Hi all,
There have been some excellent comments suggested in the language document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pLB3-QYZdETd-fjBO9Bw6W93JbcJgcc5_m8BmUKp...
But a central question asked by Karina van Dalen-Oskam is not being answered there: what to do about intercultural differences in acceptable rhetoric?
This is a real issue and one that goes much farther than just interpersonal communication. Some disciplines, some cultures, have traditionally had very aggressive argumentative and rhetorical approaches to research communication; others have had far less aggressive ones.
I come from Anglo-Saxon studies, for example, which used to have a very hard and aggressive tone at conferences and the like (though it has toned itself down a lot in the current generation). But I'm also in North America, which has a far less aggressive academic culture on the whole, than, I'd say, the UK, Australia, or Germany.
I think there can also often be a strong gender aspect to this: part of the lessening of the aggression of tone in Anglo-Saxon studies, I'd argue, has been a result of the sea change in gender composition of the field in the last couple of decades: apparently 2/3 of the speakers at the last ISAS meeting were women, for example (I couldn't go).
So a real question is what to suggest about handling this? If you work in a discipline or culture that values that aggressive edge, for example, you can find not being tested aggressively vaguely insulting (as my father-the-physicist used to say, the worst thing in the world is being told you're not even wrong). But if you are used to a culture that values a more supportive or deferential or indirect approach to criticism and questioning, that same approach can come across as incredibly rude and exclusionary.
My own feeling is that this needs to be treated a little like native-speaker use of international English: i.e. that we need to strive, regardless of what we consider to be the norm, for an approach that is accommodating and inclusive rather than divisive. So if I'm used to asking hard questions in a hard way in my own discipline, in an international context, I need to consciously practice a style that is more deferential and supportive, even while asking necessary questions and making necessary value judgments, in an international forum.
Or is it as simple as saying "don't be an asshole"? I really don't know.