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23 - Intercultural Communication in Computer-Mediated Discourse

from Part IV - Intercultural Pragmatics in Different Types of Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

By
Carmen Maíz-Arévalo
Edited by
Istvan Kecskes
Istvan Kecskes
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
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Summary

Political and economic globalization, together with constant technological advances, has resulted in unprecedented levels of international human mobility. As a result, societies are increasingly intercultural. Nowhere is this interculturality more pervasive than in digital discourse (traditionally known as computer-mediated communication or CMC), where interlocutors from different cultural backgrounds may interact on global platforms and social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, to name but a few. Intercultural communication, however, poses interlocutors with serious challenges to overcome, such as differences in their value systems, and diverging communication styles and behaviours. All of them can easily lead to miscommunication and conflict between cultural groups, both within and across societies, as well as the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes. Yet, most research on CMC to date has focused on monocultural studies or cross-cultural comparisons while intercultural communication in CMC is still rather under-researched. Keeping the above in mind, the present chapter aims to review the research that has been carried out so far in the field of digital discourse with a special focus on intercultural communication, as well as to provide readers with avenues for future research in this burgeoning field.

Keywords

online interactionmediated discoursetelecollaborationmultilingual awarenessmultilingual analysis
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics , pp. 588 - 611
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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