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240 Editors’ introduction

Franklin then reports a different research approach used by a few people in the
intercultural field – the study of critical incidents to help identify Kulturstan-
dards. He argues that such interactional research is more relevant and useful to
intercultural trainers than contrastive quantitative data. However, he maintains
that the analysis of authentic interaction data is even more useful because it has
greater potential for illustrating how difficulties are experienced, dealt with and
overcome. So Franklin ends his chapter by calling for more applied linguistic
research into authentic intercultural interactions in the business sector.
Chapter 14, by Eades, focuses on intercultural communication in legal con-
texts. She provides some authentic interactional data of the kind that Franklin is
calling for (in this case, in a legal context), and again focuses on the issue of dif-
ference. She starts by considering the use of silence in Aboriginal English, and
illustrates and explains how its use differs from that in general Australian Eng-
lish. She reports how she developed an intercultural awareness handbook for
lawyers that explained these and other differences in language use, and how in
certain respects this helped to improve communication between lawyers and
Aboriginal defendants and witnesses. However, she then argues that there is a
major problem with such a ‘difference’ approach – that it ignores the impact of
social inequality and power relations. Referring in detail to an authentic case
study, she poignantly illustrates how knowledge of difference can be misused by
powerful people to achieve their own purposes.
The next chapter, Chapter 15, by Scherr, continues the theme of cultural dif-
ference. It focuses on the various ways in which cultural differences can be
handled in school education, and considers this at three levels: at the national
policy level, at the community/local level, and within schools themselves. Re-
ferring particularly to France, Canada and Britain, Scherr compares the multi-
cultural approach of Britain and Canada, which attempts to recognize and ac-
cept cultural diversity, with French republicanism, which postulates that social
integration should be based on the acceptance by all citizens of French cultural
values. Scherr explains how each approach has its own problems, and argues
that each country’s way of dealing with cultural differences in education needs
to be understood within its broader social and political context.
Chapter 16, by Hinton, turns to the media sector and considers another as-
pect of difference: the extent to which people’s interpretations of media com-
munications are similar or different across cultures. Hinton points out that, in
some people’s view, the globalization of the media has led to a reduction of cul-
tural difference in media interpretation. However, he takes the opposing view
and argues that all media interpretation takes place within a specific cultural
context, and that it is vital always to take this context into account. Hinton ar-
gues his case by examining two areas of media research: the impact of media vi-
olence on violence in society, and the extraordinary worldwide popularity of
soap operas. At first glance, both these issues could seem to support the notion