Cross-cultural capability: the student-diary as a research tool

Beth Callen

Lancaster University

1.	Introduction

This paper examines the concept of ‘cross-cultural capability’ in a very specific context: namely, that of the ‘year abroad’ for UK European languages students.  As last year’s conference proceedings will testify1, there is already a wealth of theoretical and practical research concerned with preparing students ‘culturally’ (in the many and diverse interpretations of the word) for the year abroad (Phipps, 1997)2, ensuring their integration into the target culture during it (Jordan, 1997)3 and gauging their attitude towards members of the host culture upon their return (Coleman, 1997)4.  What I would like to explore is a bottom-up approach, which focuses on the way in which students reflect on, and talk about their intercultural encounters, as they experience them on their year abroad.  I hope to show that studying students’ attitudes as represented in their discourse might contribute something both to our general understanding of the term ‘cross-cultural capability’ itself and to the year abroad more specifically.

In particular, I shall examine two aspects of individuals’ responses to new cultural environments, which I shall call locus of control and expectations, although more appropriate terms may exist.  A belief in internal/external locus of control (Rotter, 1966)5 has been defined by Furnham & Bochner as follows:

‘Fatalism is therefore the generalized expectation that outcomes are determined by forces such as powerful others, luck or fate and is the opposite of instrumentalism, which is the generalized expectation that outcomes are contingent on one’s own behaviour.’6

and has been explicitly related to the success or otherwise of one’s personal adjustment to an unfamiliar culture.  Likewise, the specific expectations that one holds about that particular culture, if they are not met (Brislin’s ‘disconfirmed expectancies’7), can be a significant source of cognitive and emotional discomfort.  In this respect then, both concepts are relevant to a discussion of how easily students adapt to and function in the country of their year abroad.  In other words, they are relevant to a discussion of cross-cultural capability.  Indeed, in analysing my data, I found that an analysis of textual details revealed both strong assumptions about the locus of control and firm expectations of what the year abroad would bring.

2.	The data

The sample of text I shall be examining here is drawn from a large body of data relating to students’ experiences abroad collected by The Interculture Project  More specifically, it is an excerpt from one of twenty-five diaries voluntarily written by Lancaster students during the first term of their year abroad in response to a letter requesting their participation in the project.  These diaries were not intended to be ‘learner’ or ‘self-reflective’ diaries in any formal sense, (Convey, 19958; Parry, 1997)9, although for several of the diarists they seem to have fulfilled that function.  They were simply viewed as a means of gathering student responses to their new situation abroad.

My sample thus consists of a section of one student’s account of his life abroad.  As such, it should be viewed with certain caveats or at least considerations in mind.  First, the decontextualised nature of the extract and the fact that it is drawn from only one student must be emphasised.  I am not seeking to suggest that this extract is representative either of the remainder of this student’s diary or indeed of the whole collection of Lancaster diaries.  Rather, I have chosen it because it allows me to demonstrate a methodological approach, that is, the types of analyses which might be applied to texts such as these and the useful perspectives they may give on the question of cross-cultural capability itself.  In this way, I hope the paper will add to the discussion of one of the key questions of this year’s conference: What is the body of knowledge and experience to be acquired?  Second, a written experiential account should clearly not be put forward as a substitute for the cross-cultural interaction itself, and which it represents.  It’s primary use, I would argue, is what it can tell us about students’ attitudes, as mediated through discourse.

The extract is taken from a diary written by a student of German who went to work as a foreign language assistant in the former East Germany, who we shall call ‘Roy’. I think his diary is particularly interesting from the point of view of locus of control and expectations.

I have been here for three months and I have no close friends.  There are five people whom I regard as friendly, however I would not choose them as my friends.  I have of course been out with them many times and I am very grateful for their company.  They have been very friendly and helpful and I realize that I cannot ask more from them: it’s hardly their fault that I don’t feel completely at ease with them.  So, the lack of friends has been a disappointment, but even more so has been the unwillingness of some people to even return my efforts to make friends.  It may be interesting to note at this point that some language difficulties may have hindered my attempts, (but I doubt that).  For example, if I fail to understand the first thing that a new person says to me, they get an immediate first impression that my German is not good and that it is therefore difficult for them to converse with me.  This reaction is often betrayed by their facial expression, which naturally dismays me, and which then leads to the unhappy conclusion that the next time I see them we exchange merely the daily pleasantries that are normal here.  Once people begin to think that I am by nature a very quiet person who says very little, it is difficult to break that image.

