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RESEARCH PRODUCT

La communication interculturelle des vietnamiens francophones en insertion professionnelle : éthiques culturelles et coopération

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This thesis studies the professional integration in Vietnam of French-speakers in terms of communication. The study context involves French recruiters and Vietnamese candidates in authentic recruitment situations. Introduction presents an overview of the problem: if, as declared by E.T. Hall, culture and communication are the same phenomenon viewed under two particular facets, is it possible for French recruiters and Vietnamese candidates to communicate in order to understand, get along with each other, and reach agreement ? How can communication be viewed in the situation of cultural differences? In fact, cultural codes facilitate communication only when they are shared. The paradox is that theoretically, communication seems impossible; however, we have to admit that it usually takes place in a manner satisfactory enough to permit cooperation. Overview of the problem deals with two questions regarding the process of professional integration between a French subject and a Vietnamese subject: how do cultural ethics and professional divergences of the actors cause misunderstandings during interactions? does constant cooperation between the actors in their interactional strategies allow intercultural communication to develop? Chapter 1 presents the principles of the culturalist approach for intercultural communication. The presentation leads to a pessimistic conclusion: whenever an actor is locked in his/her culture, communication with a person from another culture is proved to be logically impossible. Definitely, culture functions like a facilitator on the condition of sharing the same culture. It functions like an obstacle in other cases. Chapter 2 presents an interactionist approach which applies universal strategies to facilitate interactions. Contrary to culturalism, the interactionist approach leads to an optimistic conclusion, considering intercultural communication to be always possible provided that the interactional strategies are applied. Yet, these strategies, supposedly universal, have been established without regarding the cultural dimension. Chapter 3 attempts to establish logical links between culturalism and interactionism. The connection is based on the following reasoning: we make the distinction between the plan of strategies (general, universal) and the plan of realisation (culturally marked); nevertheless, because the realisations are peculiar to a given culture, a strategy cannot be recognised as it really is. There exists some sort of hiatus between the two plans which usually cannot function together; that is why a third level is necessary to facilitate the transition from a strategy to a realisation. The compensation process that aims to fill in the gaps between realisation and strategy is bothlinguistic (providing or asking for explanations, for example), and behavioural (cooperation, empathy); so we can obtain the general mechanism for the functioning of intercultural dynamics: the similar strategies (plan 1); the different realizations (plan 2); and the transitional processes between the above mentioned plans. Chapter 4 presents a corpus which serves as the basis for this study. The corpus consists of three series of first-hand documents. The first series comprises 17 authentic job interviews which were recorded and transcribed in French. The second consists of 9 semi-directive interviews with recruiters conducted by the researcher. The third consists of 9 semi-directive interviews with the candidates conducted by the researcher. Chapter 5 repeats the principles of methodology – in this case being content analysis to process the raw data in the corpus. In Chapter 6, the three interview series are processed through content analysis to bring to light the principal parameters that intervene into the communication between the two speakers. Chapter 7 goes into some rigid elements that are likely to be obstacles to intercultural communication. etc