30
localised and specific discourse systems such as gender, generation and profession
are more appropriate to understanding communication. However,
the fact that
cultural and intercultural studies are still such a healthy field of academic inquiry
as well as being of interest in everyday 'folk' knowledge and linguistics suggests
that there is still much to be gained from their use. Even Scollon and Scollon
utilise culture and intercultural as terms of reference, despite their criticisms of the
terms. Nonetheless, we need to be cautious of taking unproblematic or simplistic
interpretations of
culture that correlate nations, languages and cultures, for
example conflating the English language, US nationality and American culture.
Instead, what is needed is a critical approach to culture and the intercultural that
recognises the fluidity and complexity of these concepts alongside the ideological
dimensions that evoking them brings forth.
Earlier understandings of culture and language
highlighted the close
relationship between them and in the process underscored that in any study of
language and text there is a cultural dimension. Semiotic accounts of culture such
linguists emphasized the role language plays in both enacting and creating our
social reality. More recently, sociolinguistic and socio-cultural
theories have
underscored the key role of cultural contexts in language learning processes. The
strongest conception of this link between language and culture is of course the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity, with the claim that "the 'real world'
is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group".
Linguistic relativity implies that we are constrained in our world view by the
language that we speak, which is associated with our social group. It is this latter
view that is perhaps closest to the position on culture
taken in earlier CR studies
and in particular Kaplan's 1966 paper
53
, which makes reference to Sapir and uses
the notion of national cultural entities to describe rhetorical patterns in texts.
Connor
54
and Atkinson
55
refer to this characterisation of culture and nationality as
53
Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education.
Language and learning, 16
(1), 1-20.
54
Connor, U. (2002). New directions in contrastive rhetoric.
TESOL Quarterly,
36(4), 493-510.
55
Atkinson, D. (2004). Contrasting rhetorics/contrasting cultures: why contrastive rhetoric needs a better
conceptualization of culture.
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3,
277-289.
31
'received culture,' in which cultures are seen as contained, unproblematic and
homogeneous. They are rightly critical of the influence received culture has on CR
studies and the resulting failure to address the complexity
and heterogeneity of
cultures. Furthermore, and crucially from an intercultural perspective, received
culture ignores the hybridity and fluidity of cultural
groupings in intercultural
communication.
These received culture approaches in CR can be viewed as taking a similar
perspective to cross-cultural studies. Here cultures are treated as separate entities,
with descriptions of intra-group communication produced, that are then compared
with descriptions of other groups' communicative norms and expected differences
identified. Perhaps the best known studies taking this approach are those of
Hofstede
56
and these are still drawn on in IR studies. Apart from the already
discussed problem of taking a simplistic homogenous view of cultures, this
approach also fails to account for one of the fundamental features of intercultural
communication, which is that communicative behaviours
are often adapted and
changed according to the needs of interlocutors in intercultural communication and
do not necessarily follow established norms of
intra-
cultural communication.
Thus, the location of intercultural communication studies, of which IR can claim to
be a part, should be participants from distinct cultural or other groupings in
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