3.	Analytical framework

Several papers from last year’s conference (e.g. Gullick, 1997)10 highlighted the contribution that disciplines outside language teaching can make to the subject of cross-cultural capability.  I will be drawing on the field of linguistics because it provides the analytical tools with which to approach and explore the discourse of the diaries in a detailed fashion.  Whilst other researchers had tended to focus on the higher level content of diaries when they have used them as a data-collection tool (Polanyi, 199511; Brecht & Robinson, 1995)12, I see the form of the language used to describe experience as a key indicator of the attitudes expressed thereby.  I am interested in ‘the ways in which forms of language, from individual words to complete discourse structures, encode something of the beliefs and values held by the language user.’13

There are many linguistic features which one could choose to highlight, but I have selected only those which I found most useful, as outlined in brief below.

Linguistic features	Function in text	Relevant concept	References
	
modals
negatives
	Used by the narrator to measure actual events against what might have been.	Expectations	Tannen14	
‘implicit denials’	Writer does not deny a proposition which has been explicitly stated in the preceding text, but rather denies some sort of expectation that he/she feels the reader will have.  In most cases, it is in fact the writer’s own expectation that is at the source of the denial, and which is then attributed to the reader.	Expectations	Pagano15
Tottie16	
-activation/passivation of participants (‘social actors’)
-their absence  or presence in discourse
-their representation as groups or identifiable individuals	Defines, and is defined by, the narrator’s stance towards the characters in his/her story.	Locus of control	Halliday17

Van Leeuwen18	

In general terms, I view the diary data as essentially narrative in character.  In Roy’s case, Labov’s work on narrative structure and syntax is particularly relevant as a reference point (Labov, 1972)19, since this relates to the organisational linguistic devices which individuals employ to construct accounts of their experiences, and to express their attitudes towards the events they portray.  Roy returned prematurely from his year abroad, and used his diary largely as a narrative of justification for his reasons for doing so.

4.	Sample Analysis

I see the extract as, in Labov’s terms, a narrative complete in itself. That is, the paragraph can be segmented into parts according to Labov’s framework for narrative structure.  These parts can be viewed as corresponding to a series of questions (subheadings 4.1 - 4.3) which might be asked by the potential or intended audience of the story.

4.1	The ‘abstract’ - ‘What is the narrative about?’

This is the opening section of the narrative, in which the narrator establishes the main point of the story, encapsulating it at the outset.  In Roy’s case, the ‘abstract’ would be the first sentence I have been here for three months and I have no close friends.  The negative in this sentence is an example of Pagano/Tottie’s ‘implicit denial’ and its presence is evidence for Roy’s own underlying expectations concerning the issue of friendship.  As Pagano points out (Pagano, p.254), implicit denials can only deny assumptions which can be expected to be made within a given ‘existential paradigm’.  By using a negative of this kind, the writer is simultaneously projecting a world in which what is denied is accepted.

By this criterion, we can see that the world Roy is seeking to project by employing an implicit denial is one in which gaining friends is to be expected when one has been in a new place for any length of time.  By positioning I have been here for three months directly before his denial, he is further contextualising this existential paradigm.  The story that follows, then, is an explanation of how this situation came to arise.

4.2	The ‘orientation’ - Who, when, what, where?

In this section the narrator gives more details on the characters and events which constitute his narrative. In Roy’s narrative, this can be seen as the section from There are five people up to I don’t feel completely at ease with them.

In Tannen’s terms, both the modal and the negative in the sentence There are five people whom I regard as friendly, however I would not choose them as my friends. constitute surface evidence for Roy’s underlying expectations.  The contrastive connective ‘however’ which conjoins the two clauses serves to refute the expectation that might have built up in the reader’s mind based on the information in the first.  In other words, even though he states that these ‘five people’ are friendly, Roy wants to underline the fact that they would not be his first choice of friends if he had such a freedom.  Once again, he is measuring what one might expect to happen in this given situation with what actually did occur and explaining how his expectations have been confounded.  The ‘existential paradigm’ which he is applying to his situation becomes more precisely defined as the narrative progresses.  Not only does he expect to have friends, but also to choose them.

