DOCUMENT RESUME

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AUTHOR Tannen, Debt4TITLE Cross-Cultuial Communication.INSTITUTION California Association of Teachers of English to

Speakers, of Other Languages.PUB' DATE 83NOTE , 17p.-f Paper presented at the State Meeting of the

alifornia Association of Teachers of English to'eakers of Other Languages (Los Angeles, CA, April

15- 17,.1983); In: CATESOL Occasiohal Papers; Numberr's 410 p1-16 Fall 1984.

PUB TYPE uides - Non-Classroom Use (055) --Speeches/Conference Papers (150)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Communication Skills; *Cultural Differences; Daily'

Living Skills; *English (Second Language);*InterculturalCommunication; -Second LanguageInstruction; Tel'ephone Usage Instruction

IDENTIFIERS Greece

ABSTRACTA two-part presentation on cross-cultural

commulifiation consists of a discussion cultural differences ininterpersonal communication and an'article from a GreekEnglish-language publication concerning telephone use skills in a'foreign country. Cultural differences in communication are dividedinto eight types and illuitrated: (1) when to talk; (2) what to say;(3) pacing and pausing; (4) the art of listening; (5) intonation; (6)what is conventional and'yhtt is not in a. langliage; (7) degree ofindirectness; and (8) coMision and coherence. Examples of thpseobservations about communications skills,Jound in one person'sexperience with answering telephones in Greece, are discussed. It isconcluded that cross-cultural communication presents a double-bind:the need to be connected to others and theneed not to be imposedupon and that, in certain cultural situations, individuals mustcompromise these needs in order to communicate. An, analogy is madebetween cross-cultural communication and a route on which someone hasturned the signs around: the familiar signposts are there, but theydon't lead in the right direction. (MSE)

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California Association cAnsu Occasional PapersTeachers of Englishjto Number 10 (Fall 1984)Speakers of betel' Languages

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1144) CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION '4(:)iv\

Deborah Tanners11/1 Georgetown Univeriity

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UJ In my mind, cross-cultural dommunication is alwaysclosely related to teaching English as a second languagebecause my interest in cross-cultural communication beganwhen I taught EAglish in Creep. They are related, however,in a more general way: every word spoken in an ESL classroom(and many words not spoken -- because when words that areexpected are not'spoken, that too has an effect on,the inter-actiqn) is cross- cultural- communication. In fact, in'a hete-rogenous society like ours., just about every word spoken any-

. where is crOss-cultural communication, if-kt's,communicationat all. Tb justitrthis claim, I must explain what I meanby the term.

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This paper was presented at the CATON. 1983 'state Conferenceheld in Los Angeles. It is copyrighted by the author and:noportion may be reproduced without her permission.

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Deborah Tannen is AssiStantPrafetsor of Linguistics atGe4rgetown University, She was.a Danforth Fellow'and has helda,Rdtkefeller Humanities Fellowship. Her reserach interestsindiude conversational Vialysis, spoken and written discourse,frames theory, doctor /patient communication, and cross-cultural'cotMunication.. She is on the editorial boa'd of DISCOURSEPROCESSES and is an Associate Editor of TEXT. In 1981, she.4)r organized the Georgetown {University Round Table, on Languages

+S Ind Linguistics and edited the, proceedings entitled ANALYZINGDISCOURSE: TEXT'AND TALK. Dr. Tannen is also editor of the

.... volumes SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE: COHERENCE IN SPOKEN AND

OWRITTENDISCOURSE; and, with Muriel- Saville Troike, PERSPECTIVES

SILENCE: She is the author of CONVERSATIONAL STYLE: ANALYZINGEL TALK AMONG FRIENDS, and LILIICA yAxosf about the work of a modern

Greek writer. She is currently writing a book to be.publishedby E. P. Dutton about conversation. She is, the director of thejoint Linguistic Society ofsAmefica/TESOL Summer Institute to,beheld at Georgetown University in l9.85.

as. oarofrourr or EDUCATIONNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER fellt)

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"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS1MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

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First, whit is culture? Culture is everything you haveever learned'about how to communicate and how to think aboutthings -- which comes down to the same thing. You learn all

i this in previous and ongoing interaction -- by talking toothers, observing how they talk to you, and observing howothers react to your ways of talking. And that is where the"cross-" comes in: we are, exposed to different' ways of talkingdepending not only on the country we grow up in and the 'languagewe speak but also on regional, ethnic, class, and even genderinfluences. (For example, my book CONVERSATIONAL STYLE:ANALYZING TALK AMONG FRIENDS (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1984)presents numerous cross cultural differences in ways that NewYorkers and Californians have a casual conversation.)

