Page 137 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Multidisciplinary perspectives on intercultural conflict 115

Redressive Gloss Example
Strategy
Mitigators Features within the expression – Pauses
of opposition that downplay its – Discourse markers that show
directness hesitation
– Minimizers such as a little,
maybe
Untargeted Expression of opposition that – Remark that contradicts or
opposition does not make it clear whether differs from the opponent’s
or not it is targeted at a specific view but the opposition is at-
person or viewpoint tributed as being with a third
party rather than with the op-
ponent
– Remark that contradicts or
differs from the opponent’s
view but is not directed at the
opponent, or made in re-
sponse to the opponent’s pre-
vious remarks
Honda (2002) also demonstrates how some confrontations in her data initially
proceed in an unmitigated fashion, but later the opposing parties take restorative
action and end their argument in a seemingly cooperative fashion. In other
words, as with Günthner’s study, different tactics were used at different points
in the conflict. This suggests once again that context (in this case, discourse con-
text) can influence choice of strategy, and that macro designations of people’s
conflict management styles will only be able to provide indicative generaliz-
ations of their normative preferences.
A second major contribution that applied linguistics can make to our under-
standing of conflict processes, especially in intercultural contexts, is to reveal
how conflicts may arise by carefully analysing authentic interactions. Bailey
(1997, 2000), for example, analyses service encounters between Korean retailers
and African-American customers to help throw light on the longstanding conflict
between these two groups that had been widely reported in the media. Analysing
video recordings of the service encounters, he found that there were noticeable
differences in the ways that Korean and African-American customers interacted
with the Korean retailers, such as in terms of length of the encounter, overall
quantity of talk, inclusion of personable topics and small talk, and the amount of
affect displayed. Follow-up interviews with the customers and the retailers indi-
cated that both the Korean retailers and the African-American customers evalu-
ated the other negatively, interpreting the other’s behaviour as disrespectful, and
as racist (in the case of the Korean retailers) and as intimidating (in the case of
the African-American customers). Bailey draws the following conclusion: