Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene suggests a world in which humans and non-humans are inextricably entangled, a world in which global ecological devastation demands new ways of relating across disciplines and across differences, a world in which strategic coalitions across disciplines—fluid transdisciplinary coalitions—are badly needed. Haraway suggests sympoiesis, or making-with, as a move toward response-ability. In this project, I embrace the rich fabric of Narrative Inquiry in English Education and knit a diffractive, transdisciplinary reading of current debates in reading/literacy studies, composing speculative fiction as I compose my own approaches to teaching and research and figure a sympoietic pedagogy.

Communication skills and interpersonal relationships have been receiving an increasing amount of attention in literature on workplace culture. Being polite serves a significant role in building up a harmonious working environment, and in enhancing communication efficiency. Current approaches to politeness have called for a more comprehensive framework than the polite-impolite continuum. There is a growing tendency to view politeness as a matter of appropriateness, which involves the negotiation of relationships. This new trend is represented by Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management theory. While rapport management has been framed within the study of workplace culture or communities of practice (CofP), little empirical research has investigated its application in intercultural settings. The present study has continued the focus of building up and maintaining rapport at work, which draws attention to intercultural communicative behaviour as it arises in a multicultural context. In essence, the purpose of this study is to examine how people from different cultural backgrounds manage rapport at work, and consequently explore how the workplace culture is shaped. It also aims to document and examine the change and development of workplace culture with the participation of different members. A multi-method approach underpins the study, which enables the research concern to be looked at from different perspectives. This approach, involving the adoption of workplace observation, audio recording of conversations, and semi-structured interviews, overcomes the weakness of using one single instrument to analyse communicative behaviour. Situated in a multi-cultural university workplace in Mainland China, the research makes use of naturally-occurring interactions between Chinese and foreign (American and European) teaching-related staff. The study is composed of two phases with some overlap of participants. Conversations are analyzed using Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management theory. While audio recording serves as the primary tool to collect data, follow-up and in-depth interviews were conducted in which participants were asked to recall and evaluate others’ and their own communicative behaviour. Findings from the data analysis suggest that participants exhibit an appropriate amount of their own inherent behaviour. Each of them contributes their own cultural traits and personalities to the intercultural communication process, which ultimately determines the general tendency of rapport management style. A diversity of rapport management strategies is identified according to participants’ different rapport management orientations and individual dispositions. Some features of the workiii place culture are thus clearly revealed. Neither the local Chinese staff nor the foreign (native English-speaking) staff behave in a way that could be described as typical of their own culture; their behaviour conforms to a hybridized culture which shows characteristics of both the local Chinese and foreign cultures. The comparison of results from the two phases indicates that the workplace culture evolves according to the cultural and personal attributes displayed by participants. This process is associated with a pidgin language analogy. This study therefore yields a better understanding of the dynamic nature of intercultural workplace communication. While there has long been debate and emphasis on adaptation to a workplace culture, the present study suggests that cultural hybridization is the trend in such a multicultural university workplace. It is therefore implied that in order to manage rapport appropriately in intercultural communication, it is important to be able to negotiate one’s behavioural norms to the workplace culture instead of only acclimating oneself to the local culture.

The object of this investigation is to determine whether two aspects of reference group orientation, 1) multiplicity and 2) structural variation, are possible indicators of ethnocentrism. Most of the thesis is devoted to a theoretical formulation in which reference group orientation and ethnocentrism are placed in a peroeptual framework. Reference group orientation is defined as a person's use of a frame of reference that is formed through adoption of a reference group's perspective. Ethnocentrism is defined as a person's use of a frame of reference that keeps him from accepting the viability of other cultural frames of reference. The acceptance of the viability of other cultural frames of reference is defined as ethnorelativism. A flexible formation of cultural identity creates the conditions for a large number (relatively high multiplicity) and broad diversity (relatively high structural variation) of reference group orientations. It is hypothesized that those people who are aware of higher multiplicity and higher structural variation of reference group orientations will be more likely to accept the viability of other cultural frames of reference.

