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FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Department of Foreign Languages

Bachelor's thesis

Miscommunication in gatekeeping situations: cultural mismatch revealed in job interviews

Field of study: 45.03.02 “Linguistics"

Degree programme: Foreign Languages and Cross-Cultural Communication

Glazkova Alexandra S.

Reviewer Associate Professor, PhD Irina I. Chironova

Advisor Associate Professor, Sc.D Mira Bergelson

Moscow, 2019



Contents

Introduction

1. Literature review

1.1 Discourse analysis in modern linguistics

1.1.1 Origins of discourse analysis

1.1.2 Approached to analyzing discourse

1.2. Institutional discourse and business discourse

1.2.1 Primary research methods in business discourse analysis

1.2.2 Speech events in business discourse

1.3 Employment discourse

1.4 Gatekeeping encounters within employment discourse

1.4.1.Levels of analysis of gatekeeping encounters in employment discourse

2. Methodology

2.1 Purpose

2.2 Population and Sample

2.3 Participants

2.4 Investigative Technique

2.5 Limitations

2.6 Data Collections

2.7 Data Analysis

3. Results

3.1 Quantitative analysis: turn-taking patterns

3.2 Qualitative analysis

3.2.1 Applicant's responses

3.2.2 Interviewer's evaluation

Conclusion

References

Appendix



Introduction

Rapid multidimensional changes of the last century not only led to acceleration of the processes of global social, cultural, economic and political integration but also enabled the creation of international bridges between the new-sprung global institutions and organizations and facilitated the development of multifaceted relations on an international scale. As knowledge and information converted into the main and most valuable resources, being able to build efficient external and internal communication within a culturally diverse institutional setting became a determining factor for specialists if they are willing to compete on the new internationalized labor market.

The demand for employees who, apart from being highly qualified, also possess intercultural communicative competences generated a need for adequate training programs which could not be elaborated without any previous research on the topic.

The transdisciplinary study of cross-cultural business communication that emerged as a descriptive and explanatory framework for globalization provided the scholars with a wide range of tools to analyze the intricacies of professional interactions within differing sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds such as institutional discourse analysis.

Language-focused explorations of intercultural In this paper the terms intercultural and cross-cultural are not used interchangeably. “Cross-cultural” refers to the comparative study of cultures (comparison and contrast), whether the term “intercultural” concerns the features of interaction of different cultures (Gonzбlez, 2011) institutional discourse are crucial regarding cross-cultural studies as they provide us with an insight into the mechanisms the institutions use to create, shape and impose particular types of discourses on people for them to be able to gain access to the institution, utilize its privileges and successfully terminate a relationship with it, and how in return people shape institutions by either complying with the impositions or denying them.

One of such mechanisms, and perhaps the most important one as it determines whether a person is eligible to enter the institution, is selection during the admission process. Its form varies depending on the type of the institution. In terms of organizational communication, it takes the form of a job interview.

Many foreign academics refer to the concept of job interview using a metaphor “gatekeeping encounter”, where the gatekeeper is the interviewer, the person who is responsible for the selection process (for instance, an HR-manager, a recruitment manager, etc.) and the gatekeepee is the interviewee is the candidate for the position.

Conducting a job interview in a multicultural and/or multilingual setting is an especially challenging task since the issues of potential miscommunication are more prevalent due to many linguistic and extralinguistic (contextual) factors: inherent interactional asymmetry, prejudices and hidden assumptions, subjectivity and lack of knowledge about the institutional requirements.

In Russia, the challenge of intercultural recruitment processes is still yet to be recognized. Irrespective of the long multicultural and multilingual history of the country, presently cross-cultural competences are not considered an integral part of the academic development of Russian HR-managers (whom we may consider as potential gatekeepers), even though the level of interest towards studying cross-cultural communication among the students of Human Resources Management programs is quite high. As for the majority of potential Russian “gatekeepees” (or potential candidates), they are either not exposed at all to the pragmatics of a cross-cultural job interview throughout their formal education , or are exposed insufficiently (notwithstanding the fact of them majoring in teaching ESL/EFL (English as the Second Language/English as a Foreign Language), linguistics, foreign languages, and/or intercultural communication).

Statement of the Problem

Along with this rise in the level of internationalization of labor market in Russia, there is an increasing need in specialists who possess certain cross-cultural competences that above all enable them to successfully manage stressful gatekeeping encounters, such as job interviews, in unfamiliar intercultural settings. However, nowadays the number of candidates who comply with such requirements is rather low, even among applicants with majors in teaching ESL/EFL, foreign languages, linguistics, or intercultural communication.