My presentation here is in two parts. 'First, I suggestthe range of aspects of communication that can vary from cul-

sture to culture by mentioning and exemplifying 8 kinds ofdifferentes. This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives anidea of the levels of. communication on which differences canbe found. The second part presents.an article that appearedIn THE ATHENIAW(an English-language magazine published inGreece) which reports -the personal experience of an Americananswering the telephone in Greece. Using that as a basis, Ithen draw some principles about communication in general andcross-cultural communication it particular hecause, as I willexplain, cross-cultural communication makes evident and in-tensifies the processes that ate basic to all human communica-tion.

LEVELS OT COMMUNICATION DIFFERENCES

What is it that can be culturally relative in communica-tion?' The answer is, just about everything -- all the as-pects of what you say and how you say it.

1. WHEN TO TALK. To start on the most geberaf level, thequest4on of when to talk is different From culture to culture.This became apparent to me as I recently co-edited a cpllect-ion of papers on the topic of silence with my colleague MurielSaville-Troike (PERSPECTIVES ON,SILENCE, Norwood, N.J.: Ablex,in press). Cultures' differ with respect to what is definedas silence and when it is deemed appropriate.

People experience silence when they think there couldor should be talk. If we are sitting together, I may thinktherers silence between us and youmay not. In an articlein the collectibn 1 co-edited, Ron Scollon points out that,Athabaskan Indians consider it inappropriate to talk to strang-ers. Now this can yield very odd results when'an Athabaskanis inl situation with a non Athabaskan, white or black, whoconsiders that the way tei get to know someone is to talk. One

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wants to get to know the other by talking, and the other N.. feels it is inappropriate to talk until they know each other.

The result of this. kind of difference is cross-culturalstereotyping NorIAthabaskans conclude that Indians aresullen, uncooperative, even stupid, because they don't talkin situations where the non-Indians,expect them totalAnd on the other sid* as is dramatized in a book by KBasso among the Western Apache (PORTRAITS OF "THE WHITE).XN ",Cambridge University Press,1979), Athabaskan Indians havenegative stereotypes of non-tetthabaskans as ridiculously gar-rulous and also htoocritical4because they act as\if they'reyour friend when ihey're not.

Such mutual negative stereotypes are in countryafter country. Those who expect more talk stereotype themore more silent group as' uncooperative and stupid. Those.1rrho use less talk think of the more talkative group as pushy,hypocritical, and untrustworthy. This wqs found, for example,aliong Finns as compared to Swedes, accor4ing.to JaakkoLe ttonen and Kari. Sajavaara iR another chapter in the samevolume. The same pattern is seen, in our own country in themutual negative stereotypes of Neok Yorkers and non-New Yorkers.

2. WHAT TO SAY.' Once 4u 'decide when to talk, what do you'say? Can you ask questions, and what can you ask them about?Diana Eades tells us that AlOtralian Aborigints never askthe question 'Why?" Suzanne Scollon tells us that AlaskanAthabaskans rarely ask any questions. In these and othercultures, questions are regarded as too powerful to throwaround, because they force a response.

We take it for grantedthat questtots are basic to theeducational setting. How would one learn anything if onedidn't ask. Ester,Goody found, however, that in a learningsituation in Conja, ho questions were ever asked. As sheputs it, Gonjans are so aware of the indirect function ofquestions to imply something else that "the pure informationquestion hasn't got a chance."

A universal way of communicating is telling stories:`But when do you tell them? How many can you tell? What canthey be about? What can the point be, and how do you get toit?

In my research (as reported in the. book CONVERSATIONAL;STYLE) I found that New Yorkers of JelOsh background weremore likely than their California friends to tell4stories,and their stories were more likely to be about their per-sonal. experience. The non-Jewish Californians in the conversa-tion I studied tended to talk about events that happened tothem without focusing on how they felt about those eventA.

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Members of each group often responded to the stories told bymembers of the other group with subtle signs of impatienceor incomprehension like "Yeah, and:" */* "What does it mean?"

