Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Globalisation has led to the use of English lingua franca (ELF) in many international classrooms and in the majority of the South African tertiary education institutions. The South African situation and use of ELF is grounded in the historic developments of the country and an understanding that it is an international requirement for individuals to have access to English language skills to enable them to realise their potential and participate fully within South African society (CHE, 2002:4). While the development of the previously neglected field of African languages as scientific and academic languages remains a priority, examining the use of ELF in the South African tertiary classroom is essential; therefore, this study explores the use of ELF in the South African tertiary education classroom to understand the role of linguistic diversity in the learning environment. Particular attention is directed to the linguistic repertoires of students, their codeswitching behaviour and instances of miscommunication. The study was conducted at a university of technology and participants were observed during group work sessions, which culminated in a formal assessment. Questionnaires were also utilised to gain further data for analysis. Findings indicate that the role of English as a global economic language should not be underestimated. However, the promotion of multilingualism is advocated and attention should be given to not only the promulgation of language policies, but also their implementation. Furthermore, flexibility in language should be encouraged, with a move away from the traditional use of one language for teaching and learning to a translanguaging classroom and an assessment environment, which brings to the forefront the benefits of translanguaging, where one language is used to reinforce and increase understanding in the other languages (Garcia & Wei, 2014:64). This will assist students to reach their full potential in the tertiary education environment. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Globalisasie het gelei tot die gebruik van Engelse lingua franca (ELF) in baie internasionale klaskamers, sowel as in die meerderheid van Suid-Afrika se tersiêre onderwysinsitute. Die Suid-Afrikaanse situasie en die gebruik van ELF is gegrond op die historiese ontwikkelings in die land. Elke student moet, om sy volle potensiaal te ontwikkel en volkome deel te wees van die Suid-Afrikaanse gemeenskap, Engels taalvaardig wees, wat in elk geval 'n internasionale vereiste is (CHE, 2002:4). Terwyl die ontwikkeling van Afrika-tale (wat voorheen nie so baie aandag gekry het nie) as 'n wetenskap- en akademiese taal steeds die voorkeur geniet, moet die ondersoek in die gebruik van ELF in die Suid Afrikaanse klaskamers gesien word as ʼn uiters belangrike onderwerp. Hierdie navorsing ondersoek die gebruik van ELF in die Suid-Afrikaanse tersiêre klaskamer. Die doel is dan om die rol van linguistieke diversiteit in die leeromgewing, naamlik die klaskamer, na te vors. Spesifieke aandag is gegee aan die studente se linguistieke vaardighede, kodewisseling en kommunikasiebreuke. Hierdie navorsing is gedoen by 'n universiteit van tegnologie en deelnemers is waargeneem tydens groepwerksessies. Die waarnemings is ten slotte saamgevat in 'n formele assessering. Vraelyste is ook gebruik om inligting te verkry vir verdere ontleding. Bevindings het bewys dat die rol van Engels as ʼn globale ekonomiese taal nie onderskat moet word nie. Alhoewel die bevordering van veeltaligheid bepleit word, moet aandag nie net gegee word aan die teorie van taalbeleide nie, maar ook aan die uitvoering hiervan. Buigsaamheid moet verder in taalonderrig aangemoedig word deur weg te beweeg van die tradisionele gebruik van slegs een taal vir onderrig en leer. Daar behoort dus meer as een taal in die klaskamer en op assesseringsgebiede gebruik te word; dit sal lei tot die versterking en beter verstandhouding tussen tale (Garcia & Wei, 2014:64). Dit sal leerders ondersteun om hulle volle potensiaal te bereik in ʼn tersiêre onderwys-omgewing.

