Intercultural Communication in Letters of Recommendation_英语专业毕业论文.docVIP

Intercultural Communication in Letters of Recommendation Abstract: The letter of recommendation (LR) as a means to communicate across different cultures for the purpose of applying for entering a university can be problematic. Using contrastive rhetoric analytic framework, this paper compares LRs written by Chinese and English native speaker professionals. Discussion of culturally situated interpretations of the LRs is based on interviews with university professors who have been on the admission committee. The findings show similarities in macro discourse structure but differences in discourse content between the LRs, which suggest that successful intercultural communication in LRs requires meticulous dialogue with the ‘other’ according to Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. Unequal power relationship between writer and reader is also discussed from critical discourse analysis perspective. Key words: Letters of recommendation; intercultural communication; dialogism Introduction As more international students apply for admission to the colleges and universities in the United States, the admission committee has to read more letters of recommendation (LRs) written by English non-native speaker (ENNS) writers than ever before. The letters function as a medium in intercultural communication (IC) between English native speaker (ENS) readers and ENNS writers. However, according to many educators and employers, too few letters of recommendation tell recipients what they really need to know about a candidate (Palmer, 1983, p. 1). Although the writers’ identification is not specified here, we can assume that IC between the ENNS writer of the LR and the ENS reader is more problematic than the communication among the same language speakers because of the cultural as well as linguistic differences. The problems in this IC result probably from the different approaches to the discourse conventions. Bouton shows that although the speech event has core characteristics cross-culturally,