Stories are just one of a range of conversational actwhich seem obviously appropriate when they pop gut of ourmouths but may not seem appropriate to those whbse ears- theypop into -- especially if the speaker and,hearer are of dif-ferent cultural background. Por example, when and how and .abdUt what can you tell jokes? When is it appropriate touse irony and sarcasm, and how do you show it? When do yougive or ask for advice and information -- and how? How andwhen do you give and take compliments?

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An experience I had in Greece clued me in to the cultural,convention involved in seemingly obvious ways of talking.In this case, it involved exchanging compliments. I was in-vited to join a dinner party at the home of a man who wasianexcellent cook. He had prepared an elaborate dinner includingmany small individually-prepared delicacies. I complimentedthe food during dinner:' "These are delicious." My host agreed:"Yes, they are delicious." This struck me rather negatively;I didn't think the host sh9uld be complimenting his own food.I decided he was egotistical.

Then as I was leaving his house at the end of the even-ing, I thanked him for the wonderful meal. "What, thoselittle nothings?" he retorted, with a wave of his hand and aself-deprecati4 grimace on his Ace. I was surprised again.I expected himbIto accept the compliment this time, sayingsomething like, "The pleasure vas mine; come again."

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Then I 'realized that we differed not about whether cam-pAiments should be accepted or turned aside but rather whichcompliments, should be accepted and which'turned.aside. WhatI interpreted as a personality characteristic was in factcultural convention.

In cross-cultural communication-it is difficult toassess personality characteristics, because such judgementsare always measured against cultural standards. LThis raisesthe intriguing question of the relatiopship between cultureand personality.)

3. PACING AND PAUSING. The next level of cross-cultudifference is that of the conversational control mechpacing and pausing. pow fast do you speak, and how loyou wait before anoth'er speaker` finishes before you concludes/he has no more to say? Differences in expectations aboutthese matters can bring a conversation to an end.

If two people who are talking have even very slightly

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different expectations about how'long to wait between turns,then the person who expects a'slightly shorter pause will.take a turn first -- filling the pause while the other isstill waiting for it. I had a British frAnd who I thoughtnever had anything to say (which was becoming rather annoy-ing) until I learned that she was waiting for a slight pauseto take her turn, but that pause never occurred around me,because before it did, I perceived an uncomfortable silence,which .I. kindly headed off by talking."

One might think that knowing someone a lonCtime, youwould get to know their style. But these reactions are au-tomatic and their meaning seems sef- evident. .Furthermore,negative conclusions, such'as the impression that someonehas nothing to say, are constantly reinforceeby what youobserve to be their behaviior. You have no reason to reviseyour evaluation.

Even being married is no proof' against mutual mis-interpretation. I am frequently thankid by readers and t-audience members who tel_l_m_e that these kinds of slightlydifferent habits account for misunderstandings that haveplagued them their entire married lives. A slightly slowerpartner accuses a faster one. of not giving them a chance totalk and not being interested in what they have to say. Theslightly faster partner accuses the slower one of not talkingto him or her, not saying what's on their mind.

. . ..

This level of processing is automatic. You don't stopand ask yourself, "Now how many milliseconds shall I wait?"You simply perceive whether or not someone wants to talk and .

act accordingly. c

4. LISTENERSHIP. Another level of processing in conversa-tion that is automatic and taken for granted is showinglistenership. One way is through gaze. Frederick Ericksonfound that white participants in his study maintained eye gazewhen listening and frequently broke their gaze when-speaking.Blacks in the study did the opposite. They maintained steadyeye contact when speaking aid frequently broke their gazewhen listening.

This meant that when a white speaker talked to a blacklistener, s/he had the feeling that the black wasn't payingattention because the gaze wasn't there-. &id when the whitespeaker sent a small signal. asking for confirmation of com-prehension, the black often missed it because s/he was look-

- ing away. Se the-speaker then said the same thing again, insimpler terms -- talking down. When the white-was the list-ener; the blackspeaker s steady gaze seemed overbearing.

I found that New Yorkers in my study had an enthusiaStic

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way of ;flowing listenership -- for example, shouting "WOW!"or "NO KIDDING!" -- which frightened, and confused theCalifornians and stopped them dead in their vocal tracks.

If your speaking habits create a strange reaction insomeone you're speaking to, you don't realize that they',rereacting to you. You think, instead, that they have strangespeaking habits -- and are strange people. The New Yorkersnever suspected why the Californians stopped. All they couldsee was that they kept hesitating 'and not getting on withtheir talk.

