The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security

THE JOURNAL OF CULTURE, LANGUAGE AND INTERNATIONAL Volume 1 Issue 1 May 2014 SECURITY http://iscl.norwich.edu/online-journal/

This Issue: Finding a Common Thread: Implications for the Future of Culture and Language Programs in Support of International Security

Making Sense of Culture: Cognitive Obstacles to Reading Culture Road Signs Lexical and Semantic Analysis of Defense Culture and Foreign Language Policies Integrating Culture General and Cross-cultural Competence & Communication Skills: Possibilities for the Future of Military Language and Culture Programs Cultures of Instruction Redux: Identifying and (Hopefully) Resolving Conflict Strategic Enablers: How Intercultural Communication Skills Advance Micro-Level International Security Cultural Adaptive Performance: A Definition and Potential Solution to the Cross-Cultural Performance Criterion Problem

Déjà vu All Over Again: South Sudan’s Return to Conflict

The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security Publication Information Editor Dr. Robert Greene Sands Production Editor Jessica DeVisser Cover Art Pieter DeVisser Journal Point of Contact Robert Greene Sands: rsands@norwich.edu About JCLIS The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security is a publication of the Institute for the Study of Culture and Language (http://iscl.norwich.edu). Located at Norwich University, ISCL strives to promote the theory, doctrine, and practices foundational to mission success in the human domain through the application of culture and language. One of the Institute’s goals is to build and share a comprehensive body of professional knowledge on research, the development of learning programs and application of culture and language considered critical to the future of US military strategy and missions. The ISCL’s journal, entitled The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security (JCLIS), will contribute to the ongoing development of that body of knowledge. JCLIS offers an opportunity for a wide audience of interested military and nonmilitary academics, military professionals and operators, students of security concerns and interested colleagues - in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle - to debate and advance the theory and practice of promoting success in a very dynamic and uncertain international environment. JCLIS will be available to ISCL supporters and the wider audience interested in promoting the advancement of culture and language in shaping the 21st century security mission.

Journal Affiliation The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security would like to acknowledge our partner association with Norwich University Applied Research Institutes (NUARI) (http://nuari.org) and Norwich University (http://www.norwich.edu). Expect Challenge.

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Permissions F or information or to request permission to reproduce any part of this journal, please contact the editor, Dr. Robert R. Greene Sands: <rsands@norwich.edu> Disclaimer Statements of fact and opinion contained within the articles of The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, made by the editor, the editorial board, the advisory panel or journal article authors are those of the respective authors and not of NUARI, Norwich University or the Institute for the Study of Culture and Language. NUARI, Norwich University or ISCL does not make any representation, express or implied, in respect of the accuracy of material in this journal and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. The reader should make his/her own evaluation as to the appropriateness or otherwise of any information presented within these pages.

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The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security Editorial Board

Allison AbbevSynergist LLC Thomas HainesvDefense Intelligence Agency Jackie ElliervMiddle Tennessee State University Maj. Jonathan F. BrownvMarine Corps Security Cooperation Group Kerry FoshervCenter for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, Marine Corps University Allison Greene- SandsvDefense Language and National Security and Education Office Catherine IngoldvNational Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland Scott McGinnisvDefense Language Institute, Washington Office Lauren MackenzievU.S. Air Force Culture and Language Center Robert R. Greene SandsvNorwich University Jessica GallusvArmy Research Institute Aimee VieiravNorwich University Marinus van Driel v

The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security Table of Contents Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2014 1

Editor’s Welcome Letter

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Robert R. Greene Sands Finding A Common Thread: Implications For The Future of Culture And Language Programs In Support of International Security

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Maj. Jonathan F. Brown Making Sense of Culture: Cognitive Obstacles To Reading Culture Road Signs

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Pieter R. DeVisser Robert R. Greene Sands

Integrating Culture General and Cross-Cultural Competence & Communication Skills: Possibilities For The Future of Military Language and Culture Programs

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Gonzalo Ferro

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Lauren Mackenzie

Cultural Adaptive Performance: A Definition and Potential Solution to The Cross-cultural Performance Criterion Problem Strategic Enablers: How Intercultural Communication Skills Advance Micro-Level International Security

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Scott McGinnis

104

Claire Metelits

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Allison Abbe Robert Morrow

Cultures of Instruction Redux: Identifying and (Hopefully) Resolving Conflict Déjà vu All Over Again: South Sudan’s Return to Conflict

Lexical and Semantic Analysis of Defense Culture and Foreign Language Policies

The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, Vol. 1, Issue 1, May 2014

The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Welcome We would like to welcome you to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Culture, Language and International Security (JCLIS), a publication of the Institute for the Study of Culture & Language at Norwich University (ISCL-NU). The Journal will initially be offered twice a year (May and December). ISCL-NU strives to support the development of theory, doctrine, and practices foundational to mission success in the human domain through the application of knowledge of culture and language.

The Institute engages in efforts to build and share a comprehensive body of professional knowledge through research, the development of learning programs to support the application of knowledge of culture and language considered critical to the future of US military strategy, and missions. JCLIS undergirds this effort by providing a venue to reach a wide audience of those who are interested in promoting the advancement of understanding the significance of culture and language in the 21st century security arena. This new, web-based journal provides an opportunity for a wide range of academics, practitioners, and students to explore theories, share research, and discuss trends linking international security to bodies of knowledge in culture and language. The intended audience includes policy and decision makers, military and non-military academics, professionals and students, as well as others engaged in efforts to ensure a better understanding of the complex factors at play in a dynamic and uncertain global environment.

The journal welcomes submissions at this critical intersection of field of inquiry, focus of theory and application, and intent of practice that will facilitate the development of approaches to international security informed by knowledge of culture and language that is valid, representative and sustainable.

JCLIS solicits work from an array of related fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, area studies, criminal justice, international relations, political science, economics, linguistics, education, second language acquisition and more, and encourages submissions with interdisciplinary perspectives.

The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security was conceived to uphold certain standards of practice. The primary aims of JCLIS include a commitment to open access, while supporting a diversity of academic scholarship and professional perspective and method of inquiry and social responsibility.

Open access â&#x20AC;&#x201D; JCLIS and its content can be accessed from anywhere in the world and at no cost to those interested in the journal. There are also no fees borne by the author for published articles.

JCLIS facilitates an equal and democratic exchange amongst scholars and practitioners.

Diversity of Perspectiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; JCLIS actively promotes not just the multidisciplinary efforts needed to address the advancement of culture and language for the pursuit of international security, but welcomes the perspectives of those directly involved in applying knowledge of culture and language to the promotion of international security around the world. JCLIS is not about blurring the boundaries of discipline, organization, or responsibility, but is intent on creating a forum that considers 1

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Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Welcome

boundaries as they exist and works to accentuate the respective strengths of each to bring about meaningful conversations and collaboration. Further, the journal aims to internationalize, professionalize and energize scholarly exchange within the academic communities involved.

Diversity of Methodological Approaches â&#x20AC;&#x201D; JCLIS not only welcomes different epistemological, methodological, and theoretical traditions, but advocates the belief that to advance the understanding of culture and language to the benefit of international security, pluralism is a necessity. The journal thereby seeks to also overcome the divide between quantitative and qualitative perspectives to offer space for scholarship that can allow questions of how and what we know, as well as how we can engage this epistemology to advance understanding and ultimately application.

Social responsibility and accountability â&#x20AC;&#x201D;JCLIS emphasizes the responsibility of the editors, its editorial board, and authors to contribute mindfully to the understanding of social issues that are inherent in the pursuit of global security. We believe that all parties participating in JCLIS are mindful of the social inferences of their research, development of programs, policy making, and professional practice as it affects the advocacy of their work.

We hope that with these aims, JCLIS can provide a space to engage contrasting perspectives through meaningful and respectful scholarly debate, actively encouraging the questioning of assumptions, and allowing for the germination of new ideas when possible. In addition to this first issue, special thematic sections are also under consideration that will match the synergy of the triple pillars of the journal and the institute: culture, language and international security. A Call for Submissions will be put out shortly for the December 2014 issue.

We hope you will want to become a part of the mission of this journal as it relates to your field and your interests. Please do reach out to us for any reason. We realize our success as a journal is dependent upon the participation and enthusiasm shared by its supporters.

Robert R. Greene Sands JCLIS Editor

Finding a Common Thread: Implications for the Future of Culture and Language Programs in Support of International Security Robert R. Greene Sands

Introduction In this set of comments, I suggest that the value and importance of culture within the Department of Defense (DoD) faces a dim future in research, learning development and application due to a lack of resources and dwindling attention. Although not as dire, language programs face a similar future in the DoD, and elsewhere, with resources dwindling and efforts to maintain existing capability problematic. This essay explores the utilization and relationship of culture and language (C&L) in the DoD and suggests that history is repeating itself with regard to scaling back on culture and language programs after long, protracted land wars as resources and attention are programmed and prioritized elsewhere. To sustain the development occurring in the last decade and to mitigate the trend of reducing resources and focus given to C&L, common threads need to be need to be linked and interwoven in a coherent approach across the C&L communities to promote efficiency while creating synergy involving the development of each component so as to better facilitate success in international security missions. This commentary acknowledges that much has been done in the past within both culture and language, but little across C&L in drawing linkages, but at this time, and supporting a variety of partnership-building missions, the need is to engage the opportunities those threads provide. As an uncertain future awaits C&L programs, two examples of utilizing common threads will be provided as potential models to consider as options to attenuate this downward slope. This essay is by no means presented as more than just my own ruminations, although my reflections span six years of working in and with the DoD doing research, developing learning programs and applying C&L to DoD military and civilian personnel. As such, it is just one perspective on the state of affairs of C&L. Within the passionate community of scholars, operators and teachers interested in advancing C&L, there are many different perspectives that can and should be advanced as our collective efforts see cutbacks in resources and support from leadership, advocates and key stakeholders alike.

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Robert R. Greene Sands

The C&L Imperative The last decade of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan opened the eyes of military leaders to the stark reality of the importance of C&L in military operations. The concept of the human domain has been introduced recently to capture the physical, social and cultural environments that affect and influence human behavior (McRaven in Ruolo 2013, Sands 2013c, Odierno, et al 2013). There are a myriad of theoretical and on the ground practical issues with parsing out human behavior within any kind of construct such as a “domain.”

However, the veracity of the fact that the military is now cognizant of the imperative to better understand, interact and ultimately influence a host of cultural groups that can be relevant to strategy and operations is absolute.

This recognition of the importance of preparing for operating effectively in the human domain is now understood as a critical requirement for future operations the DoD will engage in around the world. Included in this acceptance of the importance of “human” in the human domain are the ability to speak and understand the language, the awareness of a universal set of cultural domains and systems and how that set is expressed for specific cultural groups in various locations, as well as the motivation to engage the skills necessary to facilitate successful cross-cultural interactions.

In a wide array of policy, strategy and learning development documents, the DoD has introduced the concept of language, regional expertise and culture (LREC).1 In this construc See Department of Defense, Implementation Plan for Language Skills, Regional Expertise and Cultural Capabilities (January 2014), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI), Language, Regional Expertise and Culture (LREC) Capability Identification, Planning and Sourcing (3126.01A), 31 January 2013, Building Language Skills and Cultural Competencies in the Mili1

tion, in addition to the development of language skills, the concept of regional expertise and culture (REC)2 considers knowledge of a particular cultural group in a specific location (‘region’), and more broadly requires an understanding of universal concepts and processes of culture and their application crossculturally. Demonstrated REC also includes skill-based competencies that facilitate improved understanding of others’ and one’s own behavior in cross-cultural interactions, as well as competencies that can engage more successful interactions with different cultural groups. The culture component of REC for many is described as both ‘culture-specific’ knowledge of a specific culture or cultural group - as well as ‘culture-general,‘ which involves the broad and universal conceptual knowledge about culture and cross-cultural competence (3C). DoD policy, doctrine and strategy documents have succeeded in advancing the importance and need for LREC. However, the reality is that there are many complications inherent to LREC as a policy, but more importantly as a sustainable program that can be successful across the DoD. A primary complication for the REC piece results from the necessity of bringing a number of distinct academic disciplines together anthropology, sociology, psychology, international relations/studies, intercultural communications and the many interdisciplinary fields that fall between those disciplines - to help build, develop and deliver learning programs

tary: Bridging the Gap (2010), US House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, DoD Language Skills, Regional Expertise and Cultural Capabilities Strategic Plan, Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 5160.70 and Department of Defense Directive (DoDD) 5160.41E, 2 See Wisecarver et al 2012 for a more detailed explanation of REC

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Finding a Common Thread

that would advance REC. Another complication is the need to assess REC performance so as to adequately build and capture meaningful levels of proficiency.3 Implicit in this nexus is that the DoD has/does not view each of those components equally in resources or in policy. Not bundling them together, unless synergy is achieved across the three elements, will constrain the utility and influence of at least some but possibly all of their distinctive virtues in the coming years. Thus the purpose of this commentary and the genesis of this journal: common threads already identified and explored now need to be leveraged across LREC and those disciplines that are involved in sustaining, and advancing research, learning development and application to international security efforts. This is not to say that LREC is not important to other United States Government (USG) organizations, such as the Department of State (DoS), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Peace Corps, the Intelligence Community (IC), or others; it is, but it has been developed and applied unevenly and cyclically in some organizations and agencies more than others. When and where possible, these threads and efforts across the USG

Assessing and measuring REC has been all but unobtainable, although efforts to be able to assess components, such as 3C were worked on in 2006 and 2007 at AFCLC and ARI (personal communication, K. Fosher, 5/7/2014), and efforts to be able to assess components, such as 3C are ongoing through research projects sponsored by Army Research Institute, see McCloskey et al (2010). Jennifer Klafehn presented "In Search of the Magic Bullet: Assessing Cross-Cultural Competence in the U.S. Army,” to the MURI virtual brownbag on April 30, 2014. This presentation covered an ongoing ARI project to develop a 3C assessment program.

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should be leveraged to enhance research, learning development and application that will facilitate security mission effectiveness and success across the DoD and among organizations within the Interagency.

For the remainder of this paper, LREC will be consolidated into the two more broad categories of C&L. This by no means is in any way designed to minimize approaches or disciplines included in DoD’s conceptualization of LREC from a policy and doctrinal perspective. Instead, it suggests that culture in this sense may be a concept best able to capture the need to explore, understand and ultimately (if warranted) interact with and influence the social behavior of foreign cultural groups. To the legacy of a conventional and bipolar world order that still dictates some aspects of US national security policy and missions, region (as exemplified in international studies and its derivatives) has been a focus to specialized DoD populations. Region, traditionally being a product of the geo-political nation-state construct and perspective, certainly is a vital component of the LREC equation. This broader categorization reflects the growing importance of a host of actors that are not confined or defined by nation-state borders, and presently have a stronger impact on the viability of national governments than in the past. One final note, region as a perspective has a deeper appreciation in DoD strategy and doctrine than culture ever has. To be frank, based on future missions that will revolve around building partnerships and international security, success in these missions (actions) will depend more heavily on the capacity to engage, understand and maintain relationships with cultural groups within nation-states even those that transcend borders and boundaries - than with state actors and governmen-

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Robert R. Greene Sands

tal organizations. Granted that across the DoD, and other agencies involved in international security efforts, the need for specific components of LREC will vary according to mission and organization.

The Last Decade Past experience over the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan through reports from military and civilian personnel has served to illustrate that missions were more successful if there was a concerted application of culturegeneral and culture-specific knowledge to mission planning and subsequent operations.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, front lines tracked through neighborhoods and enclaves and the detail needed was “…at a level that would help a Marine having a street-corner interaction in Fallujah or a soldier negotiating with a leader in Khost” (Fosher 2014: xiv) a much more ‘street-level’ view than the resolution provided by a regional or international studies perspective. On the other hand, as was discovered in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the languages needed did not necessarily match up with the existing capability available when Iraq was invaded in 2003.

By 2005, the Services were starting to write language policy, and by 2008 were initiating policies involving culture while standing up culture centers.4 Attention to language germane to OEF and OIF was increased and institutions like the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) and others expanded and improved language programs in Arabic dialects, as well as other Mid For a more complete history of culture in the DoD see Abbe 2014.

5 http://www.dliflc.edu/ 6 Now Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO) 4

dle Eastern languages. To meet the rapid acceleration and numbers of deployments to first Iraq and later to Afghanistan, culture and location-specific predeployment programs were rushed into delivery and soon mobile training teams were crisscrossing the country and also provided in-country culture awareness training to thousands of military service and civilian support personnel. Concerted efforts and dollars were spent in developing state of the art simulations and avatar-based training trying to appeal to a new generation of learners while in some ways making the soundness of culture theory and knowledge secondary to the product. Contracted role players populated mock Iraqi and Afghan villages and Infantry Immersion Trainers for ground forces to practice patrolling in simulated environments. Research programs designed to explore capabilities such as 3C and other interactional competencies were started in institutions such as Army Research Institute (ARI) and Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), among others.

The admittedly uneven gains made in content and application of C&L over the last decade are threatened by the same cycle of variables such as reduced resources, both human and otherwise and a return to a peacetime military where the allure of technology development to solve the human element trumps the development of the “softer” skills, such as C&L as enduring capabilities - that seem to replicate following extended and involved conflict in recent history, including the 1915-1934 Banana Wars in Haiti, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and most notably Viet Nam (see for example Fosher 2014, Abbe 2014, McFate 2005). For those involved in this mad dash to first make culture relevant as well as sound-

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http://www.defense.gov/news/mar2005/d20050330roadmap.pdf

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Recent activity in Crimea, and before that the RepubThe Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, Vol. 1, Issue 1, May 2014

Finding a Common Thread

ly presented, and in meeting the growing need for proficient language speakers, there has been suspicion that this cycle up could have been averted if lessons learned in prior conflicts had been heeded and carried forward (Abbe and Gouge 2012, McFate 2005, Fosher 2014, Abbe 2014).

As resources dwindle and the last military operations in Afghanistan are completed, immediacy, necessity and visibility of C&L will be reduced; this is already happening. However, in an ironic juxtaposition the same sets of competencies, skills and enablers that supported population-centric Counterinsurgency (COIN) missions in Iraq and Afghanistan will be important in an array of partnership building programs embarked on by future DoD missions. Despite key leadership and stakeholders acknowledging the importance of C&L (see Odierno et al 2013, McRaven 2012, Flynn et al, 2012 and Panetta 2012) , funding and attention to necessary resources seems to be moving in the opposite direction (Vergan 2013, . Keeping C&L in play and viable for future development has not been helped by the last decade of how culture more so than language was inserted into programs to address immediate need without the same attention to long term sustainment. With regard to culture, this was characterized by a fire hose application without much thought for connecting content to theory or sustainability of effort past the immediate need posed by operations. Culture as products, such as Smart Cards and Books, Field Guides, and even liveactor immersions and simulations, are only as good as the depth and validity of the information available. As soon as they are printed, shot, or developed, their value depreciates as they become static expressions that over time will represent merely historical record. Iraq

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and Afghanistan were minefields of cultural complexity involving an array of ethnic and religious groups that defied the recorded knowledge on paper or video. Navigating these minefields does not get any easier when our efforts in Afghanistan cease; it is representative of what DoD military and civilian personnel will face and engage in in many areas around the world in the future.

A New World Order In fairness to the DoD, it was only within the last decade, and specifically after 9/11 and following the first few years of combat in Iraq, that culture appeared on the radar again as critical for mission success. However, after only ten years, the direction of C&L is once again in danger of going in reverse. Language programs may at least be able to tread water, due to the fact that language has been important to certain DoD organizations and missions and to those who support diplomatic and country-team efforts. In other words, language as an enabling skill had the influence of stakeholders to institutionalize learning, a Defense Language Institute (DLI),5 and was aided by the development of an Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) “flagship” policy office (Defense Language Office6) and the 2005 Defense Language Transformation Roadmap7 to sustain its program.

Yet, as the Department and other USG organizations struggle with the effects of war, they are at the same time recalibrating the future of our national security policy and the shape of the force to meet a world that no longer fits a conventional nation-state paradigm, but in http://www.dliflc.edu/ Now Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO)

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http://www.defense.gov/news/mar2005/d20050330roadmap.pdf

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stead is one framed by a continued war on terrorism and its infrastructure while bookended by programs to build or rebuild international security around the world. Dramatic regime changes, insurgencies, massive civil unrest, nation-states rupturing from within, and pressures from ethnic, tribal and religious perspectives are not uncommon.8 This “new world order” additionally features a transnational security landscape that includes stateactors sharing security concerns along with a host of non-state actors and cultural groups some fed by extremist motivations and others perhaps motivated by a failure to address aspects of human security. Also feeding into global instability is the increase of humanmade and environmental crises that impact emerging and developing or unstable nations to a greater extent than the rest of developed world. The need to more clearly understand this new world order and then interact within it to advance international security postCOIN is crucial. Testament to the effectiveness of C&L stems from experience relayed by personnel in COIN’s natural laboratory where C&L competencies and skills were identified as effectively helping to support asymmetrical and unconventional warfare missions. On the flip side, however, neither military nor civilian personnel were adequately trained or prepared in these competencies and skills for these missions and thus efforts met with varying degrees of success and failure.

An Uncertain Future at Best C&L programs now face a perfect storm featuring: decreasing resources; a movement to 8 Recent activity in Crimea, and before that the Republic of Georgia indicates that issue of newly minted governments and issues with their nation’s security does not just lie in Africa, South America and southwest Asia, for example.

ward greater technology in the DoD; the end of the decade-long conflict that prompted the escalation of C&L and the immediacy of C&L being pushed down the DoD “priority list” and a Department needing to address the impact of multiple deployments on the Force and military families. DoD reports to Congress have identified fewer than eight percent of the Total Force with foreign language capability (tested and self-assessed). 9 Yet, it could be argued that this new set of missions brings national security priorities that are more variable, but no less important in many areas around the world, and an engagement of a cross-cultural complexity far greater than encountered in the past decade. Former Secretary of Defense Gates made the following statement regarding C&L, “The nation’s severe lack of regional expertise and linguistic capability is an issue I have thought about and worried about for a long time, both as the Director of the CIA and then as the president of a large university and now as Secretary of Defense. This is a problem that has been a long time developing, and it is a problem that will take quite some time to fix.”10 Future missions outlined by the Department in speeches and publications include activities and support that will need the same level or advanced language proficiency and culture capabilities, albeit in smaller numbers, but still spanning the total force and across the Combatant Commands.

9 DoD Report to Congress: Foreign Language Proficiency (Mar 2012). Of 3,269,543 personnel in the Total Force, DoD has identified 258,786 personnel with foreign language capability; 7.92% of the Total Force.

10 DoD Strategic Plan for Language skills, Regional expertise, and Cultural capabilities: 2011-2016. http://prhome.defense.gov/RFM/READINESS/DL NSEO/files/STRAT%20PLAN.pdf

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Finding a Common Thread

Government-funded culture programs, more so than language programs, have waxed and now are waning in importance. Service culture centers across the DoD are reducing in effort and personnel, in contrast to the height of effort and support after 2006. Their mission is changing as the demand signal need for predeployment training to support if a large deploying land force is diminishing and the culture-specific products developed to meet this mission are no longer primary concerns.

Their mission has radically curtailed as predployment training and cultural products are no longer primary concerns. Predeployment training is still being given, but to more specific groups such as Special Operations Forces (SOF), Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU) and Female Engagement Teams (FETs) and for mission such as Security Force Assistance (SFA) and Foreign Internal Defense (FID) among others. If history is to be our guide, without the immediacy of conflict to drive need, culture eventually becomes a secondary or even lower consideration. Language training is certainly a relevant skill to assist in mission success of those that beckon from the near horizon, but the current cost to train and then sustain proficiency at a level that is relevant to missions is considerable (although a small fraction of a DoD budget).

Research in areas to support further development in understanding culture has also been reduced due to funding uncertainty. It is certain that C&L programs matured across the Total Force in a time where need drove a much focused effort to support missions in distinct locations with specific cultural groups.

This approach to C&L was never sustainable for a Total Force once focus turned away from these specific regions to meet more global and transnational security threats.

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If it isn’t institutionalized by Now… "…we are not going to stop screaming that this country has to take language seriously and we have to take language seriously because it is a critical skill now to success on the battlefield.”11

C&L competencies sit at a crossroads. They are necessary enablers for current and future missions, highlighted as critical by any number of leadership, policy makers, educators and operators, but far from being institutionalized in learning programs across the DoD to endure the transformation to a military having to make critical choices where funds are placed.

Of the three perspectives that make up LREC, culture is the only one not already solidly “institutionalized” in policy, doctrine and learning (professional military education (PME) and training). There are pockets of culture that exist as components of PME: the Air Force Culture and Language Center (AFCLC) features professors in anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, cross-cultural communications and others who are aligned to both the Center and the PME institutions that make up Air University at Maxwell AFB. The Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL) and Marine Corps University (MCU) have developed a career long Region/Culture/Language Familiarization

Michael Dominguez in Redden, E. (2014 Area Studies Mismatch, Inside Higher Ed (14 April), http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/14/c onference-focuses-state-area-and-foreign-languagestudies#sthash.uaaA4i6M.o20Iw3JU.dpbs 11

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(RCLF) Distance Learning program12 that is just one of a several “culture” programs that the Marine Corps has institutionalized, while TRADOC Culture Center (TCC) at Ft. Huachuca provides region, culture-specific and cross-cultural competence training across the US Army. The US Navy features an LREC Navy-wide program as well as the start of an Asia Hands program that features regional familiarization.13 Each of the Service academies includes active language, regional/international studies and some elements of culture in their curriculum; the US. Military Academy at West Point has a Chair of Intercultural Competence.

Traditionally language and region-strong populations in the Force, such as Special Operations Forces (SOF), Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) and Defense attachés who have always been well-prepared in region and language, have also started to seed some culture into their professional development.

The Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the individual agencies across the Intelligence Community (IC) also have language and region programs in varying strengths but are just now beginning to see the benefit of culture as a means to advance their missions. In brief, each of the culture centers, along with other service elements, do

See RCLF site, https://www.tecom.usmc.mil/caocl/SitePages/RCLF. aspx 13 See Navy LREC program 12

http://www.public.navy.mil/bupersnpc/career/language_culture/Pa ges/default2.aspx. , The Asia Pacific (APAC) Hand pro-

gram is an officer-centric extended learning program “to build and identify officers with regional understanding and confidence to inform decision makers.

The program’s varying levels are marked by incremental increases in graduate education and experience gained in select regionally focused billets (APAC, http://www.public.navy.mil/bupersnpc/career/language_culture/Pages/APACHands.aspx).

manage to work across the policy, doctrine, and learning areas, but the ability to continue further development of C&L programs, even just sustaining the current level of commitment is deeply problematic.

Research Research and technical development in C&L has not been without programs or funding in the last decade.14 Region from an international relations/political science perspective has a deeper history within the DoD and has worked well with a conventional state actor paradigm. With regard to culture, however, there is over-reliance on technology to produce efforts that can double for theoretically solid approaches and ethnographicallyvalidated data, while efforts to introduce culture lack a contemporary reality of what culture is and how it can be useful to programs serviced by technology. In addition, there seems to be a programmatic imperative to develop a “product” (call it a success and move on) as well as a budgetary process and timeline that works against real and useful application to planning strategy, operations and missions.

The science and technology approach tends to become attractive to organi 14 DoD and USG research organizations have included research agendas that include LREC components. See Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), http://www.darpa.mil/default.aspx, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), http://www.iarpa.gov, Office of Naval Research (ONR), http://www.onr.navy.mil/, Center for the Advanced Study of Language (CASL), http://www.casl.umd.edu/, DoD’s Minvera Initiative, http://minerva.dtic.mil/ and Office of Secretary of Defense’s Human Sociocultural Board (HCSB) http://www.dtic.mil/biosys/hscb-mp.html, and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Army Research Institute (ARI) and Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) have also engaged in behavioral research in 3C programs.

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zations when they realize that the experts are not necessarily going to show up when needed and that building internal capacity is going to take a long time. Understandably then, organizations look for ways to analyze culture or interact cross-culturally that do not require a great deal of expertise, internal or external. It is easy for DOD organizations to swing back to one of their old standbys, “If we give it to the engineers they’ll fix it for us, because the engineers can solve anything (Fosher, in press).”

There does not seem to be a scarcity of research opportunities to engage culture to inform missions. Several research institutions have engaged resources to further investigate culture and its application to aid future need, yet their conceptual apparatus will always push them to conceive of problems in particular ways that are not relevant to most social scientists and their perspective, or, more importantly, to human behavior. For example, the Minerva Program, a sociocultural partnership between academia and the DoD, tends to focus on topical areas and a penchant to emphasize perspectives that involve neurobiological and cognitive science as well as international relations and political sciences perspectives.

