Investigating the Role of Cultural Schemata in Understanding Others' Spoken Discourse

Abstract

This paper aims to answer the question which is said, "To what extend cultural gap lets most people not to understand each other's spoken discourse critically?". It is an attempt to show the importance of cultural schemata in understanding each other's spoken discourse. The researchers have adopted the qualitative method. A questionnaire and interview were used as tools for collecting data relevant to the study. The sample of this study comprised of (60) + (10) people who did not share the same cultural background and they were descended from different cultural background identities. The marks obtained from the questionnaire and interviews were compared. The results have revealed that the cultural schemata play a great role in understanding each other's spoken discourse critically. Also, the results have shown that that there are highly differences among those people who descended from different cultural background identities. Therefore, more space should be given to those people to bridge the gap among themselves and others in terms of exchanging the discursive messages.