English as Business Lingua Franca: Acomparative analysis of communicationbehavior and strategies in Asian andEuropean contexts

摘要

Past research has concluded that people from collectivist cultures communicatedifferently from individualist cultures. This distinction has been based upon theobservation of Hall’s (1976) theory and has not been subjected to systematicempirical investigation. In this paper, I report a research finding examiningcommunication behaviors of individualist cultures (Sweden and Finland) andcollectivist cultures (Hong Kong and Japan). The data sets were the transcriptsof intercultural meetings where participants discussed and made decisions aboutsimilar topics. Using this meeting data, the communication behaviors on multipledimensions are examined. Both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the dataare analyzed to answer the three research questions put forward. While thequantitative aspect of the data answers research questions related to turn-takingbehaviors, the qualitative data describes the discourse patterns used in relation totopic management strategies.