Intercultural Communication in Letters of Recommendation

Jing LIU

doi:10.36923/jicc.v7i1.432

Open Access Article

Jing LIU ⁽¹⁾

(1) Department of English, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China , China

https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v7i1.432

Issue
Vol. 7 No. 1 (2007)

Submitted
May 23, 2005

Published
March 10, 2007

Keywords:

Letters of recommendation, intercultural communication, dialogism

PDF

Abstract

The letter of recommendation (LR) as a means to communicate across different cultures for the purpose of applying for entering a university can be problematic. Using contrastive rhetoric analytic framework, this paper compares LRs written by Chinese and English native speaker professionals. Discussion of culturally situated interpretations of the LRs is based on interviews with university professors who have been on the admission committee. The findings show similarities in macro discourse structure but differences in discourse content between the LRs, which suggest that successful intercultural communication in LRs requires meticulous dialogue with the ‘other’ according to Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. Unequal power relationship between writer and reader is also discussed from critical discourse analysis perspective.

Full text article

Generated from XML file

References

Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Hartford, B. S. (1995). The construction of discourse by nonnative speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 125-128. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100014121

Bouton, L. F. (1995). A cross-cultural analysis of the structure and content of letters of reference. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 211-244. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100014169

Cotton, H. (1981). Documentary Letters of Recommendation in Latin from the Roman Empire. Kigstein/Ts.: A. Hain.

Moore, S. & Smith, J. M. (1986). Writing recommendation letters for students. Clearing House, 59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.1986.9955695

Morrisett, L. N. (1935). Letters of Recommendation. Concord, NH: The Rumford Press.

Palmer, S. E. (1983). What to say in a letter of recommendation? Sometimes what you don’t say matters most. ED236953.

Precht, Kristen. (1998). A cross-cultural comparison of letters of recommendation. English for Specific Purposes, 17, 241-265. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(97)00012-4

Prior, P. (2001). Voices in text, mind, and society sociohistoric accounts of discourse acquisition and use. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 55-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(00)00037-0

Schiffrin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourse. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA: B. Blackwell.

Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Authors

Jing LIU

Department of English, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

(Primary Contact)

Author Biography

Jing LIU, Department of English, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

Jing Liu, PhD (University of Washington) and associate professor, is currently teaching and supervising graduate students in the areas of Intercultural Communication Theories, Ethnography of Communication and Discourse Analysis at the Ocean University of China, Qingdao.

LIU, J. (2007). Intercultural Communication in Letters of Recommendation. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 7(1), 1–09. https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v7i1.432

Download Citation

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright / Open Access Policy: This journal provides immediate free open access and is distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is an open-access journal, which means readers can access it freely. Readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles for any lawful purpose without seeking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is consistent with the Budapest Open Access Initiative's (BOAI) definition of open access.