Communicating Risk in a Cross-Cultural Context

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article analyzes how culture influences the rhetorical strategies writers employ to represent expert knowledge in the workplace and the underlying values and assumptions in a culture that enable readers to understand and evoke the knowledges represented as visual and verbal narratives. The study examines the problems of risk communication in a cross-cultural context at three levels: (a) the technical problems of representing safety information in an uncertain and hazardous environment, (b) the translation problem of multiple representations and cultural understandings in a cross-cultural environment, and (c) the rhetorical problem of defining a rational basis for argument about what constitutes safety in an economic and political context. This article expands upon previous notions of cross-cultural communication as the translation processes necessary to mediate cultural difference or translate from one culture to another. In examining risk communication within a larger global context, this article analyzes the problems writers face in applying generalized models of communication practice to solve technical problems in a culturally and politically complex global economy.

This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit: