Intercultural Variation Research Articles

The Process and Achievements of the Study on Marriage and Family in China

This article is devoted to introducing the study on marriage and family in China conducted from 1979, when it began to carry out reform, to 1991. During the past decade or more, drastic changes have taken place in Chinese society and there appeared the scientific study on family. Social changes exert profound influence on the selection of topics and theories relating to the study on family. Therefore, this article pays particular attention to introducing the study on family in the light of social backgrounds. In the meantime,Intercultural Variation in Family Research and Theory 20 it must be recognized that when they began their study on family, Chinese researchers were not skilled and they obtained their theories and technology gradually through the process of study. I did not choose and introduce achievements in strict accordance with the theories on family, but have selected the researches that appeared during recent years and that I think are relatively influential. Further- more, I have given as much...

Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Spanish-English economics texts

The research presented in this paper offers a contrastive text-linguistic study of rhetorical differences between texts written by academics with different cultural backgrounds, but using as a means of expression the same language: English. The paper is based on some previously published articles comparing English with other languages (Clyne 1987; Galtung 1979; Mauranen 1993), but in a different context in order to determine whether the results derived from the comparison between texts written in English by native speakers and non-native speakers coincide. As a result of analysing the data, I agree with Mauranen that, despite a relative uniformity of academic papers imposed by requirements of the genre, there is intercultural variation in the rhetorical preferences of writers. The cultural differences between texts written in English by Spanish-speaking academics and by Anglo-American academics are explored with respect to metatext used in papers from economics journals. The results indicate that the Anglo-American writers use more metatext, or text about the text, than the Spanish-speaking writers. They also seem to be more concerned with guiding and orienting the reader than the Spanish-speaking writers, and show more explicit presence of the writer in the text. It is suggested that the Anglo-American texts reflect a more reader-oriented attitude, and a generally more explicit textual rhetoric. The Spanish-speaking writers put a greater emphasis on propositional content and favor a more impersonal style of writing, as well as a greater tendency towards implicitness in their writing.

Empacho in four Latino groups: a study of intra- and inter-cultural variation in beliefs.

It is usually impossible to know if reported differences between cultures are due to cultural differences or due to a difference in the methods used to study the cultures. This paper describes a collaborative, multisite study using a shared methodology to study intra- and inter-cultural variation in beliefs. A series of standard interview schedules were used to study Latin American beliefs about empacho in Guatemala, Mexico, and in the United States (Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans). Results showed consistency in beliefs about empacho both within and between the four samples.

Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts

This article describes a contrastive textlinguistic study of rhetorical differences between texts written by academics with different cultural backgrounds. It is assumed that, despite a relative uniformity of academic papers imposed by requirements of the genre, there is significant intercultural variation in the rhetorical preferences of writers. The cultural differences between texts written by Finnish and Anglo-American academics are explored with respect to metatext use in papers from economics journals. The results indicate that Anglo-American writers use more metatext or text about text than Finnish writers. It seems that Anglo-American writers are more concerned with guiding and orienting the reader than Finns, and show more explicit presence of the writer in the text. This is taken to reflect a more reader-oriented attitude, a more positive notion of politeness, and a generally more explicit textual rhetoric. Finnish writers show a more negative kind of politeness and a greater tendency towards implicitness in their writing. Such differences may result in unintentionally inefficient rhetoric when the target audience does not share the writer's assumptions and attitudes.

The Social Contexts of Apology in Dispute Settlement: A Cross-Cultural Study

Recent anthropological studies of law and dispute settlement have spurned an interest in rules of substantive law and have concentrated, instead, on the social process of dispute settlement. For the most part, these studies have been case studies conducted in one culture, and the focus has been intracultural rather than intercultural variation in the dispute process.2 The study described here departs from most previous studies in that it attempts to test hypotheses regarding regularities across cultures in the social structure and child socialization contexts associated with one selected element in the dispute process, namely, apology. Apology is behavior by which a party implicitly or explicitly expresses regret for having wronged another and requests the forgiveness of the aggrieved party. Although a survey of the ethnographic literature indicates that apology is used in many cultures, these cultures differ in the extent to which their members stress apology as a redressive technique.3 My interest in apology derives from a case study of dispute management in a Fijian village. The following summary of the findings of that study provides a contextual description of apology.4

Some dimensions of intercultural variation and their implications for community psychology

This essay provides a framework for studying cultural differences and similarities in social behavior and their implications for community psychology. Culture acts as a schedule of reinforcement, thereby influencing what is perceived (perceptual selectivity), how it is perceived (information-processing strategies), and how the information is organized (cognitive structures). There are four dimensions of behavior that appear to be universal: association versus dissociation, superordination versus subordination, intimacy versus formality, and overt versus covert behavior. Research findings on these dimensions are reviewed within the context of the needs of community psychology to develop multicultural paradigms for research and intervention.

Color Terms In Folk Tales: A Cross-Cultural Study

The relative salience of color terms in folk tales from forty cultures is examined in this study. The authors test the hypothesis that a significant, positive association exists between the relative salience of color categories in folk tales and the evolutionary sequence proposed by Berlin and Kay (1969) to account for cross-cultural differences in color lexicons. The results support the hypothesis. While minor intercultural variations in basic color term salience are found, there is a strong, and possibly universal, tendency for the salience of color terms to correspond to the postulated evolutionary sequence. Additionally, it appears that the evolutionary order is related to the number of different classes of objects to which color terms are applied. We argue that the evolution of basic color lexicons is promoted by an increase in cultural complexity generally and, more specifically, by an increase in the diversity of material culture and technological development.