Technology and Learning Programs The science and technology approach also seems germane to the development of technology to promote training and education in culture. In the last decade, with time short, needs high and a budget that would make most social science educators think they had died and gone to research heaven, trying to build in knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) through simulation and gaming was much more palatable to a Department not com-

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posed of social scientists. More attention was spent on trying to make the simulation or other experience “real” than undergirding the technology with the theoretical notions of culture not in line with existing theory or the cultural reality of the locations or peoples advanced in the simulation. Moving forward, effort might be better spent in developing capacity to promote trained role players, expert instructors, and professionally developed military personnel. It is easier to build technology that can be pushed into service to fill a need, than to bow to the reality of time, effort, limits of its predictive ability and methods utilized in good social science research, not to mention the science itself. “At present we do not have the basic science that would allow us to render complex cross-cultural processes into computer algorithms, nor does the nature of knowledge about culture allow it to be parsed for storage in databases (Fosher, in press).”

Perhaps, advances can be made in marrying technology to the social sciences, but progress will not be made unless there is an active collaboration of intent and understanding of theory and what can be provided by all involved. In many ways, if this collaboration can help promote a more solid understanding of the questions that need to be asked, bending technology to help in the endeavor of answering those questions might be more beneficial (see McNamara et al, 2011 and Turnley and Perls, 2008).

Collateral Uncertainty A reduction in C&L resources is not just a DoD or interagency danger, as US universities and colleges face a similar future in promoting active programs in C&L. A recent conference highlighted a dismal future and motivation of

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C&L in the DoD and United States Government (USG) organizations. The conference, Internationalization of U.S. Education in the 21st Century: The Future of International and Foreign Language Studies. A Research Conference on National Needs and Policy Implication,15 revealed a paradox of rising interest in language and declining resources to support that interest, “….concerned about the decline in federal and university support for their programs (Redden 2014).” The DoD, and the Interagency like those in academic programs across US universities and colleges know that expanding language (and culture) programs is critical to keep pace with international business and our national security. There are two concerns about the near and mid-term future.

The first concern is that the deep Federal budget cuts of 2011 affected the ability to just meet sustainability let alone an increase in language programs and studies in secondary and higher education. Second, although as indicated earlier in this article, DoD and the Interagency leadership and policymakers have strongly endorsed the criticality of C&L, progress to translate that importance into continued funding has been minimal at best in culture as well as program maintenance for language.

In summary, these are just some examples of a contemporary and uneven application of C&L across the DoD. Culture is in danger of being relegated to an afterthought in existing learning programs save for some of the examples above, and even those instances if not funded for sustainment will see an eventual

Internationalization of U.S. Education in the 21st Century The Future of International and Foreign Language Studies A Research Conference on National Needs and Policy Implications, http://www.wm.edu/offices/revescenter/international ization/description%20/index.php 15

demise in keeping culture relevant. “…We are entering a time when standalone programs are being dismantled or left to wither without resources….Programs developed purely for the conflicts of the last ten years are finding it hard to justify continued existence (Fosher 2014: xvi).” I do not think there is any doubt throughout leadership and stakeholders that C&L are key enablers. Moving beyond the concept of ‘enabler’ to making aspects of culture core ‘competencies’ is a critical step (Abbe 2014). The military develops programs based on requirements. The more C&L can be turned into requirements across the DoD, the better it will be for institutionalization.

Common Threads Wir hören von einer besondern Einrichtung bei der englischen Marine. Sämtliche Tauwerke der königlichen Flotte, vom stärksten bis zum schwächsten, sind der gestalt gesponnen, dass ein roter Faden durch das Ganze durchgeht, den man nicht herauswinden kann, ohne alles aufzulösen, und woran auch die kleinsten Stücke kenntlich sind, dass sie der Krone gehören.“ (Goethe, 1962) (Translation) We heard of a special provision of the English Navy. All plaited ropes in the Royal Fleet, from the strongest up to the weakest, are spun such that red thread is running through the whole rope which cannot be removed without disintegrating everything. So even for the smallest pieces, it is recognizable that they belong to the crown.

This imagery from Goethe’s Elective Affinities provides us with a way of thinking about common threads, red threads, as integral to the continuity of C&L, the removal of which likely to unravel future DoD efforts. Thus far, the thoughts and reflections shared in this

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commentary reveal an uncertain future, at most, a calamitous prediction of culture and possibly to some extent language as mission enablers being placed back on the shelf of “been there, done that.” As scholars, researchers, teachers, operators and program managers, all invested in supporting a more stable international security, we must realize there are several “common” threads that connect our efforts together, but that unless threads are established, efforts to sustain, or even advance C&L as critical to international security will be problematic. There are two types of threads that offer to bind C&L efforts together. First is the “existential” red thread of policy, approach, research, dogma, and doctrine that is essential to further development and articulation within the community and will allow all interested stakeholders visibility into ongoing research, learning development and application of C&L and provide some continuity across these efforts.

The second binding is more of a carbon-fiber thread16 that strengthens the fabric, the fiber and the tensile strength of rope. This thread is the creation and adoption of theoretical and sound pedagogy and useful and meaningful assessment measures that that bind C&L KSAAs across learning events. The identification of red threads will allow all interested stakeholders visibility into ongoing research, learning development and application of C&L and provide some continuity across these efforts.

Malcom Gladwell, in his book, Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, reflects on those variables that are critical to inform and engage that moment where change, a tipping point, can generate, acceler 16

Thanks to Thomas Haines for this analogy

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ate or promote the success of a social movement. To Gladwell, there exists in the lifetime of social movements where a certain course of action or direction of path reaches a point where small changes or movements coalesce to prompt a cascade of change that will see new trends, or to Malcom Gladwell, a tipping point, “…the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point (Gladwell 2005:12). One of his observations about the success of these points is the environment and the individual and groups invested in achieving change. “If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.” Since publication, there have been counter studies done on the validity of Gladwell’s assertions about the “connectors” and the other socially and behaviorally privileged few (that form hubs) that are critical to germinate those changes.17 However, there does seem to be some agreement that context (existing environment) and to me the profound strength of the common threads can promulgate effective change.

Examples of Red Threads Two examples of efforts within the DoD that featured and continue to feature common threads and community-wide approaches can provide possible models for future work.

The first example considers the development of cross-cultural competence (3C) as a critical set of knowledge, skills, abilities (and attitudes) as part of a culture-general approach to provide cultural capabilities that were and are critical to US and coalition efforts in Iraq and

17

August 12, 2003 NY Times Article

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Afghanistan.18 Identified initially by social and behavioral scientists (Selmeski 2007, Abbe et al, 2007) as a multiplier to population-centric missions, a confederated body of multidisciplinary social and behavioral scientists and educators, Service-wide military personnel, and OSD policy strategists came together in working groups and smaller meetings to conceptualize 3C. An Office of Secretary Defense (OSD) conference on 3C was held in 2009, sponsored by then Defense Language Office (now Defense Language and National Security Education Office, DLNSEO) and a variety of meetings and exchanges between social and behavioral scientists and OSD were held on continuing research and learning successes. Several DoD research institutions engaged in research on defining, assessing and applying 3C to develop a greater understanding.19 A 3C web portal was developed to act to consolidate 3C learning and feature ongoing research20 and DLNSEO managed the development of several training simulations called Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainers (VCATs) that were specific to Combatant Commands (COCOMs), such as AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM. Developmental models of 3C have been proposed (McCloskey, et al, 2010, Reid, et al, 2012 and Reid et al, 2014) and ongoing research by ARI seeks to further

This section on 3C is not meant to be an inclusive and indepth account of its development and expression in the DoD. Resources highlighted are meant to be examples of work done and published. (Gallus, et al (2014) provides the most complete and systematic review of current and ongoing efforts in 3C and features an extensive annotated bibliography. See also Fosher 2014, Abbe 2014, and Sands and Greene-Sands 2014 for a more in-depth perspective of the development of 3C in DoD 19 see Gallus et al (2014) and Sands and Greene-Sands (2014) for a DoD-wide survey of efforts to include conceptualization, assessment, and development of 3C 20 See www.cultureready.org

explore this model. Currently, 3C has been folded into additional learning programs across the DoD and can be found in the Defense Intelligence Agency (Sands and Haines 2013, Sands 2013a & b) and in other Intelligence Community (IC) agencies,21 Joint Foreign Area Officer (FAO) training, among others; while 3C is now written into Services’ lanlanguage and culture strategies.22 The last eight years of 3C research and learning development has seen a remarkable effort of scholarship and collaboration across a multitude of disciplines, involving a dedicated community now facing the eventual reduction in focus and funding that will come once forces are drawn down. It has been a period not without debate and passionate discussion by those in the community concerning theory and bridging discipline divide, yet the community overcame the effects of a period of time where funding was plentiful, but direction and sensibility in short supply. Out of the large room of opportunity, there was collection of people from divergent perspectives, operators, policy writers, and different academic walks of life, “…willing to give up personal opportunities and do the long hard, and often unrewarded work of forging the concept of 3C into something we could all, more or less, agree on and use....Rarely has academia or the government seen so many different

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21 Between 2004 and the present, the IC has had numerous working groups and community-wide or agency-specific efforts to identify and develop the knowledge and skills needed by different kinds of intelligence personnel. The IC just recently launched a community-wide Culture and Regional Knowledge Expert Group (CRKEG) to explore identifying region and cultural knowledge and skills.

22 Draft DoD policy on LREC included 3C training and development (publication of each is expected shortly, Greene-Sands 2014).

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perspectives converge on one approach (Fosher 2014: xv-xvi).”

The second example of collaboration within the C&L community concerns intersection of C&L in learning development and proficiency.

Working intimately with a host of cultural groups demands effectiveness in intercultural communication; “ensuring the effectiveness of intercultural communication has become increasingly critical as US government, military, and NGO personnel work closely in joint efforts, and not only at senior levels (Ingold 2014:304).” Two events will be highlighted here that explore this intersection.

The first event is the identification of behavioral elements that can facilitate more successful intercultural communication events. The second event considers re-envisioning the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to support future emphasis on partnership building as a synergistic combination of language, region and culture. This re-envisioning operates on the premise that capabilities to promote successful facilitation of missions involved in this partnership building will improve when brought together in a sound and sequenced learning event.

To the first event, the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR)23, a volunteer group of affiliated government linguists and academic and professional linguists (see Ingold 2014) convened an effort to develop Intercultural Competence (ICC) skill descriptors that would highlight skills appropriate to the nonlinguistic aspects of intercultural communication into consideration and loosely align with proficiency levels for existing language skills (several members of this journal’s editorial

23

ILR webpage: http://www.govtilr.org/

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board were part of that two-year effort). This development was seen as a response for the need to “…communicate and interact effectively with members of communities whose cultural frame of reference is markedly different from their own (Ingold 2014: 304).” Although the ICC skill descriptor development committee was primarily composed of language professionals, the members sought to bring in aspects of intercultural communications theory, pedagogy and application to help guide their efforts. The skill descriptors have since been published and in response to this effort24, the ILR in May of 2012 added a Culture Committee (co-chaired by Allison Greene-Sands and Ewa Zeoli) to explore the intersection of C&L to better facilitate what has been seen in the language community as the need to marry culture into existing research and learning programs.

Potential next steps for the community with regard to intercultural communications could be to further explore the development of “can-do” statements for intercultural communication that can be general enough (culturegeneral) to apply to a majority of cultural groups within specified languages and to take on the development of a competency or performance scale (similar to the existing scale seen in the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language (ACTFL) or perhaps like the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT), which is intended to identify language proficiency against the ILR skill level descriptors.25 Although these efforts seem to

See ICC skill descriptors: http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/Competence.htm 25 See Defense Language Proficiency Test: http://www.dliflc.edu/dlptguides.html and American Council of Foreign Language Standards; http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/public/ StandardsforFLLexecsumm_rev.pdf 24

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be logical next steps, success will depend on both the C&L communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; willingness to acquire intercultural KSAAs which can be reliably assessed. Efforts exist in the DoD to promote research and learning development in intercultural communication which can advance language acquisition as well as development of pedagogy to successfully manage a security environment that no longer contains distinct front lines within the newly human domain. Work by intercultural communication scholars in the DoD such as Mackenzie (Mackenzie 2014, this issue, and Mackenzie and Wallace,) and Greene-Sands (2014a) can provide the language community ongoing research and learning development to ensure that Intercultural Communication contributions (such as the ICC skill descriptors) are both institutionalized and utilized effectively.

This important work is put into practice by such scholars as Vieira (2014) who examines interpretation in non-permissive environments. While language proficiency can be the critical piece of C&L to advance in-depth understanding, some elements of future missions will most undoubtedly involve the continued or more advanced use of interpreters to communicate with local populations.

The second avenue for consideration as a model to highlight common threads is to explore alternatives to existing learning traditions in language and culture in the DoD. One possible model is currently being piloted at Joint Base Lewis/McChord (Sands 2013a, kand Sands, 2014, this issue). Results and future implications will be presented at the 2014 June ILR session. Language familiarity courses at JBLM aim for proficiency of 1 on a scale of 0+ to 5 on the DLPT. With this new approach, the language courses combine traditional language instruction with 3C, cul-

ture-general and culture-specific knowledge, and intercultural communication in a blended 10-week format. A preliminary note to this effort and other models intending to marry C&L together, language instruction offers an extended and intensive period of several weeks to months and in that period is a longer forum in which to include culture/3C elements. For example in a 10-week language familiarization course, there are over 300 hours of instruction. Pilot efforts have indicated that folding non-linguistic KSAAs into the curriculum can better enhance overall learning and proficiency in competencies necessary for the intimacy of missions that will be featured in national security efforts.

This is not a small shift in approach or perspective; it is the acknowledgement that learning a language does not necessarily make you adept at culture-general or 3C, or even provide a solid culture-specific knowledge base unless you purposely set out to build and staff an integrated curriculum and overall learning event. Sands (2013) offers reasons why a C&L course makes sense, to include budgetary, resourcing, and the intuitive â&#x20AC;&#x153;fitâ&#x20AC;? of linguistic, intercultural communication and cross-cultural competence with the culturegeneral and culture-specific knowledge necessary for language and communicative proficiency. There are ample DoD and Interagency organizations and programs that feature extended learning opportunities where this or similar approaches can be adopted.

Over the last decade, developing language proficiency has been identified and developed for populations beyond those such as intelligence analysts/collectors and professional linguists considered necessary in a post-ColdWar security environment. Language, just as

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much as culture, was found to enhance effectiveness across operations in OEF and OIF, and language programs will continue at places such as DLI and for organizations such as SOCOM and the IC. Granted, not everyone in the DoD goes through extended language training, or even sustainment training, but those who do should be exposed to culture (culture-general, culture-specific, and 3C), with the accompanying KSAAs as part of the overall learning experience. It just makes sense. There are a number of different learning approaches that feature a variety of learning models - residential, distance learning or blended (the JBLM pilot featured all three models). Perhaps by shifting perspective, students gain a minimum of language skills in this program to effectively operate in a foreign environment, but may equipped with the requisite cultural capability (and cultural context) to understand what is or could be misunderstood culturally.

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resources from existing funding organizations, and a recognition that although region and language programs may maintain at existing levels, or reduce slightly, funding and resources for cultural programs will see dramatic cutbacks. This sets the future of C&L in a precarious tipping point. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It takes a villageâ&#x20AC;? certainly applies to the efforts needed to advance C&L to benefit international security.

Culture, Language and International Security is offered up as one of the vehicles devoted to promote and sustain research, learning development, and application of C&L in the DoD and the Interagency, to promulgate partnerships across the USG and institutions of higher learning, and to foster multidisciplinary approaches and perspectives to a continued dialogue that will be open and invaluable to all.

Summary This essay is by no means a comprehensive survey of ongoing work in C&L across the DoD and Interagency and academia, nor is it intended to be anywhere near a definitive statement of what needs to happen in the future. As hopefully this commentary has exposed, there is real need to align perspectives from those within and across the C&L community. It is also an invitation to join an expanding community of interested groups to continue and advance efforts to better facilitate international security. This brief survey did not include efforts occurring elsewhere outside of the US in C&L; it is certain that visibility into research and development in organizations and agencies internationally can better inform efforts by all. What it does represent is a frank admission to the reduction in The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, Vol. 1, Issue 1, May 2014

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Robert R. Greene Sands, Ph.D is an anthropologist and Director & Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for the Study of Culture and Language (ISCL) at Norwich University. Sands is an adjunct professor in the Norwich University College of Graduate and Continuing Studies and is also a Senior Research Consortium Fellow for the Consortium Research Fellows Program supporting US Army Research Institute. He is Editor of the ISCL’s online journal Culture, Language and International Security (CLIS). From 2008 to 2011, Dr. Sands was Culture Chair of the Cross-Cultural Competence Department, and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Air Force Culture and Language Center (AFCLC) and Air University at Maxwell AFB, AL. He was also Director of the Minerva Initiative for Energy and Environmental Security during his tenure at Air University. Dr. Sands also is a consultant supporting the development of culture and cross-cultural competence programs across the Department of Defense. He has presented to organizations such as AFRICOM, 17th Air Force, the US Air Force Expeditionary Center, the Joint Chaplains College, Special Operations Command, the JAG School, Advanced Air Mobility Operations, Joint Military Attaché School, Joint Foreign Area Officer Phase One course, Defense and National Intelligence professionals, among others. Dr. Sands has authored seven books and numerous chapters and articles on topics such as cross-cultural competence, environmental security, building partnerships and sustainability, sport and culture, ethnographic theory, and the cognitive origins of religion. His seventh book (co-authored with Allison Greene-Sands) is Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military Culture: the Flipside of COIN (2013, Lexington Books).

Dr. Sands holds a BA from Illinois State University, an MA from Iowa State University and a PhD from University of Illinois, all in anthropology.

The author would like to acknowledge the efforts of the following in providing review of this article: Maj Jonathan Brown, Mark Dye, Lauren MacKenzie, Aimee Vieira, Thomas Haines, Kerry Fosher, Aillison Greene-Sands, and Pieter DeVisser. Often, it indeed takes a village.

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Making Sense of Culture: Cognitive Obstacles to Reading Culture Road Signs Maj. Jonathan F. Brown

ABSTRACT Reading cultural road signs effectively requires insights into common cognitive errors, or bias, that shape attitudes and thinking patterns. Effects of bias are powerful and more common than most Marines acknowledge. This article discusses four biases relevant to cultural sense-making: hindsight and confirmation bias, framing effect and loss aversion. This article complements discussion of “operational culture”, the Marine Corps’ approach to developing cross-cultural knowledge and skills needed for Marines to operate effectively in any clime and place.

The lessons of the last decade have taught us that trust and cooperation cannot be surged, and neither can culture skills. The quality of relationships that Marines build with people is critical to mission success. Marines need to be able to work effectively with people from cultures that may be significantly different from their own. The goal is for Marines to develop the concepts and skills with which to “read” any culture.

The views expressed in this work are the author’s alone and do not represent the position of the United States Marine Corps.

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Making Sense of Culture: Cognitive Obstacles to Reading Culture Road Signs

“Culture” means many things to a wide audience of people. Young Marines commonly associate cultural proficiency with etiquette.

Marines senior enough to receive professional military education are taught five dimensions of operational culture to improve planning and tactical performance overseas. Lieutenant General George Flynn set the standard of cultural awareness for ‘Strategic Corporals.’

Marines must be trained to read cultural road signs… to distinguish threat from customary behavior in people whose customs may seem strange. Marines must… communicate and understand the context of the environments in which they operate.1

Familiarity with cultural road signs can be understood in many ways. Developing cultural literacy, in the sense of reading cultural road signs, involves steps that do not come naturally to most Marines.

In this article, I use Daniel Kahneman’s analysis of bias from his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, and perspectives from my own 17-year career in the Marine Corps to examine challenges in developing cross-cultural competence among Marines. In particular, I examine how four common biases prevent us from reading cultural road signs well. Similar information processing errors work in reverse, complicating foreign efforts to make sense of American actions and intentions. In this article, I outline a variety of common thinking habits that get in the way of cross cultural understanding, highlighting concepts being discussed in the field of psychology. Our attitudes often feel like they emerge from within ourselves, but they are soaked in the cultural

LtGen George Flynn, The Strategic Corporal (1 Sep 2008), p. 8.

1

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broth of our environment, taking on flavors and absorbing its context through shared perspectives. Scientific developments in psychology indicate people are extraordinarily sensitive and plugged-into cultural signals that suggest how we should make sense of the world around us. Much of this sensitivity happens below our radar. An introspective approach can improve our cultural ‘literacy’ and performance abroad.

Yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruiting Depots, where prospective Marines enter boot camp, represent a culture shock to young Americans. The meaning of “normal” is dramatically flipped on its head. The immersion is often so disorienting, recruits struggle to remember their own name, and left from right. The first days are the most overwhelming. Morning routines, practiced against a school bus schedule and a pleading parent are instantly replaced by terrifying drill instructors and earlier hours. Clothes, once selected by proximity and probability of cleanliness, become uniform and subject to driveby inspection all day. Meals are now shoveled down in record speed. Privacy and recreation no longer exist, and movement is always done with a sense of urgency. The possessive pronoun “I” must be erased from a recruit’s vocabulary. Boot camp challenges every detail of life once effortlessly considered normal. In the early weeks, a recruit’s mind is constantly racing, working to overcome habits established by a lifetime of practice. Over time, drill instructor behavior becomes normal in the context of boot camp, and foreign cultural road signs become clear. This represents the exhausting struggle to master a new culture.

At the end of thirteen weeks, the movements, details, and pace of life of freshly minted Ma-

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rines become routine. A new cultural identity forms.

In foreign cultural contexts, challenges emerge to every perspective reinforced over our lifetimes. Language differences are an obvious starting point. Communication styles vary. In America, speakers are expected to communicate clearly. We believe we say what we mean and mean what we say. In Korea, listeners are expected to make sense of what is said. A graceful response to a difficult question may come in the form of a parable. If the parable, such as an impending storm, is ambivalent, the listener must decipher the most appropriate meaning. Perhaps lingering presence, or controversial decision will cause a ‘storm’ with unfavorable consequences. Speech in Asia is commonly tailored to the audience, mitigating and hinting at meanings in conscious measures of respect. Misunderstandings are alternately the fault of speakers or listeners, depending on the cultural bias. Greetings alternate between nods, handshakes, kisses and bows. Food changes, as do customs of eating with fingers verses forks; clothing style changes, as do customs of leaving shoes at the door.

Sitting for meals may involve floors as often as chairs. Punctuality, emphasis on relationships, and men holding hands carry different meanings in various countries. Showing respect and recognizing the intentions of others involves layers of complexity that can be very taxing. These also contribute to culture shock, like yellow footprints, but few more than the effort of deciphering attitudes. As overwhelming as boot camp is for young Marines, the recruit depot does not challenge deeply held beliefs of our historical narrative.

Drill instructors do not reframe American history or challenge attitudes of our role in the

world. Foreigners do. Attitudes reflect coherent stories. Those stories spring from different sources. Foreign audiences are as likely to have different understandings of American narratives and agendas as we have of theirs.

Marines typically encounter this for the first time when they travel abroad, where both sides of cultural engagements are quick to embrace a common group insider bias that “we” are good and “they” (foreigners) misunderstand us.

What if difficulty in reading cultural road signs is directly related to our brain? Not in biology, but the thinking patterns that spring so automatically from it. Daniel Kahneman outlines a concept of our mental hardware and common cognitive errors. Bias, here, refers to information processing shortcuts (heuristics) and judgment errors, as opposed to prejudice or preference. Effects of bias are powerful and more common than most Marines acknowledge. In this article, I highlight four: hindsight and confirmation bias, framing effects and loss aversion, and why these are formidable obstacles to cultural literacy. Familiarity with bias does not make us immune from them. Familiarity, however, can help us recognize and anticipate them more quickly in ourselves and others. Introspection may give us the insight to distinguish threat from customary behavior, communicate effectively, and understand the environments where we operate.

Hindsight bias Hindsight bias is a tendency to revise the history of one’s beliefs in light of what actually happened.2 Risk looms large in the future, but disappears in memory. Abraham Lincoln’s

2

D. Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (2011), p. 202.

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nomination as Republican candidate for President was a much longer long shot in 1860 than is remembered today. Suggestion that American settlers would ever fail to unify our nation from sea to shining sea also seems absurd today. Both events happened, so, were they ever in doubt? Hindsight bias makes it easy to forget how steep the road Lincoln climbed to become America’s 16th President was. It also blurs our recollection that Manifest Destiny was not an assured outcome of the 19th century. Amphibious landings at Inchon, Korea in September 1950 were laden with risk. Success depended on deception, timing the tides to prevent landing craft stuck in the mud, skill, luck and a long list of other risk factors. Successful outcomes make planning decisions seem bolder, and assessments of the process appear more assured in retrospect than they were. History is not a recipe that can be followed and repeated to predictably reliable outcomes. Lincoln, Manifest Destiny, and amphibious landings in Korea would be remembered much differently today, if at all, had the outcomes been different.

To put hindsight bias in a more modern context, with a lighter touch, sports analogies work well. Football teams meet on the gridiron each week in the fall. Despite win-loss standings and batteries of pundits anticipating point spreads, there is no way to accurately predict the outcome of games. Plans constantly shift with conditions on the ground, player injuries, and a constant stream of split second decisions. After each game, however, doubts are quickly forgotten. Coherent stories of great plays and brilliant coaching spring up to explain the inevitable results.

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An industrial example is also useful in describing how judgment errors arise from hindsight bias. Recent shifts in domestic and Canadian oil production are dramatically increasing freight rail activity across the American Midwest. Railroad traffic seemed benign and safe enough for train and oil companies to resist environmental impact studies and expensive improvements to their existing fleet of DOT111A freight cars3 for years, despite shifts in flammable cargo and the rapid increase from 10,000 to over 400,000 tank loads per year from 2009 to 2012.4 Ten recent train accidents involving explosive oil spills in North Dakota, Quebec, Illinois and Alabama have caused alarm, sudden interest in environmental studies, and in some cases, resistance to freight travel through local communities.5 In hindsight, freight safety is less benign, despite a 99.9 percent safety record.

Likewise, influenza virus spreads in seasonal epidemics that result in severe illness and death. Flu shots have a record of reducing the number and severity of cases, and are recommended by the Center for Disease Control. Several unexpected deaths in 2012 were attributed to flu shots; hindsight bias caused many parents to believe the shots were more risky than advertised and doctors should have known better. Media reports exploded with conspiracy theories of unsafe medicine and pharmaceutical profiteering at the expense of public health. Hindsight bias makes it hard to evaluate decisions properly, in terms of beliefs

B. Mann. Lac-Megantic Blast Leaves Impact on Town, Rail Industry. (2013). National Public Radio 4 D. Schaper. String of Oil Train Crashes Prompts Push for Safety Rules. (2014). National Public Radio 5 C. Krauss, J. Mouawad. Accidents Surge as Oil Industry Takes the Train. (2014). New York Times 3

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that were reasonable when decisions were made.6 The Iraqi Army was roundly defeated and expelled from Kuwait within two months in 1991 (Operation Desert Storm), following Manuel Noriega’s successful capture in Panama the year before (Operation Just Cause).

Why should Pentagon planners expect a different result in 2003? We did not believe the capability of the Iraqi Army had changed significantly, nor did we anticipate the reaction of the population because neither was a significant factor before. Similar calculations were applied in Afghanistan. Troop levels were kept low and assessments consistently anticipated quick redeployment timelines after the Taliban government was unseated in early 2002. There are a lot of lessons to learn from each political and military conflict. Most of the time, wisdom gained from experience serves us well. Hindsight bias both informs and undercuts sound decision making. Like our memory of Lincoln’s election and successful landings at Inchon, Korea, hindsight leads us to believe that consistent recipes produce the same results, by underestimating risk and overlooking the context of new situations.

Bias led military commanders to believe that both Iraq and Afghanistan could be wrapped up in a few months, as it was in 1990-91.

Sometimes, bias creates a slippery cognitive slope, resulting in too little credit for decisions that turn out well, and too much blame for decisions made with sound processes but poor outcomes.

Hindsight bias and selective memory influences cultural interaction as well. Russian distrust of America traces to conflicting ideology,

6

dysfunctional leader relationships, delayed engagement against the German Army on the Western front in World War II, arms races and proxy engagements in Cuba, Berlin, Germany and Vietnam, among other things. The Kremlin has the Cold War to compare American intentions against. It is easy for both sides to assess future motives against previous ones, ignoring changes in context in the process. Confrontation is not a fixed paradigm to define how nations see each other. Germany and Japan are now allies, despite radically different relationships in 1941. Hindsight bias contributes to regular setbacks in security relations between China, Korea and Japan. Having suffered through Japanese occupation, China and Korea perceive yesterday’s aggression in today’s assertiveness. Japanese visits to war shrines to honor World War II ancestors punctuate the meaning that Chinese and Koreans attribute to Japanese attitudes about the past. Trust is hard to reestablish when selective hindsight is employed to maintain fixed beliefs about the character and intentions of others. Cultural road signs and customary behavior are often influenced by the past, but not defined or determined by it.

