The Role of Language and Culture in ODR

The language captured in the dictionary often reflects the culture, and language and culture combined are major components of a person’s social identity.  Identity issues play a crucial role in causing and resolving dispute. In the study of group process, the manipulation of language in communication can often strengthen or weaken a group’s solidarity.  It can also used to categorize individuals into ‘in-group’ and the ‘out-group’ members (Tidwellthe way one thinks about reality.  Many linguistic studies have addressed the importance of language in influencing thought processes.  The linguistic relativity theory has widespread implications for understanding psychological and cultural life, for the conduct of research itself and for public policy. 

In the past two decades, the field of cognitive linguistics has demonstrated that language does influence how people think, feel, reason and communicate in everyday life (Yu, 2003).  Many abstract concepts are inherently structured, to varying degrees by language and metaphors arising from recurring embodied experience in the physical and cultural world.  In their famous Linguistic Relativity Theory, the prominent linguists Sapir-Whoft have suggested that ‘those who are monolingual, bilingual or multilingual see the world differently’.   This is because people create words to describe things or concepts that are significant in their environment.  For example, there are eight words for coffee beans in the Brazilian language, twenty-five words for snow in the Inuit language for the Eskimos.

According to Sapir-Whorf’s  theory,

‘the pattern of thought may have to do with immediate perception and attention, with personal and social cultural systems of classification, inference, and memory, or with aesthetic judgement and creativity.  The reality may be the world of everyday experience, of specialized contexts or of ideational tradition.  These three key elements are linked by two relations:  language embodies an interpretation of reality and language can influence thought about that reality. The interpretation arises from the selection of substantive aspects of experience and their formal arrangement in the verbal code.  Such selection and arrangement is, of course, necessary for language, so the crucial emphasis here is that each language involves a particular interpretation, not a common, universal one.  An influence on thought ensues when the particular language interpretation guides or supports cognitive activity and hence the beliefs and behaviours dependent on it.’ (from Lucy, 1997, p. 294).

The notions of linguistic relativity indicate that one’s perceptions, interpretations, logic and the categorization and inference of everyday settings, as well as events, could be influenced by one’s understanding of a language or structure.  This leads to the hypothesis that the meaning and functions of one’s ‘relationships’ in a conflict situation is linguistically relative.  In addition, conflict resolution using English as the international language could be a form of power given to the English speaking parties.  This results in a conflict resolution process that is ineffective due to a lack of neutrality.

Case Study on Chinese Language

Guanxi, which is loosely translated in English as ‘relationships’ has found as one of the most deeply rooted Chinese values and the most important aspect of Chinese dispute resolution. 

In the Oxford English Dictionary (1999), the word ‘relationship’ refers to 1) the way in which two or more people are connected or the state of being connected; 2) the way in which two or more people or groups feel about and behave toward each other; and 3) an emotional and sexual association between two people. 

Unlike the English word, guanxi is an intricate, illusive concept (Kipnis, 1997; Dunfee & Warren, 2001) which cannot be clarified with a single definition.  Guanxi has multiple semantic meanings.  The Chinese Hanyu Dictionary (2000) gives the term guanxi at least five usages.  First of all, the concept of guanxi is used to denote the existence of a relationship between people who share a common status group or are related to a common person.  So guanxi in this context could refer to one’s social ties and connections with a certain group of people in general, or to the specific connections that exist between those people and the actual contact that they have.  Secondly, guanxi is used to describe a way of behaving which is relatively diplomatic, involving practices such as regular visiting, reciprocal exchange of favours and gifts.  Thirdly, guanxi can be used as term of bearing forgiveness, e.g., mei guanxi is often used in daily conversation to say  ‘it doesn’t matter’ or ‘it doesn’t make much difference or effect’ (Note: mei means no, not and nil).  For example, if one person says ‘I am sorry for being late’ they may receive a reply such as ‘mei guanxi’ or ‘it doesn’t matter’.  Fourthly, guanxi could be used as an indicator of a causal relationship between two facts. (For example, youyu shijian guanxi, wo xian zhoule means ‘Because time is limited, I have to go now’).  Fifthly, guanxi can be used as a verb, adjective or noun that indicates a consequential relationship, which is cause and effect.  For instance, zhe guanxi dao wo de jiaren, literally say ‘this matter has affected my family’.

When applying the term of guanxi in a social context, the discourse of guanxi goes beyond any dictionary definition (Bian, 1994).  Due to its nature, which is highly elastic and situational-based, the usage of the term guanxi is context-oriented and is therefore intricate.

