The object of this research was to discover whether the related concepts of "practical certainty" (Dewey) and "going on" (Wittgenstein) might shed light on the nature of successful intercultural communication and how it is accomplished. The inquiry is significant because much of the research in the field to date is product- not process-oriented and involves models difficult to translate into practical life. The methodology involved the assumption that utility is a more suitable research goal than truth. Student-teacher interactions were taped in two kinds of class conferences at the University of New Hampshire, (1) foreign students being taught by an American, and (2) American students being taught by a Chinese woman. Participants were also interviewed. The concepts "practical certainty" and "going on" were found to shed new light on how successful intercultural communication is actually "done."

This is a report of an ethnographic study of a graduate-level Methods course for ESL/Bilingual teachers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The course is organized around task-based, small group, collaborative learning. One of the intriguing aspects of the course is the opportunities it provides for students to learn about Whole Language teaching and collaborative learning both by studying about these topics as part of the course content and by experiencing them as students within the class. This study researched the enactment of collaborative learning by investigating the discourse of one of the course's small groups. My research questions revolved issues of voice--the conditions in which students are both able to speak and to be heard--in the small group. The structure and distribution of voice among group members was a primary research focus. A theoretical framework was developed which allows the concept of voice to be operationalized for purposes of discourse analysis. Voice emerges out of the social interactions of participants engaged in an institutionally situated activity and cannot be reduced solely to the characteristics or performance of an individual (cf. McDermott, 1986). The structure of the group's collaborative dialogue, a set of communal norms operating within the group, and the social context created within the course are investigated through a micro-analysis of the group discourse. The findings reveal a set of norms operating within the small group: active participation, students viewing one another as "resources," and the privileging of members' personal knowledge. These norms, among others, created the social conditions necessary for a truly collaborative dialogue. However, these norms also proved problematic as they fostered a set of communal tensions related to the educational ramifications of muting the instructor's voice and the ways that the discourse structure positioned a Japanese member of the group. Her minimal participation in the group's early meetings, the negotiations which took place to ensure that she would have a voice, and her own revealing views of collaborative dialogue provide rich insights into the complex nature of multicultural, collaborative learning.

This dissertation presents a rich, detailed account of lived experiences of Koreans, Americans, and Korean-Americans in a multicultural Korean business organization. Guided by the coordinated management of meaning theory as the theoretical and methodological framework, this study looks at the organization as a co-created, co-evolving interactive system. Thus, it closely examines communication among the participants as everyday practices in which to explore "goings-on" in the organization. The main focus of this study is on the extent to which cultural differences afford or constrain coordination among people, and create problems such as tensions and conflict in the organization. Six episodes were reconstructed based on various stories "told" and "lived" by the participants, and presented as major "goings-on" in the organization. The main findings centered around the issues of cultural adaptation, differentiation/division/discrimination, harmony, biculturalism, and language. These issues were manifested in various instances of situated interaction. They constrained coordination and coherence, and thus contributed to the creation, sustenance and transformation of tensions and conflict within the organization. The comparative analysis of different episodes, especially revealed the intricate ways in which various patterns of interactive relationships not only emerge and sustain, but also transform over time. The dissertation has two major theoretical implications for intercultural studies. First, it supports and extends literature on general cultural patterns by illustrating detailed ways in which this general knowledge is manifested in situated moments of intercultural interaction. It shows us, in detail, the process in which a particular intercultural situation is constructed in a unique and complex way. The second implication is that this study is capable of accounting for the process of transformation. In other words, this study provides the elaborate ways in which cultural patterns not only emerge and sustain but also transform in practice. This ever changing, rather than fixed, role of cultural differences is unconvered by the comparative analysis of different episodes that occured in different time. The study also introduces the problems of bi-cultural persons in multicultural organizations.

This diploma thesis deals with development of communicational skills in children with hearing impairments in preschool. In this case communication is considered to bean atribute of society and it alsosals with the basic of human communication. It presents hearing impairments, its classification and the posibilities of auditory prostheses. It dis scuses the development of human speech and the influence of hearing impairments on it, the possibilities of communication and education of children with hearing impairments. It al so deals with the importace of preschooleducation, and mainparts of rehabilitation in kindergarten (Holečkova street, Prague). There search answers, if this kindergarten possitivelyaffects the development of children's socialskills . And also how importantisthe size of hearingloss and the family background for the communnication development.