The problem can be remedied by means of exposing the young specialists to the pragmatics of cross-cultural communication at the stage of their training. Such can only be achieved by elaborating a set of recommendations through a thorough investigation of current issues concerning miscommunication that arise during the cross-cultural recruitment process followed by identification of the main strategies that can help to diminish the influence these cultural mismatches exert on the interviewee's performance.

Study Purpose

It is the purpose of this study to explore the linguistic and contextual factors that contribute to cultural mismatch and miscommunication in the cross-cultural employee selection process for an English teaching position. The following shall be achieved through a thorough analysis of the literature related to the topics of interlanguage pragmatics, institutional discourse and gatekeeping encounters, followed by an experimental study of communication patterns of native speakers of Russian in a situation of a gatekeeping encounter such a job interview for an English teaching position conducted in an intercultural setting.

Research Questions

For the purpose of this study, the following question were addressed:

1) What are the main theoretical frameworks for analyzing business discourse?

2) What is the place of gatekeeping encounters in the system of business discourse?

3) What are the specifics of such a gatekeeping encounter as a job interview in an intercultural environment?

4) What are the main sources of cultural mismatches during a job interview in an intercultural setting?

Hypothesis

The hypothesis that will be tested during the empirical examination consist in the assumption that previous exposure to the pragmatics of a gatekeeping encounter such as a job interview conducted in an intercultural setting helps the candidate to avoid potential miscommunication during the actual interview.

Study Structure

The overall structure of the study takes the form of four chapters and an introduction. The chapters are further divided into sections. In the first chapter, the review of current published literature on the topic is provided. The third chapter is concerned with the methodology used for the empirical examination. The fourth chapter outlines the main results of the experimentation. Finally, the fifth chapter gives a brief summary of the outcomes, draws conclusions and identifies limitations and some areas for further research.



1. Literature review

1.1 Discourse analysis in modern linguistics

1.1.1 Origins of discourse analysis

In this chapter we are going to examine the historical background of discourse analysis, explore the main theoretical paradigms of defining the concept of business discourse and employment discourse within the system of intercultural business communication and characterize the concept of a gatekeeping encounter. A literature review will be provided to investigate how the concept emerged, how it is viewed by Russian investigators and their foreign colleagues, with the aim of motivating the research questions that guided the development, design, and results of this study.

Discourse analysis developed as a transdisciplinary field of study, combining the theoretical framework and methodology of such disciplines as rhetoric, anthropology, cognitive and social sciences, linguistics, and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences concerned with the systematic study of the structures, functions, and processing of text and talk in context. As a transdisciplinary study, it provided the scholars and practitioners with a wide range of tools to analyze the intricacies of interactions within different linguistic and extralinguistic backgrounds.

As the main theoretical framework of this paper consists of studies on sociolinguistics and its branch interactional linguistics, we define discourse as “language as meaning in interaction”.

In modern linguistics, the term discourse is a relatively new concept, since its formal coinage is traditionally attributed to the mid-20^th century. However, the first attempts to language as meaning within context can be traced down to the Rhetorical theory in ancient rhetoric, the science of eloquence. While ancient grammaticians were concerned with the issues of language theory, trying to define the rules of its correct usage, rhetoricians studied the language in a broader context - through its practical application - the art of oratory. Speakers in their speeches primarily aimed to convince their listeners of some idea, and such was only possible using certain persuasive strategies and rhetorical devices. The study of these instruments by sophists anticipated the modern stylistics and discourse analysis as the scholars managed to intuitively describe the differences in behavioral patterns of individuals in different types of communicative situations, later investigated and described by cognitive and socio-psychological sciences . Rhetoric went on being one of the main tools of language analysis until the emergence of historical and comparative linguistics in the early 19^th century and the rise of American structuralism and generative grammar in the early 20^th century.

Apart from rhetoric, the fundamental studies that also paved the way for the emergence and development of discourse analysis were conducted by linguists of the Prague linguistic circle, who worked on the ideas of the information structure of a sentence (theme and rheme) and communicative methodology of studying texts. Among others, another influential study of language as a meaning in interaction was conducted by American ethnolinguists who explored natural language and speech and outlined the hypothesis of linguistic relativity (also referred to as the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis).

Eventually, in the middle of the 20^th century under the influence of second wave of structuralist ideas a new linguistic discipline was formed: text linguistics. Within the concept of text linguistics, the notion of discoursed was finally defined as discourse analysis became the primary tool of text analysis. Traditionally, American linguist Zellig Harris is considered to be one of the first scientists to propose the term discourse. In his 1952 work “Discourse analysis”, the author emphasizes the need to study the text as an indivisible system, without splitting it into separate linguistic elements (words, sentences, etc.).

