Culture-Specific Communicative Styles as a Framework for Interpreting Linguistic and Cultural Idiosyncrasies

Abstract

This paper attempts to define a culture-specific communicative style which I call communicative ethno-style and determine the factors which lead to its formation. While defining communicative ethno-style some generalizations are unavoidable and reference is made to a typical user of standard language and his/her communicative behaviour in interpersonal interaction in everyday situations. At the same time it is not possible to take a dichotomous approach in describing the communicative styles as they form a continuum and need to be viewed in comparison. In this paper I demarcate the dominant features of Russian communicative style as opposed to British and emphasize the importance of a systemized description of culture specific communicative differences through communicative ethno-styles. This is important for developing pragmatic and discourse competence necessary for intercultural communication. The study is based on empirical data obtained through questionnaires, interviews and observations and follows contextual, pragmatic, discourse analyses. The theoretical framework is based on Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Leech, 1983, 2005; Watts, 2003), Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and the Theory of Cultural Scripts (Wierzbicka, 1991/2003, 2002, 2006).

Language and Emotion: Discourse-Pragmatic Perspectives

“…The English words sad and sadness do not have exact equivalents in Russian, which has three words to express different varieties of sadness which differ in duration and intensity -grust', pechal' and toska (Wierzbicka 2001). The semantics of the English adjective happy is much broader in comparison with the Russian word schastliviy, which provokes serious misunderstandings in intercultural communication (Larina 2015). A lot of emotional experiences, such as joy, sadness or anger are often conceptualized in Russian as inner actions in which one engages, rather than as states which one passively undergoes and so they are often expressed by verbs rather than adjectives (Wierzbicka 1999: 18).…”

“…Thus, every human being, regardless of their language or nationality, experiences emotions, but the manifestation of emotions, their expressiveness, function, pragmatic meaning, or vector of orientation have their own cultural/group peculiarities that are reflected in language and discourse and shape communicative ethnostyles (Larina 2009(Larina , 2015. Each human group (in their different discourse systems) has its own culturally conditioned rules for the manifestation of emotions, both verbal and nonverbal.…”

REVIEW of Laura Alba-Juez and J. Lachlan Mackenzie. 2016. Pragmatics: Cognition, Context & Culture. Madrid: McGraw Hill, 307p

“…The relevance of cultural variation for the study of language use is acknowledged but, for example, culturespecific communicative styles (cf. Larina 2015) are not discussed in detail. In a similar vein, the subfield of Intercultural Pragmatics (cf.…”

Intercultural Communicative Competence - A Further Challenge

“…It involves communication in which the consciousness even of the potential for cultural difference of both participants, or just of one, is limited. In the latter case, this might mean that one participant tends to see their own cultural norms, including communicative style, as universal, to interpret their interlocutor's communicative style from the perspective of their own and even to denigrate their interlocutor's different norms when they are even aware of them (Bennett 1993, Larina 2015. Naturally, this can impact hugely on their communication and general interaction.…”