Research Approach
This study adopted the qualitative approach since it utilized various empirical materials such as interviews, conversations, personal experiences, and cultural context, trying to interpret and explain the selection process of Cultural Facilitators’ communication language and intercultural communication strategies (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). As Mertens (2005) put, when the research questions included “detailed, in-depth information” or focused on
“individualized outcomes”, the qualitative method was suggested. Cultural Facilitators interviewed for this study were asked questions regarding their planning and selection process of communication strategies which varied from person to person. Furthermore, not only their individualized results mattered but also the exhaustive answers to research questions played an important role in this study.
Compared to the quantitative approach, the qualitative approach enabled the researcher to get a more insightful understanding of Cultural Facilitators about the inner selection process when engaged in an intercultural communication. Besides, the qualitative study also explored interviewees’ feedback on the whole communication process. In brief, the qualitative research facilitated the researcher explore essence of phenomenon that other approaches could not probe (Bodgan, 1975; Patton, 2002). Meriam (2009) explains, “The overall purpose is to understand how people make sense of their lives and their experiences”
(p. 23). Therefore, the qualitative was adopted in the study.
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Research Framework
The framework of this study was constructed based on research purpose and research questions stated in Chapter I. This study aims to identify communication strategies used by Cultural Facilitators in 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival and to explore factors affecting their strategies selection.
Figure 3.1. Research framework
Second language communication strategies and intercultural communication strategies were both examined and identified. In Chapter II, five primary communication strategies in second language communication had been identified by Tarone (1977) which were avoidance, conscious transfer, paraphrase, appeal for assistance, and mime. Intercultural communication strategies were also suggested by Hinchcliff-Pelias and Greer (2004) which referred to being
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bi-cultural aware, learning from misunderstanding, avoiding stereotype, and increasing encountering experiences. Although participants’ responses might not fit into these classifications, these strategies served as a good base for the analysis. Finally, the results were derived from data responded to research question of this study.
Research Procedure
The research procedure in this study included twelve steps which were described gradually below (Figure 3.2.):
1. Identify Research Topic:
After consulting with the advisor and subject matter experts, and reviewing some literatures about intercultural communication, the researcher identified the topic which aimed to explore intercultural communication strategies used by Cultural Facilitators in international events and rationales for them to select certain strategies.
2. Research Questions and Purpose:
Through reading more related literatures and discussing with the advisor, the researcher was able to set the research questions and the purpose specifically.
3. Determine the Research Method:
In order to explore the process of communication strategies which focused more on inner process, the research decided to adopt the qualitative research to get insightful information.
4. Observation and Data Collection:
After deciding to adopt the qualitative research, the researcher participated in 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival as a Cultural Facilitator and an observer for the research.
During the festival, the researcher collected data through working as a Cultural Facilitator.
5. Literature Review:
After finishing the work in the festival, the researcher started to review literatures related
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to intercultural communication, communication strategies and communication in second languages. The main focus was on the communication strategies used in intercultural and inter-linguistic context and communication models that might be applicable in this study.
6. Set Framework
Literature review provided fundamental concepts for constructing the framework which included rationales, communication strategies and the corresponding research questions.
7. Design Interview Questions
Interview questions were developed from research questions. In case the question is too broad to recall their memories, most questions are designed sequentially based on Cultural Facilitators’ daily work in the festival.
8. Expert Review/Peer Review/Pretest
The interview questions were first sent to the project manager and assistant for revision.
Then, the researcher’s classmates who also had the knowledge about intercultural communication helped to improve the wording and grammars of the questions.
9. Modify Interview Questions
After reviews, the researcher modified questions accordingly and then finalized the interview questions.
10. Conduct the interview
As soon as interview questions were finalized, the researcher began to interview Cultural Facilitators who had been selected by the project manager and assistant.
11. Analyze Data
Interview verbatim and records, relevant documents and personal observation were all used for analysis. The researcher coded the interview verbatim in order to systematically analyze the data.
12. Conclude Research Findings
After finishing the data analysis, the research applied previously reviewed literatures and
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findings of the analysis to respond to research questions in this study. Implications were provided for those who work in similar scenarios and for the future researches.