1.1.2 Approached to analyzing discourse

Today, many scientists from different academic fields, such as cognitive sciences, psychology, sociology and, of course, linguistics, conduct their research in the field of discourse analysis. Depending on the goals, methods and ideological paradigms of their studies, they choose different approaches to the interpretation of the concept of discourse. In the present section we examine some of the approaches to investigate potential patterns in defining the concept of discourse.

First, there is a linguistic approach to discourse analysis. It refers to the study of text in various linguistic directions: semantic direction, semiotic direction, pragmatic direction and others. For instance, such an approach is used by T. Shiryaeva in her 2014 study on the structural and functional paradigms of contemporary business discourse. In the paper, Shiryaeva describes discourse on three macro-levels: linguistic, social and cognitive.

Another approach to the study of discourse is communicative-functional approach, which arose from the theory of communication, the theory of persuasion, the concept of speech behavior and the main principles of ethnolinguistics. For example, I. Sternin in his paper on communicative behavior uses this approach to analyze data and design his three-level model of situational, aspectual and parametric dimensions of communicative behavior.

The next methodological paradigm considers discourse within the framework of cognitive linguistics and represents a cognitive approach to discourse analysis. In this case, the discourse is studied from the standpoint of linguacultural features and cognitive-semantic properties of human consciousness.

And the final approach that we shall mention is the interactional approached developed in sociolinguistics: the study of language in social context. One of the most influential analyses within this approach was conducted linguists L. Phillips and M. V. Jorgensen in their paper "Discourse analysis. Theory and method". According to their definition, "discourse is a system of all genres that are used in a certain social field in specific cases of language application". The analysis of discourse of social institutions is one of the main focuses in discursive research both in Russian and foreign sociolinguistics.

To sum up, there are several different approaches to the definition and study of discourse. In this paper we consider discourse primarily as a complex communicative phenomenon in the framework of two approaches: communicative-functional and socio-constructionist. In accordance with the specific features of these approach, the most comprehensive definition of the concept of discourse will be the interpretation given by Professor T. A. Van Dyck in his book "Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach", in which discourse is defined as "a communicative event (oral or written), occurring between the speaker, the listener (observer, etc.) in the process of communicative action in a certain time and spatial context". In addition, according to Van Dyck, discourse is a complex system with both verbal and nonverbal elements.

Thus, the definition of discourse analysis as a separate branch of linguistic science was a foreseeable reaction to the need of analyzing the contextual and situational aspects of language interactions. Over the course of development of discourse analysis, the variety of different methodological and ideological approaches to the interpretation of the concept and its study has been increasing. The present study is based on the interpretation of discourse through the lens of communicative-functional and socio-constructionist approaches.

One of the most important components of the study of discourse its classification , as classification of different types of discourse allows a comparative analysis of linguistic and metalinguistic elements of different types in order to identify their unique features. In the next section, we will take a closer look at one of the types of discourse that occurs in the field of business communication: business discourse. We will try to identify its main characteristics and determine its constituent elements.

1.2 Institutional discourse and business discourse

The study of business communication is impossible without the defining the concept of business discourse. According to one interpretation of business discourse, proposed by British linguists in the textbook "Business Discourse", this type of discourse is all "oral and written communication of people in business setting with an aim to perform their work". However, in this study, we consider business discourse as part of a broader concept - institutional discourse, which per se represents a subtype of status-oriented discourse in accordance with the theory of V. Karasik.

In his monographic work "Language circle. Personality, concepts, discourse" V. I. Karasik classifies discourse into two types: personality-oriented (or personal) and status-oriented. The first type of discourse according to this classification is divided into two subtypes - everyday colloquial discourse (characterized by format of dialogues, emotionality, conciseness and colloquial forms of speech) and existential (based on the literary language). And the second type of discourse is status oriented. It is defined by Karasik as communication, which can be both institutional and non-institutional, depending on the functioning social institutions in society at a certain time. Within the framework of institutional discourse the participants of interactions (interlocutors) are representatives of public institutions and organizations, or representatives of a certain social group and individuals interacting with them. In other words, when people engage in institutional interactions they take on some kind of a social role, whereas when they participate in interactions of personal type of discourse, they act on their own behalf. Thus, institutional discourse can be defined as a communicative mechanism that determines the rules, conditions, norms of communication both within and outside the professional community (corporate ideology and values) and between different professional communities.

