Language and Communication : Assumptions and Misunderstandings
Limited English language skills
The effectiveness of language users communicate their intended messages
Rule/maxims for successful communication of intent
Examples of misunderstandings: Physician (in London) failed to understand the patient's (Nigeria) intonation of expressing skepticism about rabies vaccination.
Individuals who do not speak English as their primary language and who have a limited ability to read, speak, write, or understand English. This can lead to miscommunication in interactions.
The misunderstandings made the physician decide not to give the rabies vaccine to the patient even though he should have given the vaccine.
Language barrier
Difficulties in communication vary depending on both the particular immigrant group and the linguistic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.
Example of misunderstandings: Hispanic clients (mostly speaks Spanish) had no difficulty finding Hispanic caseworkers, but Haitian clients (mostly speaks French) often had caseworkers who did not speak their language.
Maxim of quality: speaker makes every effort to communicate only accurate information
Maxim of quantity: speaker provides enough information to make his/her meaning clear
Maxim of relevance: speaker providing information that germane to the topic being discussed
Maxim of manner: speaker avoiding ambiguity in language
Conversational partner's level of directedness
Difference between sentence meaning and the speaker's intended meaning
Work and non-work contexts
Example of misunderstandings: when a speaker phrases something so as not to hurt the listener's feeling, but intends for the listener to understand a different message
Directness may be the norm for informal communication between family members
Indirectness may be expected in more formal settings such
as at work
Protestant relational ideology (PRI): , indirect communication to spare a co-worker’s feelings is not emphasized.
Effects of figurative language (Idioms and Metaphors)
Similarity in appearance was more important than similarity in function in predicting ease of translation
Although a metaphor in one language may not always translate well to another language, these results suggest that the processes used to understand metaphors may be quite similar across languages
Use of humor in conversations between native and non-native speakers of English
Native speakers tried to avoid idioms and other usages that they thought might be difficult for their non-native conversational partners to understand
Non-native speakers avoided using jokes that
they thought would not translate well into English.
Increased awareness of cultural variability can prevent misunderstandings
Mistaken ideas about language and its
relationship to culture
Dialects of any language differ from each other in features such as vocabulary and patterns of syntax
Example: Black English Vernacular (BEV) speakers tend to be lazy in their speech, leaving out words and word endings. In fact, BEV simply uses different rules than Standard American English (SAE)
A better understanding of how dialects may vary across culture can prevent from reaching erroneous conclusions about the speakers of those dialects
Writing systems used in different languages
English, rely on writing systems that are largely phonetic; written characters represent sounds
Chinese is written using characters that are largely ideographic; symbols represent words or morphemes
Example: The children learning Cantonese (in Hong Kong) were in a very different cultural setting than the children learning English (in the U.S.).
Children in Hong Kong begin learning to read several years before children in the U.S. typically begin
Methods of reading instruction: Children in Hong Kong are taught to read by sight, associating characters with the words they represent. Most children in the U.S. are taught to read primarily with phonics instruction, learning which letters represent which sounds