The influence of culture on the communicative style of students in a Malaysian Secondary School
This study investigates the influence of culture on the communicative style of students in a Malaysian school. It focuses on the relationship between cultural orientation and anxiety uncertainty management and language usage. Data were collected from 20 Chinese and Indian students from a Malaysia...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Pusat Pengajian Bahasa dan Linguistik, FSSK, UKM
2003
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3104/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3104/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/3104/1/1.pdf |
| Summary: | This study investigates the influence of culture on the communicative style of students in a
Malaysian school. It focuses on the relationship between cultural orientation and anxiety
uncertainty management and language usage. Data were collected from 20 Chinese and Indian
students from a Malaysian secondary school through a set of questionnaire to look into the
cultural orientation and to identify its influence on the students' communicative style. The results
indicate that the cultural orientation among the Chinese and Indian students vary on a continuum
from high individualistic orientation to high collectivistic orientation. There is an almost equal
distribution of individualists and collectivists among the Chinese students while there are more
collectivists among the Indian students. The relationship between cognitive (uncertainty) and
affective (anxiety) factors and the two selected aspects of language (beliefs about talks and
direct-indirect communication) do not reciprocate indicating that other factors like personality,
individual values and self-constructs influence one's communicative style. The collectivists on
the other hand also exhibit similar relationship. The results contradict with the general
characteristics of the individualistic and collectivistic orientation and recent work linking it with
AUM theory. Theoretical implications are discussed. |
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