2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Genre-Analytical Study of Intercultural Pragmatics : Towards a Cognitive Model of Academic Discourse
| Project/Area Number |
17520280
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Linguistics
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| Research Institution | Rikkyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
HIRAGA Masako Rikkyo University, Sociology, Professor (90199050)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KUME Teruyuki Rikkyo University, Business, Professor (50131199)
KOYAMA Wataru Rikkyo University, Literature, Associate Professor (30366942)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2005 – 2007
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| Keywords | Intercultural Pragmatics / Genre Analysis / Cognitive Model / Comparative Cultures between Japan and Britain / Interpersonal Communication / Intercultural Communication / Tutorial / Discourse Analysis |
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| Research Abstract |
The aim of this project is two-fold : i) to propose a genre-analytical approach as a viable methodology to delineate and validate the parallel text in comparative and contrastive cultural research, and ii) to construct a cognitive model to explicate the findings drawn from the data obtained by triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods.
The data include video recordings and participant observations of authentic tutorials in British, Japanese, and intercultural settings, retrospective interviews to intercultural tutorial participants, semi-structured interviews on British educational values and systems to Japanese students studying in Britain, and discourse completion tests administered to British and Japanese informants.
A key issue relates to how best to describe and explain the socio-cultural assumptions that play an important role in the generation, perception and interpretation of pragmatic practices in our daily communication as well as in intercultural encounters. The an
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alysis has dealt with : i) how students in both educational cultures are classified according to their behavioral and communication patterns ; ii) how Japanese students embody their cultural, symbolic, and economic habitus, which they tend to transfer or to negotiate in the British academic settings ; and iii) how Japanese students recognize and employ verbalization and non-verbalization in academic discourse. It has been argued that the Japanese students share at varying degrees certain socio-cultural assumptions and values about their educational goals and rationales, which comprise their cognitive model. This model is altered, negotiated, or sustained in their discursive interactions with the British tutors, and has been demonstrated to be an effective tool to evaluate and describe the generation, perception and interpretation of pragmatic practices
Emphasizing the increasingly intercultural nature of academic encounters, and elaborating them as both language and social practices is one way of working in the current context of educational globalization. Less
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