The difficulties of translating cultural meanings in words cannot only be frustrating, but unfair as well.  Individuals from different cultural and social units perceive the world through the lens provided by their unique vocabulary.  Language provides a repertoire of words that name the categories into which the language’s users have divided the world. 

Moreover, studies have reported that people from collective cultures like the Chinese, place a greater emphasis on maintaining relationships, particularly long-term relationships, than people from individualist cultures (Buttery & Leung, 1996).  Others have argued that the Chinese concept of relationships is about building a life-long partnership, and cannot be confined to notions of single negotiations and one-off social transactions (e.g., Pye, 1986).  Do Chinese perceive relationships differently to Anglo-Westerners? How many similarities and differences are there between Chinese version of effective ODR and Anglo-Westerners notions of efficient ODR?

Ties and interconnectedness

The relationships notion of guanxi is as intricate and resilient as its interlinking concepts.  One’s social interactions, attitudes and behaviour are different depending on the types of guanxi relationships one has with the other person. 

Hwang (1987) uses the terms ‘expressive ties’ and ‘instrumental ties’ to describe different levels of relationships.  Although relatively vague, these distinctions have provided a good basis for later studies.  He suggested that ‘expressive’ ties are formed through permanent and stable relationships, such as immediate family and close relatives.  Based on an egalitarian or so-called ‘needs-based’ resource-distribution system, it ensures that those within the group who have greater needs (e.g., the young and the elderly) will be given a larger share of the group’s resources.   ‘Instrumental ties’ were used to refer to more unstable and temporary situations (e.g., business ties).  The resource allocation for instrumental relationships are based on contribution, or so called, the equity norm, that is, those who work harder receive a larger share.   ‘Mixed ties’ are in-between, and refer to permanent and stable relationships that aren’t close blood ties.  They often involve friends such as individuals from the same home town or same school.  They are personal and affective relationships between exchange partners.  Resource allocation is based on equality basis, that is, resources tend to be distributed equally to everyone regardless of need or contribution.  Hwang further suggests that these three ties are not mutually exclusive as they represent a concentric circle of contacts. 

Guanxi may fall into to one of these three categories: 1) the existence of a relationship between people who share a group status or are related to a common person; 2) connections between people who have frequent contact, and 3) contacts between people who have little direct interaction.  Then, Tsang (1998) introduced the explanation of ‘guanxi base’ which entails either a blood relationship or some social interconnection (e.g., those who went to the same school, belong to the same neighbourhood, work in the same organization etc.).

Renqing

Renqing translates into English as human sentiment or human emotion (ren refers to human being, qing refers to sentiment, emotion, favour, kindness, relationship).  In Chinese philosophy, renqing denotes ‘a human being’s common emotional response, although it implies an obligatory affective component which serves to define the responsibility one has toward the other’ (Chang & Holt, 1991). The Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory defines renqing as ‘relationship orientation, which covers adherence to cultural norms of interaction based on reciprocity, exchange of social favours, and exchange of affection according to implicit rules.’ However, renqing cannot be equated with the concept of emotion in the Western tradition. Qu (1993) suggested that renqing involves the element of propriety, is a mixture of feelings, relations and morality, that is, the focus is on interpersonal relationships, not the self.

Renqing also implies a process whereby when one receives a favour based on a human obligation, the other person is obliged to pay back this favour sometime in the future. 

 The third connotation of renqing suggests gifts, presents or some sort of monetary gift. Zhuoge renqing indicates a unique Chinese gift-giving practice, which carries a strong implication of guanxi obligation.  During special occasions such as New Year, weddings, birthdays and festivals, Chinese often feel duty-bound to give presents to individuals of priority within their guanxi network.  For example, gifts to respected individuals or people of a superior or more powerful social status, gifts to individuals who helped them before and owe them renqing.  These gift-giving activities are a large part of guanxi building and maintenance.  The amount of the value of the gift varies somewhat according to the depth of the relationship.  In general, the closer or stronger the guanxi relationships one has with another, the bigger the gift one should give to the other. 

The fourth connotation of renqing suggests a wise understanding of human relationships.  Chinese phrases such as renqing shigu suggest possessing a worldly wisdom about relationships.  One would give a compliment to a grown-up ‘ta dong de renqing shigu’, who has a good understanding of guanxi practices and is mature enough to deal with the diplomatic guanxi matter.

