Page 43 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Discourse, cultural diversity and communication 21

Example 4
Electrician
1 R: Have you visited the skills center?
2 T: Yes, I did.
3 R: So you’ve had a look at the workshops?
4 T: Yes.
5 R: You know what the training allowance is? Do you?
6 T: Yeah.
7 R: Do you know how much you’ve got to live on for the period of time.

Bricklayer
1 R: Have you visited the skills center?
2 T: Yep. I’ve been there. yeah.
3 R: So you’ve had a chance to look around? And did you look in at the brick
shop?
4 T: Ah yeah. We had a look around the brick shop and uhm, it looks OK. I mean
itsn–
5 R: All right.
6 T: Pretty good yeah.

Note that while the interviewer asks roughly the same questions in each case,
the two applicants differ in the way they answer. The electrician provides only
minimal replies (e.g. yes, yeah, yes I did), he offers no information on his own.
The bricklayer, on the other hand, adds personal comments. And as a result he
succeeds in engaging the interviewer in a less formal exchange. For example, in
turn 2 he replies with a sentence of his own, which leads the interviewer to sug-
gest that he approves of the facilities. Then in turn four the bricklayer begins as
if about to express an opinion, but then he pauses as if searching for the right ex-
pression. Whereupon the interviewer helps him by supplying a suitable ex-
pression, and the exchange ends on a note of agreement. The electrician, on the
other hand, receives no such help. In fact, as R’s question in turn 7 suggests, he
appears not to be sure how interested the applicant is in the workshop and its fa-
cilities.
If it is revealed that the electrician is a non-native born Asian worker, and
the bricklayer a British native from the local region, it could be argued that ideo-
logical prejudices against non-natives is at work in these interviews. While
there is little question that ideology is an important factor in such encounters,
the experience referred to as prejudicial is often hidden by the indirectness of in-
teractional exchanges, as in Example 4, where no one utterance appears to di-
rectly express any disagreement or negativity. However, neither participant, the
interviewer or the interviewee, might infer that the exchange was satisfactory.
This and other similar workplace interviews suggest, that the treatment the two