<p>The world-wide globalisation that has taken place during the past decades has led to more Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) choosing to relocate some parts of their organisation to other countries. China, which is in command of the world’s lowest-cost manufacturing plants, is the first destination for MNEs. Although China presents a great opportunity for MNEs, this investment does not come without its difficulties, MNEs wishing to invest in China are confronted with certain challenges. MNEs are faced with dealing with the notable differences in Western and Chinese business culture. One particular difference is related to intercultural communication between western managers and Chinese managers. The theory of low context and high context cultures states that the Chinese communicate indirectly and Western countries directly.</p><p>The main purpose of this research is to find out if the Chinese manager, after obtaining experience negotiating with foreign managers from low context cultures, adopts a more direct communication style. The purpose of this research is to answer the following question:</p><p>Does the Chinese manager have a preference for direct or indirect communication when negotiating with foreign managers?</p><p>The following hypotheses were stated:</p><p>Ho: Chinese managers prefer direct communication during business negotiations with foreign managers.</p><p>Ha: Chinese managers prefer indirect communication during business negotiations with foreign managers</p><p>A quantitative method with a positivistic epistemology was used for the research. Quantitative research is an exploratory study with a deductive approach and therefore the most appropriate method for this research was a survey. A survey was chosen for data collection and a questionnaire based on the research model was developed and used as the survey instrument to collect data from the target group.</p><p>The target group was stated as Chinese managers with at least three years work experience, fluent in English and with experience in negotiations with managers from cultures considered as low-context cultures such as Germany, Sweden and the United States of America.</p><p>The target group was selected from the MBA programs at Fudan University.</p><p>The SPSS program was utilised to analyse the responses and to test the hypothesis. Numeric values were assigned to each of the responses, with 5 being the most direct and 1 being the most indirect. The scale was appropriately reversed for negative questions.</p><p>Descriptive statistics were obtained about distribution, variability and central tendency of the variables. t tests were applied to compare group means. Furthermore, a regression analysis was conducted to estimate a linear relationship between direct communication and the lack of miscommunication showed by the descriptive test. All tests were conducted at a 95% confidence level.</p><p>The result of the hypothesis test indicated that Chinese managers have preference towards direct communication when conducting business negotiations with foreign managers.</p>

The world-wide globalisation that has taken place during the past decades has led to more Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) choosing to relocate some parts of their organisation to other countries. China, which is in command of the world’s lowest-cost manufacturing plants, is the first destination for MNEs. Although China presents a great opportunity for MNEs, this investment does not come without its difficulties, MNEs wishing to invest in China are confronted with certain challenges. MNEs are faced with dealing with the notable differences in Western and Chinese business culture. One particular difference is related to intercultural communication between western managers and Chinese managers. The theory of low context and high context cultures states that the Chinese communicate indirectly and Western countries directly. The main purpose of this research is to find out if the Chinese manager, after obtaining experience negotiating with foreign managers from low context cultures, adopts a more direct communication style. The purpose of this research is to answer the following question: Does the Chinese manager have a preference for direct or indirect communication when negotiating with foreign managers? The following hypotheses were stated: Ho: Chinese managers prefer direct communication during business negotiations with foreign managers. Ha: Chinese managers prefer indirect communication during business negotiations with foreign managers A quantitative method with a positivistic epistemology was used for the research. Quantitative research is an exploratory study with a deductive approach and therefore the most appropriate method for this research was a survey. A survey was chosen for data collection and a questionnaire based on the research model was developed and used as the survey instrument to collect data from the target group. The target group was stated as Chinese managers with at least three years work experience, fluent in English and with experience in negotiations with managers from cultures considered as low-context cultures such as Germany, Sweden and the United States of America. The target group was selected from the MBA programs at Fudan University. The SPSS program was utilised to analyse the responses and to test the hypothesis. Numeric values were assigned to each of the responses, with 5 being the most direct and 1 being the most indirect. The scale was appropriately reversed for negative questions. Descriptive statistics were obtained about distribution, variability and central tendency of the variables. t tests were applied to compare group means. Furthermore, a regression analysis was conducted to estimate a linear relationship between direct communication and the lack of miscommunication showed by the descriptive test. All tests were conducted at a 95% confidence level. The result of the hypothesis test indicated that Chinese managers have preference towards direct communication when conducting business negotiations with foreign managers.