Figure 3.2. Research procedure
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Research Participants and Criteria
Qualitative study, compared to quantitative study, usually emphasized on a smaller group of samples which were purposefully selected instead of being randomly selected (Patton, 2002). The purposeful sampling helped researchers focus on samples with abundant information. Therefore, the participants of this study were purposefully selected according to Patton’s sampling strategies. There were ten sampling strategies developed by Patton and
“intensity sampling” (p. 234) adopted in this study was one of them. The “intensity sampling”
was composed of “information-rich cases that manifest the phenomenon of interest intensely”
(p.234).
Cultural Facilitators in the 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival provided rich information as research material for the study on intercultural communication since they frequently communicated with different parties so that they were selected as participants for the research. Nevertheless, not every Cultural Facilitator was selected as research participants.
Every Cultural Facilitator should present their TOEIC or TOFEL score when they applied for being a Cultural Facilitator in the festival. They should score at least 800 in TOEIC or 80 in TOFEL to be qualified candidates. They also went through oral interview conducted in English, Chinese and Taiwanese. In other words, they were competent in language proficiency since it was one of the utmost concerns of all requirements.
There were four criteria for selecting participants for this study: (1) they participated in 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival; (2) they were Taiwanese and grew up in Taiwan; (3) they have to be familiar with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese and one second Language which helped them communicate with international ensembles; (4) the list of Cultural Facilitators were reviewed by the project manager and assistant of the festival to select participants who were good communicators during the event.
Furthermore, after the participants were selected, they were classified into four groups based on their communication languages used during communication. The four
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communication types are shown below:
Table 3.1.
Communication Type
Ensembles
Cultural Facilitators
Native Language Second Language
Native Language 1 4
Second Language 2 3
In this study, the native language meant the official language, in which they were mastering. For example, the native languages for Singapore are Chinese, Malay, English, and Tamil. Taiwanese Cultural Facilitators whose native language was Chinese could communicate with Singapore ensemble by Chinese and English so they were classified into the first and second type simultaneously.
The first type meant both Cultural Facilitators and group members used their native language to communicate, suggesting that they have the same official language. The second type meant the Cultural Facilitators used their second language which was the native language of intercultural counterparts. The Singapore ensemble which was discussed earlier belongs to this type. The third type meant both parties used second language to communicate.
For example, Cultural Facilitators for Bulgaria used English to communicate with members who also used English instead of their mother tongue. Lastly, the forth type meant that Cultural Facilitators communicate with others by their native language which was the second language to others. However, in this study, the last communication type was not discussed because none of Cultural Facilitators had this kind of communication experiences in this event.
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Table 3.2.
The Description of Interview Participants
Name Gender Group Native Tongue Communication Language Communication Type
Iris F Japan Japanese Japanese 2
Federer M Japan Japanese Japanese 2
Janet F Korea Korean Korean 2
Lassie F Korea Korean Korean/English 2.3
Stacy F Nepal Nepali English 3
Jophia F Singapore English, Malay, Chinese &Tamil Chinese English
1
Andrea F Singapore English, Malay, Chinese & Tamil Chinese English
1
Anna F Philippines Filipino
English
English 2
Natasha F Slovakia Slovak English 3
(continued)
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Table 3.2. (continued)
Note: Numbers in the column of communication type refer to the table 3.1.
Name Gender Group Native Tongue Communication Language Communication Type
Sophia F Slovakia Slovak English 3
William M Slovakia Slovak English 3
Fiona F Bulgaria Bulgarian English 3
Zoya F Bulgaria Bulgarian English 3
Alyssa F Turkey Turkish English 3
Jacob M Serbia Serbian English 3
Kate F Serbia Serbian English 3
Maggie F Serbia Serbian English 3
Lucas M Mexico Spanish Spanish 2
Felisa F Mexico Spanish Spanish 2
Galina F Russia Russian Russian 2
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Data Collection
This study mainly focused on Cultural Facilitators in international events in Taiwan.
Since the researcher participated in 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival as an observer, it also adopted the case study on this event specifically and provided references for future international events. Case study was regarded as the primary research method of qualitative research (Hsiao, 2007). Like other research methods of qualitative research, the case study also viewed researchers as main instrument and aimed to conduct inductive investigation and to produce richly descriptive outcome (Merriam, 2009). In this research, data were collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and document review.
