HANKUK UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES (HUFS)
2014 INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SESSION in KOREAN STUDIES
July 18-August 14, 2014
ISS 402 CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Instructor:
Jonny Bahk-Halberg, Ph.D. (English Rhetoric & Linguistics- TESOL)
Class Meetings:
Mon-Thurs
Instructor contact:
jonnyh@hufs.ac.kr
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF COURSE CONTENT
In this course we will analyze how culture impacts communicative norms and practices.
Domains of communication to be analyzed will include marketing and advertising,
international politics, the news media, international business settings, as well as
interpersonal communication. Readings and practical activities will be organized
around the themes of the ideological orientations and belief systems which are the
foundations of cross-cultural differences, the pragmatics of cross-cultural
communication and research into cross-cultural communication (and
mis-communication). Students will conduct small-scale investigations of their own to
complement the readings and class discussions.
The course is grounded in the disciplines of linguistics, anthropology, semiotics, and
social psychology and will draw primarily on theories of politeness, accommodation
theory, cultural differences (e.g. individualism vs. collectivism), and pragmatics.
Methods of analysis will include ethnography of communication, participantobservation and discourse analysis. We will proceed from both culture-general and
culture-specific approaches and we will look at the interplay between cultural norms
and individual decision-making.
General principles in the above-mentioned areas will be analyzed and exemplified
through case studies presented in the class readings. Students will then apply these
principles to their own analysis of the Korean communication contexts. Norms of
communication in the Korean context will be compared and contrasted with norms from
other cultures and the resulting cross-cultural and inter-cultural communication
confrontations, interpretations and possible misreadings will be analyzed.
METHOD and PROCEDURES
Readings, lectures, discussions among Korean and international students in the class,
and “fieldwork observations” in written and oral formats will be the primary learning
tools used. Each week students will have a fieldwork assignment through which they
will explore the principles under analysis. The fieldwork assignments will normally be
due each Monday (following the week in which the readings, discussions and fieldwork
were done).
2
GRADING CRITERIA:
Grades will be based on
(1) daily homework completion (measured by completion of reading reports on assigned
readings, your level of class participation and contributions to class discussions),
(2) completion of weekly fieldwork observation assignments and
(3) a final take-home essay exam, in which you are asked to synthesize the material
covered in the 5 weeks.
ASSIGNMENTS INCLUDED IN YOUR GRADE CALCULATION:
Homework completion (reading reports)
(Homework completion will be calculated for each of the first
4 weeks and you will get a weekly homework completion grade)
Weekly field work assignments (4 @ 10% each)
Class attendance & discussion participation
Final exam (take-home essay)
(due in class on Wednesday, August 8)
20%
40%
15%
25%
REQUIRED CLASS MATERIALS (available for purchase in the ISS office)
1. Book: The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think
Differently (and Why), by Richard E. Nisbett
2. Reading Package
READINGS AND DISCUSSION SCHEDULE
WEEKS 1 & 2:
INTRODUCTION TO CROSS-CULTURAL AND INTER-CULTURAL
STUDIES
1. Ideological origins of cultural differences between “east” and “west”
2. Examples of effect of cultural differences in the business world
Readings: Selected chapters from The Geography of Thought and Leading the Wave
of Culture: Understanding Culture in Business. by Fons Trompenaars & Charles
Hampden-Turner
Weekly Field Assignment, Week 1: Personal reflection on “Culture Bump” project
(handout)
Weekly Field Assignment, Week 2: Cultural Tourism Assignment: Articulating a
country’s history and culture to visitors from another country (to be done in several
stages, concluding in week 5)
Prepare a two-page background paper or multi-media presentation on a site of cultural
tourism appropriate for a group of college-educated cultural tourists from a variety of
countries, most of whom have no prior knowledge of your country or its history and
who do not speak the language of the country (i.e similar to an entry in the Lonely
Planet guidebook.)
3
Prepare a general background paper on one of the ISS field trip destinations such as
Gyeongju, Gwang-ju and Tamyang-gun or one of the other cultural sites of interest in
the Cheolla-do or Seoul area.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Prepare a first draft for discussion in class on Tuesday
2. For KOREANS: Ask 2 international students in ISS to read your draft and give you
feedback on your description (feedback questionnaire will be distributed in class).
For the NON-KOREANS: Select a site of cultural tourism in Korea with which you are
familiar or which you are interested in learning more about. Ask 2 Koreans from ISS to
read your draft and give you feedback on your description Ask them to correct the facts,
your interpretation of the cultural significance of the site, and anything else they feel
needs adjustment.