Parents teach their children about emotions through a process called emotion socialization and one way that they can do so is through shared discussions about emotions. Research in developmental psychology indicates that parental emotion socialization strategies through discourse such as elaboration and labels and explanations are related to children's emotion understanding and social competence. In the current study, I apply the concept of indirect communication, which has been used in linguistics since the 1970s, to parental emotion socialization with preschool-age children (n= 55; 31 females, 24 males). I define indirect communication as parental speech in which the form and function of a subject-verb phrase do not match and examined relations of parental indirect communication to the previously established strategies in developmental psychology of elaboration and use of labels and explanations. To understand whether this type of communication may influence children's development, I also examined relations of indirect communication to preschoolers' emotion understanding and social competence. Results indicate that parental indirect communication during positive events was related to parental explanations during negative events. Parental indirect communication did not significantly predict children's emotion understanding or social competence, but showed a trend for the association between indirect communication during negative event discussions and children's nonstereotypical emotion understanding. However, the direction for this association was opposite than hypothesized. These results do not suggest consistency of indirect communication across positive and negative event discussions as an emotion socialization strategy. / Master of Science

This thesis is an investigation into ambiguity and irony in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Dread [Begrebet Angest]. The frequent ambiguities in Kierkegaard’s texts have been discussed by several scholars, and Kierkegaard’s interest in irony is evident not only from his master’s thesis On the Concept of Irony, but also from his other texts. The irony in Kierkegaard has especially been expounded on by Roger Poole and Jacob Bøggild, who both consider irony to be at the heart of Kierkegaardian writing. Furthermore, the ambiguity in Kierkegaard can also be considered typical for the existentialist line of philosophy in general. Finally, both of these subjects tie in to the difficult subject of Kierkegaard’s ”indirect communication”, a subject discussed at length by Poole. The investigation falls into three parts. The first part is essentially a preparation: the concepts of ambiguity and irony are introduced, as is their relation to each other, and the discussion of these pertaining to Kierkegaard is paraphrased. An introduction to Kierkegaard’s indirect communicationis also provided. The second part constitutes the main body of the thesis. This part consists of a reading of The Concept of Dread with special attention brought to the ambiguities of this text. These ambiguities are numerous and in most cases fundamental concepts in the book’s line of reason including things such as dread itself, sin, guilt and the demonic. This reading follows the basic layout of the book itself, interspersed with remarks and topics discussed by other scholars, notably Jonna Hjertström Lappalainen and Gordon Daniel Marino. At the end of this part, the ironic readings of Poole and Bøggild are discussed in relation to the more “direct” reading proposed previously. Such readings put even greater emphasis on the ambiguity, as the text in its entirety is ambiguous. The third part is a tentative discussion of the conflicting accounts of Bøggild, Poole and Hjertström Lappalainen, and an attempt at reconciling these into a coherent view of The Concept of Dread. It is argued that ambiguity, while not equatable with indirect communication, is nonetheless a necessary prerequisite for communicating without compromising the individual’s subjective and concrete experience of the human condition. Finally, the Kierkegaardian notion of absolute freedom as discussed by Hjertström Lappalainen is considered in relation to the “existential concepts” fundamental to existentialist philosophy and, once again, the necessity of ambiguity is shown. The task of the ambiguous or ironic text is then to communicate the subjective, that which cannot be grasped in language, making necessary a certain “emptiness” or openness with regards to the central concepts.