Participant Observation
Data used for qualitative research mainly came from the field work (Patton, 2002).
Participant observation referred to “research characterized by a period of intense social interaction between the researcher and the subjects” (Bodgan, 1975, p. 5). The researcher also involved himself in 2010 and 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival and, thus, had the opportunity to see, to observe, and to understand the interaction, organization and relationship in the whole event. The researcher went through formal selection process conducted by Tainan City Government in Taiwan, and got employed as the Cultural Facilitators for Slovakia Bratislava Technik Dance Ensemble, staying with the ensemble for 24 hours a day during the whole festival lasting for 15 days. Besides the role as a Cultural Facilitator, the researcher was also invited to give a short training to newly selected Cultural Facilitators due to rich experiences in 2010. According to Merriam (2009), the researcher was defined as a “participant as observer” (p. 124), whose observer role was known to the whole group. Being a participant and an observer simultaneously was probably the only way to get dependable materials.
During the festival, the main focuses of the researcher’s observation were on how
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Cultural Facilitators interpreted for international ensembles, how they facilitate intercultural communication and how they tackle emergent situation. Notes, photos, diaries taken during the festival were all used as research materials in this study.
In-depth Interview
When researchers were interested in the past event or how people interpreted the world around them, the interview was a good approach to get the necessary information for research.
In this study, the researcher would like to understand the inner process of selecting communication strategies and their feedback on the whole process. As Patton (2002) stated, interview was adopted when observation could not directly provide necessary and important information. The qualitative approach primarily focused on describing how people selected their strategies, made decisions, and took actions (Hsiao, 2009). Accordingly, the interview became the top priority when choosing methods for data collection.
Interview was also classified into different styles. In this study, the semistructured interview was adopted for it was “open-ended” (Merriam, 2009, p. 90), which presumed individuals had their “unique” (p. 90) perspectives towards the world in order to get more in-depth and insightful information and material.
Interview questions were developed from the research questions:
1. What communication strategies are used by Cultural Facilitators to achieve the goal of international events in inter-linguistic and intercultural context?
2. What are rationales for Cultural Facilitators to select their communication strategies?
There were in total 15 questions, covering every aspect of research questions. They are listed at the appendix A. of this study.
To ensure the reliability and validity of research questions, interview questions were reviewed by experts. All questions were sent to the project manager and assistant of 2012 Nan Ying International Folklore Festival and reviewed by both of them. The project manager and assistant had held the Nan Ying International Folklore Festival twice, accumulating rich
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experiences in intercultural communication. As experts in intercultural communication in this event, they could review interview questions with scrutiny, penetrating deeper into the core issue of interview questions.
After the expert review, the revised interview questions were sent to master students for peer review who also had good English ability and received trainings of intercultural communication and qualitative research. Wordings of interview questions were also examined carefully in order to accurately express the intended meanings. Furthermore, before conducting the interview with research participants, the researcher explained the process and the issue of confidentiality to the participants and also had interviewees sign the consent form to ensure their confidentiality.
Document Review
Materials considered as document in qualitative research had four kinds: public records, personal documents, popular culture documents, and visual documents (Merriam, 2009). In this study, the researcher needed to review the background information provided by the secretary of the Tainan City Government. Moreover, the training materials, official brochures, posters, website, photography, and videos were also good resources for the research. The researcher also reviewed feedbacks by previous Cultural Facilitators or guides for other international events on the internet. The focus of document review was on how the government or individual address the intercultural and inter-linguistic issues.
Data Analysis
Firstly, since the researcher also participated in the event, the overall background, organization and tasks were clearly understood. With the comprehensive knowledge of the event, the researcher could save the time understanding the event and go directly to the important issues regarding the research questions in the interview.
Each interview were recorded by the digital voice recorder, taken notes, and briefly
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analyzed simultaneously. By using the recorder, the researcher mainly focused on taking notes of key facts instead of verbatim notes (Patton, 2002). After the interview, all the recordings were transcribed into verbatim. The verbatim were reviewed with keynotes taken during the interview in order to sift out important information hidden between lines.
