Cultural communication | Social Science homework help

1. Think of your own experience in working to understand a language or cultural behavior that is different from yours. Do you tend to take an etic or emic approach? What about a balanced approach? Explain. (For this, you might consider the subtle issues of sound categories and ask yourself how your pronunciation of another language might have been hampered by assumptions you made from taking an etic perspective.) 

2. Context is central to how language is made meaningful. Draw on at least one factor from the S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G model to bring some ethnographic insight into a misunderstanding or miscommunication that you’ve been a party to. Be sure to provide sufficient background of the event as well as details about how you are using the S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G model to interpret the event.

3. Watch the “Armstrong BBC Interview, 2014” video and use the the “Jefferson transcription conventions” as you organize these words into a transcript. (You may have to add a few words or sounds, and you will definitely need to add other detail. Do your best with the formatting. Aim for the same organization, conventions, and amount of detail as mine.) Your transcript should contain the following words:

• “that’s the honest answer yeah that’s the honest answer but it’s an answer that needs some explanation and it I mean I look at everything when I made that decision when my teammates made that decision when the whole Peloton made that decision like let’s we get it it was a bad decision at an imperfect time but it happened when Lance Armstrong did that I know what happened because of that”

4. Build on (or critique) my analysis of Lance Armstrong by observing what happens next, which is in the “Armstrong BBC Interview, 2014” video.  Lance uses specific linguistic strategies to persuade the audience that he is more of a victim than a cheater. 

Here is a question that you can use to guide your observation:

• Why does Lance suddenly use the third person to refer to himself on multiple occasions? That is, for example, why does he say, “when Lance Armstrong did that …”?