In Swahili language proficiency is measured in terms of a speakers knowledge and use of methali (proverbs), misemo (sayings), mafumbo (riddles) and vijembe (sharp comments). The aim of the paper is to show the different uses of mafumbo and vijembe. Their meanings are at first sight hidden to the addressee, but understood in the context of their use. Mafumbo can be used as teasing, as circumscription for parts of the body of which it is taboo to speak of, as moral reprimands and warnings, and as a secret language between intimate partners or groups of people. Vijembe - `What cuts more than a knive? - the tongue´ - are used on kanga and in newspapers. An important feature of vijembe is that it always asks for an answer, therefore has a strong aspect of competition.

Submitted by Geandra Rodrigues (geandrar@gmail.com) on 2018-06-14T13:54:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 paulohenriquedasilvalopes.pdf: 2153579 bytes, checksum: 8811110be1b62b021c3506aeb8ba3971 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2018-06-27T14:58:42Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 paulohenriquedasilvalopes.pdf: 2153579 bytes, checksum: 8811110be1b62b021c3506aeb8ba3971 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-27T14:58:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 paulohenriquedasilvalopes.pdf: 2153579 bytes, checksum: 8811110be1b62b021c3506aeb8ba3971 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-28 / A dialética entre forma e conteúdo perpassa a obra kierkegaardiana desde a sua crítica aos sistemas filosóficos existenciais e à cristandade, até a tarefa que ela assume de suscitar a subjetividade em seu leitor em face de um critério absoluto religioso. Portanto, o que é dito está intimamente refletido no como se diz, e o como se diz é estritamente modulado pelo que se quer dizer. Neste contexto, defendo que a comunicação indireta se coloca não só como um recurso estilístico formal para a abordagem de um conteúdo existencial-religioso inefável, mas como uma exigência deste conteúdo sobre a formalidade da obra. Mediante esta exigência, exponho a tensão e a sua implicação para o questionamento da autoridade de Kierkegaard em meio aos recursos estilísticos demandados, como a ironia e a pseudonímia, ao passo que procuro exercer, no próprio texto, esta tensão. Com isso, além de indicar que tal dialética exige uma reconsideração do próprio fazer filosófico, quanto ao estudo da própria obra kierkegaardiana, inclusive, indico que o estilo kierkegaardiano não admite nenhum tipo de cartografia sem que, para isso, se incorra no erro de assassinar o seu conteúdo. / The dialectic between form and content runs through the Kierkegaardian work from its critique of existential philosophical systems and christendom, to the task that it assumes to arouse subjectivity in its reader before an absolute religious criterion. Therefore, what is said is closely reflected in how it is said, and how it is said is strictly modulated by what is meant. In this context, I argue that indirect communication is not only a formal stylistic resource for approaching an ineffable existential-religious content but, on the other hand, a requirement of this very content on the formality of the work. By means of this demand, I expose the tension and its implication to the questioning of Kierkegaard's author-ity amidst the stylistic resources demanded, such as irony and pseudonymy, while I try to exert this tension in the text itself. Thus, rather than indicating that such a dialectic requires a reconsideration of the philosophical practice itself, as for the study of the kierkegaardian authorship, I also indicate that the kierkegaardian labyrinthine style does not admit any kind of cartography without, for that, murder ing its subjective content.

Making inferences in communication is a highly context-dependent endeavor. Previous research found cultural variations for context-sensitivity as well as for communication comprehension. However, the relative impact of culture and context-sensitivity on communication comprehension has not been investigated so far. The current study aimed at investigating this interplay and tested 4- and 6-year-old children from Germany (n = 132) and China (n = 129). Context-sensitivity was measured with an adapted version of the Ebbinghaus illusion. In this task, children have to discriminate the size of two target circles that only appear to be of similar size due to context circles surrounding the target circles. As expected, performance scores indicated higher degrees of context-sensitivity in Chinese compared to German children and that 6-year-olds were more context-sensitive than 4-year-olds. Further, in an object-choice communication-comprehension task, children watched videos with puppets performing everyday activities (e.g., pet care) and had to choose between two options (e.g., dog or rabbit). A puppet expressed what she wanted either directly (“I want the rabbit”) or indirectly (“I have a carrot”). The children had to choose one option to give to the puppet. In both cultures, 6-year-olds outperformed 4-year-olds and children understood direct communication better than indirect communication. Culture was found to affect children’s processing speed of direct communication. Moreover, culture influenced children’s context-sensitivity while contextsensitivity influenced children’s accuracy in the indirect (but not the direct) communication task. These findings demonstrate that taking context into account is especially important when we are confronted with indirect communication.

