| The linguistic concepts of transparency, ambiguity, and opacity (TAO) are used to construct a conceptual framework to support the notion that there is a very deep, out-of-awareness universal classification system which people use to judge communication behavior across cultures.;The first of these questions deals with theoretical issues which are not easily resolved. The author argues that TAO constitute a logical paradigm, are basic to linguistic research, and are out-of-awareness concepts assumed by linguistic experts to exist.;To answer the second question, the author gathered ninety intercultural metacommunication statements from various sources and classified them into TAO categories. Five other people were able to sort the statements agreeing with the author 66.6% (a percentage considerably greater than chance).;The distribution of the statements shows definite trends in style preferences of both U.S. and non U.S. cultures. Tentative as the results must be, the research shows that U.S. respondents are less discriminating in identifying cultural style than non U.S. respondents.;The author tries to answer the following questions: (1) Do the terms TAO constitute a universal classification system of communication behavior? (2) Can we define, collect and classify intercultural meta-communication statements using the TAO framework? (3) Does the distribution of the statements as classified show anything significant about a culture's communication style preferences?... |