Two further points relating to the language are of interest in these first two sections.  Firstly and grammatically speaking, Roy (re)presents himself as very much the active character (or ‘social actor’) in the events he describes.  He, then, is the ‘Senser’ (or ‘person doing’ in Halliday’s terms) in relation to the verbs ‘regard’ and ‘choose’, ‘realize’, ‘don’t feel’, ‘am grateful’ and so on.  It is no surprise, therefore, that the first person pronoun is used a total of nine times in only four sentences.  Moreover,  the choice of verbs may be salient, as we shall see.  That is, the verbs used are not verbs of ‘doing’ in the sense of material action, but are all what Halliday calls ‘mental processes’.  It is my feeling that Roy uses these particular verbs to underscore his own credibility as a ‘thinking’, ‘feeling’ person - that is, to establish our sympathy with and belief in him as a rational being whose account and explanation of events is therefore to be trusted.

The ‘five people’ to whom he refers, by contrast, are mostly represented as the ‘Goal’ (Halliday) of Roy’s actions - they are ‘passivated’ in van Leeuwen’s terms.  Furthermore, they are not permitted an individual identity in this section but are seen as a group (van Leeuwen’s ‘assimilation’ and ‘aggregation’).  

4.3.	The ‘complicating action’ and the ‘result’ - ‘Then what happened?’ and ‘What finally 
	happened?’

The section which runs from So, the lack of friends has been a disappointment to the end of the paragraph deals with the answers to these two questions, though it might be rather ambiguous where one starts and the other begins.

As a whole however, this section displays some interesting linguistic differences when compared with the abstract and the orientation.  Firstly, Roy is conspicuous by his relative absence as a social actor.  In these five sentences, for example, the first person pronoun is used only four times.  He no longer represents himself as the active or dominant participant in the action.  How does he manage to background himself as a social actor in this way?  In fact, Roy uses a variety of linguistic means to play down his role as a social actor, such as:
- Nominalisation.  In so the lack of friends has been a disappointment, the nominalisation of the verb ‘to disappoint’ is one way of avoiding having to include a social actor - i.e. the person who is disappointed, or who is doing the disappointing.
- Impersonalisation.  In the same way, some language difficulties may have hindered my attempts  removes Roy as the person who is having the language difficulties and instead makes the abstraction language difficulties itself the Actor in the material process, and Roy the Goal.  
- De-agentialisation and passive constructions.  The use of a non-finite clause which functions as a grammatical participant in it is difficult to break that image, and the passive in This reaction is often betrayed by their facial expression are devices by which Roy can similarly avoid including himself as a social actor, as someone who may break that image or perceive/interpret their facial expression.
- Activation of the other social actors.  It is interesting to note that in this section, the other characters in Roy’s narrative (i.e. the members of the host culture) are suddenly activated where they had been previously passivated.  Indeed, in terms of who has the active and who has the passive role in the representation of events, the respective roles of Roy and the other characters seem to have been reversed:

- Some people 	are activated in relation to 	unwillingness, 
- a new person 	is 	“	“		says and 
							get an immediate first impression
- people 		are	“	“		begin to think 

and so on.  But despite their newly active role in the discourse, the other social actors are nevertheless still denied an individual identity, are always presented generically, and in two cases (people and some people) ‘assimilated’ or treated as groups.

Finally, we should note the implication behind the modal in the phrase some language difficulties may have hindered my attempts.  Once again, we see possible worlds (where Roy’s lack of friends is due to his difficulties with the language) contrasted with actual worlds (where this is not the case), the latter being further reinforced by Roy’s parenthesis.

