IKK: Conversational Analysis of Intherethnic Communication - Gumperz 1978

[ role of communication | Asians in London | Beispiele: interethnisch / intraethnisch | conclusion ]

(1) The role of communication in intherethnic relations

interethnic relations in advanced industrial socities offer a challenge to our most commonly held assumptions ('existing social theory') about culture and communication:

Zentrale Kenngrößen:
  • (ethnische) Gruppe als Sprachgemeinschaft
  • Kontakt in Relation zu ethnischen Gruppen
  • Kontakt zu 'offiziellen Stellen' (Verwaltung usw.)
  • Art und kommunikative Merkmale der Kontakte

plural society

"… several distinct ethnic groups coexist within a single geographical space and live under the same governmental and economic system": ex-colonial agricultural regions and trading centers → in-group communicative networks
• relations with outsiders … instrumental or goal-oriented interactions (business, market dealings - highly formalized or ritualized exchanges or casual encounters
• contact with officialdom … mediated either by locals or members of the elite experienced in such matters, 'informal leaders'

acculturation

occurs when individuals or small famliy groups enter a new region
over time, they become gradually absorbed into the dominant group, giving up their own values, traditions, and language

bureaucratization

… in Europe and the US, where a significant part of the industrial labor force is made up of minority group members from agricultural or economically underdeveloped regions
they tend to create religious and cultural organizations that mirror those of the homeland, so that much of their informal interaction takes place among others of similar backgrounds

urban environment

increasing bureaucratization of government agencies that control necessary housing, welfare, and health services, as well as the beaucratization of industrial managment at work → new conditions of communicative requirements that go beyond the limited kinds of intergroup contact

 

elimination of the stratum of informal leaders and intermediaries who formerly played a key role in communication between local people and official organizations

individuals

have become increasingly dependent on their own ability to deal with officialdom

communication problems

noticed as major problems in the literature: differences in values, goals, and attitudes
crucial issue: how cultural differences influence interaction and how they affect seemingly straightforward judgements of ability and intent

(2) Asians in London

Situation

Probleme zwischen weißer Mehrheitsgeslleschaft und farbigen Einwanderern sollten allmählich abnehmen; doch tatsächlich ist eine Zunahme festzustellen.
"Other English workmen, union stewards, and foremen, as well as lower-level managers" beklagen sich über asiatische Arbeiter
gut ausgebildete Pakistani und Inder, hoch geachtet in ihrer Gemeinschaft, werden von Vorgesetzten nicht geschätzt, werden bei Beförderungen übergangen und sehen sich weniger wahrgenommen.

Probleme

erste Vermutung: "… due to their lack of knowledge of the language", but the problem is more complex: almost all of them "have at least a functional control of English"
es wurde festgestellt, daß "difficulties do not necessariliy dissappear as the workers gain control of basic English grammar and vocabulary"
"disputes resulting in communication failures arise not only with speakers who have minimal control of English but as frequently with those who know English well"
"the problem is not simply knowledge of the language. Nor is the question simply one of foreign accent or second language interference"

Bewertungen

"Communication difficulties … occur primarliy in longer goal-oriented enconuters, such as negotiations or discussions, mishaps requiring a participant to justify his actions, promotion interviews, or hearings in local agencies. All these are situations in which talk is the basis for judgements about speakers' abilities and attitudes. … what it is about talk, apart from grammar, that leads to such judgements"

Beispiel 1: inter-ethnisch

Situation

young female staff member vs. middle aged Indian worker

traditionelle Analyse

sociolinguistic analysis: measurement based on rating scales by which respondents classify verbal data in terms of analytical categories devised ba analysts, in interview contexts which are quite different from those of the original interaction
implicit assumption: that participants share rules of interpretation and that misunderstanding presents the problem

neue Analyse

im Zentrum: "the processes by which hearers interpret what the speaker intends to achieve with a message"
"interpretation of communicative intent is not predictalbe on the basis of referential meaning alone. Matters of context, social presuppositions, knowledge of the world, and individual background knowledge all play an important role in interpretation"

These

in interethnic settings is the referential meaning of individual sentences understood by all - what differs are interpretations of intent

internal evidence

direct examination of the process of interspeaker coordination:
turn-taking or speaker-change strategies, or rhythmic coordination of statements and responses, and of the semantic ties among component messages

external evidence

gathered through questioning strategies in which participants themselves are asked to

  1. recall what was intended at a particular point in an interaction, and
  2. pinpoint the perceptions of style and content that led to their interpretation
 

differences are often based on unverbalized, hitherto unrecognized, but nevertheless systematic differences in the perception of linguistic signs

Beispiel 2: intra-ethnisch

paralinguistic & prosodic cues

intonation, stress, rhythm, and sentence speed

interjections & deictic pronouns

"Can we go go back / again on it please"
a native speaker of English has difficulty finding a referent for it
the Indian English speaker may include a deictic pronoun where a native English speaker would not expect it.

interjections yes & no

in British English indicate either agreement or disagreement with someone else's preceeding statement
in Indian English conversations are simply a way of indicating 'I have heard you'

loudness & pitch register

to claim the floor after interruption

Konsequenzen

beide Seiten müssen die Interaktionen kritisch überprüfen und diskutieren, was zu ihren Bewertungen führte
diese Art Metakommunikation kommt selten vor
stattdessen etabliert sich ein Teufelskreis aus Interaktionsvermeidung, um schlechte Erfahrungen zu vermeiden und die Vermeidung des Kontakts mit denen, die ähnliche verbale Strategien verfolgen

Conclusion

Entstehung von Mißverständnissen

arise as a result of habitual verbal and nonverbal strategies that subconsciously affect judgements of attitudes and abilities
These contextualization phenomena tend to go unnoticed in everyday situations, although their effect is constantly felt.
They are learned in the course of previous interactive experience. … home background, ethnicity, knowledge of rhetorical conventions; strategies of persuasion and argumentation
emotional and economic support in intraethnic communication and failure in interethnic communication → reinforcing the intraethnic networks

Gründe der Nichtwahrnehmung

"Judgements … are made on the mistaken assumption that intent is understood." - ohne daß dies der Fall ist

Kontextbindung

"contextualization conventions are context bound and therefore not readily amenable to classroom teaching.
They are best learned through practice in actual interaction where errors can be good-naturedly corrected, such as peer or family relations

Auswirkungen

miscommunication is a two-way matter: both participants fail to understand
minority members leiden darunter

Literatur

Gumperz, John J. (1978) The conversational analysis of interethnic communication. In: Ross, E. L. (ed.) Interethnic Communication. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 13-31