Intercultural Communication in Letters of Recommendation 英语专业毕业论文.doc
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1、Intercultural Communication in Letters of Recommendation Abstract: The letter of recommendation (LR) as a means to communicate across different cultures for the purpose of applying for entering a university can be problematic. Using contrastive rhetoric analytic framework, this paper compares LRs wr
2、itten by Chinese and English native speaker professionals. Discussion of culturally situated interpretations of the LRs is based on interviews with university professors who have been on the admission committee. The findings show similarities in macro discourse structure but differences in discourse
3、 content between the LRs, which suggest that successful intercultural communication in LRs requires meticulous dialogue with the other according to Bakhtins theory of dialogism. Unequal power relationship between writer and reader is also discussed from critical discourse analysis perspective.Key wo
4、rds: Letters of recommendation; intercultural communication; dialogismIntroductionAs more international students apply for admission to the colleges and universities in the United States, the admission committee has to read more letters of recommendation (LRs) written by English non-native speaker (
5、ENNS) writers than ever before. The letters function as a medium in intercultural communication (IC) between English native speaker (ENS) readers and ENNS writers. However, according to many educators and employers, too few letters of recommendation tell recipients what they really need to know abou
6、t a candidate (Palmer, 1983, p. 1). Although the writers identification is not specified here, we can assume that IC between the ENNS writer of the LR and the ENS reader is more problematic than the communication among the same language speakers because of the cultural as well as linguistic differen
7、ces.The problems in this IC result probably from the different approaches to the discourse conventions. Bouton shows that although the speech event has core characteristics cross-culturally, the realization of the speech event varies in both formal and content schema (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1995
8、, p 127). The differences may cause miscommunication if the reader fails to understand the discourse conventions of the writer if those are unfamiliar.The LR has a long history in the Western world, and can be traced to the middle of the third century B. C. (Cotton, 1981, p. 2). The routine of writi
9、ng recommendation resulted in the emergence of a mold into which each individual case could easily be fitted (although, ., room was left for variation) original, expediency and economy profited from crystallized formulae and set phrases (p. 6). The consistent practice of writing the LR has developed
10、 into a specific discourse genre with three characteristics. First, the participants are generally from educational field the admission committee and the teachers or professors who write LRs for their former students, and hence form a specific discourse community. Second, writing and reading LRs con
11、stitute a specific speech event in which the writer recommends and the reader uses the recommendation as one of the information resources to select candidates. Third, all the participants share the communicative purposes, that is, the person recommended is to be considered as a candidate for admissi
12、on to a study course.By contrast, the LR does not seem to be a well-established genre in Chinese written discourse. Traditionally, higher educational institutes in China do not require LRs for admission. There has been an informal practice that a brief note or a simple letter, which mainly states th
13、e relationship between the writer and the person recommended, might be presented to the person in charge of admission. This kind of practice, however, is very limited. In such a letter, the qualities of the recommended person are guaranteed by the credibility of the writer who is usually known by th
14、e reader. Therefore, the letter generally does not include any specific information but mostly the recommended persons virtues such as honesty, straightness, diligence, faithfulness, and so on.The different cultural practice and language use in the LR cannot be ignored if appropriate interpretation
15、of the letters must be achieved. However, the LR has rarely been studied, though research on other aspects of academic discourse has been voluminous, from reprint requests (Swales 1990) to politeness strategies in scientific articles (Myers 1989, cited in Precht 1998, p. 242). Viewing the LR in IC a
16、s a problematic issue, I will in this paper compare two LRs written respectively by an ENS writer and a Chinese native speaker (CNS) writer to find out how the writers from different cultural and linguistic background realize the speech act of recommendation. The contrastive rhetoric analysis will b
17、e incorporated with the characterizations of the LR as a particular kind of discourse genre as well as culturally situated interpretations of texts. In other words, the two letters will be compared in terms of their rhetorical construction by the writers and potential interpretations by the readers.
18、 The findings will be discussed in the light of Bakhtins theory of dialogism and critical discourse theory on the maintenance of power relations between the reader (addressee) and the writer (addresser). Further research will be suggested at the end in order to substantiate the findings in the curre
19、nt study.MethodData Two types of data are collected for this study. One consists of two letters from a file of LRs submitted to a MATESOL (Master of Arts for Teachers in English to Speakers of Other Languages) program at one of the US universities in the middle of 1990s. I was permitted to use them
20、in this paper with the candidates names and former universities deleted. Neither candidate was admitted to enter the program. One letter was written by an ENS in 198 words, and the other by a CNS in 200 words.The other type of data comprises interviews and written comments on some samples of LRs fou
21、nd typical from the file. The interviews were semi-structured and conducted with both English and Chinese NS professors. The former are the Universitys MATESOL professors who have years of experience in reading LRs. Besides interviews, I also asked them to write their comments on the given samples.
22、The latter are three Chinese NS scholars. The questions I asked them were focused on their experience in writing LRs, the history of Chinese LRs as a genre, and the problems of LRs written in English by Chinese professionals.Analytical framework As a qualitative case study, this paper will follow wi
23、th modification Prechts (1998) broad structure found in her study of 39 LRs written by 10 Americans, 10 British, 9 Germans and 10 Eastern Europeans. The structure has three major parts, i.e., Introduction/Frame, Body/Evaluation, and Conclusion/Prediction. Each part is constituted by a certain number
24、 of items (see Table 1). Three items usually form the Introduction. They are purpose of the LR, context in which the recommender knows the recommendee, and the recommenders personal comments on the recommendees qualifications. Body can be formed either in a topical or chronological format with suppo
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