Intercultural Communication

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Intercultural Communication

• Gender Discourse
• Sexuality Discourse

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Task

• I find it easier to communicate with men/women.
• The problem I have in communicating with
  men/women is that they tend to

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Task

• If you are a man, write down in rank order the
  ten most desirable attributes of a woman
• If you are a woman, write down in rank order the
  ten most desirable attributes of a man.

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Personal Ads

• 28 SWM, 61, 160 lbs. Handsome, artistic,
  ambitious, seeks attractive WF, 24-29, for
  friendship, romance, and permanent partnership.
• Very attractive, independent SWF, 29, 56 110
  lbs., love fine dining, the theater, gardening
  and quite evenings at home. In search of
  handsome SWM 28-34 with similar interests.

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Personal Ads

• Gujarati Vaishnav parents invite correspondence
  from never married Gujarati well settled,
  preferably green card holder from respectable
  family for green card holder daughter 29 years,
  54, good looking, doing CPA.
• Gujarati Brahmin family invites correspondence
  from a well cultured, beautiful Gujarati girl for
  29 years, 58, 145 lbs. Handsome looking, well
  settled boy.

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Research on Gender Discourse

• Deborah Tannen
• Focus on interactional sociolinguistics
• Culture and socialization
• Workplace communication
• Deborah Cameron
• Focus on issues of power in talk
• Others
• Talk in same/different gender groups

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Stereotypes

• Women are indefinite, passive, unable to say
  what they want.
• Men are unobservant, insensitive, uncaring
• Different interpretative frames
• Explicit vs. Implicit
• Different expectations
• NOT men are direct/women are indirect
• Different situations
• Women explicit/ men implicit

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Most significant aspect of inter-gender discourse

• POWER
• Patriarchal societies
• Matriarchal societies
• Role of power in
• Ideology
• Face systems
• Socialization
• Forms of discourse

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Confucius

• Woman yields obedience to man, and helps to
  carry out his principles When young she must
  obey her father and elder brother when married
  she must obey her husband when her husband is
  dead, she must obey her son Womans business is
  simply the preparation and supplying of drink and
  food.

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Hong Kong

• Polygamy was legal until 1971
• Inheritance system in New Territories
• Women with same educational level do not earn as
  much or rise to as high position as men
• Men outnumber women 101 in administrative and
  managerial positions
• Deviance from gender roles in girls interpreted
  as delinquency
• Genderization of Education (Sciences and Arts)
• Capitalism/consumerism (women in advertising)
• Increased violence towards women
• Government responses
• Equal Opportunity Ordinance

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Who talks more

• Mixed gender groups
• men
• Single gender groups
• women

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Dimensions of Difference

• Intimacy-independence
• Connection status
• Inclusive exclusive
• Relationship information
• Rapport report
• Community contest
• Problems solutions
• Novice expert
• Listening - lecturing

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Intimacy

• Relationship to background assumptions of status
• Inclusionexclusion
• Individualismcollectivism

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Rapport and Report

• Information and relationship
• What counts as information
• good talk
• Community vs. contest
• Problemssolutions
• troubles talk
• lectures

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History

• UDS
• Inside vs. Outside work
• Industrial revolution
• Women and moral education
• Socialization

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Socialization

• Play of girls
• Small groups/ egalitarian
• Best friends
• Dolls
• Sharing secrets
• Play of boys
• Large groups/ hierarchal
• Leaders and followers
• Guns
• Doing rather than talking
• Ritual insulting

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Boys and Girls

• Non-verbal behavior
• Girls
• Alignment towards each other
• Small space
• still
• Boys
• Alignment towards third point
• Large space
• Movement

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• The 4 most popular women's magazines (Home
  Journal, Cosmo etc.) were compared to the 4 most
  popular men's magazines (Popular Mechanics,
  Sports Illustrated etc.). The target of
  comparison was the number of ads for diet foods.
  In 48 issues of women's magazines there was a
  total of 63 diet food ads. The total ads for men
  was 1. (Silverstein, Peterson, Perdue Kelly,
  1986).

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How Girls Learn to be Girls

• Socialization
• Textbooks
• Media
• TV
• advertising

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Textbooks
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Images of women in advertising
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Gender Stereotypes in Advertising

• 1. functional ranking the tendency to depict
  men in executive roles and as more functional
  when collaborating with women,
• 2. relative size the tendency to depict men as
  taller and larger than women, except when women
  are clearly superior in social status,
• 3. ritualization of subordination an
  overabundance of images of women lying on floors
  and beds or as objects of men's mock assaults,
• 4. the feminine touch the tendency to show
  women cradling and caressing the surface of
  objects with their fingers, and

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Cultures of SexualityWhats in a name?

• Gay/lesbian
• Queer
• Homosexual
• Tong xing lian zhe
• Gei (Geilo)
• Tongzhi
• (?????, ??????), friends like us (??????) us
  people (?????) PLU

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Gays and Lesbians in Chinese Culture

• Constructionist view of sexual identity
• Dennis Altman Global Sex
• The Chinese Tongzhi Movement
• How Discourse Systems invent themselves
• Boellstorff (2000) dubbing culture
• Imagined Identities
• Invented Identities
• Chinese Tongzhi Manifesto

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History

• The earliest recorded mention of homosexuality in
  Chinese literature is probably in the Shi Jing
  (??), a collection of poems from the early Zhou
  Dynasty. The oldest historical record mentioning
  homosexuality is the Spring and Autumn Annals
  (??) (722-479 BC). Other stories from the
  Spring-Autumn Period and the Warring States
  period make frequent reference to homosexuality
  in the context of palace intrigues, politics and
  warfare. For two centuries at the height of the
  Han dynasty China was ruled by ten openly
  bisexual emperors and annals from the Western and
  Eastern Chin even include accounts of
  intercultural homosexual relationships between
  Han Chinese and foreign invaders. An anonymous
  author of the early nineteenth century complied
  approximately fifty famous historical cases of
  same sex love into a volume entitled Records of
  the Cut Sleeve (???) (Hinsch 1992, Liu 1993b,
  Ruan 1991, Samshasha 1997).