S. INTONATIOW.' Another level,of difference is intonation;nere I will horrow an example from the work of John Gumperz.There were complaints about rudeness by cafeteria employeesfrom India and Pakittan who had been hired for jobs tradi-tionally held by British women in London's Heathrow Airportemployee cafeteria. The Asiai. women. felt they were the ob-ject of discrimination.

When a customer coming through the cafeteria line re-quested meat, the employee had to find out if he wanted gravyon it. The British women asked,."Grally?" The Asian womenalso said "Gravy," but instead of going up, their intonationwent down at the end. During a Norkshop session, the Indian.women said they couldn't.see why they were getting negative,reactions since they were saying the same thing as the Britishwomen. But the British Women pointed out that although theywere saying the same word, they weren't saying the same thing."Gravy?" -- with the question intonation._:,- means "Would youlike gravy?" The same word spoken witICTalling intonationseems to mean, "This fS gravy. Take it or leave it."

Tiny differences in intonation can throw an interactioncompletely off without the speaker knowing that somethings/he said caused the problem. Intonation is made up of-dif-ferences 16 pitch, loudness, and rhythm -- features of talk '

we use both to show how we mean what we say, and to expressspecial meanings, Cultures differ in how they use theselittle signals both to do conversational business as usual_,and also to express special meanings or emotions.

Gumperz has shown, for example, that whereas speakersof British Eglish use loudness only when they are angry,speakers of Indian English use it to get the floor. Sowhen an Indian speaker is trying to get the floor, theBritish speaker thinks s/he is getting angry -- and,getsangry in return. The result, both agree,, is a heated inter-change, but each thinks the other introduced the emotionaltone into the conversation.

6. FORMULAICITY. The next'levelof cross-cultural differ-ence is the Tfuestion of what is conventional and what isnovel in a language. When.I first visited Greece, I had the

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imOession that one after another individual Greek that Imet was &poetic soul -- until I heard the same poetic usageso often that I realized they,Were all uttering conventionaltruisms that sounded novel and poetic to me because I wasn'tfamiliar with the convention.

Our own talk is full of figures of speech which we takeJot granted -- until we hear them fractured or altered bynon-native speakers (or qv poets).

7. INDIRECTNESS. Communication in any culture is a matterof indirectness. Only a small part of meaningeis containedin the words spoken; the largest part is communicated byhints, assumptions, and audieite filling-in from context andprior experience: Yet how to be indirect is culturally rel.:.ative..

Americans as a group (I lump Americans as a group here,but I caution that Americans4re not a group but are culturallyheterogeneous, its I've been explaining) tend to ignore or even-rail against indirectness. We believe that Ards should saywhat they mean and people should only be accountable for whatthey said in words. We tend to forget the importance of theinterpersonal level of interaction and think that in some in-stances only the content counts.

This is value associated with "getting down to brass..tacks" and "s ing to facts" -- values taken for grantedin American b iness and education, and perhaps more generallyby Aierican men.- But it gets American businessmen'in troublewhen they try, for example, to skip the small talk and getright down to business with Japanese,,Arab, or Mediterraneancounterparts, for.whom elaborate small talk must furnish thefourtdation for any business dealings.

Non-Americans, and American women, more often realizethat much of what is meant cannot be said outright. This in-troduces the enormous problem, even within, a culture, offiguring out what is meant that is not said. Cross - culturallyit becomes a maddening guessing game that most entrants lose.

A quick example of indirectness: A Greek woman-told methat when she asked her father (as a girl) or her husband(as an adult) whether or not she could do something, he wouldnever say no. Ifhesaid."If you want, you can do it," she knewhe didn't,want,her to. If he really thought it was a goodidea he would be enthusiastic: "Yes, of course. Go." Sheknew from the way he waid yes whether he meant yes or'no.

This strikes many Americans as hypocritical. Why.didn'the say what he meant? Well he did say what he meant in a wayshe had no trouble understanding. But if,a Greek=American

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Cousin came to visit the family and asked her uncle if shecould do something and he Answered in a way his daughteralways understood, she would be likely to take his equivocalresponse literally. Although they spoke the same language --Greek -- they would be victims'of cross-Cultural miscommuni;.cation. `,Lf

Now that commerce with Japan is 'widespread there are .

frequent repdYts of frustration by Americans-because politeJapanese'never say lid. One must understand from how they

/ say yes whether or not they mean it, 'Since Americans don'tknow the system, they don't, know what signals.to look fpr --even if they realize.(which most don't) that yes might meanno. -0

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8. COHESION AND COHERENCE. I have defined-cohesian as'surface level ties showing relationships among elements"in discourse and coherence-as "organizing structure makingthe wd'rds and sentences into a unified discourse that hA.cultural significance" (COHERENCE IN SPOKEN AND WRITTENDISCOURSE, Ablex', in press).

