The construction of intercultural discourse : Team discussions of educational advisers / Tom Koole, Jan D. ten Thije.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koole, Tom, author.

Thije, Jan D. ten, author.

Series:

Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication ; 2.

Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication ; 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intercultural communication--Netherlands.

Intercultural communication.

Foreign workers--Netherlands.

Foreign workers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Other Title:

Team discussions of educational advisers

Place of Publication:

Leiden; Boston : Brill | Rodopi, 1994.

Summary:

This book breaks open the 'black box' of the workplace, where successful immigrants work together with their Dutch colleagues. In their intercultural team meetings the work itself consists of communication and the question is how that work is done. The teams consist of Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan, and Surinamese educational experts whose job it is to advise schools and teachers on the form and content of language teaching. Their meetings are structured according to institutional patterns, such as 'interactive planning' and 'reporting', and according to intercultural discourse structures. For instance, Dutch team members identify their immigrant colleagues as 'immigrant specialists' and are themselves identified as 'institutional specialists'. Further, the intercultural pattern 'thematizing and unthematizing racism' provides the team members with communicative methods to deal with the societal contradictions that exist between different cultural groups, in the Netherlands as well as elsewhere. These intercultural discourse structures concur with the institutional patterns so that, for instance, they affect the outcomes of planning discussions. Most studies on intercultural communication focus on misunderstandings and miscommunications. This book demonstrates that also communication without miscommunication can be shown to be intercultural.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Immigrant employees in a Dutch institution

Immigration, multilingualism and educational advice in the Netherlands

Research methods and corpus

Intercultural communication and the concept of culture

The pragmatics of multilingualism

A pragmatic analysis of educational advising

Different perspectives in reporting

Making plans in interaction

The meaning of institutional key words

The interference of intercultural and institutional positions

Thematizing and unthematizing racism

Conclusions

Notes

References

Subject index

Author index

Original Dutch transcripts

Questions biographical interview

Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789004372733

9004372733

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004372733 DOI