Intercultural Politeness: Managing Relations across Cultures

Product Description

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.

Review

‘With a firm focus on the negotiation of relationships in context, Helen Spencer-Oatey and Daniel Kadar provide an immensely useful discussion of theory, methodology, and applications in intercultural research on politeness. Their analyses draw on their extensive research experience and are illuminated by data from a wide range of sources, making this an engaging text which researchers, practitioners and students will find stimulating.’ Janet Holmes, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Victoria University of Wellington

‘This is an extraordinarily rich textbook on the cross-cultural management of interpersonal relationships, embedded in a state-of-the-art knowledge of recent research on the impact of our many cultural identities on how we communicate with others and the cooperative or conflictual results that follow. Both authors are recognized scholars in their respective areas of social psychology and in linguistic pragmatics but also have extensive experience in living and working successfully across cultural lines. Their academic backgrounds and personal experience produce a book that is both sophisticated in its appreciation of culture and practical in its application to the real world of interacting across cultural lines. Reading this book would be informative and enlightening to academics and students in the disciplines of social psychology, intercultural communication, discourse analysis and socio-pragmatics, as well as to professionals working in contexts of cultural diversity. Eminently readable and readily applicable.’ Michael Harris Bond, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

‘This wide-ranging multidisciplinary collation of research over-layered with original thinking is a jaw-droppingly impressive achievement. Both theoretical and applied, we (researchers, practitioners, students) are guided by the authors through the complexities of intercultural politeness with an easy yet assured hand, assisted by copious examples, diagrams and clarity of writing. This is a book that will reverberate through scholarship for many years to come.’ Jonathan Culpeper, Lancaster University

‘Emphasizing interpersonal relationships in intercultural settings, the authors offer an elegant integration of theoretical inputs, empirical evidences, concrete experiential examples, and practical reflections questions on intercultural politeness. The book is a timely contribution to our world that is in need of enhanced competences for intercultural connection.’ Yih-Teen Lee, IESE Business School, University of Navarra

‘As the world becomes a global village through increased intercultural contacts amidst the complexities of ethnic discriminations wrought by Covid-19 (Kulich et al, in press) the book Intercultural Politeness couldn’t have come out at a better time. This book provides a thorough analysis of managing i