Comment former au mieux un professeur de Français Langue Etrangère (FLE) avec une compétence en Communication Interculturelle dans un pays où les échanges interculturels naturels sont réduits par rapport à d’autres pays plus francophones? C’est une problématique sur le point d’être aborder en Colombie. En effet, il existe des recherches autour de l’interculturel, dans des contextes comptant d’innumérables immigrants et des mélanges de différentes cultures provenant de divers pays. Cependant, dans notre recherche, la problématique est née du manque de ces interactions au quotidien. La question se pose donc dans l´absence de l’exigence du contexte d’établir un échange interculturel exolingue qui donne comme conséquence la faiblesse d’une compétence en Communication Interculturelle. La recherche s´intéresse donc à mettre en évidence l’importance d’une dynamique de la Communication Interculturelle dans l´apprentissage d´une langue étrangère, le français, en dehors de son contexte familier (le bassin francophone) et utilise comme outils de recollection d’information l’observation, les rencontres interculturelles synchrones et asynchrones, les enquêtes, les questionnaires ou encore les rapports réflexifs, qui plus tard seront interprétés à travers le logiciel Atlas Ti. Comme résultat de la recherche, l’auteur propose une méthode d’apprentissage de la langue étrangère, à l’intérieur de l’approche interculturelle, en tenant compte des caractéristiques de la ville où le processus d´apprentissage a lieu ainsi que les caractéristiques des enseignants de FLE en formation, afin de développer leur compétence en Communication Interculturelle. / How to educate a foreign French language (FLE) teacher with a competence in intercultural communication in a country where the daily intercultural exchanges are limited? This is an avid question for being studied in Colombia. In effect, there are researches about the intercultural, in the contexts with a lot of immigrants and with the mixture of different cultures from diverse countries. Nevertheless, in our research, the problem exists because in Colombia there isn’t this type of exchanges in the daily life of young students. The problems were born because the context doesn’t demand to have an intercultural exchange in foreign language. This situation provokes consequences like the feebleness in the competence in intercultural communication. The research is interested in showing the importance of a dynamic intercultural communication in a process of learning foreign language, the French, out of its familiar context. The research uses like instruments of information recollection: the observation, the synchronous and asynchronous intercultural interchanges, the interviews, the questionnaires, and reflexive reports. The compiler information is analyzed throw the software Atlas TI. Finally the research proposes a method for the learning of foreign languages in relation to the intercultural approach and takes account the important aspect of the city’s characteristics, where the process of learning is happening, and the students’ feature. The objective of the method suggests developing the competence in an intercultural communication in the teacher’s French Foreign language (FLE) in formation in Colombia.

Magister Artium - MA / In recent years South Africa has seen a significant growth in the number of migrants entering its borders. The country has opened its doors to not only migrants from the African continent, but also to immigrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Indian subcontinent. The increasing number of Chinese businesses in South Africa means that South Africans are now coming into fairly regular contact with Chinese people from mainland China. This study addresses the issue of intercultural communication between Chinese store keepers and South African customers and seeks to investigate the ways in which the two juxtaposed cultures communicate effectively despite linguistic and cultural barriers. As a study on intercultural communication, the theoretical framework for this is globalisation, with a particular focus on concepts like intercultural communication, politeness and face theory. The study adopts a qualitative research design with an ethnographic methodological approach to examine and describe the linguistic practices of Chinese and South Africans in the city of Cape Town when they interact in the business contexts. The study relies largely on interviews with Chinese business owners and their South African clients, as well as observation of the interaction between these two groups. The research population consists of 8 Chinese interviewees, random interviews with 4 customers and 4 shop assistants, and observation at stores in a local China Town (a collection of Chinese shops and businesses). For research purposes and for the sake of informed consent, a Chinese research assistant and translator assisted the principal researcher. The major tool for analysis is a content analysis of the transcribed interviews. From these transcribed interviews, I describe the strategies used for effective intercultural communication between the two groups, and aim to draw conclusions on how these strategies have enabled Chinese businesses to flourish in Cape Town.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Life in the twenty-first Century globalised world brings people into contact with others from different cultures who use different languages. Through these contacts, the need for interactions makes these people to find different ways of understanding one another and to generate knowledge. For them to achieve this objective, they need a strong medium. L2 and Foreign language education has been develop to unravel such challenges posed to competence in intercultural communication, with the emphasis placed on how to communicate with a different "other" since the world is now a small village. Foreign and second language teaching and learning (a social practice) in this study, is tangible to eradicate linguistic and cultural barriers. In this case, it does not only require to promote competence through linguistic capital (language), but more importantly, it arouses intercultural awareness. For these issues to develop and consolidate intercultural communication competence, language practitioners need to deviate from the rationalist reductionistic approaches to language teaching and learning in favour of an ecological or a constructivist perspective, which views language learning as a social practice. In view of this, whatever language the participants may use for communication does not matter, what really matters is that they need to switch to any given language as a situation may demand. In upholding a constructivist perspective, this research hypothesized that engagement and participation as a social practice, does not only increase competence in the target language, but it also helps the participants to develop in terms of emotional maturity and character (Bilton and Sivasubramaniam 2009). This research made use of the qualitative research methodology, revolving around an ethnographic design, to understand the outcomes and the fluidity of interactions among a diverse community of the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. Such an understanding can therefore only be deduced from the perspectives of the role-players through their engagements and participation in activities and events in and out of the classrooms. The research population constituted lecturers, tutors and students of the above institution. The four principal tools used for data collection included: the Interviews, Questionnaires, Naturally Occurring data and Participant Observation. The interviews were both formal and informal and together with the Questionnaires, they were all open-ended. Their open-ended nature was not only because of the interaction it provided between the researcher and the researched but also because they aroused an awareness of diversity and a need to understand otherness. The findings from the study affirmed that the participants gained competence in intercultural communication through the different levels of interactions that were used to enhance participation, engagement and involvement. In view of this, the participants benefited from provisional understanding, tentative interpretations and the affective environment. Furthermore, it could be said that interactions provided them the rationale to challenge, develop and explore ideas and meanings for communication. Holistically, the study attested to the importance and centrality of participation and engagement in a target language, with the main aim of motivating the participants to understand that there is no such thing as correctness in meaning or proficiency in a language, nor in understanding the world around them.

