Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:08:06.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interculturality as social capital at work: The case of disagreements in American-Japanese interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Stephen J. Moody
Stephen J. Moody*
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Stephen J. Moody Brigham Young University3069 JFSB Provo, UT 84606, USA[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Theories of social capital hold that strong interpersonal relationships can be leveraged to facilitate information sharing, gain trust, and strengthen group solidarity. Thus, it is often predicted that international workers are disadvantaged in these areas because they lack established social ties. Using data from disagreements between American interns and their colleagues in Japanese companies, this study critically examines this prediction by illustrating some ways participants use socially constructed representations of intercultural ideologies in ways that facilitate similar outcomes and substitute for their lack of relational histories. Specifically, these representations temporarily reverse flows of information, resist restrictions stemming from perceived lack of trust, and create shared humor that helps redefine in-group boundaries. By using a formal social capital model to interpret these results, this study helps position socially constructed representations of interculturality within a broader theoretical account of the potentially many forms of symbolic ‘capital’ that enable action. (Social capital, interculturality, disagreements, workplace, social identity)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , June 2019 , pp. 377 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to participants at the 2016 meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics for feedback on the data analysis, as well as to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I am especially indebted to the student interns and companies who graciously allowed me to observe and record their interactions. All remaining errors are my own.

References

REFERENCES

Adler, Paul S., & Kwon, Seok-Woo (2002). Social capital: Prospects for a new concept. The Academy of Management Review 27(1):17–40.Google Scholar
Angouri, Jo (2012). Managing disagreement in problem solving meeting talk. Journal of Pragmatics 44(12):1565–79.Google Scholar
Angouri, Jo, & Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca (2011). ‘So what problems bother you and you are not speeding up your work?’: Problem solving talk at work. Discourse & Communication 5(3):209–29.Google Scholar
Angouri, Jo; Marra, Meredith; & Holmes, Janet (2017). Negotiating boundaries at work: Talking and transitions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1983). Language & symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson, John G. (ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, 241–58. New York: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Coleman, James S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94:S95–S120.Google Scholar
Cook, Haruko Minegishi (1992). Meanings of non-referential indexes: A case study of the Japanese sentence-final particle ne. Text and Talk 12(4):507–39.Google Scholar
Cook, Haruko Minegishi (2006). Joint construction of folk beliefs by JFL learners and Japanese host families. In DuFon, Margaret A. & Churchill, Eton (eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts, 120–50. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Firth, Alan (2009). Doing not being a foreign language learner: English as a lingua franca in the workplace and (some) implications for SLA. IRAL 81(3):285–300.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1978). The conversational analysis of interethnic communication. In Ross, E. Lamar (ed.), Interethnic communication, 13–31. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1990). On interactional sociolinguistic method. In Sarangi, Srikant & Roberts, Celia (eds.), Talk, work and institional order: Discourse in medical, mediation and management settings, 453–72. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise (2009). Professional discourse. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Habib, Rania (2008). Humor and disagreement: Identity construction and cross-cultural enrichment. Journal of Pragmatics 40(6):1117–45.Google Scholar
Hayano, Kaoru (2011). Claiming epistemic primacy: Yo-marked assessments in Japanese. In Stivers, Tanya, Mondada, Lorenza, & Steensig, Jakob (eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation, 58–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Higgins, Christina (2009). ‘Are you Hindu?’: Resisting membership categorization through language alternation. In Nguyen, Hanh thi & Kasper, Gabriele (eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual perspectives, 111–36. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, National Foreign Language Resource Center.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet (2007). Making humour work: Creativity on the job. Applied Linguistics 28(4):518–37.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Marra, Meredith (2002). Humour as a discursive boundary marker in social interaction. In Anna Duszak (ed.), Us and others: Social identities across languages, discourses and cultures, 377–400. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Marra, Meredith (2004). Leadership and managing conflict in meetings. Pragmatics 14(4):439–62.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Riddiford, Nicky (2009). Talk at work: Interactional challenges for immigrants. In Bhatia, Vijay K., Cheng, Winnie, Du-Babcock, Bertha, & Lung, Jane (eds.), Language for professional communication: Research, practice, and training, 217–32. Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific LSP and Professional Communication Association.Google Scholar
Hua, Zhu (2010). Language socialization and interculturality: Address terms in intergenerational talk in Chinese diasporic families. Language and Intercultural Communication 10(3):189–205.Google Scholar
Iwasaki, Shoichi (2013). Japanese. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kurhila, Salla (2006). Second language interaction. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lin, Nan (2001). Social capital: A theory of social structure and action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liu, Xiangyang, & Shaffer, Margaret A. (2005). An investiagation of expatriate adjustment and performance: A social capital perspective. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 5(3):235–54.Google Scholar
Locher, Miriam A. (2004). Power and politeness in action: Disagreements in oral communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Marra, Meredith (2012). Disagreeing without being disagreeabale: Negotiating workplace communities as an outsider. Journal of Pragmatics 44(12):1580–90.Google Scholar
Marra, Meredith, & Holmes, Janet (2007). Humour across cultures: Joking in the multicultural workplace. In Kotthoff, Helga & Spencer-Oatey, Helen (eds.), Handbook of intercultural communication, 153–72. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Miller, Laura (1994). Japanese and American meetings and what goes on before them: A case study of co-worker misunderstanding. Pragmatics 4(2):221–38.Google Scholar
Mori, Junko (2003). The construction of interculturality: A study of initial encounters between Japanese and American students. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36(2):143–84.Google Scholar
Narayan, Deepa, & Pritchett, Lant (2000). Social capital: Evidence and implications. In Dasgupta, Partha & Serageldin, Ismail (eds.), Social capital: A multifaceted perspective, 269–95. Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Nishizaka, Aug (1995). The interactive constitution of interculturality: How to be a Japanese with words. Human Studies 18:301–26.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, J. Maxwell & Heritage, John (eds.), Structures of social action, 75–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rees-Miller, Janie (2000). Power, severity, and context in disagreement. Journal of Pragmatics 32(8):1087–1111.Google Scholar
Rogerson-Revell, Pamela (2007). Humour in business: A double-edged sword: A study of humour and style shifting in intercultural business meetings. Journal of Pragmatics 39:4–28.Google Scholar
Ryoo, Hye-Kyung (2005). Achieving friendly interactions: A study of service encounters between Korean shopkeepers and African-American customers. Discourse & Society 16(1):79–105.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah (1984). Jewish argument as sociability. Language in Society 13:311–35.Google Scholar
Schnurr, Stephanie, & Chan, Angela (2011). Exploring another side of co-leadership: Negotiating professional identities through face-work in disagreements. Language in Society 40(2):187–209.Google Scholar
Schnurr, Stephanie, & Zayts, Olga (2017). Language and culture at work. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Seargeant, Philip (2009). The idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the evolution of a global language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Sifianou, Maria (2012). Disagreements, face and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 44(12):1554–64.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen (2000). Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk across cultures. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Asuka (2009). When gaijin matters: Theory-building in Japanese multiparty interaction. In Nguyen, Hanh thi & Kasper, Gabriele (eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual perspectives, 89–109. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, National Foreign Language Resource Center.Google Scholar
Tsuda, Takeyuki (2000). Acting Brazilian in Japan: Ethnic resistance among return migrants. Ethnology 39(1):55–71.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. (1985). Language variation and cultural hegemony: Toward an integration of sociolinguistic and social theory. American Ethnologist 12(4):738–48.Google Scholar
Yoshimura, Noboru, & Anderson, Philip (1997). Inside the kaisha. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar