CIICPD 2023

Germany: University of Applied Sciences Zwickau

Critical Incidents: A narratological perspective and its implications for intercultural learning. A corpus analysis

Doris Fetscher, Susanne Klein Faculty of Applied Languages and Intercultural Communication

Summary: In the first chapter, the authors examined a corpus of written critical incident narratives in English as a lingua franca from a narratological perspective with reference to a previous study of a corpus in German. The corpus was created in the context of an intercultural workshop with students and staff participating in the EU-Project CIICPD (Critical Incidents in Intercultural Communication and Promoting Diversity). In doing so, the authors presuppose that CI-narratives are fragments of autobiographical narrative and draw on categories developed for the analysis of autobiographical interviews by Lucius-Hoehne & Deppermann (2004), Bamberg (2012) or Giaxoglu & Georgakopoulou (2022). The paper endeavours to answer on which narrative procedures CI-narratives are based, which aspects of representation are used and how the narrators position themselves and the ‘others’. In addition, the authors argue for a conceptual differentiation between CI-application, CI-narrative and CI-storytelling (Fetscher, 2022). The conclusion gives an outlook on possibilities for a differentiated approach to CIs in research and training by providing tools and pedagogical stimuli to meta-reflexively penetrate the narrative structures themselves, e.g. such as dramaturgy or stereotyping. Keywords: autobiographical narrative, critical incidents, intercultural training, multi perspectivity, storytelling

For detailed analysis and a list of references, see Chapter 1, page 47–74.

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