Page 36 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

14 John J. Gumperz and Jenny Cook-Gumperz

In their recent re-examination of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis of linguistic
and cultural relativity, Gumperz and Levinson (1996) argue that to the extent
that linguistic categorization reflects cultural codes, these codes must be treated
as historically created conventional ways of referring which do not necessarily
determine what people do or think at any given time. To show how language can
affect thought and lead to action we need to take a different and more detail-
ed perspective on communication, a perspective which distinguishes between
grammatical and semantic structures and the historical knowledge they encap-
sulate, on the one hand, and broader communicative processes that rest on lan-
guage yet have special, often metaphoric, significance in evoking contexts and
constructing social personae, on the other.
Take the following illustrative example:

Example 1
[Brief exchange between two women in an office, also discussed in Gumperz
1982]
A: Are you going to be here for ten minutes?
B: Go ahead and take your break. Take longer if you want.
A: I’ll just be outside on the porch.
B: OK don’t worry.

To make sense of this brief exchange we must begin from a position which as-
sumes that communication in face-to-face encounters can be seen as constituted
by interactive exchanges of moves and countermoves involving speakers and
listeners who actively cooperate in the joint production of meaningful interac-
tion (see Corder and Meyerhoff in this volume). The cultural knowledge that is
needed to understand this exchange is common to many workplace situations
that occur globally. In the present case we may begin by asking how we know
that B’s comment is a response to A’s question? The assumptions that make these
exchanges both appropriate, and in accord with accepted politeness conventions
reveal an awareness of the relations between the two women that requires us to
know a series of culturally specific details, such as that most offices are expected
to have someone on duty during working hours, and that in this particular situ-
ation, office workers can determine their own break-times. The lexico-
grammatical or denotational content of this exchange is simple, but inferences
necessary to understand it rest on familiarity with a complex body of social re-
lational assumptions that reveal culturally specific knowledge acquired through
participation. The approach we illustrate here departs from established notions
of culture as an abstract unitary set of community wide beliefs and norms, show-
ing how human action depends on a variety of interactionally established
cultural practices (see also Günthner in this volume). The challenge for the
researcher/analyst interested in intercultural communication is to discover how