It is important to note that in the present work the concepts of institutional and professional discourses are linked by relations of conceptual interaction and interpenetration. That is to say, we use the terms institute and organization (company) interchangeably. Such an idea is backed up by numerous researches by Russian and foreign investigators who professional discourse materials a basis for their research in institutional discourse and vice versa. Moreover, linguists Candlin and Sarangi noted that professional and institutional types of discourse combine in their ways of constructing and developing rhetorical and social rituals that underlie professional and institutional practices.

1.2.1 Primary research methods in business discourse analysis

Interest in the study of business communication has increased significantly under the influence of the latest global trends in the development and strengthening of intercultural and economic relations. This fact contributed to defining business discourse as an independent branch of discourse research, the primary focus of which was not just the study of the business language, but also the analysis of business interactions. gatekeeping interview discourse cultural

Business discourse takes place in both oral and written modi. Functional stylistics, contextual analysis and text linguistics have traditionally been the main tools for the study of these modes.

According to Stebletsova's classification of discourse, the key typological features of business discourse are the following three characteristics: intentionality (purposefulness), effectiveness and regularity. In addition to that, business discourse as a subtype of institutional discourse is characterized by a high degree of stereotyping and clichйs of speech and asymmetry of interaction, that is, status-role relations between the interlocutors .

Intentionality is understood as the efforts of the interlocutors to organize their communicative activities in such a way that a certain result can be achieved. Such a feature is usually expressed through the normativity of encounters within the discourse (interviews, meetings, etc.), i.e. there are usually certain rules to the scenarios of every particular event.

The effectiveness of business discourse can be defined as the obligatory presence of a certain verbal or nonverbal, tangible or intangible result. It should be noted here that business discourse is defined precisely by the focus on a very specific result: to fill in a vacant position, to receive a promotion, etc.

The last typological feature is regularity. It is expressed through the dependence of every event within the discourse on clear socio-cultural rules on the one hand, and previous interactions on the other hand. This feature demonstrated that business discourse as a complex communication system is based on socio-cultural and historical traditions, norms and values. This information should be taken into account when analyzing business discourse in the context of cross-cultural and intercultural communication.

The presented features are fundamental for business discourse as they basically determine the content of communicative activities.

1.2.2 Speech events in business discourse

As outlined by many academics, the basic descriptive unit of business discourse (and discourse in general) is a speech event. The most complete definition of the term can be found in the textbook on the introduction of intercultural communication by L. Grishaeva and L. Tsurikova, who define the speech event as the basic structural unit of discourse and explain it as a set of significant in communication and pragmatically related speech actions (speech acts) aimed at achieving a common communicative goal. Such an interpretation of the term can be traced down to the concept of communicative events of Dell Hymes, proposed by him in 1972 and defined as the basic element of communication in a certain framework of space and time, which includes a set of closely related elements of purpose, conditions, process and result. According to Hymes, such elements include the general theme and the main aims of communication, the participants of communication, their linguistic community or disunity, sociocultural rules of interaction and its tonality, etc..

Based on Hymes' definition, Doctor of Philology A. Stebletsova characterizes a speech event as an independent element of the discourse description. She points out that it possess thematic integrity and completeness, general tone and is united by a certain composition of participants performing discursive practices.

Speech event as a manifestation of a communicative event is used by many specialists in discourse analysis as a fundamental tool of discourse analysis in general, and interactional analysis within the framework of business discourse in particular.

According to the research conducted by Sarangi and Candlin, in business discourse speech events take place both in written and oral modi (since the events in oral modus are necessarily recorded in the form of texts of various types of documents and reports). In other words, the texts of discursive events of business discourse have a strong relation with each other and represent the main object of business discourse analysis.

It should be emphasized that due to the abovementioned relation, one speech event can always be the initiator of another, which means that business discourse is a set of speech events organized in a special way, not just individual texts.

There are several approaches to analyzing speech events, however the most suitable for the purposes of the study approach is the methodology proposed by A. O. Stebletsova in her doctoral thesis on "Business Discourse in Higher Education". Within her methodological paradigm, there are three dimensions of the study of speech events: situational/pragmatic, textual and linguistic.

The first dimension, situational/pragmatic, analyzes the situational parameters of the event: the situation, the participants, the setting, the method of communication, the channels of communication, etc.

The study of discursive events in the textual dimension is realized through the analysis of the textual component of the event: its genre, its compositional and content structure, main topics and methods of their presentation.