Marines are well served with familiarity of history and an open mind to allow alternative future outcomes as circumstances change.

Confirmation bias Confirmation bias is a tendency to magnify details that support previously held beliefs while ignoring conflicting observations. In the first weeks of boot camp, drill instructors expect to break recruits of a lifetime of ‘bad’ habits, which are all they see. When Corporal Brown is introduced as a Marine to keep an eye on, future mistakes will stick out and stack up in our memory more easily than his suc-

D. Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (2011), p. 203.

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cesses. First impressions have an outsized impact on follow-on perceptions because we tend to see what we are looking for. Marines patrolling combat zones sometimes see evidence of hostile intent in every foreign face.

Afghans who were warned that Americans were occupier forces bent on social and religious changes with little regard for Afghan lives found outsized evidence of this in airstrikes and night raids. Messages that seem intuitive are magnified with each example we can point to, and are often very difficult to adjust or correct.

Daniel Kahneman suggests the way our brain associates suggestion to memory makes us susceptible to confirmation bias.7 When Sergeant Smith is introduced as intelligent and friendly, we are more likely to notice evidence that matches the description. If China is described as shifty and menacing in the South China Sea, our brain fixes on confirming evidence, such as near collisions with USS Cowpens (December, 2013)8, unilateral establishment of air defense identification zone (November, 2013),9 cable-cutting of Vietnamese survey cables,10 rhetoric of south china sea as a core interest,11 etc. Under these circumstances our brain minimizes examples of restrained or supportive behavior, to the point we feel they don’t exist. When Al Qaeda tells fellow Muslims that America’s secret agenda is a crusade against Islam, the suggestion, supported by night raids, civilian casualties,

D. Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (2011), p. 81.

C. Thayer. USS Cowpens Incident Reveals Strategic Mistrust Between U.S. and China (2013), The Diplomat 9 C. Clover. John Kerry Warns China Against Declaring Second Air Defense Zone (2014), Financial Times 10 J. Page. Vietnam Accuses Chinese Ships (2012), Wall Street Journal 11 T. Yoshihara and J. Holmes, (2011) Can China Defend a “Core Interest” in the South China Sea? CSIS 7

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and any insensitivity by NATO forces, can seem compelling.

Kahneman outlines a common cognitive tendency to “see the world as more tidy, simple, predictable and coherent than it really is.”12 Stereotypes are frequently reinforced by confirmation and selective hindsight bias, and both shape foreign attitudes towards America. Marines are well served to be watchful for confirmation bias, recognize it in themselves and others.

Framing effect The presentation or framing of information impacts reactions, preferences and beliefs. A glass half full is also a glass half empty. An employment rate of 93.3 percent elicits a more positive response than a 6.7 percent unemployment rate. Both present the same information, framed differently to evoke a response. Marketing firms pay close attention to this in order to trigger predictable feelings or action. Freight train safety records listed at 99.9 percent elicit confidence. We assume the .1 percent is a realistic rounding error to account for occasional accidents. When description of .1 percent of freight train accidents shifts to 1.5 million gallons of oil spilled and 175 lives lost in ten explosive derailments over five states in a single year (2013), the meaning of the same information changes.

Political pundits obsessively frame their issues in terms of left or right, liberal or conservative, red or blue. These associations make it easier for people to quickly interpret how to feel about the ideas that follow, without needing to understand the details of each issue.

8

Infantry Marines are the main effort of most Marine warfighting engagements, by design.

D. Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (2011), p.

204.

12

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Infantry is, by far, the largest of 42 occupational fields among Marines, enlisted (18%) and officer (12%).13 31 of 35 Marine Commandants were infantry officers. Framing effect impacts how Marines see themselves, and contributes to perceived dichotomy between infantry (grunts) and everyone else. As young infantrymen enjoy attesting, “you’re either a grunt or a pogue.” For optimum career management, department head tours as Operations Officers and Chiefs are highly valued. Marines prioritize and compete for these limited assignments. Promotion boards tend to look for this in performance records and draw conclusions when critical billets are missing. Framing communicates relative importance.

America is a predominantly Christian nation, familiar with a wide spectrum of Christian denominations. When Timothy McVeigh detonated his truck bomb in Oklahoma City in April 1995, few Americans felt the nation was under attack by organized, zealot religionists. Before 2001, most Marines were comfortably unfamiliar with Islam, Afghanistan, or Osama bin Laden. After September 11, framing effect associated all three with attacks on America’s homeland and values. The meaning of a religion, a country and a leader blended so tightly in that context, many Americans could not distinguish any difference. Bin Laden came to represent Islam, and both became tied, via the attack, to Afghanistan.

Since then, political leaders have attempted to clarify that the U.S. is not at war with Islam.

America learned about Islam through the context of terror, and has had a difficult time separating them since. Framing effect can be powerful enough to trigger hindsight and con 13

firmation bias. Because we were attacked, the Muslim community has been closely correlated to threats. A key difference between 9/11 and Oklahoma City is relative familiarity before traumatic events, and the way information was presented to the public. In contrast, many Afghans have come to learn of Christianity through the context of armed patrols in their villages and a decade of war and foreign interference in their affairs.

Framing effects are important in reading cultural road signs. Chess players can see their opponent’s pieces, but they cannot see the intent. Information can be deliberately packaged to create positive or negative reactions.

Cultures suspicious of American intentions can draw radically different conclusions from the same information. For example, China and Russia view U.S. posturing in their respective backyards as containment. The U.S. advertises our presence as enforcement of international order and balance of power.

Iran claims nuclear ambitions for peaceful energy; western nations believe Iran seeks nuclear weapons. Insider bias helps people frame information about themselves in the most positive and benevolent light possible.

When controversy occurs, explanations or exceptions quickly surface. The Oklahoma City bombing was the act of an individual, not a religious group, for example. When foreigners apply insider bias, they see themselves selectively, in the most favorable light, much as we do when the roles are reversed. The key is familiarity. Outsider bias is the perspective that comes intuitively when people have superficial insights and familiarity with another group. After 9/11, Muslims were scary to many Americans. Framing effects are more likely to influence attitudes towards the glass

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half empty, where less benefit of the doubt is considered.

Battalion and Company intelligence sections are typically charged with informing Marines about foreign populations. Marines responsible for threat assessments and force protection are more likely to be affected by hindsight and confirmation bias, using intelligencebased information sources, and season their briefs with hints of suspicion. The same bias can work in reverse, in foreign interpretations of America. Washington D.C. is a beautiful city, rich with history, museums and American culture. It also had the fifth highest crime rate14 in the most (handgun) armed nation in the world,15 with a revolving door of political scandal and corruption. Americans are simultaneously charitable, industrious, individualistic, politically polarized, opinionated, creative, wealthy, and prone to spying. Depending on the information source, stereotypes foreigners use to characterize Americans are often framed with the same bias that Americans use to understand foreign audiences.

Loss aversion Loss aversion, put simply, is a powerful tendency to fight harder to prevent losses than to achieve gains. In a foot race, for example, a Marine will run harder to beat another runner (avoid losing) than she would to set a personal record on her own. This bias applies in several contexts. Armies tend to fight harder in an existential fight to defend their families and homeland than to expand an empire far from home. Vietnam, for example, lost an estimated 1.6 million soldiers and 2 million civilians

fighting the French (1945-54), Americans (1965-1972), and Chinese (1979).16 Russia left Afghanistan in 1989 after nine years of fighting and 14,500 killed in action, compared to 90,000 Afghans killed.

Defense is a more desperate position to be in.

In April, 1863 at the battle of Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee’s force of 60,000 prevailed against a Union attack by 133,000 men under General Joseph Hooker. With the Rappahannock River at their back, fighting on Virginia soil, Lee and Stonewall Jackson surprised the Union force, stood their ground, and won. “Because defeat is so difficult to accept, the losing side in wars often fight long past the point at which victory of the other side is certain, and only a matter of time.”17 Many parts of the American South continue to disavow the results of the Civil War. Unconventional warfare and insurgency spring from this refusal to accept loss. As of this writing, Syrian rebels, pummeled by the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iran, continue fighting against great odds and heavy attrition, three years after the Arab spring revolution began.

To avoid loss of face, honor, or sovereignty, Marines should be prepared for people to make irrational decisions when opponents perceive themselves backed into a corner.

A second context of loss aversion emerges from fear of change and the unknown. “The disadvantages of change loom larger than its advantages, inducing a bias that favors the status quo.”18 Many Pashtun and Baluch Afghans have clannish societies, long accustomed to independence from any central gov-

FBI Uniform Crime Report (2013) 15 M. Morgenstern. (2013) How Many People Own Guns in America? The Blaze.

16

14

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VietnamGear.com (2012) D. Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (2011), p. 319.

18 Ibid. p. 292.

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ernment. The imposition of an effective central government potentially threatens traditional tribal structures and Pashtunwali, the way of Pashtun life. Modernity itself, often depicted by Marines with advanced technology hanging from every limb, represents challenge to tradition. It makes Pashtun children aware of technological differences between them and an outside world.

Over the course of many conversations with Arab families across Egypt, Oman and Saudi Arabia, a consistent pattern of fear has emerged that western influence will erode the ethical behavior of young generations. Muslim parents worry their children will be seduced by temptations represented by Hollywood: pornography, drugs, marriage outside of local custom, obsessions with wealth, technology, and a replacement of communityoriented Arab culture with western individualism. Marines should not be surprised if everyone does not aspire to become American.

Yet this perspective does surprise many Marines. It seems intuitive for Marines to assume opportunities represented by the American dream are universal values. They are not.

The aversion to lose identity and tradition is powerful, and the ‘American dream’ is often framed as a challenge to a cultural status quo.

A third perspective of loss aversion involves a surprising connection between context and attitudes towards risk. Kahneman outlines four decision-making patterns that Marines should be aware of; two result in risk seeking behavior and two result in risk aversion. The first pattern is long odds for high payoff, such as winning the lottery, which results in riskseeking behavior. Scott Moore, the Sergeant from 3rd battalion, 2nd Marines who asked ac-

tress Mila Kunis to the 2011 Marine Corps Ball19 via a YouTube video from Afghanistan had nothing to lose, with a potential big payoff. The second risk-seeking pattern is near certain odds for a big loss, such as Aids victims willing to try experimental drugs.

Corpsmen who rush through open fire to treat and recover wounded Marines, and security guards who stand their ground against approaching suicide bombers to save their fellow Marines exhibit this kind of riskacceptance, particularly when they know others will be harmed if they fail to act. Suicide bombers have a similar incentive to seek risk, for a disproportionate impact against a stronger enemy. Sports provide a less controversial example. Facing near certain loss in the final seconds of a football game, a quarterback will throw a Hail Mary pass (risk seeking) for the chance of avoiding defeat. Afghans on horseback fought Russian tanks in the 1980s against similar odds.

The converse are conditions that encourage risk averse behavior. The first risk averse pattern is near certain odds for high reward. A sniper with a 90 percent chance of hitting a moving target, or a 100 percent chance of hitting a stationary target, is more likely to choose the stationary shot to avoid the chance of missing (risk averse). The second risk aversion pattern is small odds of catastrophic loss.

Insurance companies count on people paying money to cover the minor chance of fire, flood or accident.20 The American defense budget is larger than comparable defense budgets of the next 13 countries combined!

We pay huge sums to guarantee the greatest

G. Harkins, My Date with Mila Kunis: Marine’s Untold Story, (2012), Marine Corps Times 20 Ibid. p. 317.

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advantage and minimize risk, despite high probability of similar results at much less cost.

These four tendencies are important for Marines to pay attention to. They do not dictate human behavior, but tilt the mental playing field in predictable ways. Foreign populations and opposing forces will be more likely to seek or avoid risk if Marines recognize and set the right conditions.

Conclusion I began with a brief description of boot camp because all Marines have experienced basic training. As recruits or officer candidates, we were overwhelmed with new circumstances, attitudes and expectations. After training, hindsight bias made it difficult to remember what it was like to not know the basic expectations of being a Marine. Confirmation bias constantly reinforces and reaffirms our new standards. Framing effects help us present information in ways to affirm our beliefs, and loss aversion keeps us holding tight to existing reputations, attitudes and norms. Foreign audiences tick through similar sequences when they come in contact with Marines. An effective way for Marines to improve relationships and performance is to become familiar with our own psychology and employ crosscultural competence. As Marines prepare to read cultural road signs and perform as ‘Strategic Corporals’, they should consider the four biases discussed above and incorporate an introspective approach. Lessons about crosscultural situations are subtle, sometimes hard to notice and difficult to pass from generation to generation. Our thinking habits incorporate hidden obstacles that modern psychology is only beginning to understand and articulate.

Hindsight and confirmation bias, framing effects and loss aversion are not the only rele-

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vant biases that affect human thinking and attitudes. Attitudes and cultures are influenced by our biology, learned habits of thinking and the context of our environment. Operational culture training focuses on physical environment, economic, social, political structures and belief systems.21 Applied with an introspective awareness that attitudes are often developed beneath rational, conscious thought, Marine performance abroad will improve.

Salmoni, B.A. & Holmes-Eber, P (2008) Operational Culture for the Warfighter: Principles and Applications.

P. 1.

21

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References Lieutenant General George Flynn, USMC, (2008). The Strategic Corporal. P. 8. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=strategic%20corporal&source=web&cd=12&v ed=0CDQQFjABOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quantico.usmc.mil%2Fdownload.aspx %3FPath%3D.%2FUploads%2FFiles%2FCDI_strat%2Bcpl%2Bfinal.pdf&ei=vZZWUZCd Ooi29QTGiYCIBQ&usg=AFQjCNERgpCwqGweovolFzF50rGdqz-VjQ .

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

B. Mann. Lac-Megantic Blast Leaves Impact on Town, Rail Industry. National Public Radio, All Things Considered, 14 Oct, 2013. http://www.npr.org/2013/10/14/227840021/lac-mgantic-blast-leaves-impact-on-town-rail-industry D. Schaper. String of Oil Train Crashes Prompts Push for Safety Rules. National Public Radio, Around the Nation, 24 Jan, 2014. http://www.npr.org/2014/01/24/265762435/string-ofoil-train-crashes-prompts-push-for-safety-rules C. Krauss, J. Mouawad. Accidents Surge as Oil Industry Takes the Train. New York Times, 25 Jan, 2014.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/business/energy-environment/accidentssurge-as-oil-industry-takes-the-train.html?_r=0 C. Thayer. USS Cowpens Incident Reveals Strategic Mistrust Between U.S. and China. The Diplomat, 17 Dec, 2013. http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/uss-cowpens-incident-reveals-strategicmistrust-between-u-s-and-china C. Clover. John Kerry Warns China Against Declaring Second Air Defense Zone. Financial Times, 14 Feb, 2014. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc37afda-9574-11e3-8371-00144feab7de.html J. Page.

Vietnam Accuses Chinese Ships. Wall Street Journal, 3 Dec, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323717004578157033857113510 T. Yoshihara and J. Holmes, (2011) Can China Defend a “Core Interest” in the South China Sea? Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), The Washington Quarterly. https://csis.org/files/publication/twq11springyoshiharaholmes.pdf Marine Corps Almanac (2013), Marine Corps Concepts and Programs 2013, Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. http://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/136/Docs/Concepts%20and%20Programs/2013/CP13%2 0CH4-BkCvr_WEBFA_5FEB13.pdf FBI Uniform Crime Report (2013), Congressional Quarterly Press http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2012/CityCrime2013_CityCrimeRankingsFactSheet.pdf M. Morgenstern. (2013) How Many People Own Guns in America? And is Gun Ownership Actually Declining? The Blaze, 19 Mar 2013. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/19/howmany-people-own-guns-in-america-and-is-gun-ownership-actually-declining/ Vietnam War Casualties (2012) http://www.vietnamgear.com/casualties.aspx G. Harkins, My Date with Mila Kunis: Marine’s Untold Story, 10 Nov, 2012, Marine Corps Times http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20121110/NEWS/211100316/My-date-MilaKunis-Marine-s-untold-story Salmoni, B.A. & Holmes-Eber, P. (2008) Operational Culture for the Warfighter: Principles and Applications.

Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/mcu_op_culture_for_warfighter.pdf

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Major Jonathan Brown is a Marine helicopter pilot and Foreign Area Officer (FAO). Jonathan’s global perspective on security cooperation and military program management comes from his work in Indonesia, multiple deployments, previous assignment at Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, and current assignment at Marine Corps Security Cooperation Group (MCSCG). In his previous assignment as USMC FAO Program Manager, he promoted language, regional expertise and culture (LREC) skills development and employment in the Marine Corps. He has led efforts to double accession into the USMC LREC community for officer and enlisted personnel, managed international exchange programs, and currently prepares Marines for advising and Security Cooperation missions abroad. He has been based in Indonesia, Okinawa, Washington DC, and deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and across the Asia Pacific. He is currently assigned to Marine Corps Security Cooperation Group in Virginia Beach, working to advance the Marine Corps approach to security cooperation, security force assistance and advising.

Jonathan has a master’s degree in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School.

He is tri-lingual, speaking Indonesian and French.

You can contact Maj. Brown at Jonathan.f.brown@usmc.mil. Additionally, you can read his blog at http://jonb-one.blogspot.com/ and follow the Marine Corps International Affairs Program (IAP) on Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Marine-Corps-International-AffairsProgram-IAP/231182070225906)

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Integrating Culture General and Cross-cultural Competence & Communication Skills: Possibilities for the Future of Military Language and Culture Programs Pieter R. DeVisser Robert Greene Sands

Disclaimer The views expressed herein are those of the authors, not the Department of Defense or its elements, including the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. The content does not necessarily reflect the official US Army position and does not change or supersede any information in official US Army publications.

Abstract This article presents arguments in support of the inclusion of culture-general and cross-cultural competence learning points, as well as cross-cultural communication competence skill development, in language and culture education and training throughout the Department of Defense. It describes a curriculum and assessment model already developed and piloted at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord Language & Culture Center and explores the applicability of Moran’s Cultural Knowings framework as a potential starting point for programmatic curriculum development. Sample lesson plans using Moran’s framework are provided for demonstration purposes. Finally, this article calls for greater collaborative effort and discourse both within and without the Department of Defense for exploring such models and sharing best practices.

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Integrating Culture General and Cross-cultural Competence & Communication Skills

Introduction Two stark realities exist in today’s military in regards to providing our troops with language and culture education and training. First, lack of sufficient cross-cultural competence (3C) and intercultural communication competence not only severely limits operational success but also jeopardizes it, as well as our troops’ safety. In a very real sense, lack of 3C is killing us in the field (Bordin, 2011). For our purposes, 3C is defined as the ability to navigate in complex interpersonal situations, express or interpret ideas/concepts across cultures, and make sense of foreign social and cultural behavior (following Sands 2013b and c, Sands and Haines 2013 and modified from Reid et al., 2012 and 2014). Four “baseline” competencies make up 3C: cultural learning, cultural self-awareness, perspective-taking, and cultural sensemaking. A series of additional skillbased competencies and enablers have also been identified as being important for increasing 3C. These include cognitive flexibility, emotional self-regulation, openness to new experience, and tolerance for ambiguity and others (Reid et al., 2012, and Reid et al., 2013).

A complementary but distinct concept of cross-cultural communication competence – defined here as “the knowledge, motivation and skills to interact effectively and appropriately with members of other cultures” (Mackenzie & Wallace 2014:241) – has also been identified as critical to successful crosscultural interactions. This concept considers additional skills and enablers – such as impression management, active listening, communication adaptability, paralinguistic skills and self-monitoring, and others (Mackenzie & Wallace2014: 235) – as well as utilizing baseline 3C skill-based competencies in its expression.

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After over a decade of Counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense (DoD) has acknowledged that interactions within complex cultural environments require exploration of an additional domain, the Human Domain, to those the military has traditionally considered (strategy, preparation and operations, and land, sea, air/space and cyber mission spaces).

“This nation takes action in the international arena aimed at influencing human activity and the environments in which that activity occurs. It could not be otherwise, as all institutions – states, corporations, NGOs, etc. – are populated, controlled, and directed by people. Influencing these people – be they heads of state, tribal elders, militaries and their leaders or even an entire population – remains essential to securing U.S. interests… Time and again, the U.S. has undertaken to engage in conflict without fully considering the physical, cultural, and social environments that comprise what some have called the ‘human domain,’” but it is within these “fundamentally… human endeavor[s]” that we operate as a military (Odierno, Amos, and McRaven, 2013).

It is central to the success of those future operations to recognize the existence of a mission space that features not only the various populations in and around military Areas of Operation but also the diversity of US, Coalition, ally/partner nation agencies, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Failure to recognize and learn to work within the context of cultural difference and unfamiliarity can, at best, lead only to short-term successes, and will more likely and more often end in failure and loss of lives, American and foreign.

The second harsh reality we must acknowledge is that the current fiscal envi-

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ronment will simply not allow for significant budgetary increases aimed at addressing this readiness deficiency through sufficient funding of the necessary additional research, education, or training. On the contrary, training and education budgets and associated personnel are being reduced across the DoD in the wake of budget sequestration and the current military draw down. In March of 2014, Secretary of Defense Hagel announced the plan to continue to downsize human and other resources dramatically in all four services, including budgets for education, training, and force preparation (Simeone, 2014). This second truth, however, cannot be allowed to result in simply ignoring the first.

It is with both these truths in mind that the endeavor outlined below is contemplated, not merely as an academic or hypothetical pursuit but rather as a viable response to supporting military readiness and addressing identified deficiencies. Significant effort has been devoted to re-envisioning one particular DoD language program to integrate 3C information (and the underlying culture-general (CG) knowledge that informs it) and 3C competency skills into its foreign language curricula. At the same time, course length is not increased, nor are language portions diminished in any way by the additions. These efficiencies result in a significant net gain to the military units and students supported. Students are exposed to the additional CG/3C information and skills they will need to execute their missions successfully. These are not culture or region specific and are therefore transferable across the various mission contexts of service members’ entire careers. At the same time, unit commanders can enjoy better-trained troops – who have acquired meaningful, transferable

skills – without losing their personnel to additional training events at additional cost. Especially in a resource-constrained environment, the resulting benefits cannot be overstated.

Academically, of course, there are sound reasons and support for combining 3C and CG, with language learning and the culture specific (CS) information that has traditionally accompanied it. In the early 1970’s, Hymes used the term communicative competence (CC) to describe a language learner’s ability to use not only grammatically correct utterances in the target language, but to use them appropriately – when to speak and when not to, to whom, in what manner, etc. (Corbett, 2003). It is partly from this concept that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approaches evolved in the decade that followed, and it is CLT (along with approaches that developed alongside and from it) that has dominated the major language programs throughout the DoD, most notably at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC).

Since the turn of this last century, a greater emphasis on cultural understanding is being added to Hymes’ concept. Byram and Guilherme coined the term intercultural communicative competence (ICC), which Corbett defines as a learner’s ability to understand the behaviors of the target community, as well as the ability to explain them to the learner’s “home” community as a kind of language/culture “diplomat” (Corbett, 2003). In line with this concept of cultural mediator, Kramsch has expounded upon the concept of third culture, the mental space foreign language (FL) teaching should afford FL learners from which to explore both their own and target cultures, as a means through which to better understand and ex-

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plain both (Kramsch, 2009). These concepts represent a departure from the long-standing aim of producing native-like proficiency and the de facto adoption of target culture norms by FL learners. Instead, they focus FL learning on the more realistic and infinitely more useful production of FL users with the ability to facilitate reflection and intercultural collaboration and not simply hasty, target-language transactions or snap judgments. It is in this same vein of departure that the strategy explored below aims to move our military language and culture program from CC to ICC and beyond, as cultural mediation is precisely what has been missing from DoD efforts overseas (Odierno, et al. 2013).

Research in this area, though as yet insufficient for the purposes of inferring universally applicable correlations, also indicates support for the integration of ICC into language classrooms. Genc and Bada argue that: Ethnocentricity limits the self, hence individuals have to look at themselves from a different perspective to surmount such limitation; thus, culture classes are vital in enabling individuals to see themselves from a different point of view… Culture classes have a humanizing and a motivating effect on the language learner and the learning process. They help learners observe similarities and differences among various cultural groups (2005).

In their 2005 study of students’ attitudes towards the culture class they attended in the fall semester of 2003-2004, they found that “a culture class is significantly beneficial in terms of language skills, raising cultural awareness, … [and] changing attitudes towards native and target societies” with “implications for a culture class in the curriculum of language teaching departments” (Genc and Bada, 2005). The participants in their study empha

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sized some form of transformation in their thinking and attributed significant proficiency gains in speaking, listening, and reading (and moderate gains in writing) to the culture class they attended.

In late 2012, the Joint-Base Lewis-McChord Language & Culture Center (JBLM LCC) piloted a ten-week Korean course that added CG and 3C components to the language curriculum. Though this integration was far from seamless and there was no identified control group against which to measure outcomes, the JBLM LCC was able to conclude that significant knowledge gain in CG and 3C had taken place, with no detriment to the language component of the course (the ILR goal of 0+ in speaking having been achieved by the overwhelming majority of students). It was not possible to determine whether or not the integration of CG/3C resulted in higher language proficiency than might have been achieved without it, but the JBLM LCC was encouraged enough to continue developing the course model (Sands, 2013a).

In late 2013, the JBLM LCC piloted two iterations of a revised course, this time in Indonesian and Tagalog. In this revised pilot, the integration of CG/3C was more explicitly stated and more directly related and relatable to the CS components of the curriculum, and the instructors themselves completed the CG/3C learning modules prior to the course. Again, significant gains in CG and 3C knowledge were achieved. The first round of Indonesian and Tagalog was ten weeks long. Across both languages, the stated ILR outcome goal of 0+ (in speaking) was exceeded, with twelve of the thirteen students achieving ILR level 1. The second round of these classes was nine weeks,

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but all 14 of the students (eight Tagalog and six Indonesian) achieved ILR speaking level 1.

While these outcomes are far from scientifically conclusive, they cannot be discarded as purely anecdotal or coincidental either.

The JBLM LCC pilots referenced above have been focused on the training of what the Army calls General Purpose Forces (GPF), referring to any service member not specifically trained in an occupational specialty that requires a foreign language skill. Given the importance of 3C integration and the apparent JBLM LCC successes, the intention now is to make similar curricular changes to the JBLM LCC continuing education courses offered to the Army’s language-trained personnel. As the linguistic skills of this population are significantly higher in regard to, at least, reading and listening in their respective target languages (typically between 2 on 4 on the ILR scale), the amount of culture integration possible (to include 3C, CG, and additional CS components) is presumably also higher. As such, the JBLM LCC is exploring curricular models that lend themselves to more in-depth exploration of these components, as well as to easier fusing of the CG and 3C components to the target language and CS ones. Considering the development of 3C is essential for constructing a viable learning model that will help inform curriculum and instructional development.

There are several models that consider the development of 3C and ICC and could be applied to promote the development of a learning program like that featured at JBLM. Reid et al 2012, 2014 represent the most recent attempts at a developmental model of 3C for military use, although others have been

proffered, as well. To provide a sound theoretical foundation upon which to build a successful program, many such existing developmental models for developing ICC should also be explored. Moran’s Cultural Knowings framework, for instance, appears to incorporate the competencies that make up 3C (cultural learning, cultural self-awareness, perspective-taking and sensemaking) and thus offers the potential to apply them to learning events, such as the experimental JBLM LCC curriculum now under development for the revised continuing education courses mentioned above (See example lesson plan drafts in Appendix A). What follows is an assessment of how well Moran’s model fits into the CG and 3C learning concepts already in use at JBLM and how the model may and may not be applicable to its language and culture program and potentially others throughout the DoD. Moran’s Cultural Knowings To understand the way these lessons are designed, it is important to have a basic grasp of Moran’s model, how it is structured, and how it might be adapted for the JBLM LCC. First, his model is broken into for parts: Knowing About, Knowing How, Knowing Why, and Knowing Oneself (Moran, 2001). Moran adapts the four stages of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle to apply more aptly to the culture-learning context, changing concrete experience to participation, reflective observation to description, abstract conceptualization to interpretation, and active experimentation to response. With the learner placed in the center, he then overlays Knowing How, Knowing About, Knowing Why, and Knowing Oneself over each new term, respectively, to create his Cultural Knowings framework for culture learning and language instruction (Moran, 2001). See Figure 1.

