1_Linguistics and Intercultural communication.pdfVIP

Language and Linguistic Compass 1/3 2007 : 208–226, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00012.x Linguistics and Intercultural Communication Ingrid Piller* Macquarie University Abstract Our times are often referred to as the ‘new world order’ with its ‘new economy’. What this means is that capitalism has been restructured on a global scale, and people of widely different cultural and linguistic backgrounds have been thrown into contact more than ever before. Cultural and linguistic contact may occur in the flows of information and mass media, as well as in the flows of actual people in migration and tourism. Given the ubiquity of cultural and linguistic contact, mergers and hybrids, it is unsurprising that there should be a strong interest in Intercultural Communication, both outside and inside academia. Linguistics as a discipline makes two key contributions to the study of Intercultural Communication. i It is the key contribution of discourse analysis and anthropological linguistics to take culture as empirical and cultural identity, difference and similarity as discursive constructions. ii Intercultural Communication by its very nature entails the use of different languages and/or language varieties and sociolinguistics, particularly bilingualism studies, illuminates the differential prestige of languages and language varieties and the differential access that speakers enjoy to them. Introduction The term ‘Intercultural Communication’ is used in at least three distinct ways in the literature. I follow Scollon and Scollon 2000, 2001 in referring to these as ‘cross-cultural communication’, ‘intercultural communication’ and ‘interdiscourse communication’. Studies in ‘cross-cultural communi- cation’ start from an assumption of distinct cultural groups and investigate aspects of their communicative practices comparatively. Studies in ‘Intercultural Communication’ also start from an assumption