LSPr 14: Institutional Discourse in Cross-Cultural Contexts

 Institutional Discourse in Cross-Cultural Contexts

Ronald Geluykens & Bettina Kraft (eds.)
University of Oldenburg, University of Southampton

While the fields of Institutional Discourse Analysis and Cross-Cultural Pragmatics are now two well established, and rapidly growing, subdisciplines within pragmatics, the cross-section between these two areas remains underexplored. The current book attempts to explore this interdisciplinary dimension, by presenting a collection of papers dealing with cross-cultural aspects of institutional interaction, approached from a variety of methodological perspectives (such as ethnomethodology, speech act theory, and systemic-functional grammar).

Two areas of institutional interaction are explored in detail. The first is classroom interaction, where the focus is mainly on the question how foreign language learners can improve their communicative competence in a formal teaching environment. Phenomena investigated here include intonation, phatic talk, speech act realisations, and the issue of autonomous language learning. The second context is that of professional interaction in the narrow sense, which incorporates both business and academic discourse, and which includes both written (e.g. business letters) and spoken (e.g. conferencing, service encounters) modes of communication.

Given that this collection has institutional (or professional) discourse as its main focus, it is an ideal companion volume to the earlier ‘Discourse in Professional Contexts’ (edited by R. Geluykens and K. Pelsmaekers, 1999) collection published in the same series.

Contents:

PART I: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

1. The Cross-Cultural Dimension of Institutional Discourse
Ronald Geluykens and Bettina Kraft

2. Taking a Multiple Analysis Approach to Discourse
Poul Erik Flyvholm Jørgensen

3. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Definition and Methodology
Ronald Geluykens

PART II: CLASSROOM INTERACTION

4. Phatic Talk in Learner – Native Speaker Interaction
Bernhard Bielick

5. Modifying Requests in the EFL Classroom:
A Focus on Instructional Effects
Maria Pilar Safont Jordà

6. Classroom Procedures and the Development of Pragmatic Competence
Lienhard Legenhausen

7. What does the Tonic Say in Pre-School Teacher Talk in the EFL Classroom? An Acoustic-Based Analysis of Tonicity
Silvia Riesco Bernier & Jesús Romero Trillo

PART III: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

8. Requesting in Native and Non-Native Business Letters
Ronald Geluykens

9. Deductive and Inductive Methods in the Teaching of Business Pragmatics: Not an ‘either/or’!
Anna Trosborg and Philip Shaw

10. Complaint Sequences in Cross-Cultural Service Encounters
Bettina Kraft & Ronald Geluykens

PART IV: ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

11. Spoken Academic Discourse: A Critical Review
Holger Limberg & Ronald Geluykens

12. Lexical Density and Grammatical Intricacy in Conferencing
Eija Ventola

ISBN 9783895867750. 280pp. LINCOM Studies in Pragmatics 14. 2008.