Page 156 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

134 Susanne Günthner

stead, the receiver of a compliment for a meal is expected to downgrade the as-
sessment, e.g. by denying the excellence of the food or by refuting his or her ca-
pacity to cook (‘wo zuo cai, zuo de bu hao, qing yuanliang’ ‘I didn’t cook well,
please excuse my bad cooking’) (Günthner 1993). 12
Philips’ (1972) analysis of participation structures in classroom interactions
in Warm Springs (Oregon) reveals striking differences between Indian and
White children. Non-Indian teachers continuously complain that Indian
children show a great deal of reluctance to talk and participate in various verbal
activities in the classroom. As Philips points out, this ‘failure to participate’ is
based on the ‘social condition for participation’ which exists in the class situ-
ation and which the Indian children are not accustomed to. In traditional Indian
learning contexts, the use of speech is notably minimal, and one observes others
and starts with private self-testing before one demonstrates one’s skills. In
Western classroom interactions, however, the prevailing assumption is that one
learns more effectively by practising even if it involves making mistakes. As In-
dian children are neither accustomed to such public ‘exhibition’ nor to the fact
that they cannot choose the proper time for demonstration of their skills, they re-
frain from participating. A further reason for the absence of participation is that
Indian children are not used to interactive structures in which one person (such
as the teacher) overtly controls the activity of other people in the interacting
group. 13

2.3. The level of the external features
The external level reflects the relationship between the use of genres and par-
ticular communicative milieus, communicative situations, the selection of types
of actors (according to gender, age, status, etc.), and the institutional distribu-
tion of genres.
Cultural ‘otherness’ may be constructed in respect to gender specific uses of
particular genres. In Caucasian Georgia ‘toasting’ is an important, ritualized
male genre, its competent use is a mark of masculinity (Kotthoff 1995 and in
this volume). Those men who lack the rhetorical abilities of toasting ‘are con-
sidered unmanly’. If a foreigner refuses to offer a toast or if his toast appears
‘too modest’, his ‘masculinity’ is questioned. In informal situations, women
may also occasionally take over the role of toast-masters. In formal situations,
however, the toastmaster inevitably is a man. In intercultural encounters, when
foreign women are invited to formal dinner-parties, they embarrass their hosts
when they assume that toasting is expected from all guests and ‘usurp’ the role
of toast-master (Kotthoff 1991).
Miller (1994, 2000) describes intercultural problems arising between Japan-
ese and American business people because of cultural differences in the institu-
tional organization of communicative genres. For American business people