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Kate Stephens
To cite this article: Kate Stephens (1997) Cultural Stereotyping and Intercultural Communication:
Working with Students from the People's Republic of China in the UK, Language and Education,
11:2, 113-124, DOI: 10.1080/09500789708666722
Download by: [Flinders University of South Australia] Date: 16 February 2017, At: 13:23
Cultural Stereotyping and Intercultural
Communication: Working with Students
from the Peoples Republic of China in the
UK
Kate Stephens
D iv ision of E d u c a tio n , Univ e rsity of S h e ffie ld , Sh e ffie ld S1 0 2 JA , U K
This paper considers the problem of cultural stereotyping in work on intercultural
communication. Recent interest in culture in relation to language learning is described,
and the problematic nature of the concept of culture is discussed. A recent study of
Chinese students attitudes towards academic study is described and the results are
presented of a small-scale attempt to test the generality of its findings: 12 Chinese
visiting scholars were given the opportunity to reflect upon and respond in writing to
some comments from the earlier study. It is concluded that Chinese attitudes to towards
academic study are diverse. It is argued that the results support the view of culture as
a contested area of discourse. It is suggested that ideas about Chinese culture should
be set in historical context, and some historical description is given. Sources are quoted
regarding the recent history of English language teaching in China. It is argued that
communication problems may be more economically explained in terms of aspects of
language proficiency rather than cultural differences.
In traditional Chinese opera, why are the parts of women played by men? Song
Liling, in Cronenbergs film version of the ambiguous M. Butterfly, tells us it is
because only a man really knows how a woman is supposed to behave. In the
film, Frenchman Gallimard falls in love with Song Liling after her performance
in the Italian opera Madame Butterfly. Song Liling explains that the Chinese dislike
the story because of its portrayal of the oriental woman. The opera tells of a
Japanese woman who, having remained loyal to her absent American husband,
kills herself when he returns with his new wife to take away her child. Song Liling
reminds Gallimard that if the woman had been an American, and the man
Japanese, her suicide would seem not romantic but insane. The story is a
European fantasy about the East.
But the film goes beyond observation on stereotyped notions of femininity and
Western fancy and confusion about the East. It also has something to say about
what is contained in the eye of the beholder, and about stereotyping as a form of
projection. Gallimard returns to Paris from his posting in China. Song Liling, after
a period of imprisonment by the Red Guard, follows him. Song Liling uses
Gallimards new government position to pass secrets to the Chinese, and is
eventually revealed as a spy. In the process he is also revealed as a man.
Gallimard can no longer love him because the woman of his imagination has been
destroyed. In prison, taking the part himself of a man portraying a woman in a
pantomime of Chinese Opera, Gallimard kills himself. We are left with the
question of Gallimards own role in the creation of Song Liling.
In working with students from China in Britain, the question of our own role
0950-0782/97/02 0113-12 $10.00/0 1997 K. Stephens
LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Vol. 11, No. 2, 1997
113
1 14 L a n g u a g e and Educ a tio n
in the creation of images of the Chinese must be raised. It is my experience of
working with Chinese students in an academic context, that the idea of a
distinctive Chinese way of thinking has wide currency. Faced with Chinese
culture, westerners can have a great sense of difference. This sense of difference
can be expressed in allusions to authoritarianism and a more communal
approach to things, a lack of individualism and independent thought; the
Confucian legacy and the effects of the cultural revolution. This paper addresses
itself to the question of how far, in our concern to properly take cultural difference
into account, the problem of unhelpful cultural stereotyping can be avoided. It
also presents evidence from a small-scale study regarding how 12 Chinese
visiting scholars following a course for English Language teacher trainers in the
UK responded to some generalisations about their own culture generated a
research study by Jin & Cortazzi (1993).
In anthropology, the tension between internally and externally generated
category systems is well known. A culture can be described in terms of a set of
categories which are generated by the participants in that culture, emic
description, or it can be described using a system developed by outsiders to that
culture, etic description. The interplay between these perspectives is a matter of
concern for the process of cultural description.