Missing of Tones -  Missing of Meaning

It has been found that nonverbal language consists of 85% to our communication. People are more likely to miscommunication without nonverbal cues.  Internet communication highly relying on reading and writing.  Researches using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) (e.g., Chee et al, 1999; Chen et al., 2000) found that the left hemisphere was activated when reading English and Chinese, but Chinese’s right hemisphere was activated while reading Chinese as its demand intensive visual-spatial analysis.

The Chinese, Japanese and Korean language consists of symbols and characters that represent meanings, that appear to rely to a greater degree on visual and spatial cognitive process.  These languages are considered by many to be highly metaphorical, holistic, circular, indirect and symbolic.  The Arabic write from right to left.  That results to different cognitive processing of information and logic. Visual working memory does not appear to play a significant role in routine English language processing other than through imagery.

Chinese speakers rely on logographs’ highly differentiated orthographic information during verbal communication because there is an abundance of homophones in the Chinese language – words that sound the same but have different meanings. The high occurrence of homophones makes sound an ambiguous mnemonic code.  Mandarin Chinese, for example, utilized only about 400 syllables with 1,300 with tones, compared to about 4,000 syllables in the English language.  In contrast, the comparison of graphemic to phonemic components stands in a 10:1 ratio in Mandarin and meaning is unambiguous yet highly contextual based in written Chinese.  When Chinese people negotiate online in another language, that suggests that there is a missing abundance of meanings may have lose in the Internet.

In Tavassoli’s (2002) study, he found these Chinese and English language systems have significant effects on one’s discourse comprehensiveness, logic formation, spatial thinking and reasoning. This suggests that Chinese visual components play a more dominant role in Chinese than English speakers.  It has been noted that numerous conventional expressions are systematically tied to each other and contribute to the underlying conceptual metaphors.

For example, Cheng (1991) compared the epistemology of thought processes of Asian and Anglo-Westerners.  Cheng concluded that Asian thought processes could be distinguished from the Anglo-Westerners’ in relation to utilitarian and holistic approaches to information.  Cheng found Anglo Westerners cognitive processes were characterized by ‘analytic, differentiated and dichotomous cognitive styles’ while Asian thought processes were characterised as ‘synthetic, contextual and holistic’ (p. 7).  Cheng described the former as ‘directed thinking’ and the latter as ‘total thinking’.  Directed thinking includes dialectic thinking, which develops in a linear way, inherent in logical thinking, and has strong goal orientation.  Asian thought processes were found to consist of a more enveloping or encircling development of logic, giving a vague or inconsistent and even self-contradictory logic, with little implication of agenda or goal to the process.  These circular thought processes narrow down into a focal point in the end. 

Language as a structure of meaning giving, of reality creation, of logic, is composed of words, sentences, punctuation, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, grammar etc.  That is what the communication is based to describe an incident and to explain one’s emotions, needs, interests and fears.

Language can not only resolve disputes, it can escalate them.  Definitions of words are linguistically and culturally and contextually bound.  Words carry meanings that may only make sense to members of a shared social environment.  There are often words that i) do not have an exact equivalent in the other language or ii) do not have a similar expression in the other language.  Translations of words usually only offer approximate glosses, not exact equivalents. However the use of such glosses is quite understandable and often unavoidable.  Ignoring or denying linguistic and cultural diversity for our global ODR development and implementation is not only a problematic issue but could perpetuate a systematic power imbalance which will need to be addressed and considered, if ODR is to grow beyond its western origins. 

Skutnabb-Kangas’s comprehensive analysis of the entire field of language dominance, language rights, and language ecology has synthesised a multidisciplinary paradigms of language as illustrated in Table 3 in the Appendix:

[T]he Diffusion of English paradigm entails the promotion of one language (English) and one culture (the USA’s) at the expense of the others, by means of the interlocking of linguistic imperialism with a system of production and ideologies that attempt to justify an economically expansionist and exploitative world order.  The Ecology of Language paradigm, by contrast, builds on our linguistic and cultural diversity, attempts to ensure equality for speakers of all languages, and uses the human rights system as a counterweight to the ‘free’ market.  (pg. 13, Phillipson, 2002)

The question of fairness, neutrality and justice needs to raised in regard to a lack of cultural and linguistic awareness in designing the increasingly importance global tool in managing dispute across national borders.

Misunderstandings would be aggravated not only by the fact that nonverbal communication is missing in ODR, but by the fact that one person underestimated or was ignorant of the range of value systems that define written language as well as the ways of understanding experience that have been developed in different cultural and social environments. 

