Cultural Colonialism - Is It Real?

I believe technical writers and translators should focus on the real needs of their customers. Any attempt to control language by force of law, internal regulations, or nationalistic feelings that do not reflect reality would be as damaging as adopting foreign, synthetic words for fashion.

Destro, Delio. TC-FORUM (1999). Articles>Language>Cultural Theory

Identity and Cross-Cultural Communication  

In this project special attention is given to legal, commercial, political and institutional discourse used in specific workplaces, analysed from an intercultural perspective. In particular, through an exploration of the international ‘image’ suggested by major social and economic actors, our project aims to improve the understanding of identity-forming features linked to ‘local’ or professional cultures, as communicated by contemporary English in various specialised domains among native and non-native speakers.

Gotti, Maurizio. Association for Business Communication (2007). Articles>Language>International>Cultural Theory

Toward a Critical Perspective of Culture: Contrast or Compare Rhetorics    

Kaplan's framework of contrastive rhetoric has been widely accepted in the field of cross-cultural technical communication. However, in the last four decades, contextual factors such as economic globalization trend and the advances of communication technologies are changing our ways of interacting with others. As a result our understanding of culture and cultural differences need to be adjusted. In this research, I start by recommending a workable definition of culture in the present context—culture as a process, which establishes a foundation for cross-cultural rhetorical research in the new era when communication across cultures transcends national boundaries. Based on the critical perspective of culture, I continue to point out the limitations of contrastive rhetoric and argue that contrastive rhetoric's view of culture and its research purpose and methodology need to be modified to overcome its constraints and better meet the needs of the present social context.

Wang, Junhua. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Language>Rhetoric>Cultural Theory