What does it mean to link one's own history to that of another person or group of people? In what sense can a given history be 'one's own' or 'another's'? This thesis investigates movements between histories in three autobiographical texts which confront intergenerational shifts in language, triggered by the legacies of violent histories. Nabokov charts his movement from the Russian to the English language against the backdrop of the October Revolution, the Second World War and the Cold War. Perec's text confronts the silences in his family history produced by the death of his father in the Second World War and his mother's deportation to Auschwitz. His autobiography engages with a family history of displacement and movement between religious affiliations, countries, alphabets and languages, triggered by multiple waves of anti-Semitism, culminating with his mother's death in the Holocaust. Chamoiseau explores the ambivalent cultural and linguistic affiliations produced by a post- or neo-colonial childhood in Martinique. The thesis argues that in such contexts the links between the author's life and the lives of previous generations take on a central importance. Further, it demonstrates that each author goes beyond his own collective history to forge links between his life and those of other people who have lived through or are still suffering the legacies of different histories of violence and oppression. Though these movements have sometimes been noted, the original contribution of this thesis is that it argues such movements are central to the autobiographical texts under discussion. It looks at why and how inter-generational shifts in language inflect these authors' approach to the connections between their own histories and those of other people, and tests what is to be gained when the critic takes up the comparative interpretive framework these texts establish. By opening up a dialogue between these texts and a range of current theories of traumatic memory, inter-generational transmission of memory and 'multidirectional' memory, it finds that a comparative approach has the potential to enrich and nuance current debates in these areas.

This study compares the speech acts of apology of Saudi learners of English with those of American English native speakers to investigate the intercultural communication competence of second language learners. The investigation is based on 120 apology responses from Saudi learners of English and native speakers of American English. The responses were collected through a discourse completion task. The participants from both groups utilized the same five strategies mentioned by Cohen and Olshtain (1981): apology expressions, explanations, promises of forbearance, acknowledgments of responsibility, and offers of repair. Results showed no difference in the types of apology strategies adopted, but the frequency of using these strategies varied. The frequency of use of the strategies significantly varied only for the offers of repair and promises of forbearance. The results also indicated that the two most universal strategies used were apology expressions and explanations. Furthermore, the most common strategies that were often combined together were expressions and explanations. This study supports Taguchi's (2011) statement on the possible effect of learners' English proficiency on their speech act productions. Moreover, social power has a noticeable impact on students' production of the five apology strategies. Results indicated that the higher the social power of the offended, the more apology strategies he/she seemed to have received. Results from the current study and studies like this are informative to not only the speech act literature but also the study of intercultural communication, the globalization of American universities, and the development of Saudi cultural missions.

