Search results for "Cultural communication."

Practical applications of naturalistic inquiry in intercultural education

2021

In recent years, the field of intercultural communication has seen a remarkable shift characterized by a growth in publications that distance themselves from the traditional, essentialist understanding of culture. In research, this shift is reflected in approaches that appreciate culture-in-action instead of taking culture for granted as a stable entity that pre-exists social interaction and predicts as well as explains human behavior. However, despite attempts to introduce differentiated views on culture and interculturality in education, concrete options for critical intercultural training are scarce and often remain abstract, which makes their application challenging. This article argues…

When Cultures Meet : Modelling Cross-Cultural Knowledge Spaces

2008

Cross-cultural research projects are becoming a norm in our global world. More and more projects are being executed using teams from eastern and western cultures. Cultural competence might help project managers to achieve project goals and avoid potential risks in cross-cultural project environments and would also support them to promote creativity and motivation through flexible leadership. In our paper we introduce an idea for constructing an information system, a cross-cultural knowledge space, which could support cross-cultural communication, collaborative learning experiences and time-based project management functions. The case cultures in our project are Finnish and Japanese. The sys…

Finnish-Chinese intercultural negotiation : power positioning and search for common ground

2018

‘Rising China’ is a term that has come to refer to China’s march to being number one, the speed of its economic growth, and its investment around the world during last two decades. In Finland, government agencies have been established to promote investment, trade, and co-operation with China, while regional and local governments are also actively involved. Meanwhile, much of the world is now competing for the attention of China, so the power dynamic is tending to shift in favour of the Chinese. This developing context has been examined in previous studies primarily from the perspectives of politics, economics, and management studies. The overarching aim of this study is to investigate emerg…

Intercultural Workplace Communication

2017

The workplace is a highly meaningful context for intercultural communication where persons who come from different countries, identify with different ethnic groups or speak different languages get to collaborate and develop relationships with one another. Needless to say, interpersonal communication in the workplace has always been a primary area of interest for intercultural communication research. Early scholarship focused on the preparation of U.S. military personnel, diplomats, business people, and missionaries for overseas assignments. However, the increasing pluralization of the social landscape has bolstered research endeavors. These days, the scope of intercultural workplace communi…

From Ivory Tower to Social Arena:

2021

International audience

Are you ready to encounter foreign patients with infectious diseases? : developing nursing students’ language skills through educational co-creation

2019

An educational co-creation project can provide valuable information about the current needs in working life and engage students in a meaningful way thus promoting their learning outcomes significantly. The nursing students at Laurea University of Applied Sciences were involved in an educational co-creation project whose aim was to increase their knowledge of infectious diseases and to develop the contents of their language course “English for Health Care”. The project was carried out through innovative methods: a learning café and online educational material for professionals in the field. This collaboration involved the infectious diseases ward of Aurora Hospital, nursing students and lect…

The level of context dependence of engagement markers in Peninsular Spanish and US business websites

2019

This paper examines the impact of Spaniards’ and North-Americans’ level of context dependence (Hall, 1976) on the engagement markers (Hyland & Tse, 2004) used on the presentation page of 100 business websites from the toy sector (50 from Spain and 50 from the US). Following an observational and a quantitative analysis, the findings reveal remarkable statistical differences in the interactional discourse of this digital genre, which may be a valuable source of information for export companies to introduce their products abroad by means of their business websites. In addition, we believe that the business website can be used in the teaching and learning of Spanish and English for professional…

Intercultural communication experiences of foreign students with a focus on their perspectives of national, cultural and ethnic identity : case of ex…

2011

The aim of the study is to learn about intercultural communication experiences of foreign Exchange and Master degree students in Jyväskylä, Finland with a particular attention to the perspective of national, cultural and ethnic identity concepts. The study is qualitative in nature. The goal in creating the interview themes was to cover a variety of topics to allow the informants to speculate on different situations related to intercultural communication experiences in Jyväskylä, their country of origin and their national, cultural and ethnic identity. To reach the diverse perspectives on the subject individuals of different cultural origin were interviewed. The interview group involved Exch…

Constructing intercultural competence in Italian social service and healthcare organizations : pedagogical design, effectiveness research, and altern…

2013

Striving for mutual understanding : native English speakers' views on speech modifications in intercultural encounters

2016

”Foreigner talk” -nimistä ilmiötä on aikaisemmin tutkittu melko laajaltikin eri näkökulmien kautta. Suurin osa tutkimuksesta on tehty 1980-luvulla, jonka jälkeen termin käyttö näyttää hiljalleen vähentyneen. ”Foreigner talk” tarkoittaa muokattua kieltä, jonka tarkoitus on tehdä puheesta ymmärrettävämpää henkilölle, jonka kompetenssi kohdekielessä ei ole toisen puhujan kanssa syystä tai toisesta samalla tasolla: kyseessä voivat olla esimerkiksi kieltä äidinkielenään puhuva henkilö ja kieltä vieraana kielenä puhuva henkilö. Aivan viime aikoina ilmiö näyttää nouseen taas suosioon tutkimuskohteena etenkin osana työympäristöä, jossa kansainväliset kohtaamiset ovat monelle arkipäivää. Siitä huoli…