developing awareness of crosscultural pragmatics: the case of american/german sociable interaction

catherine evans davies

"...this article draws teachers' attention to three interrelated aspects of conversational style which are important in initial crosscultural encounters between Americans and Germans."

criticizes the natural approach

"The argument is made that language teachers should give pragmatic competence/awareness the highest priority in the classroom, form the beginning of language study."

3 points:

1. "we need to organize teaching around speech activities as discourse rather than around isolated speech acts."
2. "we need to develop in learners the ability to looks for patterns, through discourse analysis and a certain critical distance, rather than 'facts' or 'rules' about language and culture."
3. "we need to present cultural themes (e.g., the public versus the private self: what is the boundary betwen an acceptable and unacceptable degree of self-disclosure in small talk?) as opportunities to explore diversity within the home and target cultures."

"Too often we also find an avoidance of cultural generalizations."

"...compared to German strategies, American conversationalist style (in particular with reference to the experience of university students engaged in crosscultural conversations) 'is weighted toward deference strategies' (Byrnes 1986)...Such a conversational style in fact allows the individualism which Americans favor ideologically, in that respect for the individuality of others protects one's own by maintaining reciprocal respect."

Byrned characterizes "conversational style among German univeristy students not in terms of solidarity or deference politeness strategies, but rather as placing greater emphasis on the 'information-conveying function of language, as compared with the social bonding function' (1986). She suggests further that this emphasis leads naturally to more dircet strategies."

Example in which a roommate stains another roommate's blouse. "Germans were much more willing to pass judgment on the violators, exercising a more overt social control function than English speakers."

"An alternative explanation might be that Germans have more of a sense of homogeneity with a shared set of norms which they can enforce, whereas Americans are more aware of their heterogeneity."

"...among Americans the average 'social distance' between different individuals seems to be smaller than among Germans, but only in regard to the peripheral regions."

(1) SMALL TALK
"The existence of the expression 'small talk' in English suggests that it is a cultural category; in contrast, German simply describes the practice as ...(unconstrained, unrestricted, easy interaction).

"Germans seemed to have obligatory opening and closing rituals for public encounters, with nothing in between; whereas Americans seemed to have more flexible (and sometimes optional) openings and closings, with the focus on the sociable interaction in the middle."

"It is easy to envision the difficulties of an Americna trying to develop small talk along American cultural lines."

"Germans in the US often misunderstand small talk to be the initiation of a 'close friendship' and can feel set up for a disappointment."

(2) JOKING
"...for Germans, joking is private behavior, whereas for Americans it is public as well as private...English speakers (and Austrian German speakers) have a more creative and lighthearted attitude and less prescriptive approach to language than Germans do."

"Germans tend to judge Americans negatively on the basis of what was seen to be their excessive joking; they were assumed to be 'frivolous' and 'not serious enough.'"

"human beings are not cultural robots."