Creel Froman, in his book “Language and Power” (1992), noted that ‘all that is known is known in language’.  Those who control language, control what knowledge, meaning, and reality are taken to be, (at least their legitimate, authorized version) that all members of a social unit learn.  Power is located in the systems of which we are members.

In a multicultural, multilingual world that we now live in, we often take language for granted by using English as a tool for negotiation and dispute resolution.  According to Froman (1992), ‘there are obvious advantages to some in imposing a language and restricting the creation and circulation of other languages to negotiate toward a desirable agreement.  These advantages concern the distribution of what is considered valuable within any group and the positions of power within the group. Those to whom advantages go will enforce language, which promotes and protects those advantages, and further dis-empowered the disadvantaged.  The process is manifestly gate-keeper to the non-English natives to negotiate in equal term with the natives.  Research has found that English language errors made by a non-native are interpreted as substandard, a lack of carefulness and failure.    

The questions of what language is shared within ODR, who controls that language, and even languages of resistance are thus of foundational importance. If ODR entails the promotion of one language (English) and one culture (Western, individualistic culture) at the expense of others, by means of the homogenisation of world culture and language. In particular dealing with transnational dispute, an ODR model that is designed on the basis of linguistic, cultural and functional ‘western’ homogeneity is itself a biased, flawed and ethnocentric process.  

The Potential Development of ODR

Given that Internet allows communication to occur across national boundaries and time zones, ODR could play a crucial role in facilitating dialogues across cultures and nationalities.

Samuel Huntington (1996) employed the concept of culture in a broad fashion to suggest that future conflict in international arena would take place not in politics or economics, but between civilizations, which largely involves the issues of culture and identity.   Wherever different cultures meet and exchange views, new developments occur.  This dynamic, continuous process represents an opportunity and a challenge at one and the same time for every one of us.   His idea has struck a chord for many people across the world, especially after the increasingly seriousness of intercultural conflicts which are largely based on different cultural values, ideologies, perceptions, assumptions and mistrust.  In his thesis, he argued that the major divide is between ‘the West and the Rest’, as only the West valued ‘individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets.  The two most menacing value systems for the West were predictably, Islam and Confucianism. 

In a context of intercultural conflict, perceptions of and emotional reactions to an event, as well as to the other party, could be bound by one’s sociocultural assumptions.  Interactions can certainly have a direct influence on the degree of perceived agreeableness between interdependent parties.  Many western scholars have claimed that interpretations of an event are bound by sociocultural perceptions. Cultural variation has an impact on motivation, cognition and behaviour. Perceivers use domain-specific implicit assumptions that make sense of their social world. Conflict can be filtered through the lenses of ethnocentrism and stereotypes.  Perceptions can color the conflict attribution process.  Ethnocentrism is defined as the tendency to view the cultural practices as the ‘proper’ ones and to rate all other cultural practices with reference to one’s own standards.  Members of a culture may believe that their approach is the only ‘correct’ or ‘natural’ way to handle conflicts.  They tend to see the conflict management behaviours of other cultures as ‘deviant’ from their own standard.  The rigidly held ethnocentric attitude promotes a climate of mistrust in intergroup conflict, which serves as a hidden barrier to constructive conflict resolution.   Can ODR be designed in a way to enhance cultural awareness as part of the process?  Can it lift the cultural lenses and reduce the misperceptions?

Because a cultural system is dynamic, interpreting research on culture is problematic.  This constraint leads to many cultural theories being relatively shallow and tending to produce over-generalizations.  New technologies however allow us to handle complex data, beyond human capacity.  However, can computer assisted technology help us navigate through the many complexities inherent in cross-cultural interaction, a field of endeavour we are only beginning to map?

For example, Chinese and Anglo-westerners may use different specialized implicit causal theories to interpret social and physical events.  Cultural differences in which duty-based morality and social ranking are emphasized in Chinese societies, while rights-based morality and egalitarianism are valued in North American societies (Morris & Peng, 1994; Chiu et al., 1997; Chiu & Hong, 1997).

In terms of the level of disclosure, culture does have an influence on communication in in-group and out-group relationships. The study of Gudykunst and colleagues (1992) found Chinese students from Hong Kong and Taiwan disclose more about themselves to ingroup (e.g., friends and family members) than to out-group members (e.g., counsellors and people with whom they are not familiar), but no such difference in disclosure was found with students from North America and Australia.  Choi, Nisbett & Norenzayan (1999) concluded from their review of the universality of dispositional attributions that North Americans and Europeans prefer to explain social behaviour primarily in terms of personal attributes and dispositions, whereas East Asians tend to give primary consideration to situational and contextual factors.   Would the distance afforded by computer mediated communication effect this dynamic?  Would East Asians reveal more of less about themselves through the medium of online communication?