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Knowing About “includes all activities that consist of gathering and demonstrating acquisition of cultural information… about the specific culture and language, as well as about the nature of culture and the process of learning and entering other cultures in general, or information about students’ own culture(s)” (Moran, 2001). This definition expands cultural exploration to include CG, 3C, and “home” culture, where traditional language classes have limited themselves to targetculture specific information only (primarily data based), devoid of meaningful explanation.

Though labeled slightly differently, Knowing About echoes Sands’ concept of cultural learning already employed at JBLM LCC, lending itself to easy adoption as a potential part of the learning model.

Knowing How is focused on the “doings” involved in target culture interaction and participation and also falls under Sands’ cultural learning, generally. For Moran, this “calls for direct or simulated participation in the everyday life of the people of the target culture, according to their customs and traditions, us

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ing their tools or technology – and their language – to establish bona fide relationships with them” (Moran, 2001). JBLM LCC departs from this approach slightly, as it may imply a level of desired acculturation that would be inappropriate in the context of military operations. It also implies that it is possible, as a non-native, to somehow divest oneself of her/his “home” culture and internalize the customs and traditions of a target culture.

Certainly is it important to know how people of the target culture do things and equally important to simulate walking in their shoes for the purposes of achieving deeper understanding of that culture. However, outside of playacting, it is not possible to abstract oneself from her/his culture, anymore than it is possible to be a foreigner and a native simultaneously. This would require the absence of “home” culture socialization and the insertion of target culture socialization in its stead, both of which can only ever exist as hypothetical constructs. As myriad acculturation difficulties exemplify, one cannot simply swap one culture for another, regardless of how much one may want to or tries, especially in a classroom

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or simulated environment. Setting this portion of Moran’s approach aside, we rely on the ideas of Kramsch and Corbett (mentioned above) to focus not only on how things are done within the target culture, but also on how things can be done by foreigners (Americans) operating within that culture – in ways that do not deny one’s own culture (something our military has an obvious interest in avoiding) while not offending the target culture. It is our belief, supported by the intercultural operational successes our military has had (not to be overlooked or discounted), that it is still quite possible to “establish bona fide relationships” cross-culturally, without having to adopt and/or accept (or feign acceptance) of target-culture norms.

Knowing Why “deals with developing an understanding of fundamental cultural perspectives – the perceptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes that underlie or permeate all aspects of the [target] culture” (Moran, 2001). This step falls under Sands’ sensemaking and perspective taking concepts, and it is here that the JBLM LCC focuses on CG learning as an initial enabler, followed by 3C and 3C competence. In order to understand why any culture does things one way versus another, it is imperative one understand the universal motiva-

tions that inform all cultures to one degree or another. While any two cultures may be very similar or vastly different from each other (or anywhere along that continuum), all human cultures reside within the Human Domain, and all cultures concern themselves with addressing the human condition. In the ongoing GPF pilots at JBLM LCC, courses begin with a weeklong, intensive introduction to CG that explores concepts like defining culture, sports & recreation, worldview, ideology, alliances & networks, social institutions, and identity. This intensive introduction to anthropology and other social sciences, 3C, and CG concepts is front-loaded to provide the cultural framework for the rest of the course, in order to properly contextualize it as being more about interaction within the human domain than solely a language course, abstracted from operational context.

JBLM LCC now intends to do likewise with the more advanced courses it offers. These are concepts that are continually readdressed throughout the Knowing Oneself lessons, as well.

Knowing Oneself is primarily about selfreflection, conceptualized by Sands as cultural self-awareness. “Individual learners need to understand themselves and their own culture as a means to comprehending, adapting to, or integrating into the [target] culture” (Moran,

Table 1: Moran’s Cultural Knowings: Content, Activities, Outcomes Knowing About Knowing How Knowing Why Knowing Oneself

Content

Activities

Outcomes

cultural information

gathering information

cultural knowledge

cultural practices

developing skills

cultural behaviors

cultural perspectives

discovering explanations

cultural understanding

Self

reflection

self-awareness

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2001). As part of “understating themselves,” JBLM LCC focuses on students’ discomfort zones, encouraging them to identify and articulate their own underlying biases that tend to lead to culture clash or misunderstanding.

Again, Moran’s notion of “integrating into the culture” is dropped, as that is rarely desired to a significant degree in the context of military operations.

Together, this cycle of Knowings establishes clear pedagogical foci for use in lesson plan design, as depicted in Table 1.

Course Description The lesson plans provided in Appendix A were designed with a specific class in mind.

Though the class is hypothetical, it is based on a composite of actual, specific requests the JBLM LCC has received in the recent past and therefore indicative of courses we will be expected to design and teach in the future.

The lesson plans provided are general sketches more than step-by-step instructions. Instructors are expected to personalize their lessons and add relevant materials and insight.

This group of imagined students consists of six junior officers who will be traveling to Germany to work with German military and civilian counterparts to coordinate an upcoming joint-military exercise. As part of the rapport-building part of the trip, this de facto attaché team will meet with their German counterparts at restaurants and cafes in civilian attire and will be expected to conduct themselves appropriately. The lesson plans and their objectives concern themselves specifically with this aspect of the trip. Each of these officers already speaks German at a basic conversational level (ILR 2 to 2+), and

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each has spent at least 6 months in Germany at some point during his undergraduate studies. None of them, however, has been in Germany or spoken German on a regular basis in over 5 years. Given the time constraints of their duty schedules, this course is designed as a four-week refresher that will meet from 9:00am to 11:00am, Monday through Friday.

The JBLM LCC concept of 3C lends itself to flexibly combining steps of Moran’s model into shorter or longer lesson plans, as time allows, so this hypothetical demographic is provided as only one possibility, with each Knowing as a separate lesson for demonstration purposes.

In addition to in-class instruction, students are required to complete homework assignments and take quizzes using the JBLM LCC online Learning Management System (LMS). The LMS assignments are designed to take between one and two hours to complete. Since contract instructors will be used for this course, as a cost-saving measure to limit the expense of billable contractor hours, autograding rubrics have been designed within the LMS and are used to the greatest extent possible. Certain components of quizzes and assignments (recorded speech, for instance) would need to be assessed by the instructors, however.

Assessment Mechanisms There are several assessment tools that have been developed for use in areas such as international business and marketing to identify intercultural competencies and skills within individuals (van Driel & Gabrenya 2014). Unfortunately, these kinds of assessments have not yet been adapted for the various populations within the DoD. Though organizations,

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such as the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) and the Kentucky Department of Education, have established cultural skill descriptors with associated proficiency levels that may serve as useful starting points, little progress has been made in establishing testing mechanisms that can be used to assign scores to individuals’ proficiency (ILR and Kentucky DoE). Standardization and alignment of such mechanisms to multiple organizations with multiple operational goals within the DoD will require a concerted effort and the requisite funding, neither of which has been clearly established to date. While those efforts to develop such an assessment program are contemplated, JBLM LCC has established the rudimentary program outlined below for its courses.

First, it is important to decide what will be assessed before, during, and/or after the course to determine the course's effectiveness/success. Proficiency-based assessments are preferred, since they help determine what a student can do, as opposed to what a student knows. Especially in the context of military operations, being able to do things is ultimately the desired end-state. In some cases, however, proficiency-base assessments are not possible (either because they have not yet been officially developed or because resource constraints prevent their development or the testing itself). Also, where quantifying essentially subjective concepts (such as what constitutes “good” or “bad” intercultural interaction) is concerned, assessments are exceedingly tricky. The JBLM LCC employs a mixture of both knowledge-based and skillsbased types of assessment, usually weighting skills-based performance higher when calculating a student’s cumulative course grade.

Assessments and feedback occur regularly in different formats, formal and informal, throughout the course. The formal rubrics designed for the JBLM LCC pilot courses are provided in Appendix B. Similar rubrics would be used in the hypothetic class.

In addition to quizzes, homework, and inclass activities, Language in Action (LIA) scenarios are typically used as capstone assessment events at the end of each week. These role-play events take place in modified classrooms or common areas transformed to resemble, as closely as possible, a real-world environment the students are likely to encounter when interacting in the target culture while performing their military functions (aide station, cafe, home, checkpoint, etc.). Students are given a general task to perform with a native-speaker role-player, usually the class instructor. Students are assessed individually not only on their linguistic performance (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, use of honorifics, etc.), but also on the cultural appropriateness of their actions (gestures, bodylanguage, etc.) and the thoroughness with which they complete the primary task and its associated, unstated sub-tasks. Linguistic performance is scored with points or letter grades. The separate components of the cultural interaction (as defined in the scoring rubrics) are awarded pass/fail grades, since it is not really possible to quantify something so subjective. "Failure" for any graded action indicates the behavior would likely be deemed offensive by a typical native of the targetculture and would likely be detrimental to the conversational goals and/or a significant impediment to completion of the assigned task under real-world conditions.

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Implications for Military Intelligence Professions The JBLM LCC decision to include CG, 3C, and 3C Competence in its language curricula for GPF courses was fairly simple, as there is an obvious and direct link between these subject areas and the kinds of communicative interaction envisioned for the myriad noncombative missions GPF conduct – from security and stability operations, to disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, to jointmilitary exercises and maneuvers. These missions require primarily a speaking and listening capability along linguistic lines, which are better informed by CG and 3C knowledge and 3C skill-based competencies. Sufficient anecdotal and academic support can be found throughout data and narratives collected by the Army’s Center for Lessons Learned (CALL, 2014), as well as the recently published Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military Culture, the Flipside of COIN (Greene Sands and Greene-Sands 2014; Sands, 2013b and c; Sands & Haines 2013, to rationalize the JBLM LCC approach for its GPF curricula.

Similar justification can be used to integrate these components into the training for official military interpreters, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and Civil Affairs (CA) personnel, as their missions are nearly always intercultural, generally, and also largely speaking and listening centric, linguistically.

But what about more traditional Military Intelligence (MI) professions that rely in whole or in part on linguistic and/or (inter)cultural capabilities? While much of the Human Intelligence (HUMINT) side is cultural and/or intercultural – also with a linguistic focus on speaking and listening, the bulk of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) has traditionally concerned

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itself with culture-specific reading and listening, with a very limited focus on intercultural interaction and speaking. Is there room in SIGINT education and training for these additional components? Would they be beneficial and/or necessary in similar ways to the GPF, CA, and SOF demographics? The JBLM LCC and the authors of this article assert that the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes”.

There are many possible missions for Military Intelligence (MI) personnel that have some need for linguistic and/or (inter)cultural skills on both the HUMINT and SIGINT sides. At a minimum, these can include transcription, translation, and linguistic analysis for SIGINT personnel and interpretation, interrogation, and negotiation for HUMINT operators.

(This is only where clearly discernible lines can be drawn. More often than not, these two disciplines overlap, and the line between them is blurred, at best.) For HUMINT missions, the need for 3C Competence, derived from CG and 3C education and field experience, is obvious and both directly and positively impacts mission success, as those missions are interactive in nature and clearly fall within the Human Domain (Sands 2013b). It need not be discussed in detail here. For SIGINT operations, however, other arguments must be made to account for the difference in operational focus and end products.

SIGINT professionals typically produce a variety of reports, as opposed to conversing with foreigners in a foreign language. The vast majority of these documents are in English and not the target language. These facts notwithstanding, this group and the duties they perform can benefit greatly from CG, 3C, and

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3C Competency education, especially when integrated with the language classes they already attend as a part of their normal duties.

First, just as with the training for the previously mentioned groups, these additional components provide a context in which to place culture-specific and target language information. In addition to the importance of this context in its own right, we hypothesize that its inclusion drives linguistic proficiency higher than in similar courses without it. If JBLM LCC’s results from its GPF pilots can be seen to substantiate this claim, this has import implications and direct applicability to DoD language programs, especially as the Services begin to require them to establish means for MI linguists to achieve ILR level 3 (instead of the previous requirement of 2) in both reading and listening (AFISRA Instruction 14-131; INSCOM Regulation 11-6).

Second, Kramsch’ third culture can be used as the vantage point from which to perform analytical tasks. Sands’ perspective-taking, sensemaking, and cultural self-awareness are skills with important implications for how well those tasks are done and the relative accuracy of the products produced – from translations of idioms and colloquialisms to course-of-action (COA) development and assessment. “[T]he human domain is a critical space to master and manage intent, purpose and interaction of the different actors involved” (Sands, 2013c), so it follows that development of the knowledge and skills necessary for operating with that domain are integrated into education and training programs for this discipline.

Third, more and more, the Intelligence Community (IC) is a multinational, multicultural

one. Intelligence products, be they oral briefings or written reports, are often shared and even created with the help of our foreign allies. While the form of this collaboration may not be “conversational” in the more traditional sense, it is certainly interactional and intercultural. Our partners are also actors in the Human Domain in which we operate, not simply the target culture actors of a particular Area of Operation. For that collaboration to be truly effective, the interactions must acknowledge and account for cultural, communicative differences.

Finally, when not engaged in specifically MI missions, commanders often leverage the capabilities of the MI professionals with GPF, SOF, and/or CA type missions when the organically assigned or attached personnel from those specialties are not available or sufficient for successful mission execution. This is an operational reality that will increase in frequency as DoD continues to downsize and the remaining personnel are required to pick up the additional duties resulting from eliminated positions. Thus, the same arguments that apply to those demographics, apply here to SIGNIT professionals, as well.

Conclusion Given the JBLM LCC concept of 3C and its overall pedagogical goals in support of the military, much of Moran’s model could be used in effective lesson plan and curriculum development, potentially in many other DoD language and culture programs, as well. Our aim with this application of Moran’s Cultural Knowings framework was to provide one possible approach to future military language and culture education and training. We have also attempted to show the implications for the

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integration of CG, 3C, and Cross-cultural Communication Competencies across the entire spectrum of potential student populations throughout DoD. Given resource constraints, it is clear that all organizations within DoD must be innovative enough to explore efficiencies wherever they can be found, while still ensuring the accomplishment of their primary missions and still making improvements to their various programs wherever possible. The JBLM LCC initiative described above is submitted as just such an innovation.

Our approach attempts to specifically address identified deficiencies within DoD, one of our core responsibilities. The existing infrastructure (course length, number of instructors, facilities, etc.) is being utilized, while additional subject matter is added to course curricula – essentially providing “more bang for the buck” to students and the military units they belong to. In addition, we have kept abreast of contemporary approaches to culture learning and teaching and have updated our methodologies accordingly to stay at the cutting edge of culture-based FL instruction.

challenges in FL and culture teaching and learning are shared ones. Even those that are not shared can provide insight to each respective community and potentially spur new ideas and approaches. As best practices are identified, they should be shared across the wider teaching communities. This collaboration cannot be aimed at finding a single, standardized solution to FL and culture teaching, however. The varied teaching and learning contexts and their respective objectives prevent this from being a tenable and realistic pursuit. Instead, collaboration should be geared towards finding better ways to tailor curricula to those specific contexts and outcomes, while keeping an eye on integrating new ideas, lest our programs stagnate to the point of irrelevance and continue to fail to address known and enduring deficiencies.

This is by no means the only way to approach culture and language education, though the JBLM LCC approach has enjoyed substantial successes. What is required now is greater collaboration and experimentation across all DoD language and culture programs to identify and begin using approaches that work best at other locations, tailored specifically for the missions they support and the students they teach. This too is a utilization of existing resources: something that costs nothing extra but might bear significant fruit. As much as possible and practical, this collaboration should then be extended to reach outside of DoD to the civilian sector, as most of the

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References AFISRA Instruction 14-131 (Air Force Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency Publication). (2013).

INSCOM Regulation 11-6 (Department of the Army, United States Army Intelligence and Security Command). (2011).

Bordin, J. (2011). A Crisis of Trust and Incompatibility: A Red Team Study of Mutual Perceptions of Afghan National Security Force Personnel and U.S. Soldiers in Understanding and Mitigating the Phenomena of ANSF-Committed Fratricide-Murders (Unclassified Report). Retrieved from www.phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2011-A-Crisis-of-Trust-JeffBordin.pdf Corbett, J. (2003). An intercultural approach to English language teaching. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) (2014). Retrieved from usacac.army.mil/CAC2/call/ Genc, B., & Bada, E. (2005). Culture in language learning and teaching. The Reading Matrix, 5(1), 73-84.

Kramsch, C. (2009). Third culture and language education. In L. Wei & V. Cook (Eds.), Contemporary applied linguistics:: Language teaching and learning (Vol. 1, pp. 233-254). London: Continuum.

Mackenzie, L and Wallace, M. (2014). Cross-cultural communication contributions to professional military education. In R. Greene Sands & A. Greene-Sands (Eds.), Crosscultural competence for a twenty-first-century military: Culture, the flip side of COIN (pp. 239258). Lanham, MA: Lexington Books.

Moran, P. R. (2001). Teaching culture: Perspectives in practice. Australia: Heinle & Heinle.

Odierno, R. T., Amos, J. F., & McRaven, W. H. (2013). Strategic Landpower: Winning the Clash of Wills (White Paper). United States Army, United States Marine Corp, and the United States Special Operations Command. Retrieved from : http://www.arcic.army.mil/app_Documents/Strategic-Landpower-White-Paper28OCT2013.pdf Reid, P., Sudduth, M., Mokuolu, M., Small, C. Greene-Sands, and McDonald, D. (2012). A Summary of a Proposed Cross-Cultural Competence Model for the Department of Defense. Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute.

Reid, P., Sudduth, M. M., Kaloydis, F., & Greene-Sands, A. (2014). A developmental model of Cross-cultural Competence. In R. Greene Sands & A. Greene-Sands (Eds.), Crosscultural competence for a twenty-first-century military: Culture, the flip side of COIN (pp. 43-60).

Lanham, MA: Lexington Books.

Sands, R. Greene (2013a). Language and culture in the Department of Defense: Synergizing complementary instruction and building LREC Competency. Small Wars Journal, (March 8). Retrieved from http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/language-andculture-in-the-department-of-defense-synergizing-complimentary-instruction-and Sands, R. Greene, R. (2013b). A baseline of Cross-cultural competence: The decisive Edge for a 21st Century US Military Mission. Society for Applied Anthropology News, (Feb), 1722. Retrieved from http://sfaanews.sfaa.net/2013/02/01/a-baseline-cross-culturalcompetence-the-decisive-edge-for-a-21st-century-us-military-mission/ Sands, R. Greene (2013c). Thinking differently: Unlocking the Human Domain in support of the 21st Century Intelligence Mission. Small Wars Journal, (August 20). Retrieved from

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http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/thinking-differently-unlocking-the-human-domain-in-support-ofthe-21st-century-intelligence Sands, R. Greene and Greene-Sands, A. (2014). In R. Greene Sands & A. Greene-Sands (Eds.), Cross-cultural competence for a twenty-first-century military: Culture, the flip side of COIN (pp. 43-60). Lanham, MA: Lexington Books.

Sands, R. Greene, & Haines, T. J. (2013). Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence in Intelligence Professionals: A new perspective on alternative analysis and the intelligence process. Small Wars Journal, (April 25). Retrieved from http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/promoting-crosscultural-competence-in-intelligence-professionals Simeone, N. (2014, February 25). Hagel outlines budget reducing troop strength, force structure.

American Forces Press Service. Retrieved from defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121703 Van Driel, M., & Gabrenya, W. K. (2014). Instrumentation challenges in developing crosscultural competence models. In R. Greene Sands & A. Greene-Sands (Eds.), Cross-cultural competence for a twenty-first-century military: Culture, the flip side of COIN (pp. 147-174). Lanham, MA: Lexington Books.

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The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security Integrating Culture General and Cross-cultural Competence & Communication Skills:

Appendix A

Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 1: Knowing About Lesson Overview

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 1: Knowing About Time/Activity Tables

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 2: Knowing How Lesson Overview

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 3: Knowing How Time/Activity Tables

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 3: Knowing Why Lesson Overview

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 3: Knowing Why Time/Activity Tables

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 4: Knowing Oneself Lesson Overview

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Cross-cultural Communication (3C) & Language Refresher (LR) Week 2: Restaurant Etiquette Lesson 4: Knowing Why Time/Activity Tables

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Appendix B

Class Participation Rubric

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Homework – Oral/Speaking Rubric

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Essay Rubric

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Language in Action Rubric (Partial)

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Pieter R. DeVisser is currently the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center’s Liaison to Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington where he works together with Yvonne Pawelek, Director of the JBLM Language & Culture Center. Since taking the position in early 2012, his primary focus has been on non-traditional language and culture training of the Army’s General Purposes Forces (troops not in a foreign language dependent operational specialty).

While this training was first focused on troops deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan, Mr. DeVisser has helped make the JBLM LCC the first site to fully pivot the training focus to the Army’s ongoing regional alignment, generally, and I Corps alignment to Pacific Command, specifically. Additionally, Mr. DeVisser advises and collaborates with the JBLM area language managers and unit commanders at all echelons.

Prior to his position at JBLM, Mr. DeVisser was the Command Language Program Manager for 66th Military Intelligence Brigade (MIB) in Wiesbaden, Germany. During his three and a half years there, he was responsible for the language training of hundreds of military linguists. He was instrumental in correcting the pay procedures for service members’ foreign language skills throughout Germany, assisting other language program managers throughout Europe, and helping the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center to establish its first Language Training Detachment (LTD) in Europe. The technology integration he achieved at the 66th MIB Language Learning Center was used as a model for that and later LTDs established throughout Europe. Upon his departure from that position, Mr. DeVisser was presented the Commander's Award for Civilian Service.

From early 2000 to early 2004, Mr. DeVisser served honorably in the US Army as an Intelligence Analyst and Noncommissioned Officer, deploying for eight months in support of what eventually became Operation Iraqi Freedom. After his discharge from the Army, Mr. DeVisser continued to directly support the military by managing operations responsible for providing contract linguists to Intelligence operations throughout Europe.

Mr. DeVisser graduated magna cum laude from Christ College, Valparaiso University in 1998 with a B.A. in German & English Literature. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Applied Linguistics through University of Massachusetts Boston and is expect to graduate later this year.

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Cultural Adaptive Performance: A Definition and Potential Solution to the Cross-cultural Performance Criterion Problem Gonzalo Ferro

Abstract Finding, assessing, training, and evaluating individuals who are able to perform in different cultures is extremely important for any multinational organization. A number of different terms have been used to describe this type of performance, with an equal number of different definitions proposed that focus on different aspects of performing across cultures. However, researchers in the area of cross-cultural performance acknowledge that the lack of a sound, theory-based definition for crosscultural performance is inhibiting and sewing confusion in the advancement of this field. For example, some of the definitions currently being used lack a solid theoretical framework and confound performance with its predictors. The current work focuses on clarifying and delineating the crosscultural performance domain, based on the adaptive performance literature. The term cultural adaptive performance (CAP) is proposed as a term for cross-cultural performance, and defined using evaluable behaviors (Viswesvaran & Ones, 2000). This approach is consistent with other approaches to defining performance in the industrial-organizational psychology field (e.g., Borman & Motowidlo, 1993)

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Cultural Adaptive Performance

Defining the Criterion Domain of Cultural Adaptive Performance The term globalization is often used to refer to increasing interconnectedness of global economic activity. The author Thomas Friedman described globalization as a “flattening” of the world (Friedman, 2005). According to Friedman, this flattening is characterized by the ability of individuals to compete in a global economy due to advances in transportation and the ability of individuals to communicate with each other anywhere in the world. One consequence of the globalization of the world’s economies is a need for organizations to find and develop individuals capable of successfully adapting to and meeting the needs of global customers, employees, and business partners (House, 2004). Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of employing individuals who perform effectively in different cultures and environments (Ilgen & Pulakos, 1999).

The topic of individual performance in different cultures has been examined from a variety of perspectives. Some of this work emphasizes individual difference variables such as cultural intelligence (Ang et al., 2007; Earley & Ang, 2003; Earley & Peterson, 2004), or intercultural sensitivity (Hammer, Bennett, & Wiseman, 2003); other work focuses on the processes of cross-cultural adjustment (Arthur & Bennett, 1995; Black, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 1991; Harrison & Shaffer, 2005; Tucker, Bonial, & Lahti, 2004), intercultural communication (Gudykunst, 1997; TingToomey, 2010), sociocultural adaptation (Ward & Kennedy, 1999), or acculturation (Berry, 2003); some characterize such performance as a competence, which mixes predictor and criterion variables, as is done with the term cross-cultural competence (3C) (Abbe,

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Gulick, & Herman, 2008; McCloskey, Behymer, Papautsky, Ross, & Abbe, 2010); and others characterize performing in different cultures as a dimension of performance referred to as cultural adaptability (Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, & Plamondon, 2000).

This multitude of perspectives and theoretical approaches has created a number of obstacles in the advancement of this important field.

One issue is the lack of a consistent definition of what constitutes effective cross-cultural performance (for discussions see Arthur & Bennett, 1995; Burke, Watkins, & Guzman, 2009; Deshpande & Viswesvaran, 1992; Harrison, Shaffer, & Bhaskar-Shrinivas, 2004; Kealey & Protheroe, 1996; Mol, Born, Willemsen, & Van Der Molen, 2005; Mol, Born, & van der Molen, 2005; Ones & Viswesvaran, 1997; Sinangil & Ones, 2001). In addition to the lack of consensus on the definition of what constitutes effective performance, Yamazaki and Kayes (2004) argue that much of the research in this area lacks a solid theoretical framework and is comprised mostly of lists of predictors (such as skills or personality variables). In order to address these issues, researchers have called for individual-level theories that specify the process by which individuals adapt to the “global work environment” (Gelfand, Erez, & Aycan, 2007, p.

497).

The purpose of this article is to clarify and delineate the cross-cultural performance domain. This involves clearly defining what does and does not constitute cross-cultural performance. In this article, cross-cultural performance is defined in terms of evaluable behaviors (Viswesvaran & Ones, 2000), which is consistent with other approaches to defining

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performance in the industrial-organizational psychology field (e.g., Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). Relying on existing organizational theories, I will define and explicate what is crosscultural performance from a behavioral standpoint.

Defining Cross-Cultural Performance as a Dimension of Adaptive Performance In order to identify valid predictors of crosscultural performance, an initial step must be to define cross-cultural performance. As previously stated, the lack of a consistent definition of cross-cultural performance has been a consistent problem in this literature. As discussed later in this section, existing definitions of cross-cultural performance tend to combine predictors of performance with performance itself (e.g., “the ability to perform in different countries”). In order to avoid repeating the intermixing of criterion and predictor variables in defining a performance domain, I rely on existing theories of performance (Viswesvaran & Ones, 2000), focusing on behaviors that are relevant to the performance domain and that can be measured in terms of each individual’s proficiency (Campbell, Gasser, & Oswald, 1996).

Cross-cultural performance can be defined based on the adaptive performance literature (Pulakos et al., 2000). Schmitt and colleagues (2003) and Cortina and Luchman (2013) argue that performance is a “behavior that is a direct function of declarative and procedural knowledge and motivation” (2003, p. 78).

They categorize performance into three types: task proficiency, contextual behavior, and adaptive performance. The adaptive performance category is particularly relevant to performing in a different culture. The term adap-

tive performance is used to describe performance that takes place in a dynamic environment, in which individuals must effectively adjust their thinking and actions in order to achieve their goals (Cracraft, 2011).

The key concept that differentiates adaptive performance from task or contextual performance is that an individual changes his or her thinking and behavior to meet the challenge of a dynamic work environment. Task performance is usually described in terms of core tasks (Campbell, 1990) or task-related behaviors that contribute to the attainment of an organization’s goals (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). Contextual performance is defined as behaviors that facilitate an environment conducive to the execution of the technical core (e.g., task performance). Unlike the behaviors that define task performance, which differ from one job to the next, contextual behaviors are stable across jobs and not roleprescribed. The behaviors that define contextual performance do not address the changing nature of the work environment.

The behaviors that define adaptive performance, which is sometimes referred to as adaptability, describe reactive or proactive change to meet changing environmental conditions. For example, Banks and colleagues (2001) defined adaptability as “a functional change (cognitive, behavioral, and/or affective) in response to altered environmental circumstances” (p.4). Research in the area of adaptive performance provides a theoretical framework necessary to clarify and delineate how performance in cross-cultural environments can be defined and described in behavioral terms.

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Using Campbell et al.’s (1993) model of performance as a starting point, Pulakos and colleagues developed (2000) and validated (2002) a taxonomy of adaptive job performance.

They define adaptive performance as a multidimensional construct consisting of eight dimensions: 1) handling emergencies, 2) handling work stress, 3) solving problems creatively, 4) dealing with uncertain situations, 5) learning, 6) interpersonal adaptability, 7) cultural adaptability, and 8) physically-oriented adaptability. These eight dimensions were defined in terms of behaviors that exemplify the change required to be effective in different adaptive situations.

As Ployhart and Bliese (2006) point out, adaptive “performance is not inherent in the criterion construct but driven by the demands of the environment. Thus, adaptive performance requirements are really consequences of a changing environment” (p. 25).

