Blue paint and white underwear: miscommunication and humour in intercultural contexts.

Victoria, Mabel

Abstract

When two individuals from different cultural backgrounds fail to achieve mutual understanding, the accusatory finger is almost always automatically pointed at ‘cultural difference’. Indeed it is a commonly held notion that interactions between speakers from different cultural
backgrounds are susceptible to miscommunication. This chapter seeks to put forward a dynamic and multi-faceted view of intercultural miscommunication that forces us to re-evaluate the role that culture plays in the interaction and, secondly, to illuminate an aspect of miscommunication that has often been obscured—that is, what happens after the miscommunication episode. Methodological and analytic inspiration derives from linguistic ethnography combining insights from discourse analysis and ethnography. The data suggest that miscommunication between participants does not lead to a communication break own but instead, creates a productive site for negotiating relationships.

Citation

Victoria, M. (2016). Blue paint and white underwear: miscommunication and humour in intercultural contexts. In J. N. Singh, A. Kantara, & D. Cserző (Eds.), Downscaling Culture: Revisiting Intercultural Communication (92-113). Cambridge Scholars Publishing

• Conference Name: Downscaling Culture: Revisiting Intercultural Communication Conference
• Start Date: Sep 18, 2014
• End Date: Sep 19, 2014
• Acceptance Date: Dec 31, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Apr 1, 2016
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Oct 6, 2015
• Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 92-113
• Book Title: Downscaling Culture: Revisiting Intercultural Communication
• Chapter Number: 5
• ISBN: 1443890561, 9781443890564
• Keywords: Intercultural; Miscommunication; Humour; Culture; Discourse
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/9150
• Additional Information: Presentation title at Conference = "Transforming borders into bridges: Communication strategies and resources for building relations across cultures