Bührig Kristin, Thije Jan D. Beyond Misunderstanding. Linguistic analyses of intercultural communication

Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2006. — 339 p.This book challenges two tacit presumptions in the field of intercultural communication research. Firstly, misunderstandings can frequently be found in intercultural communication, although, one could not claim that intercultural communication is constituted by misunderstandings alone. This volume shows how new perspectives on linguistic analyses of intercultural communication go beyond the analysis of misunderstanding. Secondly, intercultural communication is not solely constituted by the fact that individuals from different cultural groups interact. Each contribution of this volume analyses to what extent instances of discourse are institutionally and/or interculturally determined. These linguistic reflections involve different theoretical frameworks, e.g. functional grammar, systemic functional linguistics, functional pragmatics, rhetorical conversation analysis, ethno-methodological conversation analysis, linguistic an­thro­­pology and a critical discourse approach.
As the contributions focus on the discourse of genetic counseling, gate-keeping discourse, international team co-operation, international business communication, workplace discourse, internet communication, and lamentation discourse, the book exemplifies that the analysis of intercultural communication is organized in response to social needs and, therefore, may contribute to the social justification of linguistics.Beyond misunderstanding: Introduction (Jan D. ten Thije)
Part I. Basic assumptions of the linguistic reconstruction of intercultural communication.
Multilingual repertoires and the consequences for linguistic theory (Georges Lüdi)
The cultural apparatus: Thoughts on the relationship between language, culture, and society
(Jochen Rehbein)
Notions of perspective and perspectivising in interculturalcommunication research (Jan D. ten Thije)
Part II. Interactive analyses of intercultural discourse
Perspectives in conflict: An analysis of German-German conversations (Grit Liebscher)
Beyond ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘cultural stereotypes’: Analysing intercultural communication (Jennifer Hartog)
Intercultural communication in institutional counselling sessions (Martina Rost-Roth)
Ethnic and social groups and their linguistic categorization (Dennis Day)
How are you? I’m hot: An interactive analysis of small talk sequences in British-German telephone sales (Claudia Bubel)
Where do ‘we’ fit in?: Linguistic inclusion and exclusion in a virtual community (Lise Fontaine)
Communicating affect in intercultural lamentations in Caucasian Georgia (Helga Kotthoff)
Beyond competence: A multiculturalist approach to intercultural communication (Shi-xu)