Update March 22, 2020

Teaching plan and suggested topics for future discussions are shown as follows:

Teaching Schedule for the First Nine Weeks

Lecture 1

Course description; requirements, tasks; assessment --- discussion, presentation, and term paper;

Reading materials for ‘ESP in General’ and ‘Business English’. Summaries are needed from the students.

Lecture 2

Culture: definitions;

Hofstede’s Three Levels of Mental Programming (‘Software of the mind’);

Ecology and Culture;

Theories of culture

Lecture 3

Hall’s theories revisited;

Critique of Hofstede’s theories;

Dialectical relations of culture and communication

Lecture 4

Introducing language and intercultural Communication

Lecture 5

Business discourse --- What is Business Discourse

Lecture 6

Business discourse: Research Cases

e.g. Euphemisms in the economic discourse; metaphor; rhetorics, etc.

Lecture 7

Cultural Linguistics: Cultural dimension of language

Lecture 8

Paradigm and Intercultural Communication;

Identity and Intercultural (Business) Communication;

Interculturality, Harmony and Conflict;

Communicative Competence and ICC Training;

Analysis of SEIB Dissertation papers and Implications;

Developing Intercultural (Business) Communication theories for Belt and Road Initiative

Lecture 9

Week of Students’ presentations

20 minutes for each, presentation, plus 5 minutes Q & A.