The purposes of this study were (a) to replicate previous research reporting actor-observer differences in subjects' attributions about behavioral causality, and (b) to manipulate the availability of causal information so that those actor-observer differences would be eliminated.

This is a study of how certain cultural differences between Japanese and Americans might be problematic in Japanese/American intercultural marriage.

The purpose of this research study was to analyze the success of the Peace Corps' Municipal Development Program in its role as a change agent in the empowerment of rural Guatemalan women, and includes an exploration into the intercultural factors that may have affected the outcomes. I used my Peace Corps site of Santa Cruz El Chol, Guatemala as the case study for this research. I reviewed literature in five areas to use as a foundation to guide my research. This included literature regarding Guatemalan history and Guatemalan women's issues, women's empowerment in the international development context, Peace Corps, change agentry, and intercultural relations. I obtained data from four different groups. I interviewed a focus group of female leaders from El Chol, obtained questionnaires from 42 rural women from El Chol and its surrounding villages, interviewed three Peace Corps Guatemala staff members, and gathered surveys from 18 returned Peace Corps volunteers. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered via open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, and scale-based questions. An analysis of the findings revealed implications in three areas. The first area focused on Guatemalan women who are especially vulnerable to institutional and domestic violence, which leads to a lack of educational and economic opportunities and continues to prevent their empowerment. Next, the Peace Corps volunteers were generally satisfied with their service, but felt traits of Guatemalan society and culture prevented them from positively influencing women's empowerment. Additionally, findings revealed that Peace Corps volunteers served as change agents in that they saw themselves and were seen by others as positive role models for the Guatemalan women with whom they worked. Finally, time management styles, differences in perception of gender roles, and direct versus indirect communication styles sometimes clashed to cause issues in U.S. American and Guatemalan abilities to work effectively together.