The dominant cultures’ perception of what is a dispute or conflict can place a barrier to conflict resolution services for people belonging to a minority or indigenous group who interpret an alleged dispute incident as perhaps not meeting their criteria for a dispute.  As Lund and colleagues (1994) commented, the justification and labelling of an incident as ‘a dispute’ is itself an expression of power.  Could the ODR of the future mould meaning of ‘disputes’ and  ‘resolution’ into mutually and culturally acceptable terms in a way that is adaptable and dynamic, every time a new user logs in? 

Culture forms one’s values, norms and styles in managing conflict.  Conflict often involves the perceived or actual incompatibility of norms and values, processes, or reasons over the following goal issues: content, identity, relationships and conflict process or procedure (Ting-Toomey, 1999).  A given type of social relationship (e.g., perceived in-group-out-group and cooperativeness-competitiveness can elicit characteristic processes and effects. The tendency to tolerate, to listen, to understand and to cooperate may be induced by a perceived similarity in values and belief system (e.g., collectivism), or by attitudes (e.g., sincerity) and behaviours (e.g., open discussion, silence). All these mind-frames are often bounded by one’s social and cultural upbringing.  Despite cultural assumption-making as one of the common causes of intercultural conflict, identity issues have also been a core factor of cultural conflict.  Some of these intercultural conflicts can be resolved when the parties realize – perhaps with the help of a culturally aware and sensitive third party – that their perceptions of divergent interests are erroneous.   Identity in ‘cyberspace’ can be very different from identity in the ‘real’ world.  People in chat rooms and multiple user domains, often adopt a cyber identity.  This is another degree of complexity that will be a challenge for ODR.

As culture is such an enigma (Ting-Toomey, 1999), and contains both concrete and abstract components, to provide one acceptable definition of culture is almost impossible. As long ago as the 1950s, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) identified more than 160 different definitions of culture. According to the cross-cultural psychologist, Levine (1995), culture is a shared organization of ideas that includes the intellectual, moral and aesthetic standards prevalent in a community and the meanings of communicative actions.  Triandis (1995) makes a distinction between subjective culture (the world view or the way a cultural group perceives its environment, including stereotypes, role perceptions, norms, attitudes, values, ideal and perceived relationships between events and behaviours) and material or concrete culture which includes the objects and artefacts of a culture. 

The process of enculturation, or growing up within a cultural system, is a foundation for shaping one’s mind frame and defining what is appropriate, what is inappropriate, what is good, what is bad, what is rude or polite, what is right or wrong (Pedersen, 1994). This is very important in understanding the role of culture in determining the constitution of a conflict and its process. Cultural values can narrow or broaden one’s perceptions of an event, focus or diffuse one’s sense of logic, or discard certain information as irrelevant (Hong & Chiu, 2001).  A cultural approach presents a unique perspective on conflict in which two people can disagree without one being right and the other being wrong (e.g., Pederson, 1994; Kalowski, 1996). Thus, a conflict could occur even when parties withhold a cooperative intention and share a similar goal (e.g., a win-win outcome). 

Similarly, the outcome of a resolved conflict could bring different interpretations by parties with different cultural backgrounds. The findings of a governmental dispute resolution study conducted by the Institute for Dispute Resolution in British Columbia has supported the notion that conflict is defined and characterised differently by participants with different cultural backgrounds (Lund, Morris & LeBaron, 1994).  The new generation of ODR may have to consider providing multiple processes that are ‘culturally smart’.  

Some conflicts arise from ideas about appropriate behaviour or perceived ill intent on the part of one party that were not seen as conflict by the other.   For example, the cultural values of personal privacy, space and time, values respecting confrontation, honesty and commitment, different assumptions about propriety, how to get things done, gender roles and the perceived relationship of the parties are all related to perceptions of conflict and individual common sense of what is conflict and what to do about conflict.  Ideas about individual and collective responsibility and attitudes toward authority can also colour these determinations.