Effective performance in cross-cultural settings requires one to change the way that he or she behaves in order to fit into a different culture. Culture has been defined in a variety of ways, with Brown (1991) defining it as “patterns of doing and thinking that are passed on within and between generations by learning” (p.130). Culture, or more specifically, cultural differences represent situational variables that force people to adapt in order to be effective. These differences are usually described in terms of values, beliefs, perceptions, and norms (for a summary see Hofstede, 2011). Pulakos et al. (2000) define cultural adaptability as:

Cultural Adaptive Performance (CAP) The Pulakos et al. (2000) definition of cultural adaptability describes the behaviors and actions that are thought to make up effective performance in cross-cultural settings. As Pulakos et al. (2000) state, “the key aspect of this type of adaptive performance involves successfully integrating into a new culture or environment by fully understanding and willingly behaving in accordance with the accepted customs, values, rules, and structures operating within it” (p. 614). In their view, cultural adaptability results from an individual’s purposeful change in behavior, in order to successfully perform in an environment that is culturally different from the individual’s.

“Taking action to learn about and understand the climate, orientation, needs, and values of other groups, organizations, or cultures; integrating well into and being comfortable with different values, customs, and cultures; willingly adjusting behavior or appearance as necessary to comply with or show respect for others’ values and customs; understanding the implications of one’s actions and adjusting approach to maintain positive relationships with other groups, or cultures” (2000, p.

617).

In summary, because cultural differences dictate changes in individual behavior, the adaptive performance literature provides a theoretical framework for defining performance in cross-cultural settings. The following section defines the criterion space for performance in cross-cultural settings based on the Pulakos et al. (2000) definition of cultural adaptability.

Although Pulakos et al. (2000) use the term “cultural adaptability,” the term Cultural Adaptive Performance (CAP) provides a more straightforward emphasis on performance, which is needed to distinguish this work from other related work on individual differences.

Other researchers use the term “adaptability” to denote an individual difference construct

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(e.g., Ployhart & Bliese, 2006), or focus on the process of adapting (e.g., Chan, 2000). The term cultural adaptability has been used by other researchers, but not always as Pulakos intended – a dimension of adaptive performance. For example, Kelley and Meyers (1995) developed the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory (CCAI) and defined crosscultural adaptability as “one’s readiness to interact with people who are different from oneself or adapt to living in another culture” (Nguyen, Biderman, & McNary, 2010; p. 113).

This definition of cultural adaptability refers to an individual attribute (e.g., one’s readiness), not a dimension of performance. Similarly, Sutton and colleagues (2006) referred to cultural adaptability as “the ability to un-

derstand one’s own and others’ cognitive biases and to adapt, as necessary, to ensure successful team performance” (p.144). In this context, the researchers were focusing on cultural adaptability within a cross-cultural team performance domain. By using the term “ability” in their definition, the authors imply that this is an individual difference variable, not a dimension of performance.

In their theory of performance, Campbell and colleagues (1993) argue that if “we want to accumulate knowledge about how to measure, predict, explain, and change performance but have no common understanding of what it is, then building a cumulative research record is difficult to impossible” (p.35). Therefore, it is

Table 1: Components of CP Based on Pulakos et al.’s (2000) Definition Cultural Adaptability Dimension

Exemplary Behaviors/Activities

Revised Definition of CAP

1) Taking action to learn about and understand the climate, orientation, needs, and values of other groups, organizations, or cultures.

Learning Behaviors: Behaviors/activities associated with learning about the culture of the individual or society (e.g., studies about the cultural norms of a particular region; interviews others about cultural orientation of business partners).

1) Takes action to learn about and understand the climate, orientation, needs, and values of other groups, organizations, or cultures and how these differ from one’s own.

2) Integrating well into and being comfortable with different values, customs, and cultures.

Willingly adjusting behavior or appearance as necessary to comply with or show respect for others’ values and customs. Understanding the implications of one’s actions and adjusting approach to maintain positive relationships with other groups, or cultures.

Integrating Behaviors: Behaviors/activities demonstrating capacity for effective integration into a different culture (e.g., conducts and/or participates in meetings in cross-cultural settings; builds rapport with foreign partners).

Behaviors/activities demonstrating purposeful changes in behavior (e.g., follows the appropriate cultural protocols for the region; adjusts language/terminology to meet the level of the audience).

Behaviors/activities demonstrating actions taken to correct past mistakes (e.g., changes topic of conversation away from “taboo” topics when interacting with foreign personnel; recognizes own actions that are deemed offensive and quickly corrects behavior).

2) Adjusts behaviors in order to integrate well into and to be comfortable with different values, customs, and cultures. Monitors and evaluates the implications of one’s actions and adjusts behaviors in order to correct inappropriate behaviors, maintain existing positive relationships, and build upon existing relationships with other groups, or cultures.

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important to make a distinction between research on the adaptive performance domain and other conceptualizations of adaptability.

The term cultural adaptive performance (CAP) will be used in this article to highlight the performance aspect of a cultural dimension and avoid focusing on individual difference variables. In the conceptualization of CAP proposed here, CAP is composed of two components: learning behaviors and integrating behaviors. Learning behaviors are those that facilitate the effective adjustment of performing tasks/behaviors in a new cultural environment. Integrating behaviors reflect actions that indicate one is modifying his or her behavior based on what was observed and learned through past learning behaviors, and correcting for past mistakes or replacing ineffective behaviors with behaviors that are more likely to be effective in a different culture.

To define the two hypothesized components of CAP, the behaviors identified in Pulakos et al.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s definition of cultural adaptability are used.

The Pulakos et al. (2000) definition focuses first on behaviors that reflect efforts to learn about the culture in which performance will occur. It then identifies behaviors that highlight effective integration into that culture, which includes demonstrating adherence to the performance requirements of the crosscultural environment and behaviors that indicate recognition of the impact of the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behavior. Table 1 presents the definition of each component of CAP and a comparison to the Pulakos et al. definition.

The subdivision of CAP into two dimensions is similar to other performance dimensions such as contextual performance (Borman &

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Motowidlo, 1993), which has been subdivided into different categories (e.g., Borman & Penner, 2001). One advantage of narrowing the focus to specific culture-related behaviors in each CAP dimension is that the knowledge and skills that are likely to predict these behaviors can be identified.

Components of CAP Implicit in the Pulakos et al. (2000) definition of cultural adaptability is the process by which individuals are able to change their actions in order to effectively perform in a different culture. This process entails engaging in behaviors (e.g., learning behaviors) that result in learning about either a particular culture or about culture and cultural differences in general. These behaviors result in gaining culturespecific knowledge that allow an individual to then engage in behaviors (e.g., integrating behaviors) that facilitate effective integration into a culture and that allows them to sustain or improve/fix performance in this crosscultural environment.

In the following sections, the two components of CAP are further defined by describing the behaviors that help define each particular piece of the performance domain (Austin & Villanova, 1992). This approach is different from others who have tried to define performance in cross-cultural settings. For example, Caligiuri (2006) notes that the most common measures of successful cross-cultural performance focus on assignee adjustment (Harrison & Shaffer, 2005), completion of assignment, and performance on the assignment (e.g., task and/or contextual performance).

These are not true conceptualizations of performance per se, or at least not of cross-

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cultural performance as a dimension of adaptive performance.

Component 1: Learning Behaviors.

The first component of CAP is learning behavior. This dimension captures those behaviors or activities associated with learning about the culture or society in which an individual is going to be operating. In order to effectively adapt to a new culture, an individual needs to know the parameters of acceptable behavior (e.g., social norms, values, beliefs) for a specific culture. As such, this dimension includes culture-general (etic) type behaviors and/or actions an individual engages in that facilitate gaining general knowledge and understanding of the key aspects of culture, and how these aspects vary across cultures.

Learning behaviors are the first step in an important aspect of adaptive performance – the temporal/dynamic component. Chan (2000) argued that adaptive performance is a dynamic phenomenon that occurs over time. In their research that addresses the temporal nature of adaptive performance, Lang and Bliese (2009) proposed two types of adaptation, transition adaptation and reacquisition adaptation, within a task-change paradigm. The authors defined reacquisition adaptation as the process of recovering after a change that is a “systematic and analytical learning behavior needed in order to understand and learn the new challenges of the task” (p. 415). Similar to reacquisition adaptation, learning behaviors lead to identification of how tasks have changed in the new, cross-cultural environment, and what entails effective behaviors in this new environment. The learning behaviors themselves are etic in nature in that the same types of behaviors may be used to gain general

knowledge of a culture and may be applied across cultures, but the knowledge and understanding gained as a result of these behaviors can be emic (e.g., culture-specific). The knowledge and understanding gained from learning behaviors then informs integration behaviors.

Results from other studies of cross-cultural performance provide support for the learning behavior component of CAP. For example, in the adjustment literature, Tucker et al. (2004) examined the relationship between intercultural adjustment and job performance of corporate expatriates. The authors argue that intercultural adaptation (the process of adjusting to a new country) cannot occur unless individuals learn about the foreign country. This knowledge dimension includes historical and contemporary information about the country that an individual gains through learning or interacting with the local population. Similar to this dimension, CAP’s learning behaviors are behaviors that result in the acquisition of culture-related facts and concepts that will facilitate an understanding of the operational environment in which an individual is going to have to perform. Specific knowledge (e.g., facts and figures about a country) is a consequence of these behaviors and, as such, does not constitute part of the definition of this dimension.

All jobs require the performance of tasks (e.g., driving a bus, advising students) that are jobspecific and non-job-specific (Campbell et al., 1993). In a cross-cultural setting, effective performance of these tasks requires understanding how a task may be different because of the new cultural context (e.g., “driving in Rome,” or “advising students in China”). Learning behaviors are those that are needed to under-

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stand and learn how the task has changed, and how to effectively adjust one’s task performance in a new cultural setting.

An important addition to Pulakos’ definition captured in the learning behavior dimension is the concept of differentiating how the components of a culture differ from one’s own.

Learning behaviors not only help an individual to learn and understand a different culture, but also how the differences between one’s culture and another culture impact jobspecific and non-specific proficiency. Following the previous example, learning behaviors help one understand not only about “driving in Rome” or “advising students in China,” but also how that is different from “driving in Miami” or “advising students in the U.S.” This is beneficial because drawing specific distinctions may help build a more accurate understanding of appropriate behaviors and mitigate the chances that an individual will inadvertently fall back on his or her own culture-specific approach.

Learning behaviors are those that result in an understanding of what effective performance in a new environment needs to look like, which facilitates the adaptation of existing behaviors to meet the requirements of the new environment. Learning behaviors differ from

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the other component of CAP in that they focus on what Lang and Bliese (2009) describe as behaviors needed to understand and learn the performance requirements of this different environment. The other dimension of CAP builds on this understanding in order to implement change for effective performance in this environment. Table 2 provides example behaviors of the learning component of CAP, which are drawn from critical incidents Pulakos and colleagues (2000) collected and used to define the eight dimensions of adaptive performance.

Component 2: Integrating Behaviors.

The second component of CAP focuses on behaviors that demonstrate an individual’s capacity for integration into a cross-cultural environment, which involves taking initial steps to fit in and taking action to correct mistakes or maintain relationships that are built.

Integrating behaviors are related to social interactions, such as building interpersonal relationships, and are geared towards monitoring the environment to ensure behaviors fit within that culture’s norms of acceptable behaviors in order to maintain relationships. In addition, this dimension includes corrective behaviors (e.g., evaluating the effects of past behaviors and modifying a behavior that was offensive), which are necessary to amend for

Table 2: Examples of Learning Behaviors Ask others about cultural differences before I enter a new culture.

Learn rules for appropriate social interaction in a different culture.

Read books to learn about a new culture before I enter it.

Learn about the customs and language of another culture.

Talk to individuals from different cultures to understand their values and customs.

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past mistakes and maintain existing relationships.

These types of behaviors lead to effective social interactions or acceptance by individuals in the culture and reflect an individual’s capacity to adjust his/her behavior in order to successfully perform in a new culture. While learning behaviors assist in learning and understanding how the environment is different, and as such, how behavior should differ to be effective (e.g., knowing that in this culture it is inappropriate to contradict a leader in front of others); integrating behaviors are the implementation of behaviors that exemplify effective change (e.g., refraining from voicing an opposing opinion from that held by a leader in front of his subordinates).

Integrating behaviors are the second step in the CAP process in that they build upon what is observed and learned from the learning behaviors. Similar to the concept of reacquisition adaptation identified in Lang and Bliese (2009), having to adapt to a new culture is a change that requires learning and building skills to overcome the change. Models of skill acquisition suggest that there are three phases to skill acquisition: 1) cognitive phase (involves developing an understanding of the task and what will lead to success), 2) associative phase (involves formulation of strategies and increasingly accurate execution), and 3) autonomous phase (execution of behaviors are fast and highly accurate) (Ackerman, 1988). Integrating behaviors involve an individual applying his or her knowledge gained from learning behaviors and beginning to execute new strategies, and in this sense reflect the associative phase of skill acquisition. These behaviors represent an individual’s effort to implement effective changes in behavior to fit

a different culture, resulting in effective interactions with individuals in the new cultural context.

The proposed definition for integrating behaviors differs from Pulakos and colleagues’ (2000) definition in two key aspects. The first is the focus on monitoring and evaluating one’s actions, which are both behaviors, instead of the focus on “understanding the implications of one’s actions” which can be viewed more as an outcome. This is in line with the view of performance as a behavior and not as an outcome (Motowidlo, 2003).

The second is the addition of the concept of adjusting behaviors not only to “maintain positive relationships with other groups,” as Pulakos et al. state, but also to correct for inappropriate behaviors, an important component of adaptive performance.

The concepts of social interactions, and engaging in behaviors to build relationships or to correct for behavioral mistakes (e.g., offensive behaviors), as a core component of performance is not new. For example, models of task performance contain such dimensions as facilitating peer and team performance, supervision/leadership, and management/ administration (Campbell et al., 1993), all of which have social interaction as a core component.

Contextual job performance dimensions include the notion that individuals willfully engage in activities and behaviors that although are not necessarily role prescribed or formally rewarded, are nonetheless important for organizational functioning (Schmitt et al., 2003); and they include components such as helping and cooperating with others, and interpersonal facilitation (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993).

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Table 3: Examples of Integrating Behaviors Modify my style of dress to fit in with local customs.

Change my behavior to fit in with individuals from different cultures.

Communicate with individuals who are from unfamiliar cultural backgrounds.

Find creative ways to communicate with individuals that speak another language.

Follow the customs and practices in another culture even when uncomfortable with the custom/practice.

Adapt by leadership style to match the needs and values of individuals from other cultures.

Change my behavior to help people from different backgrounds feel comfortable.

Adapt work practices to fit in with the customs of a different culture.

Maintain working relationships with individuals from different cultures.

In the cross-cultural performance literature, various models have posited dimensions related to social interaction. For example, in their effort to map out the criterion space for expatriate success, Harrison and Shaffer (2005) listed relationship building (defined as “developing and maintaining interpersonal ties with members of the host country,” p. 1458) as one of the dimensions of the performance domain (in addition to task completion and turnover/early return).

In another example, Sinangil and Ones’ (2002) hypothesized model of expatriate job performance included dimensions such as: communicating and persuading, working with others, interpersonal relations, and personal discipline (which is defined as the avoidance of counterproductive behaviors). Ones and Viswesvaran’s (1997) model included the dimensions of communication competence, interpersonal relations, leadership, effort and initiative, and compliance with/ acceptance of authority.

In summary, integrating behaviors are those that exemplify how an individual fits into a

foreign culture, focusing specifically on behaviors related to social interactions, and engaging in behaviors to build relationships or to correct for behavioral mistakes. Table 3 provides examples of integrating behaviors taken from the critical incidents Pulakos and colleagues (2000) collected and used to define the eight dimensions of adaptive performance.

Conclusion The purpose of this article was to provide a sound, theory-based definition for crosscultural performance. The proposed definition of CAP, and its two components: learning and integrating behaviors, address two issues commonly found in other definitions of cross-cultural performance. Many definitions lack a theoretical framework or the definitions confound the criterion space (performance) with its predictors. By basing the definition of CAP on the adaptive performance literature, I provide a theoretical rationale for how crosscultural performance is different from other types of performance (e.g., task and contextual performance). Furthermore, by defining CAP and its components in behavioral terms,

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this definition can be used in future research in the areas of assessment, selection, and training.

For example, the behaviors used in the definitions of learning and integrating behaviors can be used to develop behavioral anchored rating scales (Smith & Kendall, 1963) to measure cross-cultural performance. Once these types of measures have been developed, performance data can be used to conduct criterionrelated validity studies to evaluate the predictive validity of variables (e.g., knowledge, skills, abilities, or other characteristics) that have been posited as being important predictors of cross-cultural performance.

In addition, both learning behaviors and integrating behaviors can be used in a â&#x20AC;&#x153;schoolhouseâ&#x20AC;? context. These can be used to assess studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s progress or engagement with learning materials. They can also be used to conduct a training gap analysis, by mapping how the extent to which the training requires students to engage in learning behaviors. To the extent that students engage in learning behaviors, these behaviors should be predictive of gaining required knowledge and skills necessary for cross-cultural performance.

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Gonzalo Ferro, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at PDRI a CEB Co. Gonzalo has over twelve years of research and applied experience in the field of Industrial Organizational (I/O) Psychology. Over the last ten years he has primarily worked on U.S. Army related projects, focusing on the assessment, selection, and training of Soldiers. Gonzalo has worked on a number of projects involving cross-cultural performance, including the development of a competency model for Regional Expertise and Culture (REC), and web-based cultural awareness training.

Gonzalo has conducted basic and applied research projects in the areas of training needs analyses, competency modeling, developing classroom-based and web-based training courses, identification of predictors of Soldiersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; field performance, leadership, and performance in extreme environments. Currently, he is working on finishing his doctoral degree at George Mason University. His dissertation research is focused on defining cross-cultural performance in a way that disentangles the mix of predictors and performance descriptors that is commonly used to define cross-cultural performance, as well as identifying knowledge and skills that predict cultural adaptive performance across different cultures. He is currently serving as the President-Elect of the Personnel Testing Council of Metropolitan Washington (www.ptcmw.org), the local I/O psychology group. Gonzalo has presented his work at national conferences and published his work in technical reports and peer-reviewed journals.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gonzalo Ferro. E-mail: gonzalo.ferro@pdri.com. Address: PDRI, 1777 North Kent St, Suite 401, Arlington, VA 22209. This article is based on the theory component of my doctoral dissertation. Thank you to my dissertation advisors, Drs. Jose Cortina, Stephen Zaccaro, and David Kravitz for their feedback, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Strategic Enablers:

How Intercultural Communication Skills Advance Micro-Level International Security Lauren Mackenzie

The views expressed in this academic research paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States government, the Department of Defense, or Air University.

Abstract A fundamental assumption of this essay is that effective intercultural communication is a strategic enabler of micro-level international security. It will be argued in three parts that the knowledge and skills at the heart of the field of intercultural communication are a natural platform for advancing international security. First, an explanation is offered for why current PME course offerings do not sufficiently address the pressing need our military has for improving the quality of intercultural communication. Next, an overview is provided of the specific communication skills that are research-proven predictors of cross-cultural competence. Finally, a framework is offered for institutionalizing intercultural communication into Professional Military Education

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Introduction The military's "Culture Rush" (Wynn, 2008) has created a consensus among military professionals and scholars in regard to culture's significant implications for security and stability operations. In today's culturally diverse operational environment, individuals ranging from commanding officers to strategic sergeants often rely on the warfighting capabilities of negotiating and relationship-building to accomplish their mission. However, if negotiation and cross-cultural relations represent the entryway to success in this environment, communication skills are the keys needed to open the door. A commonly cited example illustrating this point is Triandisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (1994, p. 29) claim that the first Gulf War could have been avoided had the parties involved been better educated about nonverbal communication patterns: On January 9, 1991, the foreign minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, and the United States Secretary of State, James Baker, met in Geneva to attempt a last-minute compromise that would avoid a war. Seated next to Aziz was the halfbrother of Iraqâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s President, Saddam Hussein.

The half-brother kept calling Baghdad to provide Hussein with his evaluation of what was going on. Baker used the verbal channel of communication almost exclusively and said very clearly that the U.S. would attack if Iraq did not move out of Kuwait. The Iraqis, however, paid less attention to what Baker said and most attention to how he said it. Hussein's half-brother reported to Baghdad that "the Americans will not attack. They are weak.

They are calm. They are not angry. They are only talking." Six days later, the United States unleashed Operation Desert Storm â&#x20AC;Śand Iraq lost close to 175,000 citizens.

Triandis further suggests that if Baker had pounded the table, yelled, and shown outward signs of anger to communicate intent nonver-

bally, the Iraqis may have decoded Baker's message the way he intended and the outcome may have been entirely different. Situations such as these are the focus of intercultural communication research which examines patterns of interaction in order to predict misunderstanding.

This example can certainly be extended to current international security operations, whose success depends on micro-relations whether they occur at the negotiation table or on the battlefield. Such high-impact interpersonal interactions determine whether or not the practices of partnership-building or negotiating can even begin. Whereas macro-level international security often focuses on longterm strategic goals between nations, microlevel international security entails the interpersonal interactions necessary to put such goals into action. Decorated Navy SEAL J. Robert DuBois captures the essence of this relationship in his recent book, Powerful Peace, where he calls for the relentless pursuit of interpersonal and international peacekeeping as an imperative to global security (2012). Although DuBois falls short of offering "pragmatic methods for implementing the thesis in policy and operations" (Sine, 2012, p.122), this essay fills that void, offering a prescription for how to infuse interpersonal and intercultural communication skills into Professional Military Education (PME).

A fundamental assumption of this essay is that effective intercultural communication is a strategic enabler of micro-level international security. The communication of respect and intercultural rapport-building must be incorporated into all levels of PME in order for these skills to evolve from a "nice to have" lecture or elective to a strategically necessary

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professional competency. It will be argued that the knowledge and skills at the heart of the field of intercultural communication are a natural platform for advancing international security. To develop necessary cross-cultural competence, leadership must "ensure proper application and institutionalization of these [knowledge and skill] competencies within education, training, assessment and daily application" (McDonald, et al., 2008, p. 2).

To support this claim, this essay is divided into three sections. First, an explanation is offered for why current PME course offerings do not sufficiently address the pressing need our military has for improving the quality of intercultural communication. Next, an overview is provided of the specific communication skills that are research-proven predictors of cross-cultural competence. Finally, a framework is offered for institutionalizing intercultural communication into PME. Communication is the Intersection of Language and Culture Many military members serving overseas have found themselves halfway through a mission with a partner military only to realize they are not succeeding because of an early, unintended act of disrespect (McConnell, Matson & Clemmer, 2007). As most are now painfully aware, a lack of understanding of the role culture plays in communication has serious consequences: lost time, lost resources, and lost lives. Members of the military are literally at the front lines of international security operations, yet even as late as 2011, â&#x20AC;&#x153;U.S. military personnel struggle to communicate with allies and adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistanâ&#x20AC;? (Howard, 2011, p. 26). As unsettling as this truth might be, the interaction of two individuals can have a profound effect on the relationship

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between two nation-states. It is here, at the micro-level of international security that the make-or-break policy moments occur. Like any other human relationship, cooperative alliances are formed or dissolved one conversation at a time.

Improving the quality and outcomes of such conversations is a main focus of intercultural communication research â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which makes it distinct from the study of language alone.

Whereas linguistic competence is concerned with the ability to speak a language, communication competence is concerned with the ability to use a language effectively and appropriately in context. An example that illustrates this distinction is the creation of the ABCA alliance - which was formed to create a means to continue close cooperation between the militaries of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. To ensure interoperability, the Alliance cites communication as one of the key cultural factors that affects 'the thinking and motivation of individuals and groups' (see website: www.abcaarmies.org). It is of interest that an organization was formed by several English speaking nations to attempt to facilitate intercultural communication and cooperation between military forces. Examples such as these highlight the distinction between culture and language and reinforce that the bridge between the two is intercultural communication. This skillset is recognized in recent DoD-related publications (Sands, R., 2013; Ingold, 2014) and has been discussed by members of the Interagency Language Roundtable.

Intercultural communication competence has been defined and distinguished from other fields of study in recent works (see Mackenzie

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& Wallace, 2014, p. 241), but these assumptions bear repeating: Due to the fact that the field of communication came in to existence well after many of the more traditional social sciences, it is often confused with the fields of language, cross-cultural psychology (CCP), and international relations (IR). To be clear, the field of communication makes unique contributions to 3C that are not typically within the theoretical scope of these fields of study. For example, whereas linguistic competence is concerned with the ability to speak a language, communication competence is concerned with the ability to use a language effectively and appropriately in context. Additionally, while IR is primarily concerned with institutional-level analysis of political and economic systems and CCP is primarily concerned with individual-level analysis of the personal characteristics that predict competence, CCC is concerned with analyzing the normative interaction behavior of small groups that can help us identify difference and predict misunderstanding (Bennett, 2011).

Defined as the “knowledge, motivation, and skills to interact effectively and appropriately with members of different cultures” (Wiseman, 2002, p. 208), intercultural communication competence must have a permanent place in PME if our military is to succeed in the diverse operational environment of the 21st century.

A variety of professional fields with increasing percentages of practitioners engaging in intercultural interaction have looked to the field of intercultural communication to inform and enhance their practices and applied research.

The successful theory-based, disciplinespecific, cross-cultural competence training available in the professional development literature particular to the fields of education (i.e.; Barrera & Corso, 2000), social work (i.e.; Mason, 1995), medicine (i.e.; Jeffreys, 2006;

Crosson et al., 2004; Crandall et al., 2003) and law (i.e.; Bryant, 2001) illustrate this precedent. However, in the military, consular affairs, and government, the stakes are as high or higher than in the fields just cited, and one single mismanaged interaction has the potential to derail decades of diplomatic work.

In a military context, a good amount of research has been devoted to nonverbal skills (i.e, Samman et al., 2009, Kramer, 2009, Yager et al., 2009) to assist military personnel in negotiating the variety of meanings in crosscultural contexts. The Special Forces community has also reported specific communication performance categories that have been deemed essential to cross-cultural interactions such as “building partner capacity” and “coordinating relationships” (Alrich, 2014), to include incidents reported by Special Forces members themselves (Russell, Crafts & Brooks, 1995). The importance of communication skills is mentioned in several books as well as training and technical reports (e.g.; Bauer, 2007; McCloskey, M.J., Behymer, K.J., & Ross, K., 2010; National Research Council, 2008; Rasmussen et al., 2011; & Russell, Crafts & Brooks, 1995;) however it is unclear how much of this research is being disseminated amongst military members themselves.

Fully understanding and mastering these performance categories, including using nonverbal communication and negotiating, is impossible without a discussion of intercultural communication (Reid et al., 2012). Intercultural communication skills are the essential foundation on which international securityenabling practices such as conflict resolution and negotiation are built.

Despite its necessity for a 21st century military, the field of intercultural communication is

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conspicuously absent from PME. Communication is often a taken-for-granted process that is neglected in the outcome-focused leadership and negotiation PME courses. Courses related to international security in PME lack a social/relational perspective due to the fact that the curriculum - written by faculty with advanced degrees in International Relations, Political Science, History, etc., is likely to focus on learning objectives common to such traditional disciplines. Their impact on participants’ intercultural effectiveness could certainly be enhanced and optimized by a foundational intercultural communication course devoted to the crucial process of rapport-building.

Intercultural Communication Skills as Strategic Enablers There is no question that learning a language is a critical skill for military personnel. However, there are limitations involved in relying on language skills alone to build partnerships.

Not only is the spoken word a small portion of the communication process, but it would take a lifetime to learn every language spoken in each operational theater, partner military base, or location of a potential future conflict.

The unique contribution made by intercultural communication skills is their applicability regardless of the language spoken or the location of the interaction. These foundational skills enable military communicators to interact more effectively in both a newly acquired language and their own native tongue.

Communication must be a part of DoD cross-cultural competence training and education (Reid et al., 2012) as such research examines the ways in which language use varies significantly across cultures. A recent review of “state-of-the-art themes in cross-cultural

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communication research” (Merkin, Taras, & Steel, 2013) reveals that the most common hypotheses related to the link between cultural values and communication behavior are devoted to: indirectness, self-promotion, facesaving concerns, attitudes towards silence, openness, interruption, personal space, highcontext communication, deception, dramatism and ritualism. An understanding of these communication patterns is integral to beginning the process of building relationships across cultures, and military students must be aware of their significance.

