Page 120 - Cyberculture and New Media

Rita Zaltsman 111
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Although the data above shows evident discrepancies in the length
of the contributions, there is no Western dominance observed in their quality.
The examined discourse demonstrates no misconceptions and misjudgments
between representatives of opposite cultural context caused by the use of
erroneous English lexical or phraseological units.

5. Conclusions and Future Research Directions
In this seminar, the English language has played the role of a
powerful bridge-builder able to connect people of diverse backgrounds in
online learning communities.
The obtained findings can lead to the following conclusions:
· there’s no “language divide” between Eastern and Western cultures as
far as language competency is concerned
· cyberculture, as a common educational environment, can help bridge
cultures and languages
· different “Englishes” are/will be turning into a universal lingua franca
for online communication across cultures
· cultures of different context tend to converge in online educational
settings, which influences English as a language of international
communication
Additional research is necessary in tracking the cross-cultural
communication pitfalls caused by semantic differences between the same
notions/concepts in various cultures. The same lexical units may not have
equivalent meanings which can result in misinterpretation and
miscommunication: when using a lexical unit in English, we involuntarily
attribute to it the meanings it has in our native language, even though the
same unit in other linguacultures may have a completely different scope of
meanings. E.g., the word “president” in the American electoral discourse
denotes a person, who is democratically elected and has a limited power,
whereas in Russian it means “a person elected by establishment” - an
equivalent of the word “tsar” (in the Russian culture it is a person with
unlimited authority, “God’s chosen representative on earth”).
Thus, the meanings are culturally dependent and are not
semantically equivalent in different cultures. Hence, further research will be
concentrated on linguacultural varieties of English and their relevance for
valid cross-cultural communication in educational online settings.

Notes

1
This paper has benefited from comments made by Ann Snowden. I remain
responsible for any errors and welcome corrections or comments to
<rzaltzma@yahoo.de>