Ley de Adquisiciones

As Cutrone () suggested, the design and methods of any study or test to assess micro-feedback behaviour can vary and be highly dependent on the specific goals of the researchers as well as the technical support (e.g., research and analysis equipment and technologies) and the time they can get and afford when the study is conducted. The present study is limited in a few ways.

7.4.1 Communicative activity context

This particular context of Swedish–Chinese intercultural first encounters only pro- vides us with a starting point for the analysis of micro-feedback in relation to under- standing in spontaneous communication. Apparently, unacquainted people employ plenty of questions and answers to elicit and give micro-feedback in their conversa- tions. However, they did not manifest many misunderstandings or non-understand- ings. Perhaps, first encounters are restricted to studying misunderstanding and non- understanding in the sense that unacquainted people normally do not want to reveal difficulties or problems in understanding in FTF spontaneous dyadic conversations. Thus, they probably try to minimise responses that show misunderstanding and non-

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understanding. This first encounters’ conversational context provides a considerable body of micro-feedback, but it does not provide as many cases of misunderstanding or non-understanding as it does of sufficient understanding.

It is also important to mention that micro-feedback behaviour is not only limited to contexts such as first encounters. It occurs in all types of human communications. Possibly, a larger group of dynamics and variables in terms of communication con- text could somewhat influence the micro-feedback behaviours and their associations with different types of understandings. However, it is not clear how much this influ- ence would be and what form it would take. Consequently, further research with other communication activity contexts, cultures, and languages could shed light on these issues.

7.4.2 An experimental situation

The present study of understanding in first encounters’ conversations is based on an experimental situation rather than a naturalistic situation. The participants met in a lecture room. In contrast to Svennevig’s study (), in which participants were go- ing to attend a course together, here they did not foresee a long-term relationship for any joint social activity after their participation in this research project (unless, of course, some voluntary activity in private). They were simply given a task of getting acquainted with one another, preferably within eight minutes, in a face-to-face posi- tion standing up opposite to each other. Three cameras filmed the participants from different angles, and the participants were instructed not to move out of the cameras’ capture areas.

In this situated interaction activity, on the one hand, the participants were aware of the activity rules, for example, what they were expected to do and what they could do. The participants developed sense-making and information sharing according to their knowledge of the activity type and in line with the activity expectation. On the other hand, the participants conformed to the rules of the current interaction activ- ity, with a low level of awareness. The participants created their conversation jointly and interactively. From this perspective, in this study, the experimental situation may not vary much from a naturalistic situation in terms of the content of the conversa- tion and the participants’ interactivity. Especially, the use of micro-feedback has been identified primarily as of low consciousness and intentionality levels (see earlier chapters regarding literature and theoretical reviews). This setting does not invali- date the results of this particular study.

Because gesture and prosody are of great interest in the present study, capturing these elements in the interaction is important in the study design and material col- lection. An ethnomethodological study (of understanding in first encounters, e.g. in

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a pub or business conference), which would have taken place without the study, may provide communication materials not provided by the researcher or the project. However, it may not be able to capture the interesting details of gesture and prosody in the real-time communication activity. Studies of gestures and prosodies usually use cameras and microphones (reasonably close to the participants). As long as there is a camera or microphone (or other artefacts for research purposes), a question that arises is how natural and ethnomethodological the study is.

7.4.3 Face-to-face communication

Although face-to-face (FTF) communication is historically seen as the basis of a the- ory of language, the basis of all human language behaviour, and the standard com- munication situation (Clark, ), the communication medium of FTF could have also constituted a restriction in the data in Study  on producing a greater number of understanding problems. Varying communication media can be explored in order to study micro-feedback and understanding in interaction.

7.4.4 Size of the data

Study  in the thesis was based on eight audio- and video-recorded FTF dyadic dia- logues between four Swedish and four Chinese university students who were strangers, with two females and two males from each cultural group. Study  focuses particularly on the Swedish and the Chinese second language speakers of English and analyses their first encounter’s conversations.

The size of the data is restricted in the sense that the cultural, language, gender, and educational backgrounds as well as the individual personalities and experiences could influence how they communicate in speech, gestures, and prosody.

First, the participants were not native English speakers, and Chinese and Swedish were their first languages. Although the participants were proficient users of the Eng- lish lingua franca, it is uncertain how much the first language influences the second language usage. Therefore, how representative the results of the present study can be in relation to other people in other activities in the world is a question. Second, the participants were university students, studying at different universities and in differ- ent disciplines in Sweden. Their knowledge and experience of intercultural commu- nication, in particular between Chinese and Swedish, and the frequency of using English may vary individually. Third, although general information on individual participants has been collected, for example, gender, age, education subject and level, general background information is not possible for any comparative analysis in the

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present study because of the size of the data. Nevertheless, this background infor- mation can enhance the analyst’s awareness of individual differences between the participants and provide the analyst with more opportunities to interpret, under- stand, and explain certain communicative actions and reactions, for example, the Chinese participant laughed in an “un-laughing” context (a situation where there is nothing that could be considered funny) when he did not understand the other par- ticipant and the Swedish participant did not understand the Chinese female partici- pant’s comment on her “beautiful eyes”.

Consequently, the results presented in this thesis must be considered indicative. In line with what has been discussed earlier, an extended larger study involving, for example, a larger group of participants with more contextual variables could be con- ducted in the future.