Intercultural communication skills are actions and behaviors that are intentionally repeatable and goal-oriented during interaction (Spitzberg, 2000). Such skills use appropriate and effective processes to successfully navigate an intercultural encounter in order to achieve the desired outcome. These culture-general competencies can be effectively taught and developed47. Those that are most relevant to military students have been condensed into the following eight foundational skills of intercultural communication: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Interaction management Impression management Self-monitoring Perceptual acuity Paralanguage use and perception Nonverbal communication Active listening techniques Communication styles

For example, the Introduction to Cross-Cultural Communication course offered by the Community College of the Air Force has used this model with success for three years, graduating close to 1500 Airmen. See http://culture.af.mil/enrollmentwindow.aspx for more information.

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To summarize, interaction management is the effective and appropriate use of conversational turn-taking, information-gaining strategies, and topic choice “based on a reasonably accurate assessment of the needs and desires of others” (Ruben, 1976, p. 341). Interaction skills are goal-oriented behaviors enacted while communicating with an individual or group (Spitzberg, 2003) and are strongly affected by cultural preferences for direct or indirect messages as well as an orientation toward task or relational outcomes. Impression management is defined as deliberate and motivated self-presentation and assumes that a basic motivation of individuals is to be viewed favorably by others (Goffman, 1959). Effective impression management across cultures requires self-monitoring, which is the ability to detect appropriateness of social behaviors and self-presentation in response to situational constraints and to adjust our behaviors to fit the situation (Chen & Starosta, 1997). Perceptual acuity is the flip side to self-monitoring.

Defined as “attention to and accurate detection of various aspects of the environment” (Montagliani & Giacalone, 1998, p.601), perceptual acuity is necessary for a communicator to accurately recognize how s/he is perceived by others in an interaction. Accuracy will often hinge on a conversational partner's verbal, nonverbal and paralinguistic cues.

Communication style is defined as: “The way in which we communicate, a pattern of verbal and nonverbal behaviors that comprises our preferred ways of giving and receiving information in a specific situation. If the message content is the what, and the communicators are the who, then communication style is the how” (Saphiere, Mikk, & DeVries, 2005, p. 5). Difference is communication style preferences are

often conveyed via paralanguage (how a message is delivered through rate of speech, volume, word emphasis, intonation, and silence), via nonverbal communication (conveying messages through the use of touch, space, time, and body movement) and via active listening practices (culturally variable feedback preferences used to communicate understanding to a speaker).

Although a compelling case for intercultural communication skills as strategic enablers of international security has been made, a home for it in PME has yet to be created. It is the aim of this essay not only to initiate this discussion but also to lay the groundwork for its foundation.

Incorporating Intercultural Communication into PME In order to help military members avoid as many mismanaged interactions or unforeseen difficulties as possible, intercultural interactions must be framed and examined as accurately as possible with the most precise tools.

In matters of international security, it would be an unfortunate oversight not to "take advantage of the diversity of knowledge and epistemologies" offered by the discipline of communication, which is both problemfocused and task-oriented (Capella, 2011, p.1476). Insights from the field of communication (to include the subfields of interpersonal, intercultural and organizational) must inform how military personnel are taught to communicate effectively within a multitude of contexts and circumstances of cultural complexity.

Currently, communication is found only as a component of other courses or in bits and pieces throughout PME. It typically falls under training; and often, if it is getting done, it

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Table 1: Intercultural Communication PME Framework What is Intercultural Communication?

Intercultural communication is a field of study that enables us to interact effectively and appropriately across cultures. The field of intercultural communication (also called cross-cultural communication) is based on the insight that communication everywhere contains traces of culture (s) and that cultural values are displayed in communication behavior. The field is often aligned with socio-linguistics, cultural anthropology, and cross-cultural psychology – however, practitioners in the field of intercultural communication focus on communication in context as their primary theoretical concern.

Why is Intercultural Communication important?

Intercultural communication education can improve the quality of intercultural interactions thereby minimizing misunderstanding and conflict. Cross-cultural relations and negotiations are dependent on communication skills, which make them foundational to cross-cultural competence. The knowledge, motivation, and skills to interact effectively and appropriately with members of different cultures (also known as intercultural communication competence) is a most necessary competence for military personnel in the diverse operational environment of the 21st century.

What are the goals of Intercultural Communication?

• To encourage communicators to notice cultural distinctions in others’ behavior and interpret these distinctions appropriately • To describe, interpret, and evaluate the communicative patterns and practices of particular people in a particular place and compare them across cultures • To provide communicators with resources to create a variety of explanations for confusing cross-cultural interaction What is covered in a Intercultural Communication course?

• Impression Management: Defined as “deliberate and motivated self-presentation”, this skill is crucial to intercultural interaction since our projected message is often not interpreted the way we intend it to be. This lesson also focuses on self-monitoring and perceptual acuity.

• Paralanguage: What we say and how we say it influences the way we perceive and are perceived by others. Factors such as volume, tone of voice, rate of speech, word emphasis and interpretations of silence impact the meaning of a message.

• Nonverbal Communication: Haptics (how we use touch to communicate), proxemics (how we use space to communicate), chronemics (how we use time to communicate), and kinesics (how we use our bodies to communicate) are important aspects of communication that military personnel in culturally diverse circumstances can leverage for mission success.

• Communication Styles: The ways in which our cultural values are displayed in our behavior reflects our communication style. These styles are often characterized by “high” and “low” context communication patterns and connect to collective and individual cultural values, respectively.

• Situational Judgment Tests: Concepts are applied in culturally complex, military-relevant scenarios.

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is not being done in an accountable, traceable way. Moreover, intercultural training must develop intercultural communication competence based on research-proven predictors, as opposed to a taken-for-granted or assumed skill that all military personnel possess. What follows is a one-page synopsis of how Intercultural Communication should be introduced, defined and defended. It is intended to be an action-item that can serve as a roadmap for the programmatic inclusion of intercultural communication into all levels of PME.

ty that impedes micro-level international security operations. Arming our military with the tools to explain behavior in culturally complex interactions is essential to building trust, rapport and partnerships. This essay has made the case for creating a permanent place for this essential process in military education â&#x20AC;&#x201C; anything less is a security risk that PME decision-makers should not be willing to take.

This framework has been taught in-residence and on-line throughout the Air Force, to include students at: the Senior NCO Academy, Squadron Officer College, Air Command & Staff College, International Officer School, Air War College Distance Education, among others. It is a starting point for the inclusion of a field of study that suggests concepts, theories and skills to improve the quality of personal and professional relationships across cultures.

Conclusion Former Harvard Business School Dean, Nitin Nohria, once said that communication is the real work of leadership (1992). If this is the case, and if we want our military students to realize their potential as leaders, communication courses must be infused into PME in a serious, specific and systematic way. The skills and educational framework suggested here move us closer toward helping military members increase attributional confidence in their intercultural interactions. Defined as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the perceived adequacy of information with which to explain behavior occurring and to predict appropriate future behaviorsâ&#x20AC;? (Sanders & Wiseman, 1993, p. 3), attributional confidence is essential for reducing the kind of uncertainThe Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, Vol. 1, Issue 1, May 2014

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References Abbe & Halpin (2009). The Cultural Imperative for Professional Military Education. Parameters Winter. 20-31.

Alrich, A. (2014). Cross-Cultural Competence as a Critical Enabler for Security Force Assistance Missions. . In (R. Greene Sands & A. Greene-Sands, eds.) Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: The Flipside of COIN. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Barrera, I & Corso, R. (2002). Cultural competence as skilled dialogue. Special Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. 22 (2): 103-113.

Bennett, Milton. “What All Interculturalists Need to Know: Why They Are Not Cross-Cultural Psychologists, Anthropologists or Internationlists.” SIETAR Italia Annual Meeting. Feb. 2011, http://www.idrinstitute.org/allegati/IDRI_t_Pubblicazioni/29/FILE_Documento_what_al l_interculturalists_need_to_know.pdf.

Bryant, S. (2001). The five habits: Building cross-cultural competence in lawyers. Clinical Law Review.

33-111.

Burgoon, J. & Bacue, A. (2003). “Nonverbal Communication Skills,” in Handbook of Communication and Social Interaction Skills, ed. John O. Greene and Brant R. Burleson. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum:179-218.

Capella, J. (2011). Bridging diversity through problem-based collaboration. International Journal of Communication (5):1476–1478.

Chen, G. & Starosta, W. (1997). A Review of the Concept of Intercultural Sensitivity. Human Communication, 1, 1-16.

Crandall, S., George, G., Marion, G., & Davis, S. (2003). Applying theory to the design of cultural competency training for medical students: A case study. Academic Medicine. (78)6. 588-594.

Crosson, J., Deng, W., Brazeau,C., Boyd, L., & Soto-Greene, M. (2004). Evaluating the effect of cultural competency training on medical student attitudes. Family Medicine. (36)3: 199-203.

DuBois, R. (2012). Powerful Peace: A Navy SEAL’s Lessons on Peace from a Lifetime at War. New York: Morgan James Publishing.

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday.

Howard, R. (2011). Cultural and linguistic skills acquisition for Special Forces: Necessity, acceleration, and potential alternatives. JSOU Report 11-6. MacDill AFB, FL: Joint Special Operations University.

Ingold, C. (2014). Cross-Cultural Competence Plus Language: Capturing the Essence of Intercultural Communication. In (R. Greene-Sands & A. Greene-Sands, eds.) Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: The Flipside of COIN. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Jeffreys, M. (2006). Teaching cultural competence in nursing and health care: Inquiry, action, and innovation. New York: Springer Publishing.

Kramer, N. (2009). Nonverbal Communication. In Human Behavior in Military Contexts, ed. James J. Blascovich and Christine R. Hartel. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press: 15088.

Mackenzie, L. & Wallace, M. (2014). Cross-Cultural Communication Contributions to Professional Military Education: A Distance Learning Case Study. In (R. Greene Sands & A. GreeneSands, eds.) Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: The Flipside of COIN. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Mackenzie, L. & Wallace, M. (2012). Distance Learning Designed for the U.S. Air Force. Academic Exchange Quarterly. Summer: 16 (2), 55-60.

Mason, J. (1995). Cultural competence self-assessment questionnaires: A manual for users. Portland, OR: Portland State University.

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McConnell, R., Matson, C. & Clemmer, B. (2007). The MiTT and its â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Human Terrainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Infantry Magazine, Pg. 6-9.

McCloskey, M.J., Behymer, K.J., & Ross, K. (2010). Assessing the development of cross-cultural competence in soldiers. Arlington, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.

McDonald, D.P.; McGuire, G., Johnston, J., Selmeski, B., Abbe, A. (2008). Developing and managing cross-cultural competence within the Department of Defense: Recommendations for learning and assessment.

Paper submitted to Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Plans). Washington, DC: OSD. Merkin, R., Taras, V., & Steel, P. (2013, in press). State of the art themes in cross-cultural communication research: A systematic and meta-analytic review. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2013.10.004 Montagliani, A. & Giacalone, R. (1998). Impression Management and Cross-Cultural Adaptation.

Journal of Social Psychology, 138 (5): 598-609 National Research Council. (2008) Human Behavior in Military Contexts . ed. James J. Blascovich and Christine R. Hartel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Nohria, N. (1992). Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Rasmussen, L., Sieck, W., Crandall, B., Simpkins, B. & Smith, J. (2011). Data Collection and Analysis for a Cross-Cultural Competence Model. (Tech no. DLO-GS-10F-0298K). Fairborn, OH: Klein Associates Division of ARA. Reid, P, Steinke,J.C., Mokuolu, F., Trejo, B., Faulkner, D., Sudduth, M.M., McDonald, D.P. (2012). A proposed developmental sequence for cross-cultural competence training in the Department of Defense.

(Technical Report # 01-12).

Retrieved from http://www.defenseculture.org/Research/EmergeResearchFiles/TrainingandEducation /Proposed_Developmental_Sequence.pdf Ruben, B. (1976). Assessing communication competency for intercultural adaptation. Group & Organization Studies, 1, 334-354.

Russell, T. L.; Crafts, J. L. & Brooks, J.E. (1995) Intercultural communication requirements for special forces teams. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences: Alexandria, VA. Samman, S., Moshell, M., Clark, B. & Brathwaite, C. (2009). Learning to Decode Nonverbal Cues in CrossCultural Interactions. Orlando: Global Assessment LLC. Sanders, J. & Wiseman, R. (1993). Uncertainty Reduction Among Ethnicities in the United States.

Intercultural Communication Studies. 3 (1): 1-13.

Sands, R. Greene. (2013). Language & Culture in the Department of Defense. Synergizing Complimentary Instruction and Building LREC Competency. Small Wars Journal. (March 8) Sands, R. Greene & Greene-Sands, A. (2014). Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: The Flipside of COIN. Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Saphiere, D., Mikk, B. & DeVries, B. (2005). Communication Highwire: Leveraging the Power of Diverse Communication Styles. Portland, ME: Intercultural Press.

Sine, D. (2012) Powerful Peace: A Navy SEAL's lesson on peace from a lifetime at war. By J. Robert Du Bois. New York Counter Insurgency, N.Y.: Morgan James Publishing, 2012. Journal of Strategic Security, 5 (4): 119-122.

Spitzberg, B. (2000). A model of intercultural communication competence. In L. Samovar & R. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural Communication: A Reader (9th ed., p. 375-387). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Spitzberg, B. (2003). Methods of Interpersonal Skill Assessment. In J.O. Greene & B.R. Burleson (Eds) Handbook of Communication and Social Interaction Skills. (p. 93-134). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Triandis, H. (1994). Culture and Social Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Wiseman, R. (2002). â&#x20AC;&#x153;Intercultural communication competence.â&#x20AC;? In Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication. 2nd ed. William Gudykunst & B. Mody, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Wynn, L. (2008, October 19). More on the military's 'culture rush': Brian Selmeski interview. Retrieved from January 24th, 2010, from Culture Matters: http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/more-on-the-militarys-culture-rushbrian-selmeski-interview/ Yager, M., Strong, B., Roan, L., Matsumoto, D. & Metcalf, K. (2009). Nonverbal Communication in the Contemporary Operating Environment. Boulder, CO: ECrossculture.

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Lauren Mackenzie is Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Communication at the U. S. Air Force Culture and Language Center. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts and has taught intercultural competence courses throughout the Department of Defense over the past five years. Previously, she taught a variety of intercultural and interpersonal communication courses at the University of Massachusetts, the State University of New York, and Columbus State University, among others. Dr. Mackenzie's research centers around the verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal components that comprise the communication of respect across cultures. She has recently published in the journals EDUCAUSE and Cross-Cultural Communication as well as in the book CrossCultural Competence for a 21st Century Military.

Contact Information: Lauren Mackenzie, Air Force Culture and Language Center, 600 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB, AL 36112, or by email at Lauren.Mackenzie@us.af.mil.

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Cultures of Instruction Redux: Identifying and (Hopefully) Resolving Conflicts Scott McGinnis

Abstract Returning to an empirical study first conducted by the author in 1992, and more recently referenced in the work of Hall and Ferro (2011), this essay considers the perceptions of teachers and students of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) or critical need languages (CNLs) in the United States, specifically Chinese. As first reported by McGinnis (1994), sixteen items in three categories of curricular and extra-curricular elements – classroom-internal and classroom-external procedures, and instructional materials – were rated according to their perceived importance in the teaching or learning of Chinese in a university program in the United States. Results of that survey revealed both some significant conflicts as well as points of agreement between the native Chinese teachers and the Chinese as a foreign (CFL) language learners, serving at the least as a basis for consciousness raising, toward the end of building transcultural competence for both students and teachers.

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Pedagogical and scholarly trends seem to quite frequently be like clothing fashions; if one hangs on to them long enough, they will come back in style again (and sometimes again and again and again…). Thus I was only mildly surprised to receive an e-mail at the beginning of 2011 from a good friend and sometime collaborator on various projects over the years, Professor Marjorie Hall Haley of George Mason University.

Japanese) at Cornell University and Yale University. I present it here in the hopes that some of the readers who have responsibility for a language program of their own may choose to administer it to both their teachers and students, either in full, in part, or revised to meet your local conditions. I do so in the spirit of the Chinese chengyu (idiomatic expression) of paozhuan-yinyu – “casting a brick to attract jade.”

We just had an article accepted by FL Annals…We’ve cited your work from the 90s. You and Schrier were going gang busters (sic) there with looking at teachers transitioning into US schools and then it stopped….we hope to resurrect this work and shed light on teacher training for these teachers (personal communication, January 19, 2011).

The original inspiration for my research came primarily from the writings of Hammerly (1985) and Bernhardt (1987), as well as some complementary work by Nieto (1992) and my own collaborations with Walker (1995). To my knowledge, Hammerly was one of the first to frame linguistic and communicative competence within the larger realm of cultural competence. In our collaboration, Walker and McGinnis (1995) cited “culture-based learning and teaching” (p.2) as one of the five “principal considerations” (p. 1) in both the teaching and learning of language in general, and LCTLs in particular.

“This work” that Dr. Haley refers to was a research study that appeared in the journal Theory Into Practice in the winter of 1994, as well as another article in the same issue by Professor Leslie Schrier of the University of Iowa, both having to do with the perceptions of teachers of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) or critical need languages (CNLs) in the United States. Dr. Schrier was focusing on teachers entering a precollegiate school setting, as did Haley and Ferro (2011) for the Foreign Language Annals article mentioned in the e-mail. For my research, the target population was students and teachers in the Chinese language program at the University of Oregon, for which I served as the program director in the early 1990s.

However, as luck would have it, Marjorie did not have to do all the resurrecting herself. Beginning in the summer of 2010, and again during the spring of 2013, I have in essence taken my research tool on the road to workshops for East Asian language teachers (Chinese and

The problem that can arise is most frankly and bluntly brought forth in Bernhardt’s observations. Many foreign students take on “god-like” attitudes toward their own teaching and are appalled at being asked questions, for in some cultures students do not ask questions or even address the teacher. In like manner, foreign-born teaching assistants enter the classroom expecting U.S. students to behave in particular ways; i.e., to attend to the teacher in a quiet “respectful” manner, to never challenge the teacher’s decisions on grading or the “truth” value of the teacher’s statements (1987, p. 68).

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It was within this context that I put together a survey that I distributed to 12 of our teachers (staff instructors and graduate teaching fellows (GTFs)) and all of our students in the Chinese language program at Oregon. All 12 teachers and 84 of the students completed the survey. The survey questions are presented below in a topically organized manner; the original survey presented them in a random manner. The only difference between the survey questions on the two forms is that students were asked about the importance of each in the learning of Chinese, while teachers were asked their importance for the teaching of Chinese. The ranking of each item was to be made according to the following scale. + â&#x153;&#x201C; â&#x2C6;&#x2019; 0

I think this is very important I think this is important I think this is not very important I do not think this is important

Table 1: Survey Items Classroom-internal procedures 1. Daily performance for grade 2. Drill work emphasizing creative (minimal rote repetition) use of the language 3. Drill work emphasizing rote repetition/mechanical drill 4. Formal classroom instruction of grammar 5. Use of audiotapes and videotapes during class 6. Use of language laboratory during class Classroom-external procedures 1. Frequent written homework 2. Preparation outside of class for in-class performance 3. Students meeting individually with an instructor 4. Students meeting with native speakers other than teachers 5. Students working with other classmates outside of class 6. Student memorization of sentences and dialogues 7. Student memorization of vocabulary 8. Use of audiotapes in preparation for class

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Obviously, two decades have rendered some of these categories more than a little anachronistic, literally reflecting pedagogy from a previous century! For both the Cornell and Yale workshops, the lists were updated to a more 21st century look (in particular the items that referenced audiotapes).

What potentially has stood the test of time are the rank orders for what teachers and students saw as most and least important â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both where they coincide, and where they collide.

Table 2: Most Important Features Teachers

Students

1. Preparation outside of class for in-class performance 1. Exposure to authentic materials 2. Formal classroom instruction of grammar 3. Memorization of vocabulary 4. Drill work emphasizing rote repetition/mechanical drill

1. Preparation outside of class for in-class performance 2. Memorization of vocabulary 3. Meeting with native speakers other than teachers 4. Drill work emphasizing creative use of language 5. Formal classroom instruction of grammar

Teachers

Students

1. Use of computer-based materials 2. Use of language laboratory during class 3. Students working with other classmates outside of class 4. Use of audiotapes in preparation for class

1. Use of computerbased materials 2. Use of audiotapes and videotapes during class 3. Students working with other classmates outside of class 4. Memorization of sentences and dialogues

Instructional materials 1. Authentic materials (oral and written) 2. Computer-based materials

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Table 3: Least Important Features Teachers 1 Use of computerbased materials 2 Use of language laboratory during class 3 Students working with other classmates outside of class 4 Use of audiotapes in preparation for class

Students 1. Use of computer-based materials 2. Use of audiotapes and videotapes during class 3. Students working with other classmates outside of class 4. Memorization of sentences and dialogues

At least three areas of confluence or conflict may be seen.

Accuracy versus creativity. While teachers ranked rote repetition and mechanical drill as one of the most important elements in teaching Chinese, students ranked a complementary category (memorization of sentences and dialogues) to be of relatively little use. In addition, students who had grown up in an American precollegiate setting ranked creative drill as one of the most important factors in the language learning process – a ranking not seen among the teachers. Identification of this particular cultural conflict will require teachers to examine the heart of their instructional approach.

Interaction with native speakers. While the United States students ranked interaction with native speakers other than teachers highly, teachers failed to rate such a procedure as relatively high in importance. This may reflect an attitude among some teachers that native speakers other than themselves represent a challenge to the teacher’s authority, or at the least a form of potentially conflicting input. But indeed, from the per-

spective of someone who has learned Chinese as a foreign language, interaction with other native speakers is essential – at the least, for more purely linguistic, aural comprehension skill development purposes. Accordingly, the resolution of this conflict might well be to actively integrate native speakers other than the teacher(s) into the regular course curricula, such as in the form of guest speakers.

The role of authentic materials. The high value placed on exposure to authentic materials by teachers was not shared by the students as a whole, save those at the most upper end of the language curriculum. This, too, may be an artifact of a time when we as a profession were only beginning to integrate realia for pedagogically effective purposes, as was the case for computer-assisted instruction during the 1990s.

The good news is that there was seen some core of agreement among our teaching staff and students in Eugene in the fall of 1992.

Both groups rated formal preparation outside of class, vocabulary memorization, and formal classroom instruction of grammar highly. At the same time, both the Chinese teachers and students felt that many technologically-based components were of the least use in the teaching and learning of the language. Two decades later, in the midst of a generation of digitally native Generation X-ers, it might well do us good to ask this question again. Similarly, in a generation wherein not just students in the pre-K through 16-plus pipeline are virtually connected with quite literally the world via mobile devices and Facebook, the concept of “working with other classmates outside of class” takes on a whole new meaning, seeing

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as how convenient and constant it has become – not just for our children, but for many of we baby boomers.

When I first took this survey “on the road” to Ithaca in June of 2010, I thought having a audience of only language teachers and no “authentic” students would be a limitation. In point of fact, I discovered both there and in New Haven last spring that in fact it served to be an advantage. During the course of the workshop, in the discussions that followed the participants completing the survey, I noted that teachers were frequently reflecting on their own experience in learning English as a foreign or second language, and how that differed from their experience learning Chinese or Japanese as a first language. Such consciousness raising – that it, to get teachers to think like the language learners they had been, and in a sense always would be if they continued to work here in the United States – can serve as a means to achieving transcultural competence of a very unique and important kind.

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References Bernhardt, E. (1987). Teaching foreign teaching assistants: Cultural differences. College Teaching 35(2), 67-69.

Hall, M.H. and Ferro, M. (2011). Understanding the perceptions of Arabic and Chinese teachers toward transitioning into U.S. schools. Foreign Language Annals 44(2), 289-307.

Hammerly, H. (1985). An integrated theory of language teaching and its practical consequences. Blaine, WA: Second Language Publications.

McGinnis, S. (1994). Cultures of instruction: Identifying and resolving conflicts. Theory Into Practice 33(1), 16-22.

Nieto, S. (1992). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Schrier, L. (1994). Preparing teachers of critical languages for the precollegiate environment. Theory Into Practice 33(1), 53-59.

Walker, G. and McGinnis, S. (1995). Learning less commonly taught languages: An agreement on the bases for the training of teachers. Columbus: The Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications.

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Scott McGinnis (Ph.D. Ohio State University, 1990) is the Academic Advisor for the Washington Office of the Defense Language Institute (DLI).

He also holds the academic rank of professor at DLI. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as Executive Director of the National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages at the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) in College Park, Maryland. In nearly three decades in the language teaching profession, he has held positions at institutions including the University of Pennsylvania and Middlebury College, and has a decade of experience as supervisor of the Chinese language programs at the University of Oregon and University of Maryland. Dr. McGinnis has authored or edited five books and over 50 book chapters, journal articles and reviews on language pedagogy and linguistics for the less commonly taught languages in general, and Chinese and Japanese in particular.

Within the Chinese language teaching profession, Dr. McGinnis has worked to bring about greater interaction and cooperation among the various settings within which Chinese language teaching is carried out â&#x20AC;&#x201D; K-12, college and universities, and heritage schools. He has twice served as President of the Chinese Language Teachers Association and has regularly been an invited participant for major projects on standards, articulation, teacher training and materials development sponsored or funded by the Modern Language Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the United States Department of Education. Dr. McGinnis is the former chair of The College Board Chinese Language Test Development Committee for the Educational Testing Service. His current professional responsibilities include serving as Coordinator for the Interagency Language Roundtable for the United States Government.

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Déjà vu All Over Again*: South Sudan’s Return to Conflict Claire Metelits

Abstract In December 2013, violence broke out in the newly independent South Sudan. President Salva Kiir’s Dinka-dominated national military, and former Vice President Riek Machar and his Nuer fighters took up arms against one another. To many in the policy world, this was somewhat of a surprise; South Sudan has drawn international developmental and security assistance since the end of the war with Sudan in 2005. Yet to those who have studied South Sudan, this turn of events was not unexpected. This article assesses the elements that have contributed to recent violence. I argue that by ignoring historical legacies of divisive politics among southerners, focusing on external security issues, and continuing to fund a corrupt government, Western nations bear as much responsibility for the violence as do South Sudanese leaders.

*Thank you, Yogi Berra

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Déjà vu All Over Again: South Sudan’s Return to Conflict

It is devastating for the people of South Sudan, and for those of us in the US government and broader international community, who have made enormous investments in this country in the hope of seeing it escape the terrible cycles of violence that marked its past and that now threaten to destroy its future.

- Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, Ambassador Donald Booth

In December 2013, conflict broke out in South Sudan between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those allied with the former vice president, Riek Machar. President Kiir had dismissed former Vice President Machar from his post in July, along with the rest of the cabinet. The violence between forces aligned with former Vice President Machar (who is a member of the Nuer) and President Kiir (a member of the Dinka) quickly evolved into violence among military and rebel forces in Jonglei, Unity, Warrap and Upper Nile States (South Sudan Human Rights Commission, 2014). A recent report published by the South Sudan Human Rights Commission reports that government forces loyal to the president initiated the massacre of several hundred members of the Nuer ethnic group in Juba, while rebel forces have been accused of revenge killings against the Dinka. Since this time, thousands of people have been killed and approximately 800,000 displaced.

An estimated 70,000 people have sought protection at UN compounds throughout the country (Fabricius, 2014). While the main parties to the conflict signed a ceasefire in January, there is no peace between them nor among the disparate groups who take advantage of the fighting to express their grievances (Aleu, 2014; BBC, 2014; International Crisis Group, 2014; Kushkush & Kulish, 2014).

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For those who have studied Sudan and South Sudan, the recent crisis comes as no surprise.

This article details why the return to violence in South Sudan was not unexpected and, quite arguably, inevitable. Based on fieldwork conducted in South Sudan both during the war and shortly after independence, as well an analysis of historical and contemporary works, this article assesses elements that have contributed to the recent crisis. In addition to the part that individual leaders of South Sudan play in the conflict, the international community – with the US at the helm – is also complicit. By ignoring the historical legacies of divisive politics among southerners, focusing largely on external security issues, and continuing to fund a corrupt, weak government, western nations bear as much responsibility for the violence as do southern leaders. To put the circumstances in architectural terms, state building in South Sudan has been constructed on an unstable foundation, constituted by debilitated materials, and propped up by the international community in a reckless manner.

The Foundation: A Legacy of Divisions in South Sudan Sudan was home to over 500 tribes. In the south this included the Dinka and the Nuer tribes (the first and second dominant tribes in the south), and numerous smaller tribes such as the Shilluk, Bari, Madi, Kakwa, Azende, Bagara, Toposa, and the Didinga. An understanding of the current crisis in South Sudan requires knowledge of historical tensions between individuals, ethnic groups, and political factions in Sudan, of which the south was a part until independence in July 2011. Factionalism is not necessarily (but at times can be) driven by ethnic enmities and can adversely

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affect stability. Events during the first and second civil wars in Sudan demonstrate this legacy of divisiveness between southerners and reinforce the ethnic and ideological nature of today’s crisis.

the north were far removed from the reality on the ground, they formed separate parties.

