Week 7 Blog: Analyzing Cultural Differences in Writing and Speech

The documentary that we watched in class at the end of last week’s class examined cultural differences in writing and gave tips on how to assess and help the writing of international students.  The video began by once again describing Kaplan’s idea of contrastive rhetoric and how students’ writing in second languages is impacted by their primary languages and cultures.  An example of how contrastive rhetoric can reveal cultural differences was demonstrated by the Japanese female student who lost points for describing “extra information”.  She did not describe what she saw as unnecessary or irrelevant information because in Japanese culture detailed descriptions of events are more common and natural than a brief summary.  For example, a student from the U.S. may write “there was a fight between two guys” while the Japanese student provides a detailed description of the event leading to the fight between the two guys.  This is a cultural difference, not a difference in writing ability.  Another reason for the directness of American prose is because in the United States the author is responsible for conveying a message.  In many other cultures, including Japan, it is the reader’s responsibility to determine the author’s message.  Another writing difference between the United States’ culture and other cultures is the use of citations.  In the U.S. citations are of extreme importance because using information that is not one’s own is considered stealing.  This is largely a reflection of the individualistic style of American culture.  On the contrary, other collectivist cultures place less emphasis on citations because information is shared among the public.  Information is not a private enterprise but a shared commodity.  While the documentary highlighted differences in writing between cultures, the two articles for this week analyzed the impact of culture on speech.

            Marra’s article utilized authentic data to research workplace communication.  A large portion of the article describes how research should be conducted and the importance of considering the culture of one’s participants when designing a study.  In my opinion, Marra’s most insightful point on this topic was his statement that “participants are NOT researched on, but researched with” (305).  Allowing participants to actively participate in the conduction of the research is super important because this research and data often leads to critical self-reflection by the workers.  This reflection will likely cause a change in communication patterns and hopefully lead to a more productive workplace.  Isn’t that one of the primary goals of these research studies?  Hopefully the knowledge we learn from language studies leads to practical improvements and more effective communication.  A major point that I took from the article was that importance of having knowledge of a culture before evaluating the communicative practices of that culture.  Marra’s study examined the workplace communication of two different cultures in New Zealand: the Maori and the Pakeha.  If one does not understand the nature of the Maori culture and hears two workers constantly joking around, one may assume that these workers are lazy or unproductive.  However, the Maori culture could be known for having a light-hearted and fun work environment and these could actually be great workers.  As demonstrated in this class so many times before, one cannot judge others without understanding. 

      Baker’s article focused on English as a Lingua Franca.  According to the text, the term English as a lingua franca is ‘‘a way of referring to communication in English between speakers with different first languages” (569).  For example, a native Spanish speaker and a native French speaker who communicate via English would be using the language as a lingua franca.  English has become a truly global language and its use as a lingua franca has become increasingly more common.  English’s prevalence in a wide variety of different cultures demonstrates a fluid and dynamic relationship between language and cultures.  As articulated by Baker, “English is not property of one culture or community” (568).  Many Americans often think of English as being “our” language, but we need to embrace the philosophy that all people should have the freedom to speak all languages.  In a country founded on freedom, it is ironic and disturbing that some people have tried to restrict others from learning perhaps the world’s most influential language.