Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language and Culture 461
Table 17.1 Contrasting perspectives on intercultural interaction
Sociostructural/
rationalist Discursive-constructionist
Culture Unitary, static Diverse, hybrid, dynamic,
resource and construction
Cultural identity
• Locus Internal cognitiveaffective
trait
• Duration & scope Stable, contextindependent,
intraculturally shared
• Relation to other
identities
• Relation to
actions and
participation
Discourse practices
and resources
Co-constructed interactional
accomplishment
Emergent, contingent,
contextual, contestable
Dominant Variably relevant, other
identities may be more
salient
Determines actions and
participation
Cultural diversity Hazardous, source of
miscommunication
Foregrounded
cultural
distinctiveness
Refl exive, a resource to
accomplish actions and
organize participation
frameworks
Culturally determined Construct (cultural)
orientations and identities
Interactional resource
Disaffi liative Potentially affi liative,
disaffi liative or
relationally
inconsequential
Research perspective Etic: relevance of cultural
distinctiveness
presupposed and
conceptualized through
exogenous theory
Emic: cultural
distinctiveness as a topic
for analysis only if visibly
relevant to participants
both contrast fundamentally with social-constructionist views of social
life. Constructionisms come in many varieties (Holstein & Gubrium, 2008),
but they are united in rejecting the view that social phenomena have
stable, situation-independent, ahistorical properties (essentialism) and
operate on the principles of cause and effect (determinism). Ontological
constructionism holds that social reality itself is created through participants’
social and, in particular, discursive actions (Harré, 1983), whereas
for epistemic constructionism, reality – whether social, psychological or
physical – is treated as versions of discursively produced topics (Edwards,