Tesis por compendio / [EN] Over the last years, multiagent systems have been proven to be a powerful and versatile paradigm, with a big potential when it comes to solving complex problems in dynamic and distributed environments, due to their flexible and adaptive behavior. This potential does not only come from the individual features of agents (such as autonomy, reactivity or reasoning power), but also to their capability to communicate, cooperate and coordinate in order to fulfill their goals. In fact, it is this social behavior what makes multiagent systems so powerful, much more than the individual capabilities of agents. The social behavior of multiagent systems is usually developed by means of high level abstractions, protocols and languages, which normally rely on (or at least, benefit from) agents being able to communicate and interact indirectly. However, in the development process, such high level concepts habitually become weakly supported, with mechanisms such as traditional messaging, massive broadcasting, blackboard systems or ad hoc solutions. This lack of an appropriate way to support indirect communication in actual multiagent systems compromises their potential. This PhD thesis proposes the use of event tracing as a flexible, effective and efficient support for indirect interaction and communication in multiagent systems. The main contribution of this thesis is TRAMMAS, a generic, abstract model for event tracing support in multiagent systems. The model allows all entities in the system to share their information as trace events, so that any other entity which require this information is able to receive it. Along with the model, the thesis also presents an abstract architecture, which redefines the model in terms of a set of tracing facilities that can be then easily incorporated to an actual multiagent platform. This architecture follows a service-oriented approach, so that the tracing facilities are provided in the same way than other traditional services offered by the platform. In this way, event tracing can be considered as an additional information provider for entities in the multiagent system, and as such, it can be integrated from the earliest stages of the development process. / [ES] A lo largo de los últimos años, los sistemas multiagente han demostrado ser un paradigma potente y versátil, con un gran potencial a la hora de resolver problemas complejos en entornos dinámicos y distribuidos, gracias a su comportamiento flexible y adaptativo. Este potencial no es debido únicamente a las características individuales de los agentes (como son su autonomía, y su capacidades de reacción y de razonamiento), sino que también se debe a su capacidad de comunicación y cooperación a la hora de conseguir sus objetivos. De hecho, por encima de la capacidad individual de los agentes, es este comportamiento social el que dota de potencial a los sistemas multiagente. El comportamiento social de los sistemas multiagente suele desarrollarse empleando abstracciones, protocolos y lenguajes de alto nivel, los cuales, a su vez, se basan normalmente en la capacidad para comunicarse e interactuar de manera indirecta de los agentes (o como mínimo, se benefician en gran medida de dicha capacidad). Sin embargo, en el proceso de desarrollo software, estos conceptos de alto nivel son soportados habitualmente de manera débil, mediante mecanismos como la mensajería tradicional, la difusión masiva, o el uso de pizarras, o mediante soluciones totalmente ad hoc. Esta carencia de un soporte genérico y apropiado para la comunicación indirecta en los sistemas multiagente reales compromete su potencial. Esta tesis doctoral propone el uso del trazado de eventos como un soporte flexible, efectivo y eficiente para la comunicación indirecta en sistemas multiagente. La principal contribución de esta tesis es TRAMMAS, un modelo genérico y abstracto para dar soporte al trazado de eventos en sistemas multiagente. El modelo permite a cualquier entidad del sistema compartir su información en forma de eventos de traza, de tal manera que cualquier otra entidad que requiera