The final dimension of analysis looks at speech events through the lens of linguistics and looks into such aspects as lexical, syntactic and stylistic means of expression, techniques and strategies of text composition, etc.

To sum up the section, interactions in the professional area within any public institution or organization represent the main object of study of business discourse. For this reason, business discourse can be defined as a subtype of institutional discourse. Having all the features of the latter, business discourse also has a number of unique features. Intentionality (purposefulness), efficiency and regularity of business discourse are among these features. The main element of business discourse analysis is a speech event. The realization of discourse within a speech takes place in both modi: written and oral. Texts become the main product of discourse realization and the main object of analysis. There are several methodological paradigms in studying speech event, but the most complete is the three-dimensional text analysis. The three dimensions are the situational/pragmatic dimension, textual dimension and linguistic dimension.

Business discourse, being a complex system, includes many different spheres of communication: from internal communication (among the members of the institute) to external communication (with participants who do not belong to the institution). The area of employment is one of the areas of business discourse analysis, and its investigation is very important for understanding the specifics of not only national but also international business culture. In the following section, we will take a closer look at the discourse of employment and analyze the main approaches to the interpretation of this concept.

1.3 Employment discourse

One of the key components of business communication is the area of employment. It has been particularly interesting for the academics as a result of the global processes of economic integration and diversification and internationalization of the labor market.

In this study, the field of employment will be analyzed through the lens of discourse analysis. For this reason, in the future, the term employment discourse will be used to refer to different types of socio-cultural practices in the field of employment. When referring to employment discourse, Russian academics also use the term recruiting discourse. While some scientists state that the terms can be used interchangeably (others identify a number of distinguishing features between them. Due to the fact that in the modern world the process of employment, especially its first stages, is closely connected with the activities of recruitment specialists (HR-managers, recruitment agencies, etc.) , in the presented research paper we will adhere to the point of view of interchangeability of the concepts.

Employment discourse is a subtype of business discourse and a part of a more complex system - institutional discourse. However, employment discourse has a number of unique characteristics: a special type of participants, their roles, the nature of communicative interaction between them, the strategies of their communicative behavior. Employment discourse, as well as business discourse in general, is realized through both modi: written (for example, job advertisement, CV, cover letter, etc.). p.) and oral (various types of interviews), with the obligatory recording of the results of interaction in writing.

A. Stebletsova defines the discourse of employment as "a system of organizing and structuring the communicative interaction of labor market in order to enable the participants to find a job or an employee and fill an adequate candidate to fill in a vacant position". According to her research in the field of discourse of employment, the main participants in the interactions are the employer, i.e. the person who provides the work and is the initiator of the employment relationship, and the applicant, i.e. the person applying for a vacant position, who enters into an employment relationship with the employer.

To summarize the section, the analysis of employment discourse has become one of the tools for a comprehensive analysis of the internationalized labor market. The methodology of analysis and interpretation of the concept of employment discourse varies depending on the research objectives. In general, the discourse of employment has all the features of business discourse, nevertheless its principal differences from the latter is a more precise objective of interaction: establishment of labor relations.

The realization of employment discourse occurs through different types of speech events and practices. One of the primary examples of such an event is an employment interview, also referred to as a gatekeeping encounter. In the next section, we will take a closer look at this type of speech event.



1.4 Gatekeeping encounters within employment discourse

There are many different definitions of job interview within the theoretical framework of business discourse, both in Russian and foreign literature. Next, we will look at the most fundamental of them.

Many Western academics that conduct their research in the field of institutional discourse refer to the job interview using a metaphor “gatekeeping encounter”, where what is “protected by the gate” is the organization with its privileges, meaning that “in front of the gate” there is a person willing to obtain the access to these privileges, and that “behind the gate” there is a “gatekeeper”, a person administrating the movement through “the gate” with the power to judge upon who enters and who does not. Thus, if we extrapolate this terminology to the context of a job interview, the gatekeeper will be the interviewer, the person who is responsible for the selection process (for instance, an HR-manager, a recruitment manager, etc.), and the gatekeepee or the interviewee is the candidate for the position, and finally the gatekeeping encounter is the interview itself.

The first appearance of the term "gatekeeping encounters" in the field of discourse analysis can be attributed to the study of Frederick Erickson and Jeffrey J. Schultz' conducted in 1982. In their study, they analyzed the patterns of direct communication (face-to-face) between academic counselors and students to assess how the response of the latter as the interviewee influence the behavior of the interviewers (academic counselors). Their research was one of the first to determine that the differences in the socio-cultural background of the participants (ethnic, linguistic, cultural differences) have a negative impact on the interview: the more pronounced these differences are, the more there are moments of communicative dissonance and the more likely are communicative failures.