I'll cite another example from Gumperz to illustrate*cohesion. Indian speakers often emphasize. the sentenceimmediately preceding their main point, and then utter themain point somewhat in a lower voice -- as if for dramaticeffect. -But 14itish English'speakers expect the main point tobe emphasized., so by the time the Indian is saying the mainpoint, the British listener has switched off.

Robert Kaplan illustrated differences in establishingcoherence-(thbugh he didn't use that term) in ESL essays.Some very interesting current work on cross-cultural dis-course structure is being done by Barbara Johnstone Koch onArabic vs. English. "Argumenttation in Arabic, she shows, isby accretion and repetition -- highlighting by saying overand over the important point rather than building up to it,as Americans expect. To Americans, such repetition seemspointless and not like argumentation at all.

Habits4 cOhesion and coherence are ve resistadt`tochange. One who learns the vocabulary-and sy ax of a newlanguage is likely to hang it on the paralinguistic and dis-course stfUctures of the native communicative-system.'

SUMMARY. We have seen many levels of differences on whichcross-cultutal,,communication can falter: When to talk; whattb say, pacing and pausing, showing listenership, intonation,-formulaicity, indirectness, and cohesion and coherence. Thislist also describes the linguistic ways that meaning is commu-'nicated in talk. This is no coincidence, Communication is,.by its very nature,-culturally relative.

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AI. AN EXAMPLE AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES

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Now I will preseent the article from THE ATHENIAN andthen use it as the .basis for some generalizations aboutcross-eultural communication.

In most countries, when people answer the( telephone, they e4ther'start off with a cheery

'hello', or witlf their phone number or the nameof their firm. In this country, one is usuallymet with a clipped, 'Embros!' ('Forward!' or'Go ahead!') or with a guarded 'Nai?' or'Malista?' ('Yes?')

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I have no idea how the 'embros' responseoriginated but I suspect that the first tele--phones ever used in Greece must have belongedto the army. And since official conversationin the army 1s not particularly noted for itscourteousness, the clipped and abrupt 'embros'came into tieing and eventually passed intocivilian use. t,

After twenty-five years of residence in,this country, I am still slightly put out whenI ring s number and hear the voice at the otherend giving methe command.to go forward. r startmumbling 'ah', and 'er', and the voice at the

40 other end becomes more insistent, repeating_'Embrbs!' two or three times. By then I havebecome completely flustered and can't rememberwhom I was calling in the first-place. And whenI do remember and start to speak, the personat the other end has slammed the Phone down.

Sometimes when I #ial a number I get abusy signal and sometilites nothing at all but,more..often than not, I get a number that is i

completely different from the one I dialled.If, the person at the other end waits loneenough for me to get through my 'ahs' and 'ers'and realizes I have been connected with awrong number, he abruptly utters the word'lathos' (mistake) and cuts me off immediately.If I try again and, instead of a busy signal, Iget the same wrong number, the next 'lathos' islouder and more scathing. I try to explainthat I am dialling correctly but getting hisnumber,through no fault of my own but theper on at the otheeend has already slammedth* phone down and my explanations'are lostinto a dead receiver.

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On e, instead of the laconic 'lathos',I was su jected to a curt lecture. 'My dearsir,' ,I was told, 'why the hell don't youlearn to dial.ptoperiy?' By the time I had t'gotten over the shock of this rudeness andthought of an appropriate reply, I was natur-ally cut off. -

I myself try, to be as polite as I canwith peoVle whd ring another number and getmine instead. But it can be exasperatingwhen the person'at the other end is a peasantwoman calling form some remote village in thehinter/and.

' Mitso, &s that you?* a shrik. voiceshouts into my ear.

'No,41it

is not Mitso. 'There is no Mitsohere. You have the' wrong number.'

'Where'is Mitso? I want to speak tohim!' the shrill voice goes en.

