Interculturality-in-Action: Communication Affordances used by International Postgraduate Students at a Thai University

Victoria, Mabel

Abstract

The current investigation explores interculturality by looking at the communicative practices of a culturally and linguistically diverse group of international and local postgraduate students from China, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. As members of an English conversation club, they met over a period of 28 weeks to improve their oral speaking skills using English as a lingua franca.

Methodological inspiration draws from linguistic ethnography, which combines insights from discourse analysis and ethnography in order to account for the contextual boundedness and specificity of findings. Qualitative data consist of audio recordings and transcriptions of naturally occurring data, field notes from participant/non-participant observation, serendipitous interviews and online conversations via the participants’ social networking group.

Fine-grained analysis of the transcribed spoken data provide evidence showing 1) the participants’ use of cultural differences as a malleable, deployable resource to manage the exigencies of the ongoing talk; and 2) the important role that the local setting, in this case a university in Thailand, plays in shaping the interaction. It is suggested that the participants accommodate to local norms and take up linguistic resources available in the place of interaction. In this presentation, I will also discuss pedagogical implications for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Citation

Victoria, M. (2023, February). Interculturality-in-Action: Communication Affordances used by International Postgraduate Students at a Thai University. Paper presented at GXUST-ENU 2023 Research Seminar

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: GXUST-ENU 2023 Research Seminar
• Start Date: Feb 20, 2023
• End Date: Feb 20, 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 20, 2023