esta información sea capaz de recibirla. Junto con el modelo, la tesis también presenta una arquitectura {abs}{trac}{ta}, que redefine el modelo como un conjunto de funcionalidades que pueden ser fácilmente incorporadas a una plataforma multiagente real. Esta arquitectura sigue un enfoque orientado a servicios, de modo que las funcionalidades de traza son ofrecidas por parte de la plataforma de manera similar a los servicios tradicionales. De esta forma, el trazado de eventos puede ser considerado como una fuente adicional de información para las entidades del sistema multiagente y, como tal, puede integrarse en el proceso de desarrollo software desde sus primeras etapas. / [CA] Al llarg dels últims anys, els sistemes multiagent han demostrat ser un paradigma potent i versàtil, amb un gran potencial a l'hora de resoldre problemes complexes a entorns dinàmics i distribuïts, gràcies al seu comportament flexible i adaptatiu. Aquest potencial no és només degut a les característiques individuals dels agents (com són la seua autonomia, i les capacitats de reacció i raonament), sinó també a la seua capacitat de comunicació i cooperació a l'hora d'aconseguir els seus objectius. De fet, per damunt de la capacitat individual dels agents, es aquest comportament social el que dóna potencial als sistemes multiagent. El comportament social dels sistemes multiagent solen desenvolupar-se utilitzant abstraccions, protocols i llenguatges d'alt nivell, els quals, al seu torn, es basen normalment a la capacitat dels agents de comunicar-se i interactuar de manera indirecta (o com a mínim, es beneficien en gran mesura d'aquesta capacitat). Tanmateix, al procés de desenvolupament software, aquests conceptes d'alt nivell son suportats habitualment d'una manera dèbil, mitjançant mecanismes com la missatgeria tradicional, la difusió massiva o l'ús de pissarres, o mitjançant solucions totalment ad hoc. Aquesta carència d'un suport genèric i apropiat per a la comunicació indirecta als sistemes multiagent reals compromet el seu potencial. Aquesta tesi doctoral proposa l'ús del traçat d'esdeveniments com un suport flexible, efectiu i eficient per a la comunicació indirecta a sistemes multiagent. La principal contribució d'aquesta tesi és TRAMMAS, un model genèric i abstracte per a donar suport al traçat d'esdeveniments a sistemes multiagent. El model permet a qualsevol entitat del sistema compartir la seua informació amb la forma d'esdeveniments de traça, de tal forma que qualsevol altra entitat que necessite aquesta informació siga capaç de rebre-la. Junt amb el model, la tesi també presenta una arquitectura abstracta, que redefineix el model com un conjunt de funcionalitats que poden ser fàcilment incorporades a una plataforma multiagent real. Aquesta arquitectura segueix un enfoc orientat a serveis, de manera que les funcionalitats de traça són oferides per part de la plataforma de manera similar als serveis tradicionals. D'aquesta manera, el traçat d'esdeveniments pot ser considerat com una font addicional d'informació per a les entitats del sistema multiagent, i com a tal, pot integrar-se al procés de desenvolupament software des de les seues primeres etapes. / Búrdalo Rapa, LA. (2016). TRAMMAS: Enhancing Communication in Multiagent Systems [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/61765 / Compendio

In Swahili language proficiency is measured in terms of a speakers knowledge and use of methali (proverbs), misemo (sayings), mafumbo (riddles) and vijembe (sharp comments). The aim of the paper is to show the different uses of mafumbo and vijembe. Their meanings are at first sight hidden to the addressee, but understood in the context of their use. Mafumbo can be used as teasing, as circumscription for parts of the body of which it is taboo to speak of, as moral reprimands and warnings, and as a secret language between intimate partners or groups of people. Vijembe - `What cuts more than a knive? - the tongue´ - are used on kanga and in newspapers. An important feature of vijembe is that it always asks for an answer, therefore has a strong aspect of competition.