'There is no Mitso here. You have the-7 wrong number,' I repeat. ,

'Wrong numbert What wrong number? WhereMitso?'

'What number are you calling ?*

'Barba Stavro,..is that you? I want tospeak to Mitso. Where is he?'

'It is not Barba Stavro. You' have thewxong number. Put your phone down and try'again.'

'Who ,are .you?'

I decide to try a different tack. 'Whatnumber are you calling?'

The shrill voice 'remains silent. Thereis a consultatiollat the other end that I cannotquite make out.. Then the line is cut off. Afew seconds later the phone rings again.

'Mitso,,is that you?'

By this time I have had enough. I leavethe phone off the hook and go Into the kitchen tomake myself a cup of coffee. By,the time

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*return and pick'up the receiver again I can hearthe.woman engaged in'an a'himated conversation with

.'Mitso. How she ever got through to him on my openline I shall never know.

A friend of mine claims that he can _tellwhether a company is flourishing or not by thestate of its lavatories. =If they are bright andspotless, the company is doing well. If they arenot, the company is obviously going down the drain.As Lrarely use company toilets, I haven't,beenable tq substantiate or disprove this contention.Hqwever, I do believe.that.the way a'switchboardopeXator or a' secretary answers the phone iv.astrong clue to the way a company is being run.

Me company name and-a bright and cheery'Kalimera sas'' (good morning) right up to the endof the day means the company is doing very wellindeed, with a happy and efficient staff to keepit going. A tired voice barely pronouncing thecompany's name and nothing else is a bad omen. Itis usually the trade mark of a government control-,led corporation where nobOdy gives a damn, or 'ofa company seething with labour troubled and cash-flow proble4i.

secretaries who put you through to theirbosses straight away after you have identified'yourself are obviously working for a successfulman who has nothing ,to fear from anyone. The oneswho make you wait with an 'I'll see if he's in'-- the most often-repeated lie in our modern world

are manifestly working for a man who is full' of hang-ups and probably can't cope with his job.

Hotel switchboard operators are a,race apart.They know lbverything that is going on in the hotel,probably by listening in on everybody's conversa-tions. There is one luxury hotel in Athens (whichshall remain nameless) whose switchboard operatorsare the friendliest and most uninhibited girls inthe business. Typical responses from this hotelare,:

. 'Mrs. Haggerty? Is that the red-haired Irish-American lady with the husband who has a sinus con-dition? Ah, well, she went out,about fifteen minutesago to buy some Creek embroidery. She'll probablybe back, soon. Can I take a message ?'

Or 'Mr. Ferguson? No, I'm afraid he's

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out. Hehad,an appointment at ten at-the Mifiistry-Of Coordination and you know what,they're likethere. He probably won't be'back till after two.Do you want to speak to his wife? She's sittingin'the lounge waiting for him and I expect she'sbored stiff. Iiing on a minute and I'll have herpaled 4r you." . t

- Let me sey first the, the reisoahl'clipped this article -more than five years agp and kept it hanging on My wall for' ,

more than half that time, is riot .only that it's funny,-- OT,1/4rathex, the reason it is so funny to is:thatcribes ptrfectly the response I had to Greek conventions foranswering the telephon'e and performing.otheisuch fleetingencounters which did not seem funny to me at. the time butcaused me no end of hurt feelings and negative evalUations.,.The observations I will now make `about cross-cultural lammhnication based on this-examtle are notintended to imply that,Kitroeff was Wang in,anything_he wrote. -Qpite,the contrary,helms eloquently aid beautifully right in all.he observed.But 1 want to step to a different level of abstraction toanalyze the situation -- a level of.abstractiOn that Kitroeffmay well have been aware of, but which it would not have beenappropriate for fiat to articulate in this article, becausehis goal'(bless lam) was not to analyze but to describe,and

Note first that Kitroeff talks not about different con -ventions for telephone talk but about what he perceives as,personality -- people's intentions. He assumes that his con-cept of wk blite is universal. This shows up even inthe adject 7, e uses to describe his experience: I suspect"a cheery_ o" sounds "cheery" to him (rather than, say,saccharine or silly) because it's what he expects. Op theother hand, the "clipped and abrupt emros" and the "guarded!Nal?'" ('Yes?!) sound so by comparison to what he is usedto. He has an emotional response to the way he is addressedon the phone and evaluates the intentions of the speaker bythat response. Similarly,'he calls the woman's voice "shrill"and says she is "shouting" because her volume and pitch arthigher than he expects.

