Robert Crawshaw

`I know, 'cos I was there': how residence abroad students use personal experience to legitimate cultural generalizations

This article examines the discursive construction of cultural generalizations, by analysing generalizations about gender and culture made in a large corpus of diary, focus group and interview data produced by modern languages students at university in Britain during or shortly after their period of residence abroad. It is argued that although students demonstrate an awareness of the negative cultural evaluation of stereotyping through the use of mitigation strategies, they are nevertheless willing to produce generalizations under the right discursive conditions, particularly when permission is given by the other participants in the interaction and when they are able to produce evidence to legitimate the generalization in some way. Analysis of the entire corpus shows that the most common form of legitimation is the appeal to personal experience, whereas close analysis of extracts from the data demonstrates the importance of discursive context and process in making such generalizations possible and acceptable.

Guest editor's introduction: politics, economics and perception in regional construction

As academic theorists, politicians and local populations alike struggle to confront the realization that earlier growth models have failed to offer the economic benefits promised by the virtual mobility of capital, it seems counter-intuitive to focus attention on factors that affected regional development prior to 2008. The idea that localities are essentially imagined and that ‘space’ is a mental construct produced by amalgams of fragmented local perceptions might be viewed as a luxury at a time of acute recession. Recent evidence of reductions of regional funding in France, to cite but one example from within the European Union, suggests that social relations at the local level are determined more and more by the impact of cutbacks than by investment in projects informed by the socially enlightened, intellectually sophisticated aspirations of architects, planners and geographers. Alternatively, it could be argued, following MASSEY (2005), ASH (2004) and others, that it is precisely at times of economic hardship that the mental constructs which accompany a flexible, locally determined, ‘make do and mend’ approach to the social environment become relevant as objects of close empirical analysis against the background of the highly complex global flows of goods and services. Stringency demands that planning initiatives focus less on ‘regions’ understood in terms of economic development plans than on multilayered ‘localities’ in which the combination of small-scale cultural activities, local housing, employment needs and social diversity are promoted through public–private partnership in projects in which the creative, holistic use of space is the first priority and the role of the ‘intermediary’ becomes paramount (SUEDEKUM et al., 2012; O’CONNOR, 2013; HRACS, 2013; SHEARMUR, 2013). Be that as it may, it is surely no coincidence that the titles of recent contributions to Regional Studies should have been dominated by such phrases as ‘complexity and uncertainty’, ‘self-employment’, ‘islands of innovation’, ‘life after regions’, ‘skills levels’, ‘over-education’, ‘outsourcing’, and, of course, ‘unemployment’: almost all terms derived primarily from economics and referring to quantifiably measurable phenomena, yet relating ultimately to social well-being. Economic reality has led to a shift in the focus of regional studies since the time when this collection of papers was initially conceived. Knowledge of the principles underlying regional policy has given way to the need to identify the determinants of local economic competitiveness against a background of crisis. If there is an emphasis for regions to develop as internationally networked centres of innovation, it is perhaps less as a function of strategic investment and more as the outcome of small-scale initiative. The current experience of local populations in Western Europe is intensifying the need to focus attention on sustainability, self-generated growth, and the potential impact of small and mediumsized enterprises on social environments at the expense of studying the effects of decentralization strategies on governance structures. In 1998, Michael Keating, writing of the emergence of a ‘new regionalism’, argued that the global interdependence of states and markets was redefining the notion of territoriality (KEATING, 1998). However, far from eradicating it as the material basis on which the concept of ‘region’ was grounded, it was rather causing it to be experienced in different terms in response to changes in the political and economic environment. The formation of larger political and economic blocks such as the European Union was necessitating a different form of government in which the interests of different member states and that of the Union could be reconciled through forms of multiscalar governance. The exploitation of regional resources, whether rural/agricultural or mineral/industrial/sectoral, by more prosperous metropolitan centres within individual states had given way first to ‘meso’ state intervention in regional development and then to national and international policies aimed at promoting cohesion within the wider supra-national polity. This was to be achieved through targeted programmes Regional Studies, 2013

