Cross-Cultural Blog

The Marratech session during Monday morning/evening in group C pointed out how important it is, and how well Bono succeeds, in adapting his ethos to kairos and the rhetorical situation. By high lightening the aspects of himself that correspond to the audiences understanding of themselves he tries to, and manages, to get their attention.
Important and interesting is also how he uses humor to make fun of the aspects of his ethos that he knows is hard for people to except, for example his rock star image and missionary complex.
Tanks for a rewarding meeting // Lotta

From this activity, I actually learned how to use the rhetorical terms more freely; because I was interacting with students who's major is Rhetoric, I felt the need to use the rhetorical jargon.

It was interesting interacted with the students in Sweden because I know so little about them and they expected my group, Group C, to be more familiar and knowledgeable about the American Culture.
Since both of the groups were not comfortable with the American culture, we based our assumptions on the reputation and general theme of the American culture and it was genuinely very fun.

Although we didn't really discuss about our individual research projects, I learned that we should really emphasize the importance of kairos and ethos. Pathos is good, but not necessary depending on the topic and the audience. Also, when I was giving them a brief preview about my topic, I felt much more comfortable about my topic and noticed that my "elevator-pitch" has improved drastically! Yay.

I think the tension was reduced due to the technological aspects of this discussion. Due to the lagging screens and audio, I felt like this was a more casual conversation instead of a professional meeting that required everyone to be very formal. Using this digital technology was a better choice for me and I believe for everyone else (although the speakers turned off time to time, it was a great experience).

I hope to do this again sometime soon!

I really liked video conferencing! I've never actually done this for discussion purposes... usually I'm giving a presentation or just a casual conversation. I've never just had a discussion over the internet.

It was particularly interesting to see how our Swedish friends approached rhetoric. There was more a focus on words than style. Which I found was an interesting approach, but was equally effective, or maybe more effective than the techniques that I'm used to using. Ultimately, I think given more time, we could have been able to approach our assigned task with the best tools of both worlds.

My presentation definitely focuses on just three groups of countries, but taking a look at Facebook (my topic) from yet one more other country's perspective was really interesting. Perhaps I should expand my research sometime in the future to includ Europeans. Maybe I can analyze how people of all countries interact differently. I'm really interested!

I'm a big fan of academic conversations... but usally when its over coffee or just a group of friends sitting in a hallway. Of course, I prefer face-to-face interaction. But web conferencing added a level of realism to what otherwise would have been simply a voice conference. At the same time, the tech used wasn't the best... the lag was tremendous, and in my group, our USB mic/speaker kept giving out. The USB was of course a fluke, but perhaps other free technologies can be used for video conferencing? How about a Skype conference call? I would like to be able to "look" at the person I speak to as much as possible. After all, isn't technology supposed to make web conferences feel like face-to-face interaction? I have a lot of suggestions about how to make this better (not that it was bad in the first place), but I think that small changes, such as two/three monitors instead of one, a speedier client, etc., would help. Why the two screens? The students we were speaking with were displayed in very little boxes. Which was fine, but further separated us when we didn't have to be. We should have one large screen for the faces, and another for the "white board". My ideal video conference setup? Put the faces on two different screens, places one on top of another, with the web cam in the middle. This would let us not be constantly looking up or down to who we're speaking with. Finally the white board should be a touch screen!--for obvious reasons. Of course this is all conjecture.

I felt that we really got along with the Swedish students! They were really friendly, and even though we were separated by glass, we managed to establish a rapport. To be honest, I was more interested in learning about their culture than discussing the subject matter--maybe we can meet before hand next time?--but we managed to get both done.

coolcool.

I thought that the discussion was interesting. They were not very different from what I expected. Mostly pretty relaxed but very knowledgeable. Everyone we spoke with was a rhetoric major but I found it interesting to see that we still had similar takes on the speech. It was also interesting to see how American leaders are viewed in Sweden. And I certainly did not know about the 7 political parties in Sweden which makes politics very different. All in all I thought it was successful, great discussion and everyone was very friendly. I hope to do it again soon.

The video conference on Monday was definitely interesting and a new experience. I didn't know what to expect when I walked into the situation, and it was a little awkward at first, but we were all pretty relaxed by the end of it. I feel as though the technology failures kind of obstructed our ability to interact as much as possible with the other group, but I was just amazed that we could talk to people halfway across the world in the first place.

I learned that even in Sweden, people admire Obama, and have a negative attitude towards George W. Bush. That kind of took me by surprise, but it was funny. We all definitely had stereotypes about people, and it was fun to see how that played out.

