The ethnographic project 2010

Introduction

 When we started fieldwork in October 2010, there were three matters that concerned me particularly: nonverbal communication patterns, stereotypes and language. While doing cross-cultural communication research, you have your choice of a seemingly limitless range of topics. So,  why these?  The last one has long been a hallmark of our Faculty; as far as NVC-patterns and stereotypes are concerned, it seems like no cross-cultural communication research can avoid the topics these days. My interest in names arouse I guess quite naturally from the title and the idea of my dissertation which was actually devoted to the names of American short stories. The rest was given to me by my students. I want to share our observations, those of foreign students, of Russians and those which they made together working in teams. Not all of these observations are particularly original, but some are really funny and all of them are sincere and made straight from the heart (you know, no cheating or plagiarism or all these things students are usually so good at) and that is, I guess, what makes them so valuable. I offer thanks to all my students, who have appeared before me in this project in so many curious forms.  

Tatyana Vasilyeva