Appunti di lingua e comunicazione inglese I

Introduzione

martedì 23 febbraio 2021 17:49

IL CORSO

Libro: Communicating globally - Komninos

Esame: scritto + orale. Lo scritto sarà sul libro e sul materiale del Team. Saranno 10 domande a cui bisogna rispondere con 1/2 paragrafi, in inglese. Superato lo scritto, si può fare l'orale, sempre sullo stesso materiale. Per accedere allo scritto bisogna avere livello B2 o più. Se abbiamo un certificato non serve fare il lettorato. Per mandare il certificato ci sarà un collegamento su Teams che manda a cartella Drive, dove depositare le scansioni del certificato. Certificato > scritto > orale.

Frequentante: 60% delle lezioni + consegnare 4/5 compiti.

Argomenti: linguaggio comunicativo basato sull'antropologia. Quando si usa una lingua bisogna capire la società a cui essa appartiene. Quando usiamo la lingua, ci basiamo su diversi valori come punti di riferimento. Le problematiche nella comunicazione non sono infatti le conoscenze del linguaggio (saper costruire frasi...) ma sono i riferimenti e i valori. Nel corso analizzeremo:

• Lo sviluppo della linguistica sotto un punto di vista antropologico e vedremo le diverse culture
• La psicologia della comunicazione in inglese.
• Le strategie di trattative che impareremo si possono applicare sia all'ambito professionale che personale.
• Quelle varianti culturali che influenzano la comunicazione (il valore del silenzio per un italiano è diverso da quello per un giapponese ecc.)

Lezione 1

martedi 23 febbraio 2021

11:03

ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH

Linguistics, Communication and culture have been linked with anthropology since the first half of the 20^th century, because the language system cannot be understood without focusing on the context.

3 people were essential in the anthropological approach:

• Malinowski
• Firth
• Halliday

MALINOWSKI

Malinowski was an antropologist, important also for linguistics.

His best known work was carried out in the Trobriand Islands. He noticed that in fishing trips, the interaction between islanders were a crucial part of the process. He transcribed these interactions ("take me this, go there...")

When he came back to London he translated the interactions into english, but he realized that it didn't make sense without an exhaustive explanation, because you have to understand that the speaking was influenced by:

• Context of culture
• Context of situation

Moreover, our language is shaped by our roles in society, that are very different.

If you are translating just the words, you don't understand the social situation.

FIRTH

Firth was the first professor of Linguistics in the UK and founder of British linguistics. He dealt with problems of words, culture, values and society in oriental cultures. He focused on the function of language and for this reason he was influenced by Malinowski, who he worked with.

He began to use the word "system" in a new sense, from which the name "systemic grammar" originated.

HALLIDAY

Approfondimento: language, linguistics and thought

venerdì 16 aprile 2021 15:26

LANGUAGE STUDIES

Language and thought are connected. Linguistics tries to understand language as a resource for social meaning-making, because it is a shaper of reality and a deep force in the lives of human communities.

Main scholars are:

• Malinowski
• Firth
• Halliday: language has an experiential function, through which speakers construe experience
• Whorf
• Bernstein
• Boroditsky

MALINOWSKI

There is a relation between the external world, the inner world of thought and the structure of language. He thinks that language has a magical power and it is a form of action. Meaning is "the effect of words on human minds and bodies".

Dimensions of power: sacred (exorcism) + pragmatic: languages influences the course of an event.

FIRTH

He focuses on meaning. He explain the concept of "contextualisation", a dimension of meaning-making on which meaning depends. He sees the body and the world as a set of structures of systems, even though we see everything as chaos, as a flux.

According to Firth, language is ubiquitous in 2 ways: horizontally (across contexts of living) and vertically (in relation to periods in the social developement of humans).

WHORF

Besides language, there are also non-linguistic elements, like feelings. He distinguishes linguistic categories as "phenotypes" and "cryptotypes".

Phenotypes are "formal marks" which are indicated, as for example the category of plural in English.

Cryptotypes are a "submerged, subtle and elusive meaning", like transitive/intransitive verbs or the gender distinction.

Moreover, according to Whorf, the "habitual thought" is a process in which people develop their own "thought world" inside, a microcosm through which they understand what they can of the macrocosm.

BERNSTEIN

Personal space is an example of a mobile form of territory: a Japanese person will stand closer to an American, inadvertently making the American uncomfortable.

Finally, he distinguishes between:

• High territoriality cultures: typical of low context cultures, they give more importance to the aspect of ownership, and tend to mark out the areas which are theirs ("this space is mine and I belong to this, that is yours and you stay there"). Territoriality extends to anything that is "mine" and frequent are wars fought over boundaries. Essential is the concept of security.
• Low territoriality cultures: typical of high context cultures, they have less ownership of space and boundaries are less important. They share territory and ownership. For example, Australian Aboriginal people will say they just belong to the land rather than marking the territory.

ICEBERG

Hall describes cultures as an iceberg.

• A = Technical level: what is evident, cultural artifacts like music, art, food and drink, institution, language and that allow to distinguish cultures.
• B = Formal level: customs, rituals, ways/style.
• C = Informal level: structure, thinking, orientations, environment, time, space, power, individualism and values.

C influences B and B influences A: this means that values and thinking in a culture influence the rituals and customs they adapt to and these customs influence the evident artifacts.

Example: showing our body naked has different influences in different cultures. If in the culture the body is celebrated or the climate is hot and seeing the body is more frequent, showing nudity is normal. For example, in Kirikou, nudity appears normal and in some country it went famous (France), while in England it's not known, because nudity is taboo. Benetton breastfeeding advertisement showed a black breast feeding a whitebaby. In some cultures it was banned because of nudity, in others because of racism.

• People value future
• Sacrifice immediate pleasures
• Long-term rewards = result of today's hard work
• Plan

Short term:

• People value present
• Satisfy immediate pleasures
• Spend money

TROMPENAARS AND HAMPDEN-TURNER

Trompenaars is an organisational theorist who collaborated with the management consultant Hampden-Turner in order to classify culture along 7 dimensions.

These are:

• Universalism vs Pluralism
• Individualism vs Communitarianism
• Specific vs Diffuse
• Affectivity vs Neutrality
• Inner Directed vs Outer Directed
• Achieved Status vs Ascribed Status
• Sequential Time vs Synchronic Time

1) UNIVERSALISM VS PLURALISM

It's the degree of importance that a culture assigns to the law or to personal relationships.

• Universalistic cultures: people believe that rules and values take precedence over the needs and the relationships.
• Pluralistic cultures give more importance to friendship and intimate relationships.

2) INDIVIDUALISM VS COMMUNITARIANISM

It's the degree to which people see themselves function more as a community or more as individuals.

It's the same as Hofstede's Collectivism vs Individualism.

3) SPECIFIC VS DIFFUSE

It's the degree to which responsibility is specifically assigned or is diffusely accepted.

• Specific/analyzing cultures: people first analyse the elements individually and then put them together. The whole is the sum of its parts. They separate business and private lives.
• Diffusely oriented/integrating cultures: people start with the whole and see individual elements from the perspective of the total. They integrate business and private lives.

4) AFFECTIVITY VS NEUTRALITY

It's the degree to which individuals display their emotions.

• Affective cultures: people display their emotions, it's not necessary to hide them ("feelings").
• Neutral cultures: people are taught not to display their emotions overtly, they must control their feelings ("logic") (Japan or USA).