In this dissertation, I explore how crossing national borders has made me aware of the many identity borders that I have crossed as a transnational Chinese, and how I am caught up in identity politics between the “Chinese,” who do not necessarily always identify as “Chinese” in the transnational context. However, as a racialized group in the U.S., transnational Chinese are perceived as a homogeneous population, usually through racially (“Yellow Peril” or “Chinese Virus”) and politically (“Red Scare”) charged lenses measured by Western/U.S. binaristic and hierarchical standards. Therefore, in this research project, I problematize dominant U.S. race logic, i.e., the White/Non-White binary, for its limited capabilities of understanding and explaining identity, communication, culture, and power in an increasingly interconnected world; and I also call for an alternative theorizing of race and identity in the transnational context. Border crossings within the conditions of contemporary globalization have intensified interconnectivities and complicated how we comprehend and communicate our identities. It thus becomes essential to find ways to “unsettle and restage” racial and cultural differences in the context of globalization (Shome & Hegde, 2002a, p. 174-5). With a different skin color, speaking English with a foreign accent while being perceived as “Model Minorities,” transnational Chinese have lately been ascribed with another pathologized identity label: “Chinese Virus,” which may be understood as an extension of the “Yellow Peril” rhetoric. Furthermore, within the Chinese communities, due to historical reasons, colonialism, political unrest, and civil war, many Taiwanese and Hong Kongers identify themselves very differently from mainland Chinese. When crossing borders to live together in the U.S., the identity tensions among Chinese ethnicities in addition to the interracial confrontations between transnational Chinese and local racial groups only make understanding what it means to be Chinese on the racial landscape of the U.S. even more complex.I weave together Yep’s (2010) notion of thick(er) intersectionalities and Kraidy’s (2005) description of transnationalism to build my conceptual framework. On the one hand, thick(er) intersectionalities advocates for more complex and embodied ways of theorizing intersectional identities and “the interplay between individual subjectivity, personal agency, systemic arrangements, and structural forces” (p. 173). On the other, transnationalism helps make sense of transnational identities with “a shifting location of contradictions that straddles multiple viewpoints,” which cannot be defined “in binary and essentialist terms” (Bardhan & Zhang, 2017, p. 288). I thus examine why an in-depth, transnational understanding of Chinese identity is necessary and how to move toward such an understanding, including that of racial, cultural, linguistic, and political identities of transnational Chinese living in the U.S., especially in the context of the current trade tensions between the U.S. and China, two nations tightly connected economically while largely differing culturally and politically.Methodologically, I employ a mixed-method approach by applying autoethnography and in-depth interview as my primary research methods. The dissertation mainly addresses three research questions through a communicative lens: 1) What does it mean to live in the U.S. as transnational Chinese? 2) How do transnational Chinese make sense of Chinese-ness(es) in such a context? 3) What is at stake in understanding Chinese-ness in a transnational context that necessitates an alternative theorization of race to the dominant/White U.S. race ideology? The findings show that there is no singular definition of what Chinese-ness(es) is(are) and what it(they) entail(s). It is a thick and fluid concept that is unique to each transnational Chinese based on their lived experiences and subjected to their own understandings while also constrained in the larger social framework by Chinese and U.S. cultural scripts and contexts. Chinese-ness, to transnational Chinese, cannot be compartmentalized in the limited identity categories specific to either cultural context. Being exposed to a broader world with multiple cultural references, they are flexible enough to creatively identify, dis-identify, or even counter-identify with either their avowed identities, or ascribed identities, or both in either or both cultural contexts. The complexities, specificities, and particularities of their transnational identity experiences, thus, cannot be adequately understood within the confines of simple intersections of U.S.-centric identity categories. I conclude that Chinese-ness(es) is local and global, racial and ethnic, cultural and political, and spatial and temporal. There is no such thing as a singular, uniform Chinese-ness. Not even in the imaginary. This study may contribute to critical intercultural communication scholarship by situating knowledge of race, identity, and power in a very specific and complex context that includes the U.S. but is transnational in scope. Further, with an aim to provincialize dominant U.S. race logic, it makes an effort to transnationalize and internationalize theorizing of race and identity. Finally, speaking in a voice from a non-Western perspective currently situated in the West, I practice self-reflexivity throughout my writing with the hope of avoiding re-essentializing identity, race, and power in a covert “oppressor-oppressed” Manichean dualism that I attempt to deconstruct.

This study utilized in-depth, one-on-one interviews to examine the experiences, attitudes, and opinions, with regard to their use of the Internet for online intercultural communication (OIC), of a culturally diverse sample of 17 members of the global online social community, Interpals. The purpose of this study was threefold: first, the study sought to determine how OIC is shaping the intercultural perceptions of English-speaking Interpals members; second, the study sought to determine how OIC shapes and/or reinforces the cultural identities of English-speaking Interpals members; and finally, the study set out to examine the various ways that English-speaking Interpals members are using their community to engage with people from a variety of different geographical locations and cultural backgrounds. The themes and subthemes that emerged during analysis of the interview data led to the discovery of a typology of three distinct uses, each of which provided valuable information about how members are coming to feel more interconnected with—and understanding of—cultures that differ from their own. Through the first use, Interpals as a Place to Connect, participants demonstrated that the online community puts them in contact not only with people from countries and cultures that they originally intended to interact with when they joined the community, but also with people from countries and cultures that they knew nothing about. Participants claimed that these unanticipated interactions often caused them to become more knowledgeable and understanding of cultures that differ from their own. As to the second use, Interpals as an Escape, a number of participants claimed that the community gives them a way to escape the tedium, monotony, and poor living conditions of everyday life in their own villages, towns, and cities, by providing them with a way to virtually explore alternative and unfamiliar people, places, and lifestyles. Through the final use, Interpals as a Classroom, participants demonstrated that the community is a place where they can teach and learn foreign languages, which helps them to feel more connected to people from around the world. Several participants also claimed to use Interpals as a tool for teaching and showing other members what life is really like where they live. The study also found that OIC, at least in the context of the global online social community, can facilitate the shaping of a global village where the villagers maintain their own unique cultural identities and come together to form a cultural mosaic, as opposed to being shaped and transformed by the dominant global cultures.

