Intercultural communication at work: Puerto Rican and Anglo communicative patterns in a service organization

What are the differences in communicative patterns of Puerto Rican and Anglo, staff who work together in a service organization? This study examines this question through an ethnography of communication within a career counseling center staffed by Anglos and Puerto Ricans at all levels of the organization. The analytical tool and organizing schema for this paper is a theoretical framework called cultural communication system. The system is comprised of three elements: forms of talk, norms of talk and cultural identity. Each of these three elements informs the others, and analysis of all three together reveals what is cultural about the communication system in use. This study found two distinct forms of meetings within the organization, one that was dominated by Anglo speakers and produced a linear flow of communication back and forth between participants and leader that took on an arrow-like shape. The other was dominated by Puerto Rican speakers and the cross-talk among participants produced a circular flow of communication that took on a web-like shape. Conversational analysis revealed that the arrow-like meeting was governed by the norm of a leader-enforced “one speaker at a time” rule. Such a norm promoted individual ownership of ideas that were presented through sole speaker status, with the purpose of persuading others of their value. The web-shaped meeting was governed by a group-sanctioned norm of “anyone can speak at any time,” resulting in overlapping talk that co-produced utterances and ideas. This norm promoted co-production of ideas through overlapping talk, with the purpose of moving the group toward consensus and cooperation. Coded in participant talk about these meetings was a Puerto Rican cultural identity uncomfortable and silenced in leader-directed meetings but exhilarated and productive in collaborative meetings. Salient symbols such as “respeto” and “same level” coded a cultural identity of a collective and egalitarian “we,” a “self in others,” oriented to feelings, whose communication is primarily emotive, spontaneous and indirect and gives respect and consideration to others. The Anglo cultural identity coded in such symbols as “leader” and “roles” is that of a functional and performative “I” embedded in action, who uses rational, controlled, and direct communication in order to get the job done and to advance individual interests