Engaging and Transforming Global Communication through Cultural Discourse Analysis: A Tribute to Donal Carbaugh(The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Communication Studies)

Global communication can be difficult in the best of circumstances. The contributors in this book take seriously the premise that one can examine communication within specific global settings and scenes with the goal of ensuring that the meanings made among those within specific communities is more clearly understood. This includes recognizing that we often communicate based on specific assumptions and act in ways that have normative bases that are shared with those within communities, but are often difficult to discern or navigate by those who are not members of them. Situated within the Ethnography of Communication research program, the contributors in this volume use Cultural Discourse Analysis to examine such practices, a theory and methodology developed by Donal Carbaugh over the past thirty years. The book is a celebration of his work and career, in which forty-four prominent Communication scholars and practitioners come together to use this framework to examine pressing communication issues across the globe. The book includes a preface by Gerry Philipsen that is an academic history of Carbaugh’s career, an introduction outlining the history and current practice of Cultural Discourse Analysis, sixteen data based chapters using the framework to examine a broad range of inter/cultural communication practices across the globe, and an epilogue by Carbaugh reviewing this research and its future trajectory. The book is a handbook of Cultural Discourse Analysis for examining the latest in Cultural Discourse Analysis research and learning how to do such work that will be useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in a broad range of fields, inter/cultural communication scholars, and all those who seek to better understand and communicate in the global world today.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface Gerry Philipsen Introduction Cultural Discourse Analysis: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Michelle Scollo & Trudy Milburn PART I: BEING 1. Speaking of Health in Singapore Using the Singlish term Heaty Evelyn Y. Ho, Sunny Lie, Pauline Luk, & Mohan J. Dutta 2. Applying Cultural Discourse Analysis to an Online Community: LinkedIn's Cultural Discourse of Professionalism Tabitha Hart & Trudy Milburn 3. Voice Persona Perceptions: Apologies in In-Car Speech Technology Laura Rosenbaun, Ute Winter, & Brion van Over PART II: ACTING 4. When Discourse Matters: Temporality in Discursive Action Tamar Katriel & Oren Livio 5. Cultural Discourse Analysis as Critical Analysis: A View from Twin Oaks and SuicideForum.com Jolane Flanigan & Mike Alvarez 6. Cultural Variation in End-of-Life Conversations: Using Cultural Discourse Analysis to Inform Case Studies Designed for Professional Military Education Lauren Mackenzie & Kelly Tenzek 7. Museum Tour Talk: Communicative Acts, A

About the Author :
Michelle Scollo is associate professor of communication at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. Trudy Milburn is assistant dean for the school of liberal arts and sciences at Purchase College, SUNY.

Review :
Overall, the book offers massive implications for research in culture and communication. It elaborates, through data-based studies, on the concepts of discursive hubs and radiants in CuDA, and also on the important themes worthy of being explored in discourse analysis and pragmatics. As such, this book constitutes a valuable read for researchers in all these fields. One cannot open Engaging and Transforming Global Communication through Cultural Discourse Analysis without feeling the joy, excitement, and love that produced this edited collection. It breaks new ground not by presenting readers with superb summaries and extensions of Donal Carbaugh’s and his colleagues’ work, but by illustrating its significance today through detailed cases and analyses. Each of the contributors—from the preface by Gerry Philipsen through the epilogue by none other than the honoree himself—explicates central concepts, assumptions, procedures, findings, and boundaries between, with linkages to, Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) and related approaches in such thoughtful and insightful ways that the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the normative becomes visible. As readers, we participate in the unraveling of rich, meaningful everyday talk that constitutes health, cultural aspects of funeral rites, ambiguities in emerging romantic relationships, refugees and broadcast programming, and so much more. This collection is indeed A Tribute to Donal Carbaugh. Through it we have the honor and privilege of tracing CuDA’s lineage to future applications hinted at between and within chapters. With this tribute, we celebrate Donal the scholar but also the humble force behind this remarkable body of work. Engaging and Transforming Global Communication through Cultural Discourse Analysis: A Tribute to Donal Carbaugh honors a leading second-generation scholar in the Ethnography of Communication and demonstrates the fruitfulness of Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA), an innovative approach to cultural analysis that Carbaugh has developed through much of his career. In the best tradition of the Festschrift, the many excellent studies collected in this volume not only celebrate a key scholar’s work, but carry it forward and point the way to future advances. Recommended reading for anyone interested in communication and culture. Cultural Discourse Analysis is Donal Carbaugh’s expansion of Dell Hymes’ Ethnography of Speaking, integrating concepts from Interactional Sociolinguistics and several later approaches, with the goal of improving analysts’ understanding of how people jointly construct cultural meanings through talk. In Engaging and Transforming Global Communication through Cultural Discourse Analysis, his colleagues and students demonstrate the value of this theory across a wide range of cultural contexts. Uncommon focus is placed on cross-cultural comparisons, with multiple authors contributing their own data to a joint comparative analysis. Authors demonstrate the use of specific tools this theory provides (especially discursive hubs and radiants) for analyzing interaction and understanding communicative practices across cultural groups. Carbaugh’s Epilogue summarizes several key concepts and will be especially valuable to newcomers to the theory. Rich in description and grounded in theory. This collection not only honors the work and person of Donal Carbaugh, it also demonstrates how Cultural Discourse Analysis can be applied to explicate a range of communicative phenomena. Each chapter works with data from a novel context to demonstrate culturally situated ways of being, acting, relating, feeling, and dwelling. An essential work for anyone interested in the Ethnography of Communication.