Communication Styles

Course content

There are clichés about differences in communicating in countries of the world. As there is so much international travel and migration, due to people working abroad and returning (or staying), strict classifications seem inappropriate. Someone who speaks English as a world language uses it to communicate in many situations and needs to adapt. There are also many unexpected developments which necessitate communication in unfamiliar contexts without time to prepare or remember a model of intercultural competence. Nevertheless, it might be worthwhile to try out how communicating in different styles affects us.
We will look at some descriptions of communicative patterns and some travellers' reports and kind of "imitate" that pattern or reported incidence. We can also work with short situations where one or a few are, for example, hypersensitive to noise or party style music and talk. And we will consider the role of misunderstandings. Generally speaking, this course is related to "Mediating Competence" in the CEFR for Modern Languages.