It may be that the woman who calls his hotly: talks onand on because he encouraged her to, by not saying, as soon

' as he realized she had the.mrong number, "LATHOS1" and hang-ing up -- like any normal Greek would. By not doing whatwas name] in that system, he misled her.. She. kept detandingto speak to Mitso because he kept talking to her --givingthe impression that she must be talking to someone who knows

* Alec Kitroeff, The Athenian, October, 1977, p. 19. Reprintedby permission.

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her Her wily problem then Was to figure out who it was. %-=

You haieseen youeself, I am sure, the position ofthis woman: behaving in away that is -rAther bizarre. because "1"-others are behaving in ways that seem strange to you. Youassume, all the while, that the other is always the samepeison. If he is'acting strangely, right now,- Ile is a strange'person. But we see ourselves as many different people: I'monly acting strangely right now because the situation is .

strange*-- or because you are! This is not my normal behavior.(This is very relOant to a classroom situation, which be-.comes natural for the teacher,'who has, gotten used t* it,.but maybe a very strange situation to many, of the students.

Another general truth about communication which istrated in this exa401e'is what anthrop4igist Gregory Batesoncalled COMPLEMENTARY SCHISMOGENESIS (STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OFMIND, N.Y.: Ballantine, 1977). We'expect that if peoplewhose styles differ,havle a chance to communicate frequently,the will accommbdate each other and beZbine mor similar.Thi sometimes happens,.and"the phepomeneb has e'n studiedby psychologists under the rubric of accommodatio eory,for example by Howard GileS. But- Bateson points out, hatoften, in such circumstances, rather than becoMing mogruent in extended interaction, eaa one's style ,drivesother.. to more. extreme forms of the differing behavior. Thisis complementary schismogenesis. Then each ene.ends up ex-hibiting behaviors.that are extreme even for .him 'or her.

That happens in our example.. When Kitroeff hears theabrupt 'answer "eMbros,': he is caught off guard. As a result,he hesitates and falters., which drives the Greek phonesan-swerer to more insistent and peremptory forms of speechwhich distreis Kitroeff-even more, until le completely for-gets whohe was calling. Each ene gets more exaggerated inhis own style. Similarly, the Californians in my study werecaught off guard by the style of the tew Yorkers, consequently-became more tentative.and hesitant, and thus incited theNew Yorkers to become more directly encouraging -- in.theirstyle.

2 AKitroeff's experience on the knone also demonstrptesthe uselessness of formulas with those who don't recognizethem. He tried to let the Greek caller know had gottenW. wrong number by as'k'ing, "What number do you want?" Thissounds very logical to him (and to us), but'really it is aconventional expression by which we let callers, know the num-ber they have reached is not the one they want. We don'treally need to know what number they want, and in the vastmajority of cases, we already know it isn't our number beforewe ask that. However it seems More polite to make sure be-.

fore pronouncing the call a wrong number. The Greek woman,

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AI imagine. did not answer these questions not because shecouldn't but because she wa§n't used to that convention,-so the question didn't make any sense to her.

The last observation 'I wild make about this exampleis somewhat.depressing in terms of the prognosis for cross-cultural comhunicationr the resilience of,our conventionalhabit.. lafroeff had lived in Greece for 25 years and stillhad not gotten-used to Greek ways of answering the phone.After all that time, it still seemed rude. Of course he is

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not uniq e nor even unusual in this. .In the early years of*our liv $ we develop ingrained notions of politeness andrudeness hich come to seem self-evident and arguably logi-cal. A lifetime of exposure to different conventions maydrive us to diStraction buwill ilot make us question ourassumptiori3,-- unless out of the ordinary processes, likebrain-washing or studying cross-cultural communicpion,

. intervene. In the latter case, we may come to undetstandthe cultural relativity of such notions as politeness and

,rudeness, but we are not likely to change our automatic emo-tional reactions to ways of.;talking.

)

A MODEL FOR COMMUNICATION

Cross-cultural communication highlights the prOtessesthat underly all communication. As Ron,ScoiloA points outin an article entitled "The Rhythmic Integration of Ordinary

Talk", all communication is,a double bind. We have to bal-ance two conflicting'needs which linguists call negativeand positive, face but which I lAketo think of as-involvementand independence: the needs-tAbe connected to others and tonot by imposed on. It's a double bind (andther term fromBateson) because honoring one of the needs entails violatingthe other, and-we can't step out of the situation. We can't'not communicate. .

