Saturday 12:30 - 1:20 PM
Ume Flower
Conversation strategies and cultural awareness: an observational
approach
Janet Higgins
Okinawa University, Japan
This workshop presentation is based upon the premise that by becoming
aware of the strategies used in conversation, speakers can become more
sensitive to the role these play in cross-cultural misunderstandings and
thereby be less judgmental and more accommodating to their conversational
partners. One way of raising awareness of these issues is by systematically
observing behavior in conversations. In the classroom, students can be
encouraged, by means of observational tasks, to analyze their own conversational
strategies. These later can then be compared to those they observe among
speakers from other cultural groups (racial, gender, occupational, age-based).
This work forms a practical basis for discussing issues of culture and
language.
In this workshop, participants will experience this approach by participating
in observational tasks and follow-up discussions.
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