Page 296 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

274 Peter Franklin

Explicitly taking as his point of departure definitions of culture formulated
by Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1963) and Boesch (1980), Thomas (1988, 1996,
2003) sees culture as an orientation system typical of a society, an organization
or a group. This system consists of symbols passed on within a society. It in-
fluences the behaviour of all the members of the group and defines their affili-
ation to the group. Culture as an orientation system allows its members to create
their own ways of coping with their environment (Thomas 1988: 149).
According to Thomas, what he describes as culture standards are central fea-
tures of a culture’s orientation system. Perhaps similar in some ways to Spencer-
Oatey and Jiang’s (2003) concept of sociopragmatic interactional principles,
they are defined by Thomas (1988: 153) as ways of perceiving, thinking, evalu-
ating and acting that are regarded by the majority of the members of a culture as
normal, typical and binding for themselves and others. According to Thomas,
they serve to guide, regulate and assess one’s own behaviour and that of others.
An individual’s and the group-specific application of culture standards to regu-
late behaviour may vary within an area of tolerance but behaviours outside this
area are rejected.
In common with Hall, Hofstede and others, Thomas argues that members of
a culture are mostly unaware of these culture standards and the behaviour-regu-
lating function they have. They generally only become obvious to them in inter-
actions with members of other cultures, frequently in what are known as critical
incidents, or intercultural interactions which are experienced as problematical
and conflict-bound by the interactants (Thomas 1996: 113). The orientation sys-
tems of the parties to the interaction break down because they are using differ-
ently calibrated sets of instruments in their cultural cockpit.
Culture standards are identified, their behaviour-regulating function deter-
mined and their origins described by scholars through the collection and analy-
sis of critical incidents, unproblematical interaction situations and other data.
Originated by Flanagan (1947, 1954) in his work on the training of U.S. pilots,
critical incidents have long been used in the intercultural field as the basis for
the creation of training instruments known as intercultural sensitizers or culture
assimilators, as described, for example, by Fiedler, Mitchell and Triandis
(1971), Albert (1983) and Rost-Roth in this volume.
Critical incidents can be collected and analysed and culture standards ident-
ified by applying a basic research procedure which exists in a number of varying
forms. Thomas (2003) himself refers to procedures to identify culture standards
described by Triandis (1995), Brislin et al. (1986), Landis and Bhagat (1996)
and Thomas (2000). The description that follows here is based on the detailed
description contained in Thomas (1996).
Semi-structured interviews were conducted both with members of the cul-
ture under investigation and with members of other cultures about their experi-
ences of interaction with the other culture. In the research reported on here