Others simply left the country for safety elsewhere and formed parties in exile (Collins, 2008).

The First North-South War The first civil war in Sudan lasted from 1955 to 1972. The protracted nature of the struggle was the result of several factors, many of which were the result of divisive politics among the southern Sudanese leaders. Longstanding disagreement and the lack of unity among southerners kept any one group from achieving a majority platform that would serve as the basis for action. Until nearly the end of the conflict and coincident with the rise of the South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) led by Joseph Lagu, southern politicians were at constant odds over both the desired endstate of the struggle (unification with the north, a federal system, regional autonomy or separation) and the means to achieve that end-state (diplomacy, violence or international intervention). For example, two factions of the Sudan African National Union (SANU), one inside Sudan (SANU-inside) and one in exile (SANU-outside), represented the south’s position at the March 1965 Round Table Conference in Khartoum, which was held to resolve the “Southern Problem.” Delegates representing SANU-outside came from several groups including the Azania Liberation Front (ALF) and the Sudan African Liberation Front (SALF). The Khartoum-based Southern Front and the “Other Shades of Opinion,” also were in attendance. Many southerners living in Khartoum continued to work inside the political process (e.g. the Southern Front).

However, because those who were physically located in the south felt that those living in

Factionalism among southerners was exacerbated in 1967 when politicians began forming actual governments in the south. The first of these, the Southern Sudan Provisional Government (SSPG) was made obsolete almost immediately by internal squabbling, as representatives of small ethnic groups reacted to the perceived domination of the Dinka. The political environment was further complicated by the formation of several ethnically-based pseudo-governments to include the Anyidi Revolutionary Government, the Sue River Revolutionary Government and the SudanAzania Government. By the end of 1969, there were three governments in the south with one in exile, as well as three political parties in the north purportedly representing the southern Sudanese. All of them claimed to be the unique and sole representatives of the south (O'Ballance, 1977).

Thereafter, southern political leaders recognized the impact that divisive politics were having on their fight against the north. In one instance, the first president of the SSPG, Aggrey Jaden, attempted to end the decentralized and ethnically based organization of the southern opposition. To provide a more national character to the insurgency, he renamed the guerilla forces the Anya-Nya National Armed Forces (ANAF) and created a General Staff to coordinate operations in the three southern provinces.

To stem infighting among soldiers, he required them to operate outside of their tribal areas. Khartoum took

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advantage of divisions among southerners, seeking to weaken the Anya-Nya by leveraging long-standing ethnic tensions and recruiting soldiers to challenge the group. This was one of Government of Sudan’s (GoS) more effective tactics, one it used repeatedly in the second civil war (O'Ballance, 1977).

enlistees of the Sudanese armed forces who were not from the south and depicted southerners as receiving special treatment by political fiat. Conversely, members of the AnyaNya feared they would be outnumbered and viewed as disposable in an integrated national military (Collins, 2008).

Southerners achieved a limited unification during the first civil war. Lagu melded an effective political machine in the SSLM by appealing to members of other parties to defect to his cause. He also engineered coups in opposition parties when necessary. Such political machinations removed factionalism from the southern opposition. Furthermore, Lagu achieved unified command of the ANAF by placing officers personally loyal to him in charge of the various independent guerilla groups, dispensing arms and ammunition as rewards for fealty, and dismissing those individuals whom he found untrustworthy (O'Ballance, 1977). Lagu thus established the south as a force with which all other parties had to reckon.

The Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) process was completed three years after the signing of the Agreement when some 6,200 Anya-Nya were consolidated into the Sudanese army and trained in “modern warfare” weapons, logistics and tactics. Another 7,600 Anya-Nya were placed in other government departments (Collins, 2008).

While this transition was not without its challenges, the overall success of this DDR process stands in stark contrast to the still extant problem of demilitarizing the tens of thousands of SPLA soldiers and other southern militias following the end of the second civil war.

The south’s unification hastened the end of the war and in 1972 the rebels and the GoS signed the Addis Ababa Agreement. Some southern leaders took issue with portions of the peace agreement to include an article that directed how southern insurgents would be integrated into the police, the prison system and the army. While integration of the police and prison system went fairly smoothly, the sense that the army was the only existing “national” institution raised concerns on both sides. First, although the army was a national one, the individuals manning it did not come from throughout Sudan. Thus, integration threatened the vested interests of officers and

The Era of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) Divisions within the south were not unique to Sudan’s early history, nor were they only ethnically based. Equal levels of divisiveness also existed during the second civil war (19832005), many of them characterized by ideological differences among the leadership. The second civil war began with the compounding of various events including the discovery of oil in the central and southern regions of the country. The government’s abrogation of the Addis Ababa Agreement also intensified southern grievances. In January 1983, southern troops belonging to the 105th battalion refused orders to abandon their weapons and transfer to the north. These soldiers feared

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they would be sent to Iraq to join with another Sudanese contingent fighting that country’s war against Iran, a condition that would leave the south open to an all-northern unit and increase its vulnerability. Following failed negotiations with this southern unit, President Nimeiri ordered aggressive action against the soldiers, which in turn inspired a succession of mutinies throughout the south (Metelits, 2009).

The mutineers found refuge in Ethiopia, where they came together to form the SPLA (Johnson and Prunier 1993). The southern Sudanese rallied around a group calling itself the SPLA. The were various reasons for the SPLA’s popularity among southerners. First, it provided an outlet for the expression of protest over the dissolution of the Addis Ababa Agreement. The insurgent group also attracted individuals who rejected the inequalities implemented by the north on the south. John Garang de Mabior, a Twic Dinka, emerged as the group’s leader. Garang was a former officer in the Sudanese Army and a US-educated agricultural economist. Under him, the SPLA defined its objectives in broad terms: to help establish a democratic Sudan that was multiracial, multi-religious and multi-ethnic (International Crisis Group 2002). Garang’s new goal for the SPLA was a marked difference from many of the previous southern insurgents’ objectives, which included advocating for southern autonomy. Not all southerners accepted this goal of unification. Thus, from its inception, the SPLA was plagued with infighting. This culminated in a split in the movement in 1991, when several southerners, including Nuer leader Riek Machar, formed their own factions, protesting what they called Garang’s “dictatorial” style (Metelits, 2009).

While intra-group fighting in South Sudan could in part be characterized as an extension of ethnic enmities, a more accurate explanation for tensions within the SPLA should include ideological and personal differences among the leadership (Metelits, 2009). One historian has characterized these individuals as “men of limited abilities, conceited personalities, and narrow vision unable to define, let alone articulate, a future that would unify the [s]outh… [they] were bewitched by a kaleidoscope of internal rifts, ethnic loyalties, and ideological confusion” (Collins, 2008, p. 87).

A sign posted on a local leader's desk, outside of Bentiu - left over from the lead up to the referendum vote (Photo Credit: Claire Metelits, 2011.

The discord in part stemmed from Garang’s life experience. Many southern officers were dissatisfied with Garang’s qualifications to lead an insurgency. He was a former officer in the Sudanese Army and with a western degree, and his time in the field was limited to a few months serving in the original Anya-Nya. In military matters, this forced him to rely heavily on insurgent veterans from the first war. This was a source of tension in his relations with field commanders, many of whom, though lacking in formal education, had spent several years in combat with the Anya-Nya and had advanced to high levels (Johnson, 2003). A veteran field commander argued that

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during this period the SPLA became a group that served a few high-level southern elites (Confidential Source, 2003).

The North’s tactic of coopting militias also was reinstituted during this period. The threat of insurgents from the south and the desire to clear the Upper Nile regions for oil exploration by interested foreign corporations spurred Khartoum to raise a Nuer army (Johnson, 2003). Khartoum even went so far as to legalize militias under the Popular Defense Act in 1989 (Salih & Harir, 1994). Thus began what one SPLA commander referred to as the “balkanization of tribes” (Lino, 2005).

Many of these divisions – dating back to the era of the first war – continued to affect politics in the Sudan following the end of the second civil war. The national election during April 2010, for example, exposed counterproductive divisions in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the SPLA’s political arm. It highlighted continuing factionalism regarding the goal of unity versus secession, and exposed the power struggle between individual members who ran for office without the approval of the SPLM political bureau (Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2011). These individual and group-level tensions remained unaddressed in the years immediately prior to southern independence.

Poor Building Materials: Insecurity Within South Sudan Along with the fragile foundation upon which South Sudan was built, insecurity within the region has contributed to the nascent state’s current crisis. When the second civil war ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), several underlying challenges re-emerged. During the

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war, people put many of their differences aside to attain the greater objective of defeating the north. Thus, after 2005, and particularly after the 2011 referendum (which would determine if South Sudan should declare independence from Sudan) internal challenges once again materialized. During the conflict, foreign humanitarian assistance mitigated tensions between groups. Lower levels of humanitarian assistance (and more development and security sector assistance) meant fewer immediate resources. This exacerbated extant divisions among groups. To worsen the issue, during the period between the end of the war and the referendum, the international community focused on ushering the Sudanese toward the vote for independence and paid little attention to new and not-so-new security concerns in the south. These particular security issues included the prevalence of small arms coupled with the lack of security guarantees from the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), and land insecurity.

“Unfettered arms flows” In the years leading up to the referendum, Sudan was a “powder keg…[an area of] unfettered arms flows” (McEvoy, 2009, p. 1). The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated in 2007 that between 1.9 and 3.2 million firearms were in circulation in the country, twothirds of which were in civilian hands (Small Arms Survey, 2013).

One of the major concerns among southerners was the uneven process of disarmament being carried out by the SPLA (Small Arms Survey, 2013; O'Brien, 2009). Locals interviewed in Unity and Upper Nile States in late 2011 complained that some communities were being targeted for disarmament while

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others were not. This left specific regions of South Sudan vulnerable to attacks (Members of Shilluk village, 2011). Individuals did not want to give up their arms because they needed them for self-defense, at times from the government soldiers, and at others from raiders (Local Administrator and Chief, 2011).

These statements highlight important problems that have gone unaddressed by the US and other western donor nations during the interim period. The GoSS had not achieved “buy-in” from local communities nor did it provide security guarantees (O'Brien, 2009).

Since the GoSS lacks effective security institutions, it is understandable that some local citizens have been reticent to disarm. The tenuous-at-best social contract between the South Sudan government and its populace leads to questions on the appropriate use of time leading up to independence. Why was there inadequate focus on state building during this period? Why was there such emphasis on developing South Sudan’s military capabilities to counter external threats (Khartoum) if so many important internal issues existed? If the military was viewed as an internal peacekeeper, what accounted for the absence of attention to drivers of internal instability?

Land Insecurity Land insecurity is the result of the interlacing of land and politics in portions of the country.

Pastureland is prized, and violence involving cattle raiding has long been a feature of migratory movement of pastoralist tribes. In late 2011 and early 2012, approximately 3,000 people were killed in Pibor County, Jonglei State when 6,000 armed Lou Nuer youth marched on the area, targeting people of the Murle in reprisal for raids that had occurred in early 2011 (Gettleman, 2012). Historically,

legal and uniform land tenure rules across Sudan simply did not exist. The north’s land legislation was founded on colonial land laws while customary practice regulated access to southern land. Local chiefs were entrusted with the management of land ownership and use (Pantuliano, 2007). During the early years of the second civil war, the SPLA focused on negotiating disputes and administering law at the local level through these indigenous mechanisms. However, the civil war displaced communities and their leaders, which reduced contact between chiefs and their followers, and ultimately led to the end of their influence and popularity. A report by the Upper Nile State Government in South Sudan claims that chiefs were punished – often in public – for crimes committed by their subjects. Such public humiliation reduced their status in the community. Thus, many chiefs found themselves subordinated to the SPLA. With the weakening of traditional authorities’ power, customary law no longer functioned as it once did. Additionally, in the wake of war and the subsequent proliferation of weapons, smaller groups who in the past were powerless now found themselves possessing powerful instruments of coercion (Upper Nile State Government, 2011).

While the land tenure issue was one focus of the CPA-mandated Southern Sudan Land Commission, which drafted a five-year strategic plan to govern land allocation as well as leasing and acquisition issues, this body was unable to fix the country’s continuing land challenges. South Sudan forces exacerbated these problems, as returning soldiers have been accused of occupying abandoned plots in key towns without the consent of the owners.

Additionally, the military has been accused of

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building on and selling non-owned plots. According to one report, some military members boasted that they took precedence in ownership of land over those who fled during the war because they were the ones who fought to get it back (Pantuliano, 2007).

The Shilluk are the most vocal about land conflict, claiming that other ethnic groups, specifically the Dinka, seize territory as a consequence of their military and political dominance in South Sudan. For example, some Shilluk reported that the Nuer and Dinka had disproportionate influence in the city of Malakal (traditionally a Shilluk town) and denied land to returnees (Upper Nile State Government, 2011; USAID, 2011). Furthermore, the redrawing of county borders heightened ethnic tensions in several states. The newly created Akoka County (carved out of Manyo and Baliet Counties in Upper Nile State) became the site of increased hostility between the Shilluk and the Dinka. The Shilluk claimed this area is their ancestral land, but Dinka were relocated there. Meanwhile, members of the Shilluk maintained that giving Akoka County to the Dinka was a part of the political machinations of the central government in Juba (Upper Nile State Government, 2011; Members of Shilluk village, 2011). In South Sudan’s rural areas (which is the majority of the country) land is essential to survival, whether for subsistence farming or pastoralist activities. Because of weak state institutions, land insecurity has led to increasing instability.

The Framework: Foreign Support for a Weak State While much of the blame for the recent crisis rests in the hands of the GoSS, the international community is also culpable. The main

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international actors involved in South Sudan’s transition included the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) as well as the IGAD-Partners, a largely western consortium of donor countries and organizations that brokered the agreement that ended the war. Additionally, an Assessment and Evaluation Committee (AEC) composed of representatives from Norway, the UK, the US, Kenya, Ethiopia, and several international organizations such as the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU) and the Arab League monitored and supported the implementation of the CPA. Yet the provision of foreign assistance to a new country such as South Sudan, cobbled together during a sixyear period, did little to enhance future stability. The US and other international entities are at the very least complicit in the current violence, if only as facilitators providing the means with which to carry it out.

During the interim period, the foreign diplomatic and military corps focused largely on getting the north and the south to the January 2011 referendum without a return to war; the focus was not on internal southern security concerns such as growing factionalism, insecurity in rural areas, and corruption among southern government and military officials (who were usually one in the same). In the years leading up to independence, and the months afterward, aid increased. Donors spent billions building roads and digging wells, ferreting out landmines laid during the war, printing textbooks, training women to farm, and helping the government write laws (Robinson, 2012). Global assistance to South Sudan increased from $1.2 billion in 2004 (the year prior to the CPA) to $2.1 billion in 2005.

By 2009, the amount had increased to $2.4

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billion (Poole, 2010). The notion that greater development by way of improved services and institution building would lead to stability was the rubric under which much of the international community worked. South Sudan analyst Alex de Waal argues that because of the justice of the US and international community’s cause, many of them held South Sudan to a lower standard than other countries (DeWaal[a], 2014).

Internal opposition in post-conflict societies not only can make for tenuous stability, it can lead to increased government corruption. Academic studies have suggested that polarized societies are prone to competitive rent seeking by different groups struggling over public goods (Alesina & Tabellini, 1989; Alesina & Drazen, 1991; Shleifer & Vishny, 1993; Alesina & Rodrik, 1994; Alesina & Spolaore, 1997).

Such polarization naturally impedes consensus on the distribution of resources and creates rents for groups in power at the expense of the larger populace (Easterly & Levine, 1997).

According to several studies, the competing ethnic groups’ interests in South Sudan are kept in check around President Kiir, making the regime susceptible to the demands of competing groups and therefore open to corruption (Lacher, 2012; Mores, 2013). A Freedom House report claims that officials take advantage of inadequate budget monitoring to divert public funds (Freedom House, 2013).

For example, while health, education, and social service monies allocated to states within South Sudan have been consistently underbudget, security and the public sector payroll have been vastly over-spent (DeWaal[a], 2014). Citizens have reported facing demands for bribes in their dealings with South Sudan’s government institutions, even to access basic

public services. The 2011 Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer found that of the respondents who had contact with nine public institutions (police, education, judiciary, medical services, land services, tax revenue, customs, registry/permit), 66 percent reported paying bribes during a 12-month period (Transparency International, 2011).

The lack of infrastructure and capacity in the south was the premise upon which donors started large-scale state-building programs after the signing of the CPA. However, it was the security sector that received the bulk of the assistance. Security Sector Reform (SSR) focuses on developing institutions that protect the state. These institutions include border and customs bureaus, the armed forces, justice institutions and actors that play a role in implementing security such as the parliament and ministries. There have been reports of corruption of SSR assistance as well. As one donor representative complained, “The technical advisers help[ed] prepare budget allocations but then army generals wheel[ed] into the minister’s office and [made] the real allocations” (DeWaal[b], 2014).

By 2011, the US had spent $300 million on SSR activities as compared to the British £5.5 million (Security Sector Reform Resource Center, 2014). Much of this money goes to the salaries of individuals in the security sector. According to one report, salaries account for 40 percent of the SSR budget, which are among the highest in the region (Bonn Center for International Conversion, 2013). Likewise, between 2009 and 2013, a program run by Great Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) to assist in the development of South Sudan’s security sector and

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defense had a budget of £16,778,245 ($27,385,365). As of 2012, £14,296,761 ($23,335,401.73) had been spent. The goal of the project was to transform the SPLA into a professional, disciplined army accountable to democratic, civil control (Department for International Development, 2014). By March 2012, the World Bank–Multi-Donor Trust Fund for South Sudan, a project of 13 donor states and the World Bank, had dispensed over 90 percent of the total $541 million in financing. While the Trust Fund was spent on a variety of activities, the security sector received a disproportionate $37 million while state and peace-building activities garnered $12 million (World Bank, 2012). In 2012, the US justified selling weapons to South Sudan by framing it in counter-terrorism rhetoric.

When President Obama approved the sale of defense services and weapons, he stated that the “furnishing of defense articles and defense services to the Republic of South Sudan [would] strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace” (Brannen, 2012). There is no evidence available to the public, however, that claims the US carried out such sales to South Sudan. Furthermore, in response to the increased violence in South Sudan, the US, much to its credit, announced it is considering withholding further military aid to the country. In his testimony before the House of Representatives, Special Envoy to South Sudan, Ambassador Donald P. Booth, said he did not know how much money would be withheld from South Sudan’s army and police (Sudan Tribune, 2014).

In the end, the trainings, workshops, reforms, and a battalion of foreign technical assistants embedded within state ministries appear to have made little real change in South Sudan.

As one report claims, “the GoSS now ‘looks

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like a state’ but performs as anything but” (Larson, Ajak & Pritchett, 2013). The transition from war to peace is not merely a technical exercise. It is a highly political process that necessitates an understanding and appreciation for issues that fuel instability. In other words, it is not simply the provision of basic services that is of great import; rather, it is how these services are distributed and to whom they are allocated that is critical (Gida & Lucey, 2014). The challenge, though, lies not merely in the amounts of money being spent by western governments and agencies.

The problem is the seemingly blind donations without oversight in the face of a system known to be corrupt. Despite the immense amount of funding that continues to flow into South Sudan, there is frustratingly slow progress in developing a legitimate, functioning government. The rationale for further training a military known to have a history of violence against civilians in the face of few if any government institutions to manage such forces is certainly questionable.

The speed at which today’s crisis in South Sudan has metastasized exposes the shortsightedness of the self-appointed cheerleaders of southern independence abroad who have maintained, if not in word, certainly in deed, that all other issues have been secondary to sovereignty (Wallis, 2014). Since independence was a foregone conclusion, it is puzzling why the international community did not pay more attention and urge southern leaders to focus on internal security issues. Furthermore, sufficient historical analysis demonstrates that “the south” as a body unified in vision and purpose was a moderately correct concept only in the face of a common enemy. Once the common enemy – the north – no longer

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posed a threat, the internal challenges facing the south once again ignited.

What is to be done?

I am hesitant to provide “policy solutions.” I do not have my feet firmly planted in the policy sector, though I have worked with those who are. However, scholars are often criticized from shying away from policy recommendations. Therefore, I will provide some thoughts that policymakers can consider in this regard.

First, it has been acknowledged that community-based programs and local leadership did not have much voice in institution building during the interim period. National level programs furthermore did not address systems that would regulate or enable violence, such as the president’s monopoly on power, the dearth of party structures within the SPLM, ethnic-based recruitment and corruption. As this paper has highlighted, the international community’s focus during the six years prior to the referendum focused on keeping peace between the north and the south. By placing the perceived north-south conflict threat at the center of all things, the international community overlooked the historical divisions within South Sudan. Consequently, the entrenched discord continued to shape relationships after independence. The role of ethnicity and power relations should be acknowledged and addressed as a major force of future instability. Without the involvement of local actors, any sort of peace agreement will not take hold (ISS, 2014).

While today the international aid community scrambles to address the humanitarian challenges that trouble the country since the re-

cent outbreak of violence, since the CPA initiative have focused on development. The assumption embedded in this assistance is that development will lead to stability. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) challenges these assumptions. It found there is no causal link between the provision of basic services and a decrease in conflict (Bennett, et al, 2010). This, perhaps, is part of the impetus behind the enormous amounts of money allocated to the security sector. However, if the former issues (excessive executive control, ethnic divisiveness, and corruption, to name a few) are not subsequently addressed, security reform and development assistance will continue to have little impact on the populations that need these most.

Conclusion While the western media appears to have largely forgotten about the current crisis in South Sudan, violence continues. As this paper argues, the conflict and the ensuing violence that broke out late in 2013 is not a surprise. The historical legacy of divisive politics is alone an issue that, unaddressed, fuels instability. The focus for the GoSS and the international community during the interim period following the end of the second civil war was on reaching the referendum and independence. Following these benchmarks, attention continued to focus on relations between the GoS and the GoSS, and as such the latter’s defense capacity was given priority.

While some of this focus is justifiable, as the two countries’ shared border has been witness to troop standoffs and sporadic violence, it does not justify the backseat position South Sudan’s own internal security issues have taken. Additionally, the ongoing efforts of the

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international aid community, which has given South Sudan over $1 billion in aid annually since 2010, allow the GoSS to divest itself of a significant portion of responsibility to form effective institutions in support of the population writ large.

must not confuse business with progress. In the case of South Sudan, as has been the case in past development models, such assistance and intervention often protects and sustains weak governments while doing little for the people of the country.

Disappointingly, the level of corruption within South Sudan’s government and military has not stymied the flow of donor monies without conditions. Looking at the international community’s role – specifically the US’ – in the recent violence poses several questions: With the knowledge of corruption, why do such large sums continue to flow to the GoSS? Why do officials travel long distances to broker ceasefires between warring parties, only to put into place agreements that do not address the root causes of the violence? Certainly, progress in any area cannot be made until violence is brought to a halt. Yet one

There are multiple dimensions to the current crisis in South Sudan. This paper has attempted to narrow these down to a set of three understandable variables: the history of division, unaddressed internal insecurity, and international assistance that proliferates corruption and prolongs the resolution of the causes of conflict. The goal here has been to provide a rough picture of the South Sudanese environment, not merely to think about the causes of the current crisis, but to identify the underlying issues that fuel insecurity and violence in the new nation.

Nuer men holding court in a Kakuma Refugee camp (northern Kenya).

Photo Credit: Claire Metelits, 2001.

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Addendum: The top UN humanitarian official in South Sudan reported that on April 20, 2014 the killing of hundreds of civilians was carried out in Bentiu in Unity State (where the author conducted research in 2012). According to the official, "piles and piles" of bodies were left behind in a mosque, a hospital, and along roads. He said the killings were a response to a local radio broadcast urging people to engage in atrocities.

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Claire Metelits is a Visiting Professor of Political Science at Davidson College and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Language at Norwich University. She has been studying and traveling in South Sud an since 2001. Her most recent research in the region was in late 2011 when she traveled through the northern states of the new country.

Special Thanks from the Author: I would like to thank CAPT Owen M. Travis, USN, for providing invaluable insight on the historical divisions in Sudan during the first civil war. I also want to thank Marie Besançon for her willingness to provide assistance on this article while she traveled through Sudan.

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Lexical and Semantic Analysis of Defense Culture and Foreign Language Policies Allison Abbe Robert Morrow

Abstract In recent years, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its Service components have adopted various policies for culture and foreign language training of military personnel. Though the approaches and priorities differ, each strategy includes three common elements: foreign language, knowledge of or expertise in specific regions, and general cultural understanding or skills. Qualitative reviews by observers within and outside DoD have concluded that the strategies place less emphasis on foreign language relative to the other elements. To test this conclusion using alternate methods, this paper applies quantitative methods to the strategy documents, using word frequencies and computational analysis to identify themes and elements in each of the major culture and language strategies, including documents from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Office of the Secretary of Defense. Results showed that foreign language receives as much or more attention than culture and region in DoD policies. Semantic analyses indicated that language and culture have related, but distinct and separable meanings in popular understanding.

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Lexical and Semantic Analysis of Defense Culture and Foreign Language Policies

Lexical and Semantic Analysis of Defense Culture and Foreign Language Policies When the United States intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, training of military personnel in culture, regions, and foreign language was primarily limited to small numbers of individuals in specialist communities, such as linguists, foreign area officers, regional area strategists, or analysts. As conditions in Iraq shifted toward stability and reconstruction, and later to counter-insurgency operations, the U.S. defense community recognized the need for greater attention to the socio-cultural aspects of the conflict. As a result, the Department of Defense (DoD) began extending cultural, regional, and language training to a much broader portion of the workforce.

DoD Language, Regional, and Culture Policies Initially, the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap (Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, 2005) focused primarily on language capabilities. Many of the recommended actions applied to linguists and translators, but other actions aimed to expand regional studies and increase language capability in general-purpose forces (GPF).

Each of the Service components (Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) subsequently adopted strategies encompassing both foreign language and cultural training. The Navy strategy was the first to be published (2008), followed by the Air Force and Army (2009), the Marine Corps (2010), and OSD (2011).

Though they differ in implementation details, these strategies show consensus on some central principles. Each includes the same basic

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elements of foreign language, regional studies, and culture (LRC). This consensus suggests that some LRC capabilities are needed not just in specialist roles and missions, but more broadly in the General Purpose Force (GPF).

They project that such capabilities will be needed for the foreseeable future, not only in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that prompted the policies.

Beyond the basic areas of consensus, the policies and their implementation differ across Services. Some initiatives for culture and foreign language in GPF reflect an adjustment from the educational model used for specialists in terms of regional focus. For example, the Marine Corps Regional, Culture, and Language Familiarization program (U.S. Marine Corps, 2012) assigns individuals a region and language to study throughout their career. The Army has elected to implement some regional specialization at the brigade level and began aligning brigades to regions in 2012 (McIlvaine, 2012). These policies primarily address training and education, and do not explicitly outline the implications of these policies for personnel management.

Like the Army and Marine Corps, the Air Force provides culture-general education for everyone and regional training in predeployment (Department of the Air Force, 2009). But the Air Force also selects some personnel (both enlisted and officers) for more specialized training in its Language Enabled Airmen Program (LEAP). The Air Force is also considering a foreign language requirement for all Airmen (Hardison et al., 2012).

Observer Responses A number of academics and military personnel have responded to these initiatives, con-

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tinuing the dialogue about how much, when, and who should receive training and education in LRC capabilities. Commentators seem to disagree about the appropriate level of emphasis for particular elements of the strategies and programs. For example, according to Watson (2010), the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps have separated language from culture in their training and education efforts and thereby marginalized it. Watson concluded that the Army’s weighting of culture and region over language for GPF is a mistake shared by the other Services (with the exception of the Navy): In most branches of the military, the philosophy behind culture training programs is based on the idea of “big ‘C’ Culture; little ‘l’ language.” In other words, we give culture more importance in our training programs and make language a “supporting effort.” (Watson, 2010, p. 95)

Similarly, Outzen (2012) has critiqued the Army Culture and Foreign Language Strategy as artificially separating culture from language and inappropriately prioritizing culture. In this view, the increase in attention to culture has come at the expense of foreign language.

As representatives of the language (Watson) and specialist (Outzen) communities, these authors argue for an expansion of the training and education paths traditionally used for specialists. Homan (2010) has proposed this approach explicitly, contending that the Army would benefit from a ‘light’ version of Foreign Area Officer (FAO)– a skill identifier for all officers in the GPF, modeled after the FAO training and education cycle. This approach seems generally consistent with the regional familiarization being implemented in the Marine Corps. Another perspective shares the call for specialization (Buswell, 2011; Siska, n.d.), but has proposed regional proficien-

cy rather than foreign language as the centerpiece for understanding human dynamics, arguing that regional expertise is “the key” for attaining proficiency in language and culture (Siska).