Here, I bring communication theories into conversation with peace and conflict scholarship. Specifically, I explore how the ways in which women narrate their experiences of violent conflict through sewing collectives can inform conflict transformation work. I engage in this exploration within the framework of narrative theory, using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to analyze the narratives presented in a selection of textile pieces created by women in Chile, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. I situate this project within literature pertaining to feminist approaches to rhetoric, discussions of bridgework in identity negotiation from intercultural communication, concerns related to conflict transformation, and work with socially engaged art. Finally, I bring these analyses into conversation with one another to consider how women rhetors may inform conflict transformation through their textile work. In particular, I discuss how each of these rhetors offers the narrative elements to reconstitute collective identities, providing an avenue toward peace in their own settings.

This empirical study examines politeness phenomena in the English of first and second language students at an academic institution. Using the theoretical framework of the CCSARP, a OCT and a qualitative questionnaire were used to analyze the speech act realizations of requests and apologies. The main objective of the study was to establish the extent of differences in the choice of speech act realizations and whether distinct patterns of speech act behaviour obtained. Findings show evidence of a difference in preference for positive and negative politeness strategies. The L2's expressed more of a concern for solidarity, than for social distance and deference, using in-group markers to signal social closeness. The L 1 's use of internal modification, in the form of downgraders, exhibited negative politeness. The frequent use of indirectness, especially hints, reflected a hesitancy to impose. Results from the investigation could have implications for enhancing cross-cultural communication. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

abstract: This dissertation aimed to identify the factors that facilitated the friendship initiation, development, and maintenance between Taiwanese and Chinese students and the influential relationship among those factors. Nine Taiwanese and nine Chinese students studying at one Taiwanese university were recruited for this study. The Chinese students were in Taiwan for at least two years. The participants were friends with the other party for at least 8 months. This study was divided into three stages. In the first stage, participants were required to provide factors that facilitated their friendship with the other party. Fifty ideas were collected. In the second stage, participants were asked to clarify those factors and then categorize those factors. Fourteen categories were identified in this stage. The participants, then, voted on factors that affected their friendship formation, development, and maintenance with other party. Fifteen factors were voted the highest among those factors. Those 15 factors were imported into interpretive structure modeling (ISM) software for the next stage. In the third stage, 18 one-on-one interviews were conducted, and 18 ISM diagrams were generated. ISM provided a method to identify the influential relationship among those factors. According to the results, the friendship formation model was proposed. Five stages were identified in this model: exploring, matching, engaging, deepening and bonding. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2016

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 / Within China's the hotel industry, they are known as expatriate managers and. on behalf of parent multinational hotel corporations, provide an element of control and co-ordination within local operating units. On average, organisations spend over two and a half times more money to send an employee on an expatriate assignment than they would if they hired employees locally. Expatriate managers have been faced with new and complex organisational cultures and work practices. In order to avoid expensive failure costs and to manage suci:essfuJly, an exploration of the issues that face international hotel managers in China. is both timely and relevant A qualitative case study approach was used for this thesis, while secondaIy dala was obtained from private, as well as public sources. Primary data was collected via questionnaires from hotel managers comprising both locals and expatriates. whilSt specific questions were exclusively posed to expatriate managers. Through collection and analysis of infonnation and data, and a thorough understanding of the research problem, this study provides a useful reference for expatriate hotel managers who are confronled with the issues of managing Chinese employees, as well as basic Chinese cultural, ethical and business valUes. Primarily this research examines challenges, which mostly arise from cross-cuIturaI differences between Westem and Chinese values, as well as a range of diverse organisational cultures and management styles within China's hotel industry. South Africa has become China's the biggest trading partner within Africa, while an increasing number of South African companies invest in China. The research is paramount to any foreign organisation that wants to conduct business in China.