Cross-Talk

This is a bit of historical documentation of what Spring Breaks were like when I was an undergraduate (well, really when I was still in high school) ….

Welcome Back from Spring Break

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR CROSSTALK I. In the first episode in the video, the service

encounter at the bank, cross-cultural differences in intonation contribute to difficulty between the bank teller and the customer. Do you think that these problems arise solely because of differences in norms for pronunciation, or might they also result from stereotyped attitudes of each speaker toward the other? Can you remember observing or being involved in other service encounters where similar problems arose in conjunction with differing norms in accent, particularly due to intonation?

II. In the second episode in the video, why does the service encounter between the social services worker and the applicant for assistance break down? Consider, in particular, problems that arise due to matters of domain, register, and genre, especially with regard to expectations of what types of information are relevant in this genre.

III. In the third episode in the video, the interview for the college library position, the interviewers and the interviewee never seem to understand each other. Try to explain what some of the problems are by referring to Kachru and Smith’s notions of schemata / scripts / frames / scenarios and to cross-cultural differences in expected behaviors in the genre of an employment interview. For example, some of the problems may arise due to differing expectations about the purpose of the interview, “telling the truth,” providing evidence of accomplishments, and the relevance of a candidate’s training and experience to the position being sought.