Overall, the ideological paradigms adopted and developed by foreign investigators of the topic can be divided into two main branches: the view of a gatekeeping encounter as an asymmetric interaction and gatekeeping encounter as a symmetrical interaction.

The idea of asymmetric interaction was developed by many linguists, but the fundamental research in this direction was conducted by the American linguist John J. Gumperz. In many of his analytical papers on the subject, he emphasized the fact that the "gatekeeper" or interviewer is always in a dominant position because he has direct power over the outcome of the event . His followers developed the idea in the direction of sociolinguistics and intercultural communication, mainly highlighting the importance of the lack of socio-cultural differences of participants in the formation of a successful outcome of the interview .

The concept of symmetry of interaction in began to develop at the beginning of the 21^st century with the research of a Canadian linguist Julie Kerekes. In her works, Kerekes writes about the personal aspects of communication within the gatekeeping encounter and emphasizes that even despite the socio-cultural differences, the participants of such a speech event are able to jointly create (co-construct) its favorable outcome.

In Russian literature, the topic has not yet been sufficiently investigated to offer opposing ideological approaches to its analysis. The main research regarding the matter was conducted by A. Stebletsova from Voronezh State University. In her doctoral dissertation, Stebletsova described various types of speech events that occur within the context of business communication. She particularly focused on employment discourse and job interviews.

In her study, Stebletsova emphasized the fact that events of this type occupy a special place in the discourse of employment for a number of reasons. The main reason consists in the fact that interview is the first direct act of communication between the participants of the discourse (employer-potential employee), as it is carried out urgently in a single space-time context. Another reason for its importance is that from in most cases it is also the final stage of selection, that is, it has a specific result for all the participants of the discourse. Stebletsova also emphasizes that the organizational forms of interviews may vary depending on the constituent elements: the type of institution, the situation, the participants, etc..

To sum up the section, the speech event such as a "gatekeeping encounter" that manifests itself in a form of a job interview is one of the key speech events in employment discourse. There are different approaches to the analysis of this type of event. In foreign literature, there are two main ideological paradigms that consider the concept from the point of view of symmetry or asymmetry of communication. Russian academics mostly adhere to the concept of asymmetry, but the analysis does not avoid the possibility of co-construction of discourse by participants.

1.4.1 Levels of analysis of gatekeeping encounters in employment discourse

In this section we present a descriptive analysis of various aspects of such a speech event as a job interview. The analysis was conducted through the lens of different dimensions: from macro-level of the speech event to the micro-level of it. The table was developed based on the primary literary sources on the topic and combines various features of such a type of a gatekeeping encounter in order to motivate the research questions and provide the base for the elaboration of methodology for the experimentation.

Macro-level analysis
Situational and pragmatic aspects
Principal formats
Format type	Main features
Off-site interview	Used as preliminary tools of narrowing down the list of potential candidates for the position
Phone interview
On-site interview	A tool for selecting one and most suitable candidate from the total number of applicants.
Participants of the employment discourse
Type of a participant	Role
Applicant	Interviewee (gatekepee)
Recruiter	Interviewer (gatekeeper)
Type of discursive genre
Dialogue	Question-answer interaction
Content features
Topical features
Topics	How they are manifested
General and personal topics	Small-talk; a monologue/dialogue about the biography of the applicant
Qualification and job experience	Dialogue about qualifications and skills of the applicant, conducting a test (case-study, open-questions, etc.)
Applicant's motivation	Monologue or dialogue about personal and professional growth of the applicant within the development of the organization
Applicant's questions	Open dialogue, format of questions and answers
Composition and Structure
Name	Composition	Description of the structural elements
Five-stage composition of J. Scheuer	Introduction	The participants introduce themselves
	General information	The candidate is provided with detailed information about the organization, its internal and external channels and procedures of communication
	Main questions	Using various communicative techniques, the applicant is interviewed through a dialogue with the interviewer(s)
	Detailed information	Using various administrative procedures, the process of decision-making begins (or preparation for it is initiated)
	Conclusion	The interview is finished. The participants end the communicative interaction. Leave-taking.
Four-stage composition of J. Kerekes	Introduction	The beginning of the interaction: greetings and verification/presentation of basic personal information
	Work preferences	The candidate is checked for availability according to the position in the context of working hours and other logistic parameters
	Work qualification	Investigative phase. Checking how qualified the candidate is to get the desired position through case questions, qualification questions and other communication techniques
	Wrap-up phase	Solving administrative and legal issues related to the employment of the candidate (signing an employment agreement, providing the necessary documents, etc.).
Three-stage composition of A. Stebletsova	Introduction	Preparation of participants in the interview (greeting, small-talk, etc.), creating a trusting atmosphere
	Main part	Dialogue about professional qualifications of the applicant. It serves as a basis for assessing the applicant as appropriate or inappropriate to the desired position.
	Conclusion	The end of the interview, the prospects for future contact, leave-taking
Micro-level analysis
Linguistic and stylistic parameters
Aspect	Description	How it is expressed in the interview
Adjacency pairs	The main means of communicative exchange are questions and answers. The interviewer's role is mostly to ask questions, the interviewee's role is to answer. The answers of the applicant are evaluated from the point of view of the content have to meet the expectations of the interviewer.	Open-Ended and Closed-Ended Questions
Realization of communicative and pragmatic aspects in speech
Aspect	Channels of realization
Lexical and syntactic constructions	interrogative sentences interrogative sentences, and propositional content interrogative hypothetical sentences interrogative-imperative sentences imperative proposals narrative sentences - hints
Narrative forms	Monologue-discussion of the applicant's professional experience
Descriptive forms	Description of ideological views of the applicant to illustrate their personal and professional qualities.
Expositive forms	Discussion of more specific professional subjects

