Intercultural Politeness Managing Relations across Cultures

It is increasingly important in our globalised world for people to successfully manage interpersonal relationships. This is the first book to tackle this vital topic, by taking an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the process of relating across cultures. Drawing together key concepts from politeness theory, intercultural communication, and cross-cultural/intercultural psychology, it provides a robust framework for analysing and understanding intercultural encounters. It explores the ways in which individuals make judgements about others, deal with offence and conflict, maintain smooth relations, and build new relationships. These processes are explained conceptually and illustrated extensively with authentic intercultural examples and empirical data. With accessible explanations and follow-up activities, it will appeal not only to academics working in the areas of intercultural communication, pragmatic theory, conflict research and other related academic disciplines, but also to students of these topics, as well as professionals such as intercultural trainers and those working in the third sector.

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Part I. Conceptual Foundations: 2. Conceptualising politeness; 3. Conceptualising culture; Part II. Evaluating Politeness across Cultures: 4. Overview of the politeness evaluation process; 5. Contextual assessments and culture; 6. Norms, expectations and culture; 7. Evaluation warrant 1: culture and the bases of rapport; 8. Evaluation warrant 2: culture and conceptions of the socio-moral order; 9. Making judgements and culture; 10. Application: data analysis sample and practice; Part III. Managing Politeness across Cultures: 11. Managing politeness across cultures: an overview; 12. Responding to offencess and restoring relations; 13. Dealing with disagreement and conflict; 14. Maintaining smooth intercultural relations; 15. Initiating and fostering positive intercultural relations; Part IV. Implications and Concluding Comments: 16. Implications for politeness theory; 17. Implications for the intercultural field.

Helen Spencer-Oatey is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Her academic background is in both psychology and linguistics, and she draws on both disciplines in her well-known work on rapport management and intercultural relations. Her popular books include Culturally Speaking (2008) and Intercultural Interaction (with Peter Franklin, 2009).
Dániel Z. Kádár is Chair Professor and Head of Research Centre in Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China and Research Professor at the Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is author/editor of twenty-five books and has expertise in intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics, interactional rituals and East Asian languages. He is Co-Editor in Chief of Contrastive Pragmatics: A Cross-Disciplinary Journal.