The Multi-Modal Dimensions of Risk Communication in Difficult Cross-Cultural Contexts

风险传播者认识到非语言交流在引出利益相关者所知道的知识和构建风险信息方面的重要性，但他们没有调查观点和手势在跨文化风险制度背景下如何发挥作用。对实时工作场所互动中的手势的分析表明，个人使用手势来表示仅靠言语不可能实现的体验的空间和时间特性(参见。麦克尼尔和邓肯，2000)。视点是工作场所手势表征的一个重要特征。如果个人要进入权威职位，那么在分析视角和地方视角之间灵活移动的能力是必要的(Sauer，2003；参见。McNeill，1992)。然而，如果言语和手势的语义内容冲突，或者如果手势的观点不能与工人的具体经验相协调，手势可能会导致混淆(参见。Alibali&amp；Goldin-Meadow 1993)和文化背景。这一问题在南非矿场尤为严重，在那里，语言能力(英语或南非荷兰语)往往是衡量工作场所能力的唯一标准。不同的手势观点和无脚本的交流做法产生了相互冲突和不准确的风险信息，使工人在安全培训期间感到困惑，并增加了发生灾难的可能性(Sauer，即将出版)。这些发现提出了关于跨文化风险沟通中手势的文化和制度维度的问题：什么因素决定了观点，语言和手势中编码的差异如何影响理解？更广泛地说，这些差异揭示了风险背景下跨文化交流中时空理解的文化维度是什么？该项目有五个目标：(1)在先前从SA煤矿安全培训项目收集的数据中确定手势形式及其与言语的关系；(2)确定视点与说话者在交互中规定和承担的角色之间的关系；(3)确定手势形式、意义和视点的差异是否影响理解水平；(4)确定不同的理解水平在多大程度上反映了语言、文化、教育、机构经验和/或安全培训的其他副语言和语境因素的差异；(5)总结了手势观点和手势作为专业技术(风险)语篇的交际特征所起的作用及其对跨文化环境下的风险交际和相关学科的影响。使用以参与者为中心的方法，手势分析、修辞、挖掘和南非语言方面的专家将(1)与当地线人合作，描述、分析和比较录像中跨文化和制度维度(培训者、翻译和矿工)的矿山安全项目交流互动中的手势意义和观点，以及(2)在每个假设的差异参数中，以10人为一组，引出交流困难地点的交流表征：教育VS未受教育，南非荷兰语VS祖鲁，这项研究将有助于在技术高度不确定的情况下改善跨文化风险沟通，在这种情况下，语言障碍阻碍了社会和经济的转型，并造成了灾难的可能性。这项研究还对那些语言或文化不同的人的工程和科学教育有更普遍的影响

Risk communicators recognize the importance of non-verbal communication in the elicitation of what stakeholders know and in the construction of risk messages, but they have not investigated how viewpoint and gesture function in cross-cultural institutional contexts of risk. Analysis of gesture in real-time workplace interactions shows that individuals employ gesture to represent spatial and temporal properties of experience not possible in speech alone (cf. McNeill & Duncan, 2000). Viewpoint is a critical feature of gestural representations in the workplace. The ability to move flexibly between analytic and local perspectives is necessary if individuals are to move into positions of authority (Sauer, 2003; cf. McNeill, 1992). Gestures may contribute to confusion, however, if the semantic content of speech and gesture conflicts or if the gestural viewpoint cannot be reconciled with workers' embodied experience (cf. Alibali & Goldin-Meadow 1993) and cultural background. The problem is particularly acute in South African mines where linguistic facility (in English or Afrikans) often provides the sole measure of workplace competence. Differences in gestural viewpoint and unscripted communication practices create conflicting and inaccurate risk messages that confuse workers during safety training and increase the potential for disaster (Sauer, forthcoming). These findings raise questions about the cultural and institutional dimensions of gesture in cross-cultural risk communication: What factors determine viewpoint and how do differences encoded in language and gesture impact on comprehension? What do these differences reveal, more generally, about the cultural dimensions of spatial and temporal understanding in cross- cultural communication in the context of risk? The project has five objectives: (1) identify gestural forms and their relation to speech in previously collected data from SA coal mine safety training programs; (2) determine how viewpoint is related to speaker's prescribed and assumed roles in the interaction; (3) determine whether differences in gestural form, meaning, and viewpoint affect levels of understanding; (4) determine the extent to which different levels of understanding reflect differences in language, culture, education, institutional experience, and/or other paralinguistic and contextual factors of safety training; (5) draw conclusions about the role of gestural viewpoint and gesture as a communicative feature of specialized technical (risk) discourses and its implications for risk communication and related disciplines in multi- cultural environments. Using participant-centered methods, experts in gestural analysis, rhetoric, mining, and South African languages will (1) work with local informants to describe, analyze, and compare gestural meaning and viewpoint in video taped communicative interactions of mine safety programs across cultural and institutional dimensions (trainers, translators, and miners) and (2) elicit communicative representations of sites of communicative difficulty in cohorts of ten across each of the hypothesized parameters of difference: education v. uneducated, Afrikaans v. Zulu, and institutionally experienced v. inexperienced.This study will help improve cross-cultural risk communication in conditions of profound technical uncertainty where language barriers prevent social and economic transformation and create the potential for disaster. The research also has more general implications for engineering and science education where individuals do not share similar languages or culture