The number of senior missionaries serving missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has increased in recent years. Many of these volunteers travel overseas and are therefore immersed in a different culture. Some of them adjust successfully and others do not. The purpose of this research was to assess senior missionaries' perceptions of the type of preparation they made and training they received before departure, the expectations they had of their assignment, the people and way of life in the islands, and the accuracy of those expectations, the challenges they faced, the factors that they felt helped them adjust to these challenges, the advice they would give to future senior missionaries, and the recommendations if any they would give to improve their training. Participants consisted of 37 senior missionaries currently serving on the islands of Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, and Kiribati. The instrument used in this study was a questionnaire containing both quantitative and qualitative questions. Analysis of the quantitative data showed that subjects identified their previous experience living in the country and conversations with other Americans who had been to the country as the most helpful way to prepare for their assignment. The subjects felt that the most helpful aspect of the formal training was training that focused on their specific area of responsibility. The subjects reported having some challenges with the climate, the people, and the language barriers they encountered. Factors that were identified as being very helpful to participants in adjusting to the challenges included spiritual factors (such as prayer and scripture study), building good relationships with the local people and other missionary couples, maintaining contact with home, maintaining a positive attitude, striving to be tolerant, support from non-native supervisors, and staying active/busy. Analysis of the qualitative data showed that the participants felt that learning some of the host language, and learning more about the host culture prior to departure would be particularly beneficial. They also indicated that although training was provided prior to departure, the training needed to be more specific to their individual assignments, and it needed to involve some language and cultural training. In addition, it was also apparent that regardless of whether or not the missionaries had had previous experience living overseas, most of the subjects had a good idea what they where undertaking before they left home.

<p>Job crafting refers to work-related behaviors employees take to make their job better fit with their preferences. While job crafting is based on the premise that employees can make such proactive changes on their own volition, recent work has suggested social context plays an important role in determining whether an employee has the opportunities and ability to engage in job crafting. Such contextual factors include the level of support one’s manager provides as well as one’s ability to obtain instrumental resources such as information and advice as well as emotional resources such as social support from the wider organizational community. Applying conservation of resources (COR) theory, Study 1 proposes that when a manager is perceived to provide a low level of support, employees can leverage their social network in order to engage in job crafting initiatives. For instance, when one’s manager offers relatively little encouragement and availability, it can hinder their subordinate’s ability to engage in job crafting. Additionally, when one’s manager has relatively low status in the organization, they may be less able to help their subordinates develop a network to obtain the types of instrumental resources that fuel job crafting behaviors. Findings based on a survey of 276 full-time workers suggest that employees seeking to job craft can compensate for their manager’s shortcomings by building bonding social capital in the former scenario (i.e., when the manager offers little encouragement and availability) and bridging social capital in the latter (i.e., when the manager has relatively low status). Study 2 focuses on the extent to which employees with differing dispositions towards their work engage in different kinds of job crafting behaviors. Findings from survey data (<em>n</em> = 307) suggest that compared to career orientation (i.e., the tendency to view work as a means for advancement and status enhancement), calling orientation (i.e., the tendency to view work as one’s “calling” in life) reduces the tendency for employees to engage in withdrawal behaviors. However, both calling and career orientation were associated with the tendency to proactively leverage technological and other knowledge-based resources in the execution of their work. Additionally, the study tests how virtual work contexts may influence how employees across different dispositional types engage in specified forms of job crafting. Findings suggest these dynamics persist regardless of telecommuting frequency. Implications for theory and practice are provided for both Studies 1 and 2. </p>