Overall, it was interesting, and something I wouldn't mind trying again!

I had a really great time with the video conference. It isn't often you have an opportunity to interact with students from such different backgrounds.

The most fascinating parts for me were noting how similar our background in rhetoric was, we had similar observations and agreed about technique and delivery style in Meryl Streep's address.

We also had an amazing discussion about differences, most notably about the idea of freedom from an American and Swedish perspective that really enlightened me.

All in all it was a great experience. Thank you so much!

I had such an awesome getting to know a little about Swedish DOXA. It was great to learn how they value rational explanations or logical ones over appeals to emotion (pathos).

In watching Former President Bush's speech, I could understand more what people around the world may think as global leaders present themselves on television or on radio. It matters how they carry themselves physically as well as verbally. It seems like his persona is as much heavily weighed throughout the whole world as it is here. Videos online of his speeches and mess ups do not give him the best image, and the world is quick to jump on it because of his position. So when one is at a high position, it is necessary to practice speech in order to avoid people criticizing your persona.

Thank you for the wonderful experience!

Group E

We had an interesting experience discussing the audience. Al Gore really included what we thought of as stereotypical audiences. Interesting how he makes a whole argumentation of such different subjects as economy, national security and environment. It was rewarding to see the differences , but most of all how well we understood, and communicated our views to each other. We spoke about doxa and how to target different groups, in America and Europe.

Group F, Uppsala University

* What did you think of today's activity?
This being our third Marratech session, we really appreciated that this activity focused more on the discussion taking place between the Stanford and the Uppsala students, and not so much on composing images on the whiteboard.

* What did you learn about cross-cultural rhetoric or communication from this activity?
It was very interesting to hear the Stanford students' views on what they perceive to be typical american rhetoric, especially regarding doxa in american political rhetoric. By analyzing and discussing American rhetoric, I think we were able to more easily reflect on european and swedish rhetoric.

* How will your experience in the video conference today enrich your own research project or approach to oral rhetoric and presentation?
Since we are still in the early stages of our projects, it's difficult to say, but hopefully the insights offered by our american counterparts will help us view (swedish) rhetoric from a slightly new perspective. The Stanford students' projects on "virtual identity", sounded really interesting, so that might be something we'll be taking with us.

* How did you create an online group identity? How was this technologically-mediated identity different from one that you might create with a face-to-face interaction?
The group identity we created was a product of the topic discussed, so we all interacted as rhetors rather than as students or young adults. Meeting face-to-face would have added the aspect of body language and our identities as rhetors probably wouldn't have been as clear as they where though Marratech.

Thank you Stanford students for yet another interesting and fun Marratech session!

//Group F: Axel, Helena, Mikael, Robin and Åsa.

It was a really wonderful opportunity to talk with Swedish students about rhetorics. Especially, it was interesting to compare how DOXA changes the appeal of a speech. Religious appeal may not work universally as well as national concerns of US such as terrorism. Thinking about Korean culture, I could find the similar effect of DOXA. Since it is usually thought as unacceptable to talk about one's religious on politician's speech in Korea, the religious appeal similar to what Bush used may disturb some of the audience, but

The high technology that we used for the video conference was astounding too.

(This is the completed version)
It was a really wonderful opportunity to talk with Swedish students about rhetorics. Especially, it was interesting to compare how DOXA changes the appeal of a speech. Religious appeal may not work universally as well as national concerns of US such as terrorism. Thinking about Korean culture, I could find the similar effect of DOXA. Since it is usually thought as unacceptable to talk about one's religious on politician's speech in Korea, the religious appeal similar to what Bush used may disturb some of the audience. However, since there have been some Korean people who were targeted by terrorists, emotional appeal from mentioning terrorism will also appeal to Koreans.

The high technology that we used for the video conference was astounding too. It was really interesting to form a group through video conference. It was like virtually sitting in front of each other. And the white board function that enabled to share notes with our group brought us even closer to the "real" conference. it was a really interesting experience to be with other people in new way by technology.

nice articles, thanks..!

Thank you for your enlightening opinions

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Great Post ! with growing demands businesses are moving towards developments in audio video conferencing , in order to compete in niche markets adopting latest technology is the key concern .

Great idea. We should focus more on how these leaders stand out from the others

Great post ! Video conferencing give great video solutions , these help individuals to participate and collaborate helping in gaining knowledge exchange.

yes. i am also doing video chatting with my friends. for my university subjects.

wow nice. Glad that the conference went well.