L. (2008) Methodology Quick Guide. Brno:
Masaryk University Press.

Koester, A. (2004) The Language of Work. Oxon: Routledge.

Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of
Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.

Lankshear, C., Snyder, I., and Green, B. (2000) Teachers and Technoliteracy: Managing
Literacy, Technology and Learning in Schools. St. Leonards, Sydney: Allen and
Unwin.

Mercer, N. (2000) Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together. London:
Routledge.

Morgan, J. (2008) Methodology of Video-conferencing – Theoretical Background in
English. INVITE project Leonardo da Vinci. 27.1.2010. Online document. 4. February
2011. <http://invite.lingua.muni.cz>

Schmidt, W. V., Conaway, R. N., Easton, S. S. and Wardrope, W. J. (2007) Communicating
GLOBALLY. London: Sage Publications.

Schnieders, L. and Kuipers, H. J. (2008) ‘What worked & What didn’t: A multi-national
multicultural project.’ Diverse Conference, Haarlem.

Snyder, I. (2003) ‘A new communication order: Researching literacy practices in the
network society.’ In: Goodman, S., Lillis, T., Maybin, J. and Mercer, N. (eds) (2003)
Language, Literacy and Education: A Reader. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books/Open
University.

Metrics

233

Views

132

PDF views

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

PDF