After collecting all the verbatim and notes, the “open coding” was used as the first step in analyzing the data. At the beginning of analyzing data, being “as expansive as possible”
(Merriam, 2009, p. 179) was necessary to gain potentially useful data. The results of initial coding defined as different categories were combined accordingly into different themes. The process of categorizing here was defined as “analytical coding” (p. 180). The themes were sifted, sorted, and finalized into findings in response to research questions of the study.
Furthermore, during the coding process, a peer who received trainings of human resource development, intercultural communication and qualitative research was invited to work together with researcher to increase the credibility of the research.
The categories, themes, and findings were checked carefully on whether they were
“responsive to answers,” “sensitive to the data,” “exhaustive,” “mutually exclusive,” and
“conceptually congruent” (Merriam, 2009, p. 186). During the coding and categorizing process, the key notes and documents were reviewed simultaneously to help the researcher gain a more in-depth understanding of these materials. Finally, the findings and conclusion of the study were drawn from the aforementioned data. The analysis process is listed in the Figure 3.3.
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Figure 3.3. Analysis process
Table 3.3. showed the coding process (see also Appendix B.). The interview contents were transcribed into verbatim and carefully examined and filtered out important ideas or concepts which responded to the research questions. After the idea or the concept was identified, it was given a code number for future reference. The code was composed of the acronym for the nation of the international ensemble Cultural Facilitators served and followed with three sets of numbers. The first number denoted which Cultural Facilitator of the ensemble was interviewed. The second number denoted the pages in the original data.
Last, the third number denoted the series number for codings.
When all the findings and coding work had been done, the codes were categorized into categories, themes. The initial analytical coding process was done by printing out all the results of open codings and categorizing them without using the computer. The hard copies
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helped the researcher gain a better view and understanding of all the codings and transcription and how they echoed with the categories and themes (see Appendix C).
Afterwards, the results of analytical, the themes, were placed into different dimensions, responding to the research questions and also documented into electronic files.
Table 3.3.
The Example of Coding Process
Interviewee Original Data Coding
Fe We sometimes solved the problem by taking advantage of language barrier.
For example, A local person told a Taiwanese joke which could be fun only if the audience understood Taiwanese.
However, my Mexican friends did not understand it at all but local people were expecting to see how the Mexicans would response. To facilitate the intercultural communication, I changed the joke into a Mexican joke so that my Mexican friends responded as expected.
Mex_01_12_28
local people were expecting to see how the Mexicans would response.
To answer the two research questions, the findings were eventually categorized into three main dimensions, including inter-linguistic communication strategies, intercultural
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communication strategies, and rationales for selection of strategies. The first two dimension regarding communication strategies were expected to answer the first question which was about what kinds of strategies were applicable at workplace. Then, the third dimension was expected to answer the second question asking about the rationale for Cultural Facilitators to select certain strategies.
Table 3.4. presented the process of categorizing codes into categories, then themes, and ultimately dimension (see also Appendix D.).
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Table 3.4.
The Example of Categorizing Process
Code Category Theme Dimension
Npl_01_12_11
To calm her down, I translated everything including what nurses said to the manager and the manager translated my translation into Nepalese.
Consulting the experts Appeal for assistance Inter-linguistic Communication Strategies
Jap_02_05_13
My partner, Federer, always took out his iPad to search for
information needed.
Ser_01_10_11
Fortunately, there was one Taiwanese expert of glove puppetry who also spoke English so I turned to him whenever I needed to translate special terms Ser_03_09_23
You could found out the key person after working with the ensemble for a couple of days
Consulting the key person
Sin_01_29_48
To catch bandits, first catch the ringleader
Slo_01_09_47
Communicate with the manager or the teacher first because they knew how to manage and interact with members.
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Research Quality
The quality was critical to a study and in qualitative research it usually determined by different criteria (Patton, 2002). The quality of a study usually referred to the reliability and validity. This section addressed to the quality of the study based on the criteria proposed by Lincoln and Guba (1985) to examine the trustworthiness of a study, which were (1) credibility (internal validity) (2) transferability (external validity) (3) dependability (reliability).
Credibility (Internal Validity)
Credibility meant how well the findings could explain or respond to the research
Credibility meant how well the findings could explain or respond to the research