When you say that you would like to group participants according to culture, do you mean that you actually want to physically group during teaching, or do you wish to group study results for analytical purposes (possibly to identify cultural differences in learning behaviour)?

Let's assume it is the latter (for I wouldn't know why you would want to do the former).

Hofstede of course is widely quoted. He did his research in 1980, by interviewing 116,000 IBM employees - the results of his studies may or not be relevant for your work.

I find the distinction of high-context and low-context communication interesting, which goes back to Edward Hall (see link to article by Michelle LeBaron, 2003, below.)

You may also look into the Seven Dimensions of Culture (Fons Trompenaar, link below).

Anne Perkins (2009) notes the limitations of some Western-oriented models, including Globe and Hofstede (link below).

Generally, literature on this subject seems to be dominated by studies on leadership and intercultural communication at work places.

Certainly all these studies have their use. However, I am a bit doubtful whether their findings can be applied regardless of context. I am European (from Austria) and have worked for more than 25 years in many African countries. My experience tells me that a Kenyan learner (who may have gone through British education at home, and there are many) has more in common with her British counterpart than with his own country mate who may have a more traditional education. Just as one simple example, to underline my doubts.

Your question, therefore, whether you can actually create cultural groups, is very relevant. If you don't mind the extra work, try at least two different cultural models, plus - and this is important - find out what learner types your particpants are. By the time you have collected valid and reliable data, established correlations, hopefully some causal, you may have a solid doctoral dissertation ..

Good luck!

https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/communication_tools

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/seven-dimensions.htm

http://www.journalofleadershiped.org/attachments/article/183/Perkins.pdf

Leopold Hamminger , many thanks for your extensive and useful reaction. I wasn't aware of Trompenaar's work, I'm looking forward to look into it. Perkins' article will be very relevant for my work too.

I like your suggestion to compare several models! Thank you.

To reply to your first question: I forgot to mention that I am finishing the data collection of my research via an online survey: after providing sociolinguistic information, participants have to indicate the emotion they perceived in 12 short clips in which they see and/or hear a Chinese man talking. One of the questions I would like to investigate it whether (or to what extent) cultural background is related to one's perception of emotions.

Makes sense, Pernelle. Do you expect different emotions depending on whether respondents see and hear, or see only?

Statistical analysis will be an interesting task, good luck!

I guess that participants (especially the 'nonnative' participants?) might interpret the emotional state of the speaker differently depending on what kind of information they have at their disposal. If you are interested, you can find a summary of my project here:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/L1-LX-and-L0-Mandarin-Speakers-Emotion-Perception-across-different-modalities

Yes, the statistical analyses are quite challenging, given the design of my project. I want to focus on the response patterns displayed by the different groups, not on "the most chosen emotion". Hence, I am planning to use a multinomial regression (although I am more familiar with SPSS, I might need to do it in R because SPSS only gives information about the effect of the IV on one category of the DV compared to the other categories, while R has a package that can give me information for all the categories independently...

I guess a PhD is about learning new skills ;-)

I took part and I was impressed. Great job. There is a lot you can do with it.

I'd be interested in the research design.

Thank you for your participation and your comment, Leopold.

I haven't published anything about this project yet, so I haven't written much more than in the description of the project I've mentioned above. I'd be happy to answer your questions or comment, though. Do not hesitate to contact me via e-mail.

Dear Pernelle,

I think Leopold did a great job and gave you many interesting hints for your research. Nevertheless, I would like to add one dimension to this discussion. If you follow authors like Hofstede you have to be careful because they seem to understand culture rather as a thing than a construction. Here you have the danger of essentializing what culture is.

In recent social and cultural anthropology, my field of expertise, there is great doubt if there is one single national culture (e.g. Kenyan culture). Instead it might be that there is one group of people within Kenya who have a similiar educational background (English speaking by British educational institutions) which makes them disctinct whthin Kenyan society. To sum this up, it might be better to keep in mind that culture is an open, dynamic and heterogeneuous system of symbols and forms of communication that builds on different categories such as ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual oriientation, gender or many others...

Good luck and all the best,

Tobias

Dear Tobias, Many thanks for your reaction. This is indeed a very puzzling aspect which I am not sure how to treat. Originating from Belgium (the north of the country is monolingual Dutch, hence more influenced by the Dutch culture, while the south of the country is monolingual French, hence more influenced by the French culture), I am myself convinced that country boundaries might not always offer the best delineation for cultural groups. I guess that we need to start with some sort of clustering, hence some sort of "(over)generalisation" to be able to unveil broad, ''gross'' patterns (with a quantitative approach), which can then be refined in future research (probably with a more qualitative approach or by looking quantitatively at smaller geographical areas). If you know of any names of researchers which might help further my reflection on this, I would be glad to hear it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this, Pernelle

Dear Pernelle,

there is a whole literature in anthropology on this issue. To name just a few, it is certainly helpful to have a look at the writing culture debate. One of its proponents is George Marcus (see for example "Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences"). Other valuable contributions are given by Sherry B. Ortner ("Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject") and Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson ("Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology"). Moreover, it might be useful to have a look at the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0039.xml

All the best,

Tobias

Thank you Tobias! I haven't read Ortner nor the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology yet, I will definitely have a look!

Best,

Pernelle

"This is indeed a very puzzling aspect which I am not sure how to treat. "

This is precisely the problem Tobias is pointing at: country does not necessarily equate to culture. It may - or not - have been the case at the time Hofstede did his research. Going beyond Hofstede, and similar models of culture, social / cultural anthropology offers a more comprehensive view.

For example, take Tobias' notion of culture as a construction. This gives rise to a number of questions, e.g.: Is one's cultural identity context- or situation - specific? Can you be an "Arab" with your family and a "German" at work? What about gender? Do women's cultural views manifest themselves differently than men's? It appears we know very little yet how to handle constructs.

For your dissertation you may want to differentiate your respondents by languages, possibly language groups, and whether they are mono-, bi- or multilingual.

Exactly. I am planning to group participants in different ways, and I am also planning to do some factorial analyses (especially when it come to "culture"), to see whether it even make sense to try and group them according to, say, culture or not