Naming the Trouble with Default Settings

Abstract

The 21st century is marked by accelerating global flows more so than mere ripples in regard to the exchange of cultural resources across geo-political boundaries. However, a spot of trouble in these flows can produce disruptive ripples. This paper examines textual data generated in the contact zone of teacher-student interactions within an online MBA unit, offered by an Australian university to an international student group. Over the life of the unit, it became evident that names were doing a lot of identity and pedagogical work in these interactions and considerable interactive trouble arose over the social practices surrounding names. In particular the default field settings in the online courseware did not suit the tripartite Chinese names and their associated conventions, though these scripts were also being eroded. The analysis will use SFL concepts to interrogate selected slices of the online texts and participants' interview accounts to demonstrate how naming practices were instrumental in building the tenor sought in competing models of teacher/student relationships, and how ethnocentric default settings in the electronic mode served to heighten and exacerbate cultural differences. These events are related to the larger problematic of theorising the context of culture in times of globalisation.