Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

460 Part 6: Language and Interaction
Culture, as the ensemble of discursively mediated practices, has both
universal and local dimensions.
Turning to the myth of homogeneity, the practice of referring to particular
‘cultures’ by the names of nations or ethnic groups (the Finns, the
Hawaiians) reinforces the idea that communities that share the same name
also share the same practices and belief systems. Throughout its history,
anthropology did much to promote views of culture as cohesive ways of
being in the world that identify distinct social groups. But the counter
positions that came to the fore with poststructuralist critiques in the late
20th century (e.g. Clifford & Marcus, 1986) were foreshadowed much earlier
by anthropologists who emphasized the internal diversity of communities,
the existence of ‘subculture’ within the ‘generalized culture’ (Sapir,
1949: 515). Wallace’s succinct formulation of culture as an ‘organization of
diversity’ (Wallace, 1961: 28) and Clifford’s portrayal of culture as ‘temporal,
emergent, and disputed’ (Clifford, 1986: 19) sit well with contemporary
perspectives on the increasingly multilingual and multicultural
communities around the world. Theories and empirical evidence suggest
that the cultural fabric of multiethnic neighborhoods, workplaces and
educational institutions produces identities marked by fragmentation,
hybridity (see Kraidy, 2005, for discussion) and liminality (Rampton,
1999). 1
Contrasting perspectives on intercultural discourse
How do participants in these and other settings address themselves to
intercultural interaction, and what theoretical approaches have been proposed
to explicate it? A preliminary answer allows us to distinguish two
main perspectives, summarized in Table 17.1 (for a related, in-depth discussion
of research paradigms and social theories in sociolinguistics, see
Coupland et al., 2001). According to sociostructural theories, social action
and language use are determined by macrostructural forces and internalized
social norms that powerfully constrain the agency of individuals and
social groups. In sociolinguistics, the prototypical example of a sociostructural
approach is variationist sociolinguistics in the tradition of William
Labov. Rationalist theories, following the sociological tradition of Max
Weber, conceptualize social actions as cognitively based, intentional, goalrelated
means–end calculations. In sociolinguistics, they include such
prominent theories as Myers-Scotton’s Markedness Model of codeswitching
(1993), motivational theories of communicative accommodation (Giles
& Coupland, 1991), Grice’s theory of meaning (Grice, 1957), Searle’s speech
act theory (Searle, 1969), relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995)
and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (Brown & Levinson,
1978/1987). Despite their ontological differences, sociostructural and
rationalist perspectives are often merged in research practice, and they