Articulation, Imagined Space and Virtual Mobility in Literary Narratives of Migration

As the blurred boundaries between documentary, memory and ‘re‐imaginings’ of personal experience have become more intensively theorised, creative writing is re‐emerging as an important resource in social science, following the extensive debates surrounding the sociology of literature in the 1960s and 1970s. This is especially true with regard to the type of mobility entailed by migration. This essay advances a methodology for incorporating creative fiction into mobilities research. It argues that certain types of literary text offer fresh perspectives on the overlapping layers of experience which characterise the mental condition resulting from cultural displacement, bringing together the historical, the global and the local within a single, multiply constituted, ‘imagined space’. Literary accounts of this kind can be characterised as a data source in their own right, complementing social science research methodologies grounded in ‘real‐life’ observation and offering hypotheses for subsequent ethnographic verification. Through the narrative processes of metaphorical transfer and space‐time compression, Joe Pembertons autobiographical novel Forever and Ever Amen (2000) demonstrates the potential of narratives informed by the experience of migration to present ‘alternative cartographies of social space’ (Rouse, 1991). The social relevance of such narrative representations is further demonstrated by their ‘envelopment’ within mainstream discourses, thereby illustrating how they ‘articulate’ with existing social norms.

Wanting to be wanted: a comparative study of incidence and severity in indirect complaint on the part of French and English language teaching assistants

Using data from the ESRC funded project Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication (PIC), this paper applies contrastive quantitative and qualitative analysis to data derived from oral statements, logbooks and retrospective reports by language teaching assistants in France and England. The data concerns their ‘rapport’ (Spencer-Oatey, 2003; 2005) with the members of staff responsible for their professional supervision and the paper assesses complaint behaviour across the two national groups. Basing our study on computer recorded discourse segments taxonomically codified as ‘negative assessment’, we show that the incidence of ‘indirect’ complaint (Boxer, 1993) is significantly higher among English assistants than among their French counterparts. A revised model for measuring ‘severity’ (House and Kasper, 1981; Olshtain and Weinbach, 1993) is applied to the data using corpus linguistic techniques. Its findings demonstrate that English assistants also complain more ‘severely’ than their French peers. Nevertheless, the difference in linguistic behaviour between individuals within each group is shown to be greater than that between the two national groups, implying that personality is a stronger determinant of cultural outlook than nationality.

Politics and Pragmatics in the Crosscultural Management of ‘Rapport’

This paper examines the sociopragmatic character of intercultural communication between English Language Assistants (ELAs) and their ‘mentors’ in French primary and secondary schools. With reference to Levinsons notion of ‘activity type’, it argues that judgements by mentors as to what constitutes ‘allowable contributions’ on the part of ELAs are determined by the extent to which mentors themselves have internalised French State regulations. The degree of internalisation can thus serve as a means of distinguishing between ‘the political’ and ‘the cultural’. Awareness of this distinction and an insight into its social significance exemplifies what Spencer-Oatey describes more generally as a ‘sociopragmatic interactional principle’ or SIP. According to Spencer-Oatey, ‘SIPs’ are key elements in the successful management of ‚rapport’ in intercultural situations. By applying a methodology derived from Sinclair and Coulthards analysis of oral discourse to recordings of ELA–mentor interactions, we identify specific sequences of moves that illustrate the relationship between political and cultural factors, SIPs and sociopragmatic misunderstandings in Anglo-French intercultural communication.

Exploring French Text Analysis: Interpretations of National Identity.

Exploring French Text Analysis introduces students of French to a range of methods of text analysis, including stylistics and discourse analysis. The editors provide a clear framework for analysing written French critically. Through a series of commentaries on a range of texts by different contributors, they present a variety of models for readers to follow. The texts have been carefully chosen both to illustrate key points of language analysis and to present a picture of national identity. Texts including adverts, newspapers, magazines, travel writing, fiction and political texts cover a range of topics such as food, sport, law and the arts. The book also includes a comprehensive glossary of linguistic terms.