Discourse-Pragmatic Description

The five approaches to intercultural communication presented in this book elaborate on a wide range of linguistic and cultural theories, such as sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, (ethnomethodological) conversational analysis, pragmatics, discourse analysis, literary theory, cultural representation theories, and communication theories. In this theoretical chapter, the relevant concepts from the various theories are compared and juxtaposed. In this way, the reader can make an informed choice when compiling an analysis model that is based on current literature. It should be pointed out that the design of an analysis of language use starts with choosing a unit of analysis. What is innovative about this article is that the authors argue that two units are needed for the analysis of (intercultural) communication. They consistently distinguish between (CMI) Communicative Minimal Units (e.g., the ‘sentence’ or ‘turn’) and Communicative Maximal Units (CMA) (e.g., conversation or text). After all, when analyzing a text or conversation, one must be able to justify the minimum units used to analyze these maximum units. For example, how does a sequence of turns determine the structure of a conversation, or how does the coherence of sentences determine the comprehensibility of a text? In this systematic review of the broad scope of theories about minimum and maximum unity, external and internal arrangements which prevailing theories introduce to describe these units are discussed. This results in six sections in which the internal and external arrangement of Maximum Communicative Units and the internal and external arrangement of Minimum Communicative Units are examined. The chapter includes two sections that introduce the linguistic categories used as minimum or maximum units. This overview addresses the interactive approach to intercultural communication, but interfaces with other approaches are discussed. After all, in the contrastive, multilingual and cultural representation and transfer approaches, the design of an analysis model involves a choice for a combination of a minimum and maximum analysis unit.