In this scenario, the Oslo Traffic Police hold more power (+P) due to their authority and institutional role, while keeping social distance (+D) is crucial to maintain the formal structure of the administrative interaction. While Norwegian cultural values emphasize 'Equality,' there is still a clear hierarchical structure in place when it comes to law enforcement. Pellegrino adopted an independent face strategy to negotiate with the police, as the lower-status participant applied polite language, making his request in a non-imposing manner.

William Labov's narrative model contributed to revealing how the contexts in which the narrators were situated affected their experiences (Johnstone, 2016). Additionally, Labov's framework helped to understand the identities narrators tried to construct through narratives, especially in the speaking narratives (Labov, 2013). Therefore narrative inquiry can help researchers  comprehensively understand the personal experiences under the transcultural communication contexts.

Because Pellegrino was lived in Italy, preferring to negotiate his way out of parking problems as he used to, as he belonged to the past rather than ‘fitting in’ and moving forward. So, he got the parking ticket due to irregularities in Norway, which is a new and unknown country for him. This shows that “the stronger the drive to ‘belong’, the more invested the processes of fitting in in a new field and a transformation in one’s way of being.” (Kirilova & Angouri, 2018, p. 355)

In this text, when Pellegrino, an Italian, negotiated with the Norwegian traffic police after being fined, the Norwegian traffic police judged that the person he was talking to was an Italian by virtue of his name and accent. Based on the stereotype of the Italian culture, that is, Italians love football culture, are good at talking, and are humorous, the Norwegian traffic police chose to communicate with the same humorous tone and text descriptions related to football crossing the line. Both the choice of content and ways of the conversation, the Norwegian traffic officer's feedback impressed Pellegrino, and he was happy to share them with the audience.

Therefore, this scene shows that using positive stereotypes in communication scenarios of different cultural backgrounds allows both parties to communicate information efficiently, enhance understanding and interact harmoniously, even if they're not in the process of understanding each other more fully (McFarlane, 2014).

• Ineffectiveness of Pellegrino’s behaviors to persuade the Oslo Traffic Police and the police's incapacity to respond to his question can be explained by different and incompatible expectations around social rights and obligations between Italians and Norwegians. The social right and obligation were social conventions which involved the appropriateness driven from particular cultures (Nguyen, 2023).

• The behavior of using speech's power to persuade the police reflects Pellegrino’s Italian identity. Moreover, speaking English and actively reporting parking issues to the police as a way Norwegians typically did reflected Pellegrino’s attempts in identity negotiation. It was aligned to the context that he was influenced by multiple nations' cultures. It revealed identity’s  fluid and dynamic natures (Canagarajah, 2010).

Context:Pellegrino is an Italian with living experiences in Norway, and engages in addressing a parking violation with Norwegian traffic police.

Complicating action: The Narrator used persuasion skills to negotiate the rule with the police for avoiding the fine resulting from parking violation. The Police used humor to reject his appeal.

Evaluation: Pellegrino uses humor to acknowledge Norwegians’ strict adherence to the rules which have no possibilities to be negotiated.

Result of resolution: Pellegrino failed to persuade and received the fine.

Coda: Pellegrino recognized that people from different cultural backgrounds tended to perceive and address the same events differently.

Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry: A methodology for studying lived experience. In Research studies in music education, (27), 44-54. 10.1177/1321103X060270010301

Easton, G. (2016). How medical teachers use narratives in lectures: a qualitative study. BMC Medical Education, 16, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-015-0498-8 

Johnstone, B. (2016). “Oral Versions of Personal Experience”: Labovian Narrative Analysis and Its Uptake. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20(4), 542–560. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12192

Kanahara, S. (2006). A Review of the Definitions of Stereotype and a Proposal for a Progressional Model. Individual Differences Research, 4(5).

Kirilova, M., & Angouri, J. (2018). You Are Now One of Us – Negotiating ‘Fitting in’ in the Workplace. A. Creese & A. Blackledge (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity (pp. 345–360). Routledge.

Labov, W. (2013). The language of life and death : the transformation of experiencein oral narrative. Cambridge University Press.

Labov, W., & Waletsky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 3-38. 

McFarlane, D. A. (2014). A positive theory of stereotyping and stereotypes: is stereotyping useful?. Journal of Studies in Social Sciences, 8(1).

Nguyen, H. (2023). Interactional sociolinguistics as a multi-pronged approach to office hour rapport management. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 62. 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2022.101213

Nunan, D., & Choi, J. (2010). Achieving Community. D. Nunan & J. Choi (Eds.), Language and culture: Reflective narratives and the emergence of identity (pp. 41–49). Routledge.

Scollon, R., Scollon, W.S., & Jones, R. H. (2012). Intercultural communication: A discourse approach (3rd ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

2.Based on your experience, how do language choice and politeness strategies affect the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication?

Thank you!