About the Book
This handbook brings together 26 ethnographic research reports from around the world about communication. The studies explore 13 languages from 17 countries across 6 continents. Together, the studies examine, through cultural analyses, communication practices in cross-cultural perspective. In doing so, and as a global community of scholars, the studies explore the diversity in ways communication is understood around the world, examine specific cultural traditions in the study of communication, and thus inform readers about the range of ways communication is understood around the world. Some of the communication practices explored include complaining, hate speech, irreverence, respect, and uses of the mobile phone. The focus of the handbook, however, is dual in that it brings into view both communication as an academic discipline and its use to unveil culturally situated practices. By attending to communication in these ways, as a discipline and a specific practice, the handbook is focused on, and will be an authoritative resource for understanding communication in cross-cultural perspective. Designed at the nexus of various intellectual traditions such as the ethnography of communication, linguistic ethnography, and cultural approaches to discourse, the handbook employs, then, a general approach which, when used, understands communication in its particular cultural scenes and communities.
Table of Contents:
Dedication
Table of Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword, Robert T. Craig
Editorial Team
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Handbook
Chapter 1: Donal Carbaugh, Communication in Cross-cultural Perspective
Unit One: The Idea(l)s of Communication in Cultural Context
Chapter 2: Donal Carbaugh, Terms for Talk, Take 2: Theorizing Communication through its Cultural Terms and Practices
Chapter 3: Igor Klyukanov and Olga Leontovich, Russian Perspectives on Communication
Chapter 4: Camelia Suleiman, Arabic Language Ideology and Communication: An Image from Egypt
Unit Two: Critical Inquiry through Plaintive Forms of Cultural Communication, National Identity
Chapter 5: Nadezhda Sotirova, Oplakvane [complaining] and what it teaches us about Communication in Bulgarian Discourse
Chapter 6: Michaela Winchatz, Jammern [whining] as a German Way of Speaking
Chapter 7: Shi-xu, Cultural Assumptions about Chinese Communication
Unit Three: Cultural Styles of Communication with special attention to Identity
Chapter 8: Cliff Goddard and Rahel Cramer, "Laid back" and "irreverent": An ethno-pragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communication
Chapter 9: Michael Haugh, Mockery and (non-) seriousness in initial interactions amongst American and Australian speakers of English
Chapter 10: Todd Sandel, Hsin-I Yueh and Peih-ying Lu, Some Distinctive Taiwanese Communication Practices and their Cultural Meanings
Chapter 11: Richard Wilkins, The Optimal Form and its use in Cross-Cultural Analysis: A British "Stiff Upper Lip" and a Finnish Matter-of-fact Style
Chapter 12: Saskia Witteborn and Qian Huang, Diaosi [expressing the underdog] as a Way of Relating in Contemporary China
Unit Four: Electronic and Written Media, Mobile Communication
Chapter 13: Haiyong Liu and Mary Garrett, A Perilous Journey: Intercultural Communication through Translated Novels
Chapter 14: Saila Poutiainen, Finnish Terms for Talk about Communication on a Mobile Phone
Chapter 15: Kwesi Yankah, Mobile Phone Technology: Coping Strategies in African Cultural Practice
Unit Five: Interpersonal Communication, Gender, Respect, Sociability
Chapter 16: Benjamin Bailey, Piropos [amorous flattery] as a cultural term for talk in the Spanish-speaking world
Chapter 17: Patricia Covarrubias, Respeto [respect] in Disrespect: Clashing Cultural Themes withinMexican Immigration Discourses
Chapter 18: Wenshan Jia and Dexin Tian, Chinese Conceptualizations of Communication:Terms for Talk and Practice
Chapter 19: Elena Nuciforo, "Sitting" as a Communication Ritual with special attention to Alcohol Consumption inRussian Culture
Unit Six: Organizational Communication
Chapter 20: Tovar Cerulli, "Ma’iingan is our brother": Ojibwe and non-Ojibwe ways of speaking about wolves
Chapter 21: Leah Sprain, Cultural Communication within Nicaraguan Cooperative Meetings
Chapter 22: Alena Vasilyeva, Mediation Discourse in the United States and Belarus: Culturally Shaped Interactions
Unit Seven: Political Communication
Chapter 23: David Boromisza-Habashi and Gábor Pál, The discourse of dictatorship in Central Eastern Europe, and the case of Hungarian "hate speech"
Chapter 24: Gonen Dori-Hacohen, Israeli online political commenting: Tokbek [talk-back] in between griping and hate-speech
Chapter 25: Zohar Kampf & Tamar Katriel, Political Condemnations: Public Speech Acts and the Moralization of Discourse
Unit Eight: Religious-based Communication
Chapter 26: Abdrabo Abu Alyan The Friday Sermon ‘Khutbah’ at the Mosque: Messages and Emotions
Chapter 27: Sunny Lie, Effective Evangelism: Discourse about Best Evangelical Practices in a Chinese Indonesian Evangelical Christian (CIEC) Community in New England
Chapter 28: Elizabeth Molina-Markham, "Drawing Back to a Sense of the Whole":
Positioning Practices in Quaker Administrative Meetings
Epilogue, Gerry Philipsen
