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

风险传播者认识到非语言沟通在获取利益相关者所知和构建风险信息方面的重要性，但他们尚未研究观点和手势在风险的跨文化制度背景下是如何发挥作用的。对实时工作场所互动中的手势的分析表明，个体使用手势来表现空间和时间属性的经验，这在言语中是不可能的（参见McNeill &amp； Duncan, 2000）。视点是工作场所手势表现的一个重要特征。如果个人想要进入权威职位，那么在分析和地方观点之间灵活移动的能力是必要的（Sauer, 2003; cf. McNeill, 1992）。然而，如果言语和手势的语义内容冲突，或者手势的观点不能与工人的具体经验（参见Alibali & Goldin-Meadow 1993）和文化背景相协调，手势可能会导致混淆。这个问题在南非矿山尤为严重，因为语言能力（英语或非洲语）往往是衡量工作能力的唯一标准。手势观点的差异和无脚本的沟通实践会产生冲突和不准确的风险信息，使工人在安全培训中感到困惑，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：什么因素决定观点？语言和手势编码的差异如何影响理解？这些差异更普遍地揭示了风险背景下跨文化交际中空间和时间理解的文化维度？该项目有五个目标：(1)从SA煤矿安全培训项目先前收集的数据中识别手势形式及其与语音的关系；(2)确定观点与说话者在互动中所扮演的角色之间的关系；(3)确定手势形式、意义和观点的差异是否影响理解水平；(4)确定不同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背景因素的差异；(5)总结了手势视点和手势作为专业技术（风险）话语的交际特征的作用及其对多文化环境下风险交际和相关学科的启示。使用以参与者为中心的方法，手势分析、修辞、采矿和南非语言方面的专家将(1)与当地的告密者合作，描述、分析和比较跨文化和制度维度的矿山安全项目的视频交流互动中的手势意义和观点(培训师、翻译、(2)在每一个假设的差异参数（教育vs .未受过教育，南非荷兰人vs .祖鲁人，有制度经验vs .没有经验）的10人队列中引出交际困难地点的交际表征。这项研究将有助于在深刻的技术不确定性条件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转型，并创造了潜在的灾难。这项研究还对工程和科学教育有更普遍的意义，因为这些领域的个体没有相似的语言或文化

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