Cross-Cultural Conversational Strategies Used by Chinese Students in Pakistan

Abstract

Cross-cultural communication is the study of ways people from multi-cultural backgrounds interact, in similar and different manners among themselves, and how they strive to converse cross culturally. This becomes particularly significant given potential frequency of interaction and/or the nature of relationship. The claim of Pakistan-China friendship with new economic agreements in the form of CPEC is opening up new avenues requiring effective cross-cultural communication. One of which is in the academic domain with an increased students exchange. The aim of the present research is to explore the cross-cultural conversational strategies used by female Chinese Students studying at International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan while conversing in English. The current study focuses to depict their cultural context i.e. high context culture or low context culture by exploring their method of developing the topic; ways of responding difficult questions and participation in term of interaction; and their promptness of disagreement through verbal and nonverbal indications. A Popular cultural framework of Hall (1976, 2000) is used as a theoretical framework for this research. For the elicitation of linguistics data, questionnaires (adapted from Xu Lin (2007) and interviews are used as a data collection tool. The study concludes that the Chinese female students are low context people, who rely on words, as they avoid silence and actively participate in the conversation for clear understanding of the topic. It is clear from their responses of interviews as well as questionnaires that they interact during conversation and immediately disagree through verbal and nonverbal indications. They don’t only give short answers but try to develop the topic raised in the questions and even try to respond difficult questions.