Online Lesson 1:
Part II - Communicating Across Cultures

I hope you got a kick out of these funny things you could do in an elevator. The point is that rules are learned by observations and by participation. If somehow you break the rules in social contexts, other participants will let you know thereby making the rule you didn't know explicit.

In dyadic (two people) face-to-face interactional contexts, the rules for interaction may be made or discovered "on the spot." For example, I meet a person at a bar and I initiate a discussion. I assume he speaks English, so I address him in English. "Hi, how are you?" He replies, "Fine, thanks." His reply establishes that in fact my assumption that he spoke English was right. So we continue to talk to each other in English. But what if he had not responded in English as I expected? What if he had answered my greeting with, "A toda madre! żY tu?" [Mexican slang gloss: "Cool, man. And you?]. His assumption might have been that since he took notice of my Hispanic facial features, my brown skin tone, and even detected a slight Spanish accent in my English, that I was Hispanic and therefore also understood Spanish. In this latter example, I, in turn, adjust my assumption to include that he not only speaks Spanish but also English since he did respond to my English greeting. As our conversation continues with both of us realizing that we can communicate in both English and Spanish, we may take it further and begin to "code switch" using both Spanish to English, what some people call "Spanglish." As we continue our conversation we may also adjust non-verbally using more Hispanic body motions and gestures to authenticate our ethnic identities.

We do these kinds of adjustments in English-English situations, too. For example, in the first English-English example above, what if that person had responded to my initial greeting with "Gnarly, dude! How's it hangin'?" Then I would adjust my style or register to that of California surfers! People in face-to-face communication discover in the first few moments the appropriate language(s) and conversational etiquette using the cues and clues that they provide to each other. This is accomplished in those few moments of interaction…and as we continue speak we continue to adjust to each other, refining the etiquette until such time that we are authentically communicating as may be evidenced by our symmetrical verbal interactions and symmetrical body rhythms. Hall describes people in interaction as doing a dance, where participants are performing to the same beat as evidenced by the nature of a balanced discourse and symmetrical body motions. Frederick David Erickson's (UCLA) article on "Gatekeeping and the Melting Pot" (Make direct link to Cline here) provides an excellent example of the relationship of body rhythms and discourse. He demonstrates that asymmetrical body motions of people in interaction (i.e., people not moving to the same beat) may not be "listening" to each other. Isn't it true that you have experienced sometime in your life (perhaps even today) a conversation with someone that seemed very logical at the verbal level and that at the end you recall nothing about that interaction, or you came away from that interaction noting that "nothing" was really said? All of us have formulaic expressions in our sociolinguistic repertoires. Take greetings. How often in public contexts we pass strangers coming in opposite directions as we walk down the street sidewalks and with whom we make eye contact, and we say to them, "Hi, how are you?" and the stranger replies with "Fine, thank you. And you?" and we, in turn, reply with "Fine, thanks" and we continue our path without actually stopping? These are example of formulaics.

When I was studying at Harvard with Dr. Erickson and Dr. Courtney B. Cazden, a noted child linguist, we were discussing a theory that people can actually carry long conversational topics formulaically without really hearing or listening to each other. I wanted to test that theory based on a hunch about my weekly conversations with a peer at Harvard. My friend Charley and I met regularly in front of the library every Wednesday at noon. We always discussed what we had been doing that week, what we were studying and what we were writing. I would ask Charley about his week and he would go on and on about his activities while I listened attentively using backchannels (head nods, "uh huh's," and a few verbal probes, eye contact as he talked, etc.) to show him I was listening. Don't we all do this? Then as he finished his talk, he then formulaically asked what I had been doing all week. I too went on and on with my activities while he provided the appropriate backchannels. Then we normally would say to each other, "That's real interesting." Then we'd end the conversation by saying our "goodbyes" and that we would see each other the following week. After hearing Cazden's and Erickson's hypotheses and theories, I realized that my conversations with Charley were in fact formulaic in nature. I never remembered what he had said…and I hypothesized that this was a mutual accomplishment, that he also did not "listen" to me. So I tested this notion in the following manner. When it was my turn to tell him about my weekly activities, I began with a topic that I maintained for a few moments and right in the middle of the topic, in fact in the middle of a sentence, I totally switched topics but still keeping to the rhythm of my discourse. Charley kept on backchanneling keeping the same rhythm even though I had switched topics! It was very clear to me then that both Charley and I really didn't communicate. Our communication and friendship was merely based on "seeing" each other regularly. How many times have we experienced this in our lives? How many times have we "faked" listening by simply acting out the etiquette for interaction? Have you ever been in a classroom where the professor was lecturing while your mind was somewhere else? What did you do? You probably sat in the expected "attentive" postural configuration, backchanneling at the appropriate junctures, and taking notes which may actually be random doodlings and drawings---faking note-taking as the professor lectures! We all have done this and many times.

As a teacher, don't you think that your students also do this in your classes? This is an interesting phenomenon because one of the tenets of sound education is keeping the "students engaged" in the lessons. How can we be assured that students are actually engaged in the lessons or subject matter when we know they too can "fake" lesson engagement in front of the teacher?

Another story....

A colleague of mine went to Canton, China. She was describing her visit as she showed us pictures from the trip. She began to tell me about cultural differences in communication. One area that stood out in my mind was the communicative function of "smiles." This discussion made me inquire about smiles in our own culture. It seems that part of our etiquette in communicating with most strangers is to provide smiles. For example, I was at Sakura's Japanese Restaurant in Flagstaff. My wife and I sat down at the Sushi bar. We were engaged in a very serious discussion about a friend who needed help in her present situation. During our discussion, a waiter approached us, caught our attention just by standing there, and we immediately disengaged and looked up at him and "smiled" as we asked for tea and Sake. Then immediately as the waiter left the scene to get our drinks, we continued out serious discussion "without" smiles. I laughed at our reactions. From our very "serious" faces that accompanied our "serious" discussion, we simultaneously shifted to "friendly" smiles once the waiter entered our scene and immediately reverted back to our "serious" faces once he was gone. Indeed, these were formulaic smiles, smiles that we use in many situations with strangers. Don't most of us formulaically smile at others---strangers, or people we don't know--- when we glance at each other in passing, i.e., making eye contact? Then we immediately get out of that smile once that short contact is made. Watch people walking in busy sidewalks. As they pass one another, most people smile at others coming in the opposite direction---and once they pass one another the smiles evaporate! Certainly, smiles in these scenarios serve as "mini, non-verbal greetings." We walk around in public places doing this; serious faces to smiling faces and back to serious faces in microseconds! Back to our Chinese description, my friend told me that in a discussion with her Chinese hosts about their cultural impressions of Americans, they stated that "Americans smile too much. They smile all the time and at everything!" They saw this behavior as very strange and they couldn't tell whether or not Americans were satisfied or dissatisfied in any situation. Chinese smile for the purposes of showing happiness, satisfaction, and approval but not for everything under the sun, and not to every stranger as we do in American culture. So the stereotype of the American for Chinese is that we smile for and at everything! How interesting this is! If we transcend our own culture for a few moments and look at ourselves in interaction with others we are indeed a culture of "smilers." Ha! I'm sure there must be some studies of the functions of smiles. Now I catch myself smiling automatically, formulaically, but hey, that's part of the American culture!

Go on to Online Lesson - Part III
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Go back to Topic 1: General Communication Theory