Moreover, while some work on intercultural communication draws upon
notions of dimensions of cultural difference such as individualism/collectivism
(for example, Clyne, 1994), in anthropology the notion of culture has itself been
contested. Street (1993), in making arguments about the relationship between
culture and language, points out that the idea of culture involves an abstraction
and reification through the grammatical nominalisation of what should be better
conceived as a process subject to change. He suggests that the study of culture
should be concerned more with the process of how notions of culture arise and
are contested, than with cultural description:
Culture is an active process of meaning making and contest over definition,
including its own definition. (Street, 1993: 25)
And:
The reification and naturalisation of culture hides the kinds of questions
about power and social change that are currently at the forefront of
anthropological enquiry. (Street, 1993: 27)
He concludes:
if every time the term culture is uttered warning bells ring and neon
lights flash, then I shall feel that I have succeeded. (Street, 1993: 43)
There is a large literature on intercultural communication of relevance to
language teaching. Much of this literature is reviewed in a recent state of the art
article by Dirven & Putz (1993). Dirven & Putz claim that, since the early
anthropological work at the beginning of this century, there have been two peaks
of interest in the subject: one in the sixties and seventies, and a second even
stronger one in the eighties. The work they review includes attempts to map and
quantify cultural differences, studies of attitudes towards different cultures, and
W o rking w ith Chin e se Stu d e nts in th e UK 115
sociolinguistic studies of obstacles to communication between cultures. The
notion of intercultural competence has arisen at the interface between the study
of cross-cultural communication and applied linguistics. Kealey (1989) provides
an example of a study which concerns itself with the prediction of cross-cultural
effectiveness of Canadian technical advisors. Ruben (1989) locates the develop-
ment of the study of cross-cultural competence in the practical training needs and
adjustment failures of Americans working overseas. The accelerating pace of
globalisation, he points out, accentuates the need.
Fantini (1995) provides an overview to an edition of The International Journal
of Intercultural Relations which is concerned with the language culture relation-
ship. He is concerned with the apparent neglect of cultural issues by language
teachers. He suggests that students failures in linguistic communicative compe-
tence may be due to lack of cultural competence, and that the promotion of
cultural awareness is an integral part of the language teachers task. In the same
volume, the relationship between literacy and world view is explored by
Edwards & Nwenmely (1995), and Liu (1995) addresses the question of transfer
of sociocultural attitudes in second language use.
Of particular relevance to this paper is a contribution by Garrott (1995). She
describes historical studies of Chinese values alongside the results of her own
survey conducted while working as a foreign expert in China. She concludes
that, rather than tending towards the collectivism generally associated with
China, the students she surveyed tended towards individualism, and that there
is a great deal of diversity of attitudes depending on age, sex and subject of study.
She sounds a note of caution about the tendency towards overgeneralisation in
descriptions of Chinese cultural attitudes.
While interest in multiculturalism in British schools is widespread, Dirven &
Putz suggest that there is a relative lack of theoretical interest in the language
culture relationship in the UK. One exception to this apparent lack of theoretical
interest in Britain is the recent study of cultural orientation and academic
language use by Jin & Cortazzi to which this paper is in part a response. Jin &
Cortazzi focus on an alleged gap between British and Chinese ways of thinking,
and the problems this gap is believed to pose for communication between
Chinese students at British universities, and their supervisors. Their study has
broken new ground in giving a voice to the experience of the growing number
of Chinese students in higher education in Britain. They present a selection of
comments from supervisors and students, obtained in separate interviews, in the
form of an imaginary dialogue. The dialogue gives dramatic life to what appears
to be a radical mismatch in expectations.
However, there are a number of points to take issue with in Jin & Cortazzis
paper. Firstly, the voices of both British supervisors and Chinese students are
presented with an air of typicality, which does not seem to be supported by other
evidence. The views of another group of students presented below suggest a
range of variation and disagreement. Secondly, it is grounded in a view of
individually oriented and collectively oriented cultures, which has a surface
appeal, but which should be seen as part of a historically situated and contested
discourse. Thirdly, the view presented of Chinese academic norms and expecta-
tions is contrasted with an idealised view of academic life in Britain, which is
1 16 L a n g u a g e and Educ a tio n
itself better understood as a converse of the same discourse, than as a straight
forward description of empirical reality.
TutorStudent Relationships
On the question of the relationship to the supervisor in China, the visiting
scholars all agreed that the supervisor has a superior role, that one should take
care not to give offence, and the nature of ones personal relationship with the
supervisor might affect the progress of the research.
On the question of disagreement with a supervisors words, one of Jin &
Cortazzis student claimed:
We generally wouldnt disagree with our supervisors words or instruc-
tions, no matter whether they suit us or not if they dont agree they just
keep silence or if they say something, they just hint a little bit, very
implicitly. The majority are like this. Even the minority who are more
straight forward, they wouldnt say something back straight, they say it
round about.
The following are comments from the visiting scholar group:
No, thats not true, perhaps the idea from the traditional China a few years
past, but the situation has changed now. Students can arise questions which
they dont agree with.
