Speaker: Professor Todd L. Sandel

Time: 15:00-16:30

Date: June 25th, 2018 (Monday)

Venue: The lecture hall at the fifth floor of the BFSU library

Introduction

The aim of this talk is to demonstrate how findings from a study of intercultural learning mediated via online technologies. Students were paired across three contexts: the U.S., Malaysia, and China. They gained experiential knowledge to see cultural issues from another perspective. Differences emerged in how student-created messages were constructed and interpreted; these also impacted perceived relational affiliation. Messages constructed by students in Malaysia and China exhibited casual talk, with greater self-disclosure, requests for personal information, and greater use of emoticons/emoji. Their interactions were perceived as informal, friendly, and positive. U.S. students’ messages more often showed institutional talk, as there was less self-disclosure, and more attention to the instructor-assigned task. Asian-U.S. student pairs perceived their interactions as more formal, less friendly, and less positive. This study has implications for broadening our understanding of how online technologies may be afforded and shaped by culture and interaction.

About the Speaker

Dr. Todd L. Sandel (Ph.D., the University of Illinois) is the Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Macau. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, associate editor of The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, and author of Brides on Sale: Taiwanese Cross Border Marriages in a Globalizing Asia, for which he received the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from the International & Intercultural Division of the National Communication Association. His research has appeared in Language in Society, Research on Language & Social Interaction, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, Journal of Contemporary China, China Media Research, and elsewhere.