5.	Discussion

There is a lot more that could be said about the language of even this short text.  In terms of locus of control and expectations, however, several patterns have already begun to emerge. First, the active role which Roy ascribes to his own character in the abstract and orientation sections is, I feel, meant to demonstrate that his lack of friends and therefore his unhappiness were not of his own making, since he had done everything he could to prevent such a situation.  His choice of verbs of cognition and feeling, as mentioned before, are to elicit our understanding and sympathy as readers.  When he then goes on to describe the circumstances in more detail, he represents himself very much as a passive (one could say helpless) character, grammatically and metaphorically speaking, who has been somehow subject to forces beyond his control.  I would suggest not only that the responsibility for making friends is laid firmly elsewhere (on the new person or some people), but that Roy attempts subtly to elicit our recognition of this fact.  By using such phrases as it is difficult to break that image, as described above, Roy seems to be representing his own response to a given context (i.e. the fact that he finds it difficult) as a kind of universal truth, giving it a certain authority and weight. I would further suggest that it is no coincidence that other people are not permitted individual identities in the text.  For the purposes of his argument (for this, in effect, is what this paragraph amounts to), in which an opposition is created between himself and the other, the presentation of people predominantly in terms of their group identity helps to reinforce the sense that he is battling with outside forces larger than himself, and not with a series of one-to-one encounters.  I would like to suggest that there are other possible ways of representing the same version of events in which Roy might have assigned himself a greater portion of responsibility for the breakdown in communication with the host culture members which he experienced, or where the locus of control might have been viewed as more internally-located.   As for his more specific expectations, Roy’s use of modals and negatives in particular (as in I have no close friends or I would not choose them as my friends) is striking and reveals the effect which having his ‘expectancies’ ‘disconfirmed’ has had upon his happiness with his new situation.

To conclude, I would like to reiterate the point made earlier - that this kind of analysis can give in-depth insights into students’ reactions to their year abroad.  And in so far as the premature return of a student or the expression of prolonged unhappiness can be said in this context to represent a degree of failure in cross-cultural terms, two main questions are raised:

	Do existing definitions of cross-cultural capability account for the issues of locus 	of control and expectations?

	What can be done (if anything) in terms of preparation or support for the year 	abroad which would address these points?

References

1  Killick, D. & Parry, M. (Eds.) (1997) Cross-Cultural Capability.  The Why, The Ways & The Means: New Theories & Methodologies in Language Education, proceedings of the conference at Leeds Metropolitan University, 15-16th December 1997.  Leeds Metropolitan University: Centre for Language Study.

2  Phipps, A. (1997) The Promise of the Field: A Case Study in Intercultural German Studies. In D.Killick & M. Parry (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Capability, pp. 84-91.

3  Jordan, S.A. (1997) Starting with the Self: Capability in One’s Own Culture.  In D. Killick & M. Parry (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Capability, pp.64-72.

4  Coleman, J. (1997) Student Preparation for Residence Abroad: Two Stages in Acquiring Cross-Cultural Capability.  In D.Killick & M. Parry (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Capability, pp.32-43.

5  Rotter, J.B. (1966) Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.  Psychological Monographs, 80.

6  Furnham, A. & Bochner, S. (1986) Culture Shock: Psychological Reactions to Unfamiliar Environments.  London/New York: Methuen.

7  Brislin, R.W., Cushner, K., Cherrie, C. & Yong, M. (1986) Intercultural Interactions: A Practical Guide. Beverly Hills: Sage.

8  Convey, F. (1995) The Stay Abroad: Objectives, Strategies, Outcomes.  In G. Parker & A. Rouxeville (Eds.) ‘The Year Abroad’: Preparation, Monitoring, Evaluation London: AFLS/CILT, pp.127-152.

9  Parry, M. (1997) The Renaissance Dream: Literary and Anthropological Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Capability.  In D.Killick & M. Parry (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Capability, pp.22 - 31.

10  Gullick, C. (1997) Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Capability.  In D.Killick & M. Parry (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Capability, pp.175-183.

11  Polanyi, L. (1995) Language Learning and Living Abroad: Stories from the Field.  In B.F. Freed (Ed.) Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 271-291.

12  Brecht, R.D. & Robinson, J.L. (1995) On the Value of Formal Instruction in Study Abroad: Student Reactions in Context.  In B.F. Freed (Ed.) Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp.317-334.

13  Neyt, P. (1997) Bowler Hats and Cowboy Boots: Cultural Stereotypes and Prejudices in the EFL Classroom.  In D.Killick & M. Parry (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Capability, pp.213-214.

14  Tannen, D. (1979) What’s in a Frame?  Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations.  In R.Freedle (Ed.) New Directions in Discourse Processing, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. 137-181.

15  Pagano, A. (1994) Negatives in written text.  In M. Coulthard (Ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis, London: Routledge, pp. 250-265.

16  Tottie, G. (1982) Where do negative sentences come from? Studia Linguistica, 36 (1), pp.88-105.

17  Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Second Edition, London: Edward Arnold.

18  Van Leeuwen, T. (1996) The Representation of Social Actors.  In C.R.Coulthard & M.Coulthard (Eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, London/New York: Rowley, pp.32-70.

19  Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City.  Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press.