Page 154 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

132 Susanne Günthner

(2001) and Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz (in this volume) show how culturally
different speaking practices and stylistic conventions can lead to the conviction
of minority speakers.
Thematic features also represent elements of the internal structure of com-
municative genres. Kotthoff’s (1991: 251–253, Kotthoff in this volume) analy-
sis of ‘toasts’ in Caucasian Georgia shows that toasts make use of a certain
thematic canon: “peace, the guests, the parents, the dead, the children, friend-
ship, love, the women whose beauty embellishes the table”. Foreigners unaware
of canonical themes may cause embarrassment by choosing for their toasts in-
appropriate subjects.
The interactive construction of ‘in-groups’ and ‘us’ vs. ‘out-groups’ and
‘them’ may also be evoked by differences in modalizations of genres. There may
be different cultural conventions concerning the topics appropriate for jokes and
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treatment of jocular stories. An example given by von Helmolt (1997) shows
the differences between French and German engineers participating in a joint
working session. The French participants repeatedly shifted from a serious task-
oriented mode of discourse to a light-hearted jocular one (marked both non-ver-
bally by facial expressions, gestures, laughter and by allusion to shared back-
ground knowledge, teasing, etc.). For the French this was a phatic activity, ‘un clin
d’oeil complice’, for the Germans a sign of lack of interest or misplaced frivolity.
Although, in this overview I concentrate on oral communication, different
conventions concerning rhetorical features in genres cannot be reduced to oral
genres; written genres may also reveal culturally different traditions concerning
the internal level (Swales 1990, Esser 1997).

2.2. The level of interactional features
This level consists of those elements which are part of the ongoing interaction,
i.e. the interactive organization of conversations, including patterns of turn-tak-
ing, preference organizations, strategies for longer stretches of conversation and
the participation framework.
In her study of dinner conversations among New Yorkers and Californians,
Tannen (1984) shows that because of different ways of managing turn-taking,
misunderstandings arise. The New Yorkers have different turn-taking rules and
conventions to show conversational involvement: they use much overlap and
latching, a fast rate of speech and they avoid internal pauses. The result is that
the East Coast speakers continually take the floor, the West Coast participants
waiting in vain for a pause they deem long enough for them to start talking.
Whereas the ‘fast’ speakers think that the others have nothing to say, the ‘slow’
ones feel that they are not given a chance to talk.
Various studies of intercultural encounters demonstrate differences in the
signalling of attentive listening. Research in the organization of ‘backchan-