In a RAND review, assessing the DoD culture, language, and regional strategies with a focus on application to GPF (DeCamp et al., 2012), the authors asserted: Our review of LREC policy and directives leads to three important conclusions.

First, there is a clear belief that LREC skills are important for military effectiveness, especially for COIN. Second, although DoD places equal emphasis on LREC skills, the services emphasize cultural skills over language and regional expertise for GPF. Third, existing LREC guidance appears to be based on anecdotes from the field that have not been collected in any systematic manner. (p. 12; emphasis added)

The second conclusion above identifies a distinction between the treatment of LRC capabilities in the DoD strategy and in the Services strategy, unambiguously asserting that culture and region have either been prioritized over language, or treated equally with language. In addition, in this view, the emphasis on culture will be short-lived, as the authors predicted that regional alignment in GPF personnel or units will result in “a shift from cultural toward language emphasis during FY 2013 and beyond” (DeCamp et al., 2012, p. 9).

Other perspectives on the relative emphasis of LRC capabilities have also been proposed.

Some have called for increased emphasis on intercultural competence (Collins, 2011; McFarland, 2005; Selmeski, 2007). Pete (2011) has argued that DoD policies have achieved greater success with foreign language than with other capabilities and more remains to be accomplished in other areas. Still others call for more integration of the capabilities, advo-

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cating for programs that combine LRC (Chandler, 2005; Greene Sands, 2013; Wolfel, 2008).

(DeCamp et al., 2012). Other analyses were used for exploratory purposes, described in further detail below.

In contrast, Kinner (2012) cautions against placing too much emphasis on language and culture overall. For some operations, language and culture may not be critical enablers. As one example, Kinner cited the tsunami relief efforts in Japan as an operation in which cultural awareness and language were minimally relevant. Thus, expanding culture, language, and regional training to all GPF may not always have a meaningful impact on operational effectiveness. From this perspective, the disputes over how much of each capability area to include are secondary to determining in which operations they are most relevant.

Method

Present Research The aim of the present study was to test some of the assertions made in previous analyses of the LRC strategies and policies in DoD. Although qualitative assessments have indicated that the Services have prioritized culture over foreign language and region (DeCamp et al., 2012; Watson, 2010), the basis for those assessments is not entirely clear. Thus, text analyses were conducted to complement the qualitative assessments of various commentators with quantitative analysis of the documents themselves.

Study 1: Lexical Analysis This research aimed to test the notion that the Servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; policies emphasize culture over foreign language, as commentators have suggested. Based on previous qualitative analysis, we should expect greater emphasis on culture in Service policies (DeCamp et al., 2012; Watson, 2010) and relatively equal emphasis on language, region, and culture in OSD policies

Sample. Documents in the analysis included policy documents from the U.S. Department of Defense and its component Services, as well as internal government assessments of these policies (sample documents appear in the References marked with an *). The documents included in the present study were published between 2005 and 2012. This period of time started with the publication of the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap and ends with the publication of implementation orders for the LRC policies within the Army and Marine Corps in 2012. Reports by nongovernment organizations were not included in this analysis. For the Army Culture and Foreign Language Strategy, analyses included only the main text of the policy. The appendices were excluded because none of the other Servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; documents included a comparable level of detail.

To be included, each document had to apply to general-purpose forces, not only to specialist personnel. In addition, to enable direct comparison, documents had to include more than one of the three topics of interest (culture, region, or foreign language). Thus, documents that focused on only one capability area, such as foreign language proficiency pay policies, were excluded. The analyses included 22 documents: policy documents from the Services (7), policy documents, plans, and testimony from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (9), and reports from the Government Accountability Office and the House Armed Services Committee (6).

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Procedure. Word frequencies for each document were obtained from WriteWords Word Frequency Counter. Frequency counts for a subset of the documents were also obtained in a text editor to provide a reliability check.

Both tools yielded the same frequencies, with occasional discrepancies of plus or minus two.

Discrepancies sometimes occurred when one tool counted a word that appeared on the title page or in a header, but the other did not. The counts reported here are the WriteWords frequencies.

Analyses were also conducted to explore structural aspects of the documents rather than the substantive topics, using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., 2007). LIWC analyzes the use of function words. Though commonly used to assess the psychological states and characteristics of individual authors (Pennebaker & King, 1999), LIWC has also been used to analyze the products of collective efforts, such as Supreme Court opinions (Cross & Pennebaker, 2012). LIWC produces relative frequencies of specific categories of terms.

Results and Discussion To test the hypothesis that the Services would emphasize culture over language, the proportion of LRC words that reflected each element (language, region, culture) was calculated for each document (see Table 1). An independent-samples t-test showed that the OSD documents made fewer references to culture than did the Services’ documents (p = .02; M’s = .20 and .36, respectively). References to language were not significantly different (p = .27, M’s = .58 and .48, OSD and Services, respectively).

LRC elements equally (see Table 1). In the OSD documents, references to language dominate (58.5%), followed by region (21.2%), closely followed by culture (20.3%) (in pairedsamples t-tests, p = .01). In the Services’ policies, language references are also predominant (48.0%), but are followed more closely by culture (36.5%) and then region (15.5%). The differences among elements in the Services’ documents were not statistically significant.

The GAO and HASC assessments mirror the patterns of the OSD documents with heavy emphasis on language. Moreover, the GAO and HASC reports consistently refer more to language than to both culture and region combined (in a paired-samples t-test, p = .01; M’s = .59 and .41, respectively).

Thus, the hypothesis was partially supported.

The Services’ policies do refer to culture relatively more than OSD documents do, but do not refer more to culture than to language.

OSD documents refer to language more frequently than to either culture or region.

Because some of the strategies used abbreviations or definitions that combined LRC elements, frequencies were also obtained for those abbreviations. Variations included LREC or LRC (language, regional expertise, and culture; Navy and Marine Corps) and CRL (culture, region, and language; Air Force). Each of the documents used language alone more than they used the inclusive abbreviation, ranging from a low of a 1.08:1 ratio (Navy) to a high of a 5:1 ratio (MARADMIN 619-12). Relative to culture and region, the inclusive abbreviation appeared more frequently in two of the strategies (Navy and Air Force).

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Table 1: Relative Frequencies of Terms Proportion of Each Capability Policy or Report 1.

Navy LREC Strategy

Language

Culture

Region

.59

.23

.18

2.

Air Force CRL Flight Plan

.51

.30

.19

3.

Army Culture and Foreign Language Strategy (ACFLS)

.40

.50

.10

3a. ACFLS with appendices included

.33

.51

.16

4.

Marine Corps Language, Regional and Culture Strategy 2011-2015

.44

.36

.20

5.

Army HQDA EXORD 070-11

.54

.46

0

6.

Army Posture Statement 2012 ACFLS

.61

.37

.02

7.

MARADMIN 619-12

.28

.32

.40

8.

Defense Language Transformation Roadmap

.86

.02

.12

9.

DoD Instruction 5160.70

.56

.06

.38

10. DLO Regional and Cultural Capabilities White Paper

.19

.43

.38

11. DoD Language, Regional, and Cultural Capabilities Strategic Plan

.39

.32

.29

12. DoD Summit on Language and Culture: Changing Perspective

.43

.33

.24

13. Glenn Nordin, testimony to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

.76

.14

.10

14. Laura Junor, testimony to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

.79

.13

.08

15. Gail McGinn, testimony to House Armed Services Committee

.68

.21

.11

16. Nancy Weaver, testimony to House Armed Services Committee

.61

.19

.20

17. GAO 09-568: DoD Needs a Strategic Plan and Better Inventory

.56

.04

.40

18. GAO 10-879: Continued Actions Needed

.54

.07

.39

19. GAO 11-456: Actions Needed to Improve Planning and Coordination

.52

.40

.08

20. GAO 12-50: Language and Culture Training: Opportunities Exist to Improve Visibility and Sustainment

.63

.28

.09

21. HASC Report: Building Language Skills and Cultural Competencies

.61

.25

.14

22. HASC Report: Bridging the Gap

.67

.24

.09

Analysis of linguistic styles using LIWC showed few differences between OSD documents and the Services’ policies. The lack of differences may reflect similarities in writing style among these collectively-produced, official documents. However, some differences did emerge. Discrepancies and past tense verbs were lower in the Services’ documents than in OSD (for discrepancies: t (10) = 2.21, p = .05, 95% confidence interval -1.09 to 0.001; M’s = .50 and 1.94, respectively; for past tense verbs: (t (10) = 3.10, p = .01, 95% confidence interval -0.56 to -0.09; M’s = .30

and .62, respectively). These differences suggest greater immediacy in the Services’ documents than in OSD’s (Pennebaker & King, 1999). Words referring to emotion and affect were more common in the OSD documents than in the Services’ documents (t (10) = 2.85, p = .017; 95% confidence interval -3.23 to .40, M’s = 4.11 and 2.38, respectively). There were no significant differences in categories of words associated with greater complexity, such as cognitive mechanisms and words longer than six letters (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010).

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Study 2: Semantic Analysis The quantitative analyses of DoD policies and government reports showed that the OSD documents emphasized foreign language capabilities over culture and region. Contrary to the conclusion of previous qualitative assessments, the Services’ policies did not emphasize culture over language. OSD documents vary on the degree to which language dominates, but there was convergence on language as the primary element. However, analyses in Study 1 did not address the semantic relationship among language, culture, and region.

Understanding these relationships is important to anticipating how the policies may be interpreted and implemented by members of the stakeholder organizations, who may or may not have similar backgrounds as the authors of the documents.

the present research, it is possible to test whether a broader audience shares the notion that language and culture are inseparable concepts, as proposed by some members of the language education community. Experts in these content areas may have a different understanding of the terms than the readers and users of the policy documents. In a second set of analyses, we aimed to determine whether the inseparability of language and culture is shared in general knowledge using a computational model of semantic memory. Readers of the documents bring background knowledge to their understanding of the policies, which includes their experiences with the LRC elements in other contexts. Thus, Study 2 analyses examined how language and culture may be understood by readers of the policy documents.

Although language and culture are certainly linked, the nature of the relationship is less evident. Is culture primarily a component of language? Or is language primarily a component of culture? Or are the two partially overlapping and partially distinct? Seelye argued, “it is becoming increasingly apparent that the study of language cannot be divorced from the study of culture, and vice versa” (Seelye, 1993, p. 22). This view is echoed by Watson (2010), who noted that, “. . . language is vitally and inextricably linked to every aspect of culture. . . . Language and culture are inherently interrelated and interdependent” (p. 95). This perspective suggests that the overlap between language and culture is so great that they are essentially indistinguishable for education purposes.

Method For this analysis, we used the HighDimensional Explorer (HiDEx) (Shaoul & Westbury, 2010a) implementation of the HAL (Hyperspace Analogue to Language) mathematical model of semantic memory (Lund & Burgess, 1996). In this model, a corpus is processed for frequency of co-occurrence inside a weighted moving window. This process creates a feature vector (which is the size of the entire retained vocabulary) for each word in the corpus as well as its relative proximity in high-dimensional space. Word “meaning,” therefore, is instantiated as mathematical projections in a high-dimensional space. Bottomup word feature vectors, which include each word’s relative mathematical “loading” on any other given word, are based on words’ cooccurrence in natural language use. A word’s definition is its relative mathematical distance from every other word.

Though a comprehensive review of all potential interpretations of the relationship between language and culture is beyond the scope of

An extension to the original HAL model provided by HiDEx allows for higher levels of mathematical precision when estimating mod-

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el build quality, including: controlling for the weighted width of the moving window for distance of co-occurrences, global orthographic frequency in the corpus, and the global radius of co-occurrence. Mathematically expressed, co-occurrence is calculated by iterating over a given corpus and increasing the weighted load of a given wordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s increasing semantic â&#x20AC;&#x153;loadâ&#x20AC;? on the vector by relative proximity as it naturally occurs in the corpus.

Tersely expressed, the following formula describes the calculation of each wordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weighted distance vector: â&#x2C6;&#x2018;(|đ?&#x2018;Ľ! â&#x2C6;&#x2019;

! đ?&#x2018;Ś! |)!

The mathematical effect of such a calculation, is equivalent to incrementing the weights in the feature vector for â&#x20AC;&#x153;catâ&#x20AC;? in below sentence in the following way: đ?&#x2018;&#x2021;â&#x201E;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019; ! Â â&#x201E;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x;đ?&#x2018; đ?&#x2018;&#x2019; ! , đ?&#x2018;&#x2018;đ?&#x2018;&#x153;đ?&#x2018;&#x201D;! , đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;&#x2018; ! Â đ??&#x153;đ??&#x161;đ??­ Â đ?&#x2018;&#x;đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;&#x2019;đ?&#x2018;&#x2018; ! Â đ?&#x2018;&#x2013;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;đ?&#x2018;Ąđ?&#x2018;&#x153; ! Â đ?&#x2018;Ąâ&#x201E;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x2019; ! Â đ?&#x2018;?đ?&#x2018;&#x17D;đ?&#x2018;&#x;đ?&#x2018;&#x203A;! Â

Words immediately adjacent in the corpus receive a higher weighted value for that cooccurrence. Though you must imagine billions of iterations of this calculation occurring in the vector creation processing of a given multi-million word corpus, the above sentence (if it occurred in the corpus) would be included in the features vector in precisely the above way.

Sample. The text used in the current study was the Westbury Lab English-language Wikipedia corpus from at the University of Alberta (Shaoul & Westbury, 2010b). HiDEx and related models require a corpus large enough to sample different contexts in which the target words occur, in order to construct the feature vectors. The Westbury Lab Wikipedia

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corpus includes over 990 million words from over 2 million documents. The Wikipedia corpus closely resembles a collectively-edited, natural language representation of shared popular knowledge, much like the policy documents in Study 1. Using this corpus allows us to determine the likely understanding of various terms by a mixed audience, which includes but is not limited to subject matter experts. Feature vectors were established for the 57,377 most commonly occurring terms in the corpus.

Procedure. The 50 nearest neighbors to the target words (culture, language) were obtained from the Westbury Wikipedia global cooccurrence model for HiDEx. Words with an orthographic frequency higher than 9,000 per million words were excluded from analyses.

This threshold was selected to ensure inclusion of all content words, while excluding words like the and of because those words make no semantic contribution.

A matrix was formulated for each of the neighbor words, which included the cosine (distance) from that wordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vector to every other of the nearest neighbors to the target word. As an example, once the word historical was identified as falling inside the nearest neighbor perimeter to culture, the distance from historical to every other word in the culture neighborhood was inserted into the matrix.

The result is a 50x50 matrix for each term (culture, language) which is a 2,500-cosine, reduced, higher-level set of feature vectors of the much larger global co-occurrence matrix, which is a 57,377x57,377 matrix with 3.3 billion cosines.

This reduction was needed in order to allow for human-readable visualization of the feature vector.

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Table 2: Nearest Neighbors for ‘Culture’ and ‘Language’ Culture

Language

Neighbor

Cos

Neighbor

Cos

Neighbor

Cos

Neighbor

Cos

cultural

.910

language

.879

languages

.890

people

.853

modern people especially history social work among particularly traditional life society well today historical various particular art important those recent these others popular works

.898 .896 .892 .892 .890 .890 .890 .889 .887 .886 .886 .886 .886 .886 .884 .884 .883 .882 .882 .882 .881 .881 .880 .879

great like since early much human even period often both very community present influence nature throughout although own itself example though several see being

.878 .878 .878 .878 .877 .877 .877 .876 .876 .876 .875 .875 .875 .875 .875 .875 .874 .874 .874 .874 .873 .873 .871 .871

culture modern particular social example work word different these English traditional some this cultural those form or many that words other literature term related

.879 .872 .869 .866 .865 .861 .860 .860 .859 .859 .859 .859 .858 .857 .857 .855 .855 .854 .854 .854 .854 .853 .853 .853

subject knowledge information human religious more most its such means fact writing not common which historical groups especially rather various itself have certain even

.852 .852 .852 .851 .851 .851 .850 .850 .850 .850 .850 .850 .850 .850 .849 .849 .849 .849 .848 .848 .848 .848 .848 .847

Once each of the 50x50 matrices of nearest neighbors for both terms was created, a number of matrix analyses were produced. The first is a simple scree plot and “goodness of fit” analysis to determine, once the dimensionality was reduced, what amount of further pressure would be placed on the model by reducing the dimensionality of each vector.

Next, the vector for each term was placed in a multidimensional scaling solution that converted the cosines to distances. Cosines, already a measure of similarity, would have to

be converted to distances – otherwise the product would be a measure of dissimilarity, instead of the desired similarity. Using distances, a multidimensional scaling solution plotted each term vector in a two-dimensional space. This allowed for viewing the proximity of each term placement relative to the target term as well as a further visual depiction of relative vector density. Results from these analyses are presented below.

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Results Table 2 presents the fifty nearest neighbors for the words culture and language, as well as their cosine values, which reflect the degree of semantic similarity between the target word and each of its neighbors. Semantic analyses showed an asymmetrical relationship between

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meaning of language, whereas language is more peripheral to the meaning of culture in general usage.

Scree plots (Figure 1) and goodness of fit (Table 3) were calculated to determine the amount of stress introduced by reducing the

Figure 1: Scree Plot Depicting Stress Score for Dimensionality Reduction for ‘Culture’ (top panel) and ‘Language’ (bottom panel)

Table 3: Goodness-of-Fit Analysis for Multidimensional Scaling Solutions Stress and Fit Measures

Culture

Language

Normalized raw stress

.054

.063

Stress-I

.234

.261

Stress-II

.462

.483

S-Stress

.133

.180

Dispersion accounted for

.945

.937

Tucker’s coefficient of congruence

.972

.968

Dimensionality: 2

language and culture. Although culture appeared as a near neighbor of language, language was not a particularly near neighbor of culture. In other words, the term culture helps to convey the

dimensionality (in order to create a humanreadable representation of the 50x50 matrix).

Though the plots indicate a modest amount of relative stress on the model when utilizing

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Figure 2: Nearest-50 Semantic Neighbor Dimensionality Reduction (Euclidean Distance-Based Multidimensional Scaling) for ‘Culture’ (top panel) and ‘Language’ (bottom panel)

two dimensions instead of six dimensions, the absolute stress (.05 for both terms) is quite low on both multidimensional scaling (MDS) solutions, and the dispersion accounted for is quite high (>.94 for both terms.) Since six dimensions are not easily human-readable and the results do not systematically vary when using six dimensions, only two dimensions were needed.

Analyses showed that semantic representations for the terms culture and language differ in three important ways: content, density, and uniformity.

Content. First, the neighborhood for culture is quite semantically rich, but language is somewhat more procedural in nature (see Table 2).

Simply put – after controlling for derivatives of language (languages, etc.) – culture and its derivatives (cultural, etc.) contribute substantially to the semantic representation of language, but the inverse is not true. The neighborhood for culture is asymmetrically richer and includes more conceptual content words (historical, modern, social) of equivalent or greater proximity, whereas the neighborhood for language contains more function words (e.g., pronouns).

The contribution of language to the vector for culture is low, relatively speaking. Language is the fortieth neighbor to culture, but culture is the first [non-derivative] nearest neighbor to language. Although culture and language share some neighbors, such as references to time (e.g., modern, traditional, and historical) and people (e.g., social, human, people), culture has a closer relationship with those neighbors.

Density. Vector density refers to the distance of a word to its nearest neighbors: words whose nearest neighbors are more similar to the target word have denser semantic neigh-

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borhoods than words whose nearest neighbors are less similar or naturally occur in a more distal way in the corpus in terms of localized sentence structure. In the Wikipedia corpus, neighborhood density is higher for culture than for language (see Figure 2). In order to get to the same level of resolution on the culture vector that is required to simply include the 50 nearest terms from the language vector, one would have to scale out to include 209 terms from culture. Thus, culture has four times the semantic density/richness of language and is a great deal more complex, having more complex terms as nearest neighbors and fewer function words.

As shown in Table 2 and in Figure 2, the nearest neighbors of culture have higher cosines (Table 2) and are closer in space (Figure 2) than those of language, indicating a richer semantic representation for culture. Although the nearest neighbors of language are close to other neighbors of language, they are relatively distant from language itself. Though both language and culture load on each other’s meaning in the form of the feature vector, language loads lowest in both vectors. Language actually loads lowest in its own feature vector to its nearest neighbors. Note the centrality of culture in its multidimensional scaling solution for an equal, but opposite spatial relationship.

Culture has many very-near terms contributing to its definition.

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iance in the distances each term held from each other in the global co-occurrence matrix.

Language itself is distal from every other point in the language vector when each term’s interterm distance is accounted for.

A more global grayscale view of the feature vectors reveals that the entire matrix for culture can be visually depicted as more dense simply by converting the cosines to a color value (see Figure 3 on page 130) in the Nearest-50 Semantic Neighbor Density Visual Projection for each term. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the gap in spatial constraints of each term’s vector. Differences in density are apparent from a simple visual inspection of that projection. Ignoring the diagonal, any cell that showed as a darker shade of gray was closer to the target term. In Figure 3, other than the diagonal (which is each term’s weight relative to itself, always 1.0), the nearer a neighbor is to the target word, the darker the color.

The darker overall image vector, along with the mathematical values in the distance table, establishes that the 50 nearest neighbors for culture are nearer to the target term than are the 50 nearest neighbors for language. Thus, the Density Visual Projection establishes that, in the Wikipedia natural language corpus, culture has a much denser neighborhood than does language.

Uniformity. Another observation involves the distribution of points in space for each of the target terms. The points projected into space for the culture term are more uniformly distributed, which means they tend to occur at roughly similar proximal distance both from each other and from the target term. In contrast, language has a much higher degree of varThe Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, Vol. 1, Issue 1, May 2014

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Figure 3: Nearest-50 Semantic Neighbor Density Visual Projection for ‘Culture’ (top panel) and ‘Language’ (bottom panel)

culture than do OSD documents, references to culture were matched or exceeded by references to language. Within OSD, foreign language still tends to dominate many of the policies and discussions in this domain.

Study 2 addressed the meaning of LRC elements as they may be interpreted by readers and stakeholders of the LRC policies. Rather than looking at the intent of the authors of the documents, these analyses examined the relationship between language and culture in general understanding, using the language of shared popular knowledge as reflected in the collectively-edited documents of Wikipedia.

These analyses showed that although culture contributes to the meaning of language, the relationship is asymmetrical and these terms have distinct meanings.

Discussion Word frequency analyses indicate that despite DoD’s increased attention to culture in the post-9/11 era, there was no evidence from the lexical analyses that policies emphasized culture over language. Study 1 addressed the language of the policies and government analyses, examining leaders’, decision makers’, and government observers’ emphasis on different elements of the LRC strategies. The hypothesis that the Services’ policies prioritized culture to a greater degree than did OSD policies was only partially supported. Although the Services’ policies contain more references to

One limitation of these analyses is that there is no perfect conceptual correspondence for the terms used. Alrich and colleagues (2011) have noted that terminology for LRC capabilities differs across DoD components and institutions. Similarly, it is possible that the same terms may be used in different ways across components. The terms for capability areas used in the present analyses were not an exhaustive list of all possible terms, but focused instead on the terms most often used in defense discussions of these issues. For example, area is sometimes used interchangeably with region, but was not included in the analyses due to other common meanings that do not refer to geographic regions (e.g., a topic area).

The present research suggests that the perception of culture as the Services’ priority is a myth. Overall, there was no difference in references to culture and references to language in the Services’ policies. The Army Culture

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and Foreign Language Strategy is the only Service LRC strategy to attempt explicitly to prioritize culture over language for generalpurpose forces (2009, p. 6). However, the implementation of the policy does not reflect that emphasis. Both the Executive Order and Army Posture Statement implicitly reverse the prioritization, making more references to language than to culture.

Findings are therefore inconsistent with the conclusions of the RAND review (DeCamp et al., 2012) and with other commentary (Watson, 2010). We found no support for the notion that OSD treats language, culture, and region equally and that the Services prioritize culture. Instead, OSD seems to have incorporated culture and region as subordinate elements of foreign language training and education. The present text analysis suggests that, although attention to culture and region has certainly increased in the last decade, attention to foreign language has similarly increased.

Given the overlap in documents analyzed in the present study and in the RAND review, it is unclear why the qualitative and quantitative reviews produced such different conclusions about the weighting of LRC capabilities.

Exploratory analyses in Study 2 showed that language and culture are not only quite distinguishable from each other, they have very different associations with other, related concepts. Results from density analyses showed that although culture is a central feature of language, language is far more peripheral to culture. Furthermore, relative to culture, language is peripheral even to the words that relate to it most closely. This finding suggests that the relationship between language and culture is an asymmetric one, and these con-

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cepts are neither interchangeable nor inseparable.

DoD Emphasis on Language The continuing emphasis on language in OSD policies has several potential explanations, which the current research cannot directly disentangle. One explanation is that decision makers and observers believe, either implicitly or explicitly, that language is more important for military personnel than culture and region.

Foreign language capability may be perceived as more useful, or perhaps simply more difficult to achieve than cultural and regional capabilities, therefore requiring more attention and more resources. The challenge of reaching fluency in a foreign language is widely recognized, particularly for adult learners. Because learners cannot fully assimilate into a culture or achieve deep expertise without fluency in the language, a large investment in foreign language may be seen as a necessity.

However, deep expertise and potential assimilation are not the goals for general-purpose forces.

A second possibility is that leaders and decision makers within the defense LRC community have a different understanding of the LRC concepts and capabilities. Decision makers may believe language is, or should be, the primary route to cultural understanding and regional knowledge. Some may view language as a super-ordinate category that encompasses culture, and is therefore the best route to learning culture.

The language-route to-culture view has proponents in theory (e.g., language as an enabler of cultural understanding or regional expertise, Outzen, 2012; Stratton, 2006), but evidence for practical support is scarce. Where language is genuinely viewed as a means to

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other outcomes, one would expect to see assessments of those outcomes included in training, education, and personnel management. Not only are research findings to address such outcomes sparse (Abbe, 2008), there are few instruments available even to assess those relationships. Examples of such efforts exist, such as the development of a regional proficiency assessment (Center for Advanced Study of Language, 2012), but they have not yet received even a fraction of the investment and attention that language aptitude and proficiency testing have received.

Furthermore, the language-route-to-culture view is not consistent with popular understanding of the terms as revealed in the HiDEx semantic analysis. Not surprisingly, experts may diverge from a more general audience in understanding their subject matter.

However, examining how a policy or directive may be understood by their audience can help experts and decision makers better convey their intent. Perhaps OSD intended to place equal emphasis on all three LRC elements, as the RAND review suggested (DeCamp et al., 2012), but their more frequent references to language convey that the priority is language.

where they are going, as well as on time and resource constraints. Service members with recent deployment experience have provided some useful feedback on these issues (Abbe & Gallus, 2012; Chambers & Maki, 2012; Hardison et al., 2009), which can help inform future policy and programs. In addition, good practices from the science of training (Salas, Tannenbaum, Kraiger, & Smith-Jentsch, 2012) can further inform policy. For example, assessing performance and mission outcomes and incorporating training evaluation would be particularly helpful in determining what aspects of LRC training are most critical.

As scholars across disciplines have observed, gaining consensus on a definition of culture is a controversial undertaking. However, a better understanding and consensus on the relationships among culture, language, and related concepts is critical to training and educating a globally-responsive force. The nature of these relationships should be a topic of continued discussion and research to inform the development of policies and programs that best prepare service members for their roles and missions.

The realities of deploying personnel to specific geographic locations further highlight the lack of a one-to-one, symmetric relationship among LRC capabilities. Regions and national borders often do not conveniently divide along cultural and linguistic lines. Diverse cultures and regions sometimes use the same language, and different languages are sometimes spoken in culturally similar populations.

The appropriate emphasis on each likely depends on what personnel will be doing and

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Allison Abbe is Principal Scientist with Synergist Research and Consulting. She previously held positions in the federal government with the inter-agency High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group and the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Dr. Abbe holds a PhD in Personality and Social Psychology and BAs in Psychology and Political Science. She is a recipient of the Army Research and Development Achievement Award and a member of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Robert Morrow is a Senior Engineer with Cloudera where he specializes in data science and in high-dimensional models of semantic memory. He previously held a position as the Chief Architect of Oracle Corporationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s National Security Group where he supported U.S. Government engineering efforts for high- performance distributed systems. Mr. Morrow previously worked with Dr. Curt Burgess on research on the Hyperspace Analogue to Language and on Latent Semantic Analysis

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