I disagree with the idea above. Sometimes, if the supervisors or instructors
W o rking w ith Chin e se Stu d e nts in th e UK 119
words dont suit us Chinese students, some, if not many, may point out the
point which they think doesnt hold water or something like that. Some may
just keep silence. It may also be that those who keep silence are not quite
sure or quite understand what the supervisor said.
Somewhat true. Usually, the student will offend the supervisor if they
refuse too much.
The tendency of conformity is strong in China. But still there are people
who are very critical and outspoken. Its difficult to generalise the attitude
of the we.
These comments were made by individuals spanning the broad age range of
the group. Sometimes differences in perspective seemed to reflect age, with
education before, during and after the Cultural Revolution seeming to have an
effect. These are only a small number of voices speaking on the question of the
culture of one quarter of the worlds population. All that can be concluded from
them is that differences of opinion do exist. Chinese and Western cultural
difference is constructed differently by different individuals. This is, however, an
important conclusion, suggesting that Jin & Cortazzis view is oversimplified,
and confirming the view of culture as an area of contested discourse rather than
a reified construct.
In general, the visiting scholar group sometimes accepted generalisations
about the nature of Chinese culture, but they were not always willing to do so.
The idea of variation and change were referred to. Jin & Cortazzis picture of a
collective culture, in which the individual is unwilling or unable to assert his or
her own ideas is not entirely confirmed. If there is a lack of individual freedom
in research in China, this comes across as historical and circumstantial rather than
attributable to profound differences in ways of thinking.
The visiting scholars agreed that they were expected to be independent in their
studies in Britain. They did not, however, agree that constant support would be
given at every step and at every level in China. On the question of writing, the
comment that presentation of sources is not particularly Chinese, but a basic
feature of all academic writing is illuminating. On the question of the possibility
of a conflict of ideas arising in the relationship with the supervisor in China, my
group presented a mixed picture which included the possibility of disagreement.
Regarding my personal relationship with these students, I found that friendly
disagreement was a constant feature of our discussions.
Questions could be asked about the differences between the level of response
given by the two groups, which may have been conditioned by their relationship
to me and the institution in which they were studying. The visiting scholar group
were not working towards a degree. I knew them well, they did not need my
good opinion, and I have considerable confidence in the honesty of their
responses. They were deliberately given time to reflect and discuss before
committing themselves to paper. It is possible that Jin & Cortazzis group were
willing to invoke available stereotypes, which they might have been less willing
to endorse given the opportunity for a more reflective approach. Similarly, my
group might have expressed more stereotyped views if their relationship to the
institution had been different.
1 20 L a n g u a g e and Educ a tio n
Conclusion
With the growth of interest in sociolinguistics and the recognition that
language as a system can never be entirely divorced from its social context,
teachers of English as a foreign language have become increasingly interested in
the role of culture in communication. It is now a commonplace belief that the
misunderstandings that can occur between people of different cultures may not
be reducible exclusively to language difficulties, but may be also attributable to
different sets of experiences, different expectations and even profoundly
different ways of thinking.
It is taken to follow from the corrective recognition that language and context
are interrelated, that language teachers should concern themselves with culture
in addition to language. According to Dirven & Putz, some theorists have
extended the debate between grammatical and communicative competence to
include a third-term cultural competence. It is now proposed by some theorists
that in addition to learning the language, attention needs to be paid to the
teaching of cultural competence.
However, where the medium of intercultural communication is English, there
is a huge problem of how far the language is embedded in a particular culture.
English is the most commonly used language of international communication.
The number of users of English as a foreign or second language is far in excess
of the number of people who use it as first community language. Like Chinese,
it is a major medium of intercultural communication. Written Chinese has a far
greater number of users than the users of any particular spoken Chinese dialect.
While specific cultures are implicated in the languages that we use, the spread of
a language must say something about its potential for becoming culturally
disembedded.
Language teachers without an interest in culture are obviously handicapped.
But the idea that words can be separated from the things they are meant to denote
was an important development in language study. While cultural differences
clearly exist, it is an obvious fact that one of the reasons we learn foreign
languages is to overcome cultural differences. Language is the cultural product
which makes cultural translation possible. It is largely through the foreign
language that foreign culture becomes accessible. In our concern to learn or teach
a culture we may overlook the fact that this is done through a language. In seeking
cultural explanations for miscommunication between Chinese students and their
tutors in the UK, there is a danger of overlooking what gaps may exist in students
language proficiency and experience, and at the same time resorting to
overgeneralisations about culture which have a surface appeal, but which are not
supported by strong research evidence. English language teachers should
perhaps follow the anthropologists lead in acknowledging the elusive nature of
culture, and focus instead on how the concept of culture is deployed in their
own discourse.
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