3. Participate in the planned field trip to Gwang-ju and Cheolla province (or alternative
ISS field trip destination may be substituted for the Gwang-ju/Cheolla field trip)
4. Based on the feedback you received, submit a revised, polished and improved second
draft of your background paper on Cultural Tourism.
WEEKS 3 & 4
DOING RESEARCH on INTER-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS
Readings from Reading Package:
1. Mey, Jacob L. 2001. Pragmatics Across Cultures, pp. 262-280,
plus Review and Discussion questions 1,3,4,6,7, pp. 280-288.
(Ch. 10 in Pragmatics, An Introduction, 2nd ed.
Malden, MA/Oxford/UK: Blackwell.)
2. Zegarac, Vladimir and Martha C. Pennington. 2000. Pragmatic Transfer in
Intercultural Communication.
(Ch. 8 in Helen Spencer-Oatey, ed., Culturally Speaking: Managing
Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London/New York: Continuum,
pp. 155-190.)
3. Bond, Michael Harris, Vladmir Zegarac and Helen Spencer-Oatey. 2000.
Culture as an Explanatory Variable: Problems and Possibilities.
(Ch. 3 in Helen Spencer-Oatey, ed., Culturally Speaking: Managing
Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London/New York: Continuum,
pp. 47-71.)
4. Gudykunst, William. 2000. Methodological Issues in Conducting Theory.
Based Cross-Cultural Research.
4
(Ch. 14 in Helen Spencer-Oatey, ed., Culturally Speaking: Managing
Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London/New York: Continuum,
pp. 293-315)
5 .Kasper, Gabriele. 2000. Data Collection in Pragmatics Research.
(Ch. 15 in Spencer-Oatey, ed. Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport
Through Talk Across Cultures. London/New York: Continuum, pp. 316341.)
6. Korean Case Study:
Byon, Andrew Sangpil. 2003. The Korean Speech Act of Refusals:
Sociopragmatic Analysis, The Sociolinguistic Journal of
Korea,11,1: pp. 241-270.
Weekly Field Assignment, Weeks 3 & 4: Discourse Completion Task
(counts as 2 field work assignments)
Design a task through which you can collect 5 sets of data which compare and contrast
Korean interactional norms with those of another nationality. In your project design,
incorporate at least one of the cultural values we have talked about (modesty,
indirectness, age hierarchy, positive face, negative face, collectivism, individualism,
etc.) and design tasks (a minimum of 5) which demonstrate how members of different
cultures handle these situations. One of your tasks should be based on the cross-cultural
difference(s) encountered in your “culture bump” experience.
(You may work in teams to design the tasks and collect the data, but each person should
do their own write-up.)
WEEK 5:
SOURCES OF INTER-CULTURAL MISCOMMUNICATION and CROSSCULTURAL DIFFERENCES in BELIEF SYSTEMS
Readings from reading package (L.A. riots origins and aftermath, and contemporary
issues from the media and academic sources
Readings:
House, Juliane, Ch. 7 “Understanding Misunderstanding: A Pragmatic-Discourse
Approach to Analysing Mismanaged Rapport in Talk across Cultures” (Ch. 7 in
Helen Spencer-Oatey, ed., Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through
Talk Across Cultures. London/New York: Continuum, pp.146-164.)
Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, Ch. 9, “Interethnic communication in committee
negotiations”, in John J. Gumperz, ed. Language and Social Identity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 145-162.
Korean Case Study: The L.A. Riots of 1992
Excerpts from: Kwon, Ho Youn, ed. 1994. Korean Americans: Conflict and Harmony.
Chicago: Covenant Publications. (Center for Korean Studies, North Park
College & Theological Seminary)
*Paula J. Trout: “Dealing Responsibly with Discord”, pp.xix-xxvi
5
*Shin Kim: “Political Economy of Korean-African American Conflict”, pp.
177- 189.
*Eui-Young Yu: “Community-Based Disaster Management: The Case of Los
Angeles Koreatown during the April 29 [1992] Riots”, pp. 135 –157.
Final take-home essay exam due on Wednesday
(The final exam will cover course readings, lessons learned from field work tasks, and
personal reflection and analysis of an inter-cultural mis-communication situation.)
Weekly field assignment, Week 5: Final stages of Cultural Tourism project after field
trips; selected presentation(s) to be presented in Week 5 at closing ceremony