This double bind is particularly painful in cross-. cultural communication, where we find ourselves, protesting, .

'- "Hey,, I'm just like you -- don't treatise differently!"This needs no explanation. Kt then we find ourselves prosAesting, "Hey, I'm different from you -- I need special con-sideration!" All the cross - cultural differences I have:des-cribed will result in misunderstandings if special considera-tion is not made Such consideration should be made, Ibelieve, but be e of the double bind, any such specialconsideration tes the desire not to.be seen.as different.

ROSS- CULTURAL COMMUNICATION SN'T ALL BAD

-SQ as not"' to endfton a negative note, I will give two .

examples of recent research which foUnd that cross-cultural

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communication, even when it is not, strictly speaking,successful, nonetheless can have positive rather than nega-tive effects. Siti Suprapto studied'the talk between anIndonesian gpiecologist and his American patients. Onecross - cultural misunderstanding that repeatedly occurred wasthat the doctor used laughter in a way that is conventionalin Indonesia -- to smooth over embarrassing situations. Hegiggled when he mentioned potentially embarrassing topicsto is patients.' The women had no idea that he was using anIndonesidn convention. But they liked his laughing, whichthey interpreted as a 'personality characteristic., They'thought he was easygoing, friendly, and nice. He made themcomfortable. In a clinic setting, many women who returnedfor sub frequent visits specifically requested the doctor wholaughs a

A second example is from a study by Carolyn Adger ofa multi-ethnic classroom. The children in the first gradeclass, who came from a wide variety of backgrounds, did learntoletalong. .In particular, Adger studied arguments- betweentwo boys, one American black arid one Vietnamese, who becam'ebest friends and sought out each other'A company.

These two boys had very differewin an argument. The black child fthe last word. The Vietnamese chilture that values displays of harmsay something conciliatory and see himself as a peace-maker. He sought oneupmanship pr the-long haul, by get-ting a jibe in later. Because ofthsi'r cross-cultural dif-ferences, it was possible for both boys to feel they had comeout well in the same argument. "

AN

ideas about how tothat he had to get

who came from a cul-was happysif he could

CONCLUSION

Cross - cultural communication'is like trying to follow,a route on which someone has turned the signposts around.All the familiar signposts are there, but when you followthem they don't lead you in the right direction.

Cross-cultural comvinication exhibits the benefitsand problems of all communication in extreme form. Incapaper given at the Georutown University Round Table onLanguages and Linguistics-in 1981, A. L. Becker quotesOrtega y Gasset.as saying that all communication is eltu-.berant and deficient. It's deficient because what we saynever communicates exactly what we have in mind in all itsramifications and associations. It's exuberant' because ourlisteners see ramifications and associations which'we don't'intend to communicate, as well as impressions of us. This

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is true in all communication, because all communication isto some degree cross-cultural: no two people have exactlythe same communicative background. In situations that aremore decidedly cross-cultural: among speakers of different.languages from different countries -- the exuberancies and.deficiencies are proportionately greater.

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The issue of cross-cultural communication is'at thevery heart of being human. If you find, over time, that yourways of saying things are misunderstood, that your intentionsare misperceived, you start to think you are crazy. Youquestion your very sense of being in the world. This, Ithink, is what happens in that phenomenon we've all experi-enced, culture shock. Sadly, it's a reeling many ESL stu-dents-have much of the time.

At the end of +a classic paper on the coherence.systemof Javanese Shadow Theatre; Becker points, out that foreignlanguage learning has a lot.in common with schizophrenia:the experience of not being 261e,to.establish a sense of co-herence in the world, of not being aright sort of perioffwhom others undeistand.

What fan we do about these problems? Understanding i3-self is a erful tool. ff we, can talkto our studehtsabout the oblems they are having in getting.themselvesunderstood, ho feelings they' ave when. their intentions aremisinterpretlfd and when they find others behaving incbmpre-hepsibly or (as it seems to them) badly; if we can let theiknow that there are very concrete reasons for such disturb-ances in cross-cultural communication, then a great part ofthe self-doubt may be at least partly soothed. If we allremand ourselves'that others may not have understood whatthey said, it may go a long way to make all foreign language

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learners and all communicators 'g little more sane.

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