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Changing Models for Homosexuality

• Republican Period
• Eugenics
• Revolutionary Period
• Western Decadence (Marxist Social Model)
• Hooligan Laws
• Reform Period
• Medical Model (Cures)
• Contemporary Period
• Social Scientific Model
• Media Discussion
• Sexual Revolution

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Behavior vs. Identity

• The invention of the homosexual person
• See Foucault and others

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Cures

• According to Zha (199597), In hate therapy,
  the patient would be asked to think of flies or
  the skeletons of those who had died of AIDS
  whenever he experienced homosexual arousal.
  Another cure was electric therapy, in which
  the doctor would show a video of men having sex
  and then apply an electrified probe to the
  patient's erect penis, so that he would associate
  gay sex with painful shocks.

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How are Chinese Gays Inventing themselves

• Place in family
• Place in culture
• Place in Global Gay Culture
• Place in the local political circumstances
• Tongzhi
• Multipurpose identity

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Tongzhi

• ?????????????? ????????????????????
• ??? ?? ?? ????????????
• We don't like to use this word 'homosexual'.
  .because everyone thinks.. society
• thinks that this word is like prostitute.. very
  dirty. Young people all like to say tongzhi
  (comrade) (Fuzhou 1998-9)

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Friends Exchange (????)

• Appropriating official voices to the cause of gay
  rights
• Disseminate Science (????), Promote Health
  (????), Initiate Love (????) and Build
  Civilization (????)
• how well it deals with its homosexual question
  is one sign with which to measure a societys
  level of civilization. (????????????,???????????
  )
• ??????????????????????
• the aspiration of 'Friends' is to invite groups a
  different sexual orientations to build
  civilization together
• China has a 5000 year history of glorious
  civilization. 'Compassion', 'Desiring nothing,
  imposing nothing on others' , and 'valuing
  harmony' are excellent traditions of the Chinese
  culture

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Cut Sleeves

• The expression cut sleeves (??) comes from the
  story of the Han Dynasty Emperor Ai and his lover
  Dong Xian recorded in the Book of Han (??). The
  nineteenth century Records of the Cut Sleeve
  (???) relates the story like this Emperor Ai
  was sleeping in the daytime with Dong Xian
  stretched out across his sleeve. When the emperor
  wanted to get up, Dong Xian was still asleep.
  Because he did not want to disturb him, the
  emperor cut off his own sleeve and got up. His
  love and thoughtfulness went this far! (quoted
  in Hinsch 199053, see also Liu 1993b, Ruan 1991,
  Samshasha 1997). Less sympathetic versions of the
  story, such as that in Ceng and Rens AIDS The
  Warning of the Century (???AIDS?????) ( 1997
  29) add to their telling the fact that, after the
  death of the emperor, Dong Xian was impeached by
  jealous ministers and he and his wife ended up
  committing suicide.

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I am what I am

• ?????..????..?????..???????????????..????..??????
  ?????..???????..????????????...??????????.
• I am what I am.. eating and sex are human
  nature.. thats what Confucius said.. eating
  and sex are human natureliking a certain kind
  of food and being inclined towards a particular
  sex are the same.. being inclined towards men..
  or others being inclined toward women is the same
  as eating.. just different tastes.. they're both
  normal.. there's no differencethat's exactly
  what Confucius said. (Fuzhou 1998-9)

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Tongzhi Manifesto

• 3. Tradition Chinese Society was Tolerant Towards
  Same Sex Love
• Many people mistakenly criticise Chinese culture
  as sexually repressive and conservative. Some
  even think that homosexuality is a corrupt import
  front the West. In fact, traditional Chinese
  culture was tolerant towards same sex love.
  Mencius says, "The joy of eating and sex are
  natural human desires", both of which have no
  association with sin or guilt. Buddhist, a
  religion which has been well assimilated into the
  Chinese culture for 2,000 years, neither
  advocates heterosexuality nor denounces
  homosexuality, and emphasises the notion of
  bodichitta, which means that all beings have the
  potential to become Buddha. The vast
  documentation also reveals the high level of
  social tolerance towards same sex love in
  pre-modern China. 4. The Hostility and Violence
  Against Homosexuality is not Found in Traditional
  Chinese Culture

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• Hostility and violence, such as harsh legal
  punishment, bashing and lynching' against same
  sex love in pre-modern China cannot be found in
  historical records. For instance, the
  introduction of sodomy law in Hong Kong in 1865,
  which could sentence two consenting male adults
  to life imprisonment, was the result of British
  colonial rule. What was brought from the West to
  China was not same sex love, but the sin
  associated with it in the Judaeo-Christian
  tradition, which signiticamly contributed to the
  homophobia found in modern Chinese societies.

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• 6. Confrontational Politics in the West Should
  Not be Imposed Upon Chinese Societies
• The les-bi-gay movement in many Western societies
  is largely built upon the notion of
  individualism, confrontational politics, and the
  discourse of individual rights. Certain -
  characteristics of confrontational politics, such
  as through coming out and mass protests and
  parades may not be the best way of achieving
  tongzhi liberation in the family-centred,
  community oriented Chinese societies which
  stresses the importance of social harmony. In
  formulating the tongzhi movement strategy, we
  should take the specific socio-economic and
  cultural environment of each society into
  consideration.