Teaching language and communication in the age of social media is so great. It’s just an endless source of authentic and engaging input, materials, examples and illustrations of whatever it is we may be teaching.

I’m teaching intercultural communication to pre-service Chinese language teachers this semester. I came across this video by comedian Killian Sundermann, which hilariously illustrates some cultural differences in the ways that Irish people and German people offer cake to each other and some of the miscommunications that might arise from these differences.

In other words, it shows some intercultural differences in pragmatics, or how language is used.

Our class discussions don’t just focus on the differences in intercultural pragmatics, but on developing intercultural pragmatic competence–that is, the skills and abilities to be able to successfully navigate these differences.

So we talked about linguistic strategies for refusal and insistence, and what language structures, vocabulary, etc. a learner might need to learn in order to apply these strategies.

Forget the adage to “never read the comments”: the comments on this video are actually a gold mine of strategies and informal analysis, and additional examples of differing refusal and insistence behaviour from around the world.

As one commenter said, “I’ve actually tried the “take it take it take it” technique on an Irish person and I can confirm that it works.

We also talked about what non-verbal communication, such as body language, gestures, etc., are used in the video.

I love sharing these examples of intercultural pragmatic competence-building in the wild! My students loved it too.