A group of individuals who share the common values and social practices would gradually form a standard of acceptable behaviours called cultural norms. Similarly, continued acceptance as a member in one’s cultural group often requires that one exhibit certain behaviour and belief.  Therefore, cultural norms not only shape one’s behaviours, but are defined and maintained by those within the social group.  Culturally based scripts are related to normative behaviour.  Because scripts are learned, members of one’s culturally based group can pass them on and reinforce them.  Cultural scripts are mental representations that one has about oneself in a given situation.  They consist of a particular action plan or behavioural sequence indicated for familiar situations. These scripts, once developed, exist as a mentally programmed formula for individuals to respond to interact with other members under a particular context more or less automatically.  For example, Liu and Perfetti’s (1998) study on Chinese cognition found that most Chinese are strongly influenced to be respectful and obedient to superiors if they are present or even indirectly involved in a work situation.  That is, the situational cue of the involvement of superiors automatically invokes respectful and obedient behaviour.  Scripts not only aid in interpreting behaviour, they guide the planning and execution of activities.

People in every culture have both collectivist and individualist tendencies, but those from English speaking countries such as North America, England and Australia tend to be more individualist and maintain less power distance, while those from the non-English speaking countries such as Turkey, Italy and China tend to be more collectivist with larger power distance.  Schwartz (2000) suggested that a difference in value placement between cultures along these two dimensions has profound consequences for the validity of transferring conflict resolution models and processes from one cultural context to another.  In terms of perceptions of conflict, those from individualist cultures tend to assume that every person or every group has a unique goal or interest, and therefore conflict is more likely to be perceived as a natural and inevitable aspect of social life. The individualist also values direct confrontation and negotiating one’s need and interest as productive resolution.

Triandis (1988) has strongly emphasised the necessity of applying the concept of culture to understanding a conflict, the parties’ relationships and management of the conflict.  Misperceptions can occur when disputants assume that something of importance to them is also of great importance to the other party.  Once uncovered and corrected, erroneous assumptions can lead to mutually satisfactory ways of resolving a conflict.  If ODR is to live up to its potential, ODR should be looking at ways that it can facilitate intercultural dialogue, rather than act as a mere chatroom, set up in a mono-cultural domain.

Working to Design the New Generation of ODR

When the year 2001 was proclaimed United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations.  UNESCO Director-General, Ohrid said "We are convinced that dialogue represents a new paradigm of security, especially in a globalizing world with its manifold new challenges to individuals, communities and countries. A commitment to dialogue among civilizations is also a commitment against terrorism. Pursuing reconciliation and seeking security through dialogue requires a dynamic and pro-active civil society”.

There is a difference between the universal approach (based on a universal standard and using a universal language) to online dispute resolution and the local-centred online dispute resolution.    The universal approach assumes that an effective dispute resolution can be achieved when a dispute is resolved in a standardized way.  It implies that all disputants should follow a pre-designed process program and should negotiate and settled their disputes in one universally structured way.  The local-centred dispute resolution acknowledges that individuals and all disputes are different, dynamic and are cultural and contextual-oriented.  It suggests that an effective dispute resolution should take local cultural and linguistic factors into consideration.

Academics, computer scientists, psychologist, linguists and other disciplines should work collaboratively to incorporate these two approaches and to design the New-Generation Online Dispute Resolution. 

What could the New-Generation Online Dispute Resolution look like?

It could be a computerised 3^rd person mediation model that has multiple roles, such as: 

• Online mediator for intercultural dispute
• Internet facilitator for interfaith-dialogue
• Machine translations for cultural meanings
• Internet multilingual moderator for cross-cultural disputants
• Internet educator for the promotion of cross-cultural understanding 

It is crucial for the ODR researcher, programmer and developer to be aware of cultural factors that can impact upon ODR, then apply this understanding in an objective way when evaluating and seeking to improve on existing ODR models. 

But there will be challenges.  Some will be relatively easy to resolve.  For example, not every language uses the same characters (see Figure 2 in Appendix).  However there is software available to covert characters from one language into another.  But this is usually time consuming (and hence costly in terms of internet usage) for the person who needs to convert, resulting in abbreviations and restrictions on communication.  Furthermore, not everyone works on the same operating system, and the most widely used systems are designed for North American users who write left to right, top to bottom.  Assuming that market forces will result in computer hardware being designed in a more  locally-centred way, there are other factors that may be insurmountable.

Will our body of intercultural awareness and knowledge ever be deep enough to enable programmers to articulate such local-general knowledge?  Will our techniques of modelling interactions ever be capable of handling all the chaotic dynamics of interpersonal and inter-cultural exchanges?  And, due to various economical and political factors, will we ever be prepared to invest the resources, time and effort to strengthen this field of intercultural understanding for our future? 

As T. S. Eliot once wrote:

‘ For last year’s words belong to last year’s language’

And next year’s words await another voice.’

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