Overall, such a gatekeeping encounter as a job interview is an essential element of employment discourse. The main difficulty of conducting interviews in the setting of intercultural professional communication is the increased probability of communicative dissonance and, therefore, communicative failures due to the socio-cultural incompatibility of participants in the interaction.

In the next chapter we will look at the research design that is aimed to further investigate conducting job interviews in intercultural settings.



2. Methodology

This chapter consists of six sections that describe the design of the empirical examination for the present study. The first section focuses on the purpose of the experiment. The second section defines all types of population of the research. The third section focuses on the participants of the study. The fourth section summarizes the investigative technique used in the study. The fifth section outlines the limitations of the study. The sixth and seventh sections describe the process of data collection and the main approach to data analysis.

2.1 Purpose

The purpose of the empirical examination is to confirm or deny the hypothesis that previous exposure to the pragmatics of a gatekeeping encounter such as a job interview conducted in an intercultural setting helps the candidate to avoid potential miscommunication during the actual interview.

The purpose is to be achieved through the critical discourse analysis of communication patterns during the gatekeeping encounters (job interviews).

2.2 Population and Sample

The target population of the study are undergraduate Russian students with majors in teaching ESL, linguistics, foreign languages, or intercultural communication, and interested in working in an intercultural environment.

The source population of the study consists of the undergraduate students of National Research University Higher School of Economics (henceforth HSE) who study on the program “Linguistics and Cross-cultural communication” (45.03.02 “Linguistics") and are interested in working in an intercultural environment in the future.

Sample population is narrowed down to the senior bachelor students who study at the HSE on the program “Linguistics and Cross-cultural communication” (45.03.02 “Linguistics").

Study population consists of two students who match the sample population profile, were not previously exposed to the pragmatics of a gatekeeping encounter such as an employment interview in an intercultural environment and who are willing to participate in the study.

In this experiment sampling will be non-probabilistic: sample of convenience is used to compose both the control and the experimental group.

Control group participant profile is the same as the study population profile and experimental group participant profile is the same as study population profile with an exception of being exposed to the pragmatics of the gatekeeping encounter.

2.3 Participants

The Interviewer (the Gatekeeper, or GK, or G/k): Mary Smith (a pseudonym) is a native speaker of the English language from the USA. She holds a master's degree in Intercultural Management and has worked in the field of ESL/EFL teaching for over 5 years, both on administrative and teaching positions.

Both the control group (P1) and experimental group (P2) consist of 1 person (in sum, 2 participants). Both participants are female senior students of HSE, planning to obtain their bachelor's degree in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication in the summer of 2019. Both students have good language skills that are certified by IELTS certificates (7.0) and match the advanced level of language proficiency. In the future both participants are willing to work in a multicultural company, thus they are very interested in testing their skills in passing an employment interview in an intercultural setting.

The main difference between the two participants consists in their exposure to the pragmatics of intercultural communication: P1 is not explicitly instructed by the researches in employment interviewing strategies, whether P2 is given a table with the description of the main features of such a type of gatekeeping encounter and is also provided with a set of recommendations that were developed in our previous paper on gatekeeping encounters.

