Openings and Closings in Workplace Emails: How Do People Navigate without Clear Standards and Clearly Prescribed Formulae?

Languages vary when it comes to linguistic manifestations of formal politeness, but what particularly marks professional email communication is the flexibility of the genre compared to traditional, formal business letters. This poses the question of how individual email writers navigate without clear standards and clearly prescribed formulae. This study focuses on the individual email writer and, specifically, opening salutations and closing valedictions in 927Norwegian workplace emails, followed by metapragmatic interviews with their senders. In an egalitarian society with few explicit linguistic manifestations of formal politeness, individual choices of formulations provide a rich source of data. Linguistic content analysis reveals a significant degree of consistency in each person’s individual use, which indicates that when there are no commonly held norms, people make their own rules. The interviewees are aware ofwhich openings and closings they prefer, but often not why. Further analysis of the data reveals that hierarchical social distance is not a motivational factor, but the intentions to be either personally close or professionally distant are. Both are regarded as viable options in formal workplace emails by their users. However, the informants’ perception of which linguistic items represent these motivations depends on individual preferences rather than on any establishedor institutionalised practises. The latter is not a uniquely Norwegian problem, but concerns email correspondents in general because of the flexibility innate to the email genre

Fostering complex understandings of international business collaborations in the higher education classroom

acceptedVersio

Do people prefer offshore to onshore wind energy? The role of ownership and intended use.

Global investments in offshore wind energy are expected to escalate over the coming decades, fueled by improvements in technology, declining costs, and increasing political support. The complexity, scale, and location of these developments make international ownership and export of electricity more feasible. We examine how the general public's acceptance of wind energy will be affected by a political shift in focus from onshore to nearshore or offshore locations, from local or national dominance of ownership to international dominance, and from meeting local or national needs to meeting international ones. We use a nationwide choice experiment with 1612 individuals in Norway to reveal the preferences for these attributes and apply a mixed logit regression model to estimate the willingness to pay to avoid certain outcomes. We show that, although respondents prefer offshore and nearshore locations to onshore ones, they are even more concerned with maintaining local or national control both through ownership and intended use of the added electricity. Although the preferences for national ownership are strong for both nearshore and offshore alternatives, the preference for meeting national needs becomes less important when wind energy developments are located farther off the coast. Three wind energy scenarios are used to further investigate these preferences: 1) international consortium for offshore wind energy, 2) national alliances for nearshore wind energy, and 3) local energy communities for onshore wind energy. We also discuss how a shift to nearshore and offshore wind energy can be enabled by paying greater attention to people's concerns over national control of wind energy resources.Do people prefer offshore to onshore wind energy? The role of ownership and intended use.publishedVersio

Fostering Complex Understandings of International Business Collaborations in the Higher Education Classroom.

publishedVersio

Byggingen av marinefartøyet KNM Maud i Sør-Korea: "Et verdensmesterskap i misforståelser"

Denne undersøkelsen viser hvordan språk (lingvistikk) og interkulturell kommu nikasjon påvirker samhandlingsprosesser i et norsk/sørkoreansk båtbyggingsprosjekt, i dette tilfelle med Forsvaret som norsk aktør. I Sør-Korea, mellom 2013 og 2018, fikk Sjøforsvaret bygd sitt største skip så langt, logistikkfartøyet KNM Maud. Flere i Sjøforsvaret snakket om kommunikasjonsproblemer under byggingen. En av de norske prosjektlederne kalte senere byggingen av KNM Maud et "verdensmesterskap i misforståelser." Vi intervjuet norske og sørkoreanske deltakere i byggeprosessen for å finne ut hva som var årsaken til misforståelsene. Intervjuene fant sted både i Norge og i Sør-Korea. De semistrukturelle intervjuene ble tatt opp, transkribert og analysert med tematisk analyse. Analysen viser at i tillegg til språkproblemer, er misforståelsene knyttet til ulike forventninger knyttet til hierarki, effektivitet, kontrakten og relasjoner. Studien tar for seg alle disse områdene i detalj og bruker informantenes egne ord for å eksemplifisere ytterligere. Studiet er unikt i og med at det ikke finnes andre under søkelser som analyserer norsk-sørkoreansk forretningssamarbeid fra et interkulturelt ståsted. Funnene våre viser ikke direkte at nordmenns og sørkoreaneres mangel på interkulturell kommunikasjon bidro til at ferdigstillelsen av Maud ble sterkt forsinket (hele tre år), men det er fullt mulig å bruke disse analysene som utgangspunkt for å forstå hvorfor forsinkelsene fant sted. I undersøkelsen har hovedhensikten vært å forstå prosessen som Sjøforsvaret opplevde ved å bygge KNM Maud i Sør-Korea, men funnene er også interessante for alle som skal jobbe med norsk-sørkoreansk forretningssamarbeid i framtiden

Japanese and Norwegian Metapragmatic Perceptions of Contextual Factors in Intercultural Business Communication

-This is the Author's version of this article.National culture is frequently used as the dominant influential factor when intercultural business communication differences are explained. Leaning on theories about other contextual factors from the field of pragmatics, a dataset containing metapragmatic comments from interviews with forty-one Japanese and Norwegian business executives has been analysed in order to find what contextual factors are believed to influence Japanese and Norwegian communication with special attention to degree of directness and formality. The analysis indicates that the claim that the Japanese are less direct and more formal than Scandinavians (Norwegians) is highly dependent on contextual factors such as power, distance, the number of participants, message content, interactional/social roles, activity type, individual and organisation variation, language, the interlocutors’ expectations, and business tactics. National culture as the sole explanatory factor is only used to a limited extent. Thus, a one-sided focus on national culture as the main contextual factor in intercultural communication should be cautioned and alternative approaches found

Intercultural Training: Learn to avoid treading on other people’s toes or experience walking in the other person’s shoes

This article raises the question of whether the traditional approach in intercultural training focusing on knowledge about cultural differences and skills to avoid culture clash is sufficient in order to prepare intercultural communication trainees for dynamic and psychologically demanding multicultural environments. Inspired by the concept of mentalizing in the psycho-therapeutic method called Mentalization-based treatment , training that encourages imaginatively “seeing the other from the inside and oneself from the outside” is suggested as better able to prepare for complex intercultural realities. Tolerance is seen as tolerance for being in the intercultural process as much as tolerance for others’ differences. A theoretical discussion between the notion of mentalizing in mentalization-based treatment and perceptions of empathy , imagination and mindfulness further provides insight into the role of interactive tools such as case work and role plays in intercultural training. These, in turn, are seen as best suited to fulfil the goals and ambitions of the theories. However, experiences gained from them must be verbalized in order to cause increased awareness

(In)directness – Distance or Proximity?

This article is based on the compulsory trial lecture in connection with the defense of my doctoral thesis (June 2012).The terms distance and proximity are not only linked to nonverbal space but also to verbal (in)directness and politeness theories. In this article, I examine what linguistic and rhetorical devices are used to express distance or proximity in social interactions, and why some are better equipped to signal one or the other. Further, these theories are compared to Norwegian and Japanese language and values. Whereas vertical distance is especially important in directing Japanese politeness, Norwegians’ limited use of politeness devices may be unintentionally interpreted as impolite, but could also be understood as a sign of respect for personal space