Abstract
This paper presents the results of an analysis of written communication strategies between adults engaged in a teacher–student relationship, with a strong cross-cultural component. In presenting data available from actual written communication between students and teachers of diverse cultural backgrounds and age, this work aims to highlight significant strategies for negotiation in dyadic (i.e., non-mediated) conflict resolution between adults in higher education, by means of an analysis of the linguistic, pragmatic, and cultural traits within each text. The texts are taken from written communications between teacher–student dyads that are distributed as follows: a) European dyads of same nationality; b) European dyads of different nationality; and c) Chinese–European dyads. By providing a contrastive analysis of the different strategies recorded for dyadic conflict resolution and negotiation, and by elucidating the major causes of miscommunication – such as misunderstanding and wrong-footing, either between European–European and European–Chinese dyads or between dyads of the same nationality but different age – this research aims primarily to provide a key for the linguistic analysis of effective interpersonal and intercultural written communication in unequal relationships, such as that between teacher and student. The present study is also aimed at establishing a baseline for future linguistic research in this field.
Published Version
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