2.4 Investigative Technique

Open role-play

The main investigative technique that will be implemented in the experiment is the open role-play. According to Spencer-Oatley, role plays are imitations of real-life communicative encounters, “usually conducted in dyads on the basis of role descriptions or instructions”.

Open role-play was chosen to as the main method of data collection as it provides the experimental control that results in comparable language samples and is interactive, as it represents almost spontaneous oral production.

2.5 Limitations

A significant limitation of the open role-play method is its lack of consequentiality, i.e. they bear no real-life consequence and thus cannot be considered as an absolutely authentic type of discourse. Another limitation that is presented in the study is the number of participants. There is a reason to assume that it would be much more representative, if it had more participants for each group.

2.6 Data Collections

Both participants voluntarily agreed to engage in an open role-play in form of a simulation of an employment interview with Mary Smith, the supposed HR-manager of a language school.

The data is collected through audio recorded interviews conducted through Skype-call.

The role-play is led according to the previously developed scenario in order to maintain uniformity among the interviews. The scenario is elaborated according to the table designed in our previous study on gatekeeping encounters to describe the main features of such a speech event and various books on HR-management

The scenario consists of three parts: checking the connection, greetings and presentation, main questions and leave-taking. The first part suggests that the interviewer asks the interviewee if the internet connection is fine to proceed the interview. If the connection is stable, the interviewer greets the interviewee and presents themselves. The second part suggests a dialogue on the three main topics:

1. The participant is asked to tell the interviewer about themselves.

2. The participant is encouraged to talk about traits of a good supervisor or conflicts with supervisors in their work experience.

3. The participant is asked about two things that they want to be remembered for by the interviewer if the position is between them and another person.

And the final part is the conclusion and leave-taking.

The scenario has a rather recommendatory nature and does not aim to restrict neither the interviewer nor the interviewee.

After each interview, the interviewer is asked to evaluate each participant on a Likert Scale (from 1-poor to 4-very good) according to the following criteria: presentation skills, interpersonal skills and overall impression.

In average, each interview took 10 minutes. For further scientific analysis the interviews were transcribed (Appendix A). Written transcripts of the interviews became the main data source.

2.7 Data Analysis

Two types of analysis were conducted in order to summarize the data and draw the conclusions. Quantitative analysis was conducted to determine the patterns of turn-taking practices. Qualitative analysis of applicant's response was done in order to gain an insight on the patterns of communication of the participants during the interview and determine the main sources of miscommunication.

The principal analytical approach to the samples collected during the experimentation will be the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which is concerned with “exposing the often-hidden ideologies that are reflected, reinforced, and constructed in everyday and institutional discourse”.

3. Results

In this chapter we are going to describe the quantitative and qualitative results of the conducted experiment in response to the hypothesis of the study.

The main result consists in the fact that the interviewer rated P2 higher than P1, which leads us to the conclusion that the second interaction (where the interviewee was previously explicitly exposed to the pragmatics of an intercultural job interview) turned out to be more successful than the first one.

3.1 Quantitative analysis: turn-taking patterns

	P1	GK1	P2	GK2
Words	289	290	794	326
Words in sum	579 words	1 120 words
Turns	34	32	44	44
Turns in sum	66	88
Words/turn	8,5	9	18	7,4
Overlaps	2	0	6	10
Pauses	5	0	0	0

A quantitative analysis was conducted with an aim to get an insight into potential differences between a previously instructed candidate, and a candidate that was not exposed to explicit previous instructions. The table with the results is presented above.

The following three features were chosen as the main descriptive tools of discourse: words, words in sum during the interaction, turns, turns in sum during the interaction, words per turn, overlapses and pauses.

As can be seen from the table above, a more successful participant participated more actively in the process of communication. This is proved by a bigger number of words per turn and words in general, and the number of overlapses of both interlocutors during the interaction. Moreover, the second interview was in general more dynamic as the number of words in sum is almost double the same number of the first interview. Furthermore, the second applicant had less hesitations, as she did not make long pauses (in contrast, P1 made 5 pauses longer than 3 seconds).

All the facts in general contributed to the success of the second interaction.

3.2 Qualitative analysis

3.2.1 Applicant's responses

In the following table we will summarize the main features of the gatekeeping encounter as they were manifested in the transcribed interviews.

Both interviews were analyzed and included in the table in order to illustrate different levels of analysis.

Macro-level analysis
Situational and pragmatic aspects
Interview format:	Phone interview
Main features	In this case, it was not used as a preliminary tool of narrowing down the list of potential candidates for the position, it was used as a tool for selecting one and most suitable candidate from the total number of applicants. ...

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