This chapter provides an overview of Part III of the book and outlines the book’s conceptualisation of managing intercultural politeness; that is, managing interpersonal relations across cultures. The chapter approaches the issue from two angles: reactive and proactive politeness. The authors interpret reactive politeness as the behaviour that is instigated by (and hence responds to) an offence and the authors propose that it entails three key elements: perception of an offence; response to that offence; the consequences of that response. In practical terms, this involves apologies, disagreement and conflict. The chapter interprets proactive politeness as the behaviour that seeks to avoid an offence occurring in the first place, as well as behaviour aimed at establishing and building a new relationship. The former is core to traditional politeness theory, but the latter has been studied far less and needs more empirical research and theorising. The chapter ends by overviewing two key cognitive orientations – mindfulness–mindlessness and convergent–divergent accommodation – that, while relevant to all aspects of intercultural politeness, are especially important for managing intercultural politeness.

This chapter provides an overview to Part II of the book, which focuses on the process of making evaluative judgements with regard to politeness. Early in the history of mainstream politeness research, theorists argued that words and phrases are not inherently polite or impolite, but rather are judged as such by participants. Yet for many years there was remarkably little research into the process of interpersonal evaluation. Recently, there has been more attention paid to evaluation, yet there is a need for greater theorisation. This may particularly be the case with regard to politeness in intercultural scenarios, considering that the cultural background of the interactants, the extent to which culture influences the context of the interaction, and other aspects of culture strongly influence politeness evaluations. The chapter outlines the various steps involved in the process of making politeness evaluations. There are five main sections to the chapter: behaviour in context; normalcy zone and triggering of the evaluation process, evaluating behaviour and agent, evaluation warrant and judgement of behaviour and agent. We explore each of these steps in detail in subsequent chapters of Part II.

This chapter provides an introduction to the book. It starts with an introduction of readership, including all those who are interested in intercultural relations – in relating with people who have different national, linguistic, social, ethnic, religious or other backgrounds to ourselves. The focus, as the subtitle indicates, is therefore ‘relating across cultures’ – how people build, maintain and manage relations when communicating across group boundaries of various kinds, such as national, linguistic, ethnic. It then considers the two concepts within the main title of the book: ‘politeness’ and ‘intercultural’. It explains that we take a ‘relating’ perspective to politeness, and it offers a working definition of ‘culture’ as well as the notion of ‘intercultural’. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing together concepts and ideas from pragmatics, intercultural communication and cross-cultural and moral psychology, and we argue that such an interdisciplinary approach is vital for a topic like intercultural politeness. The chapter introduces the book's authors, providing some background to them, so that readers can understand the subjectivity of the authors' positions. The chapter also outlines the types of data the book uses throughout in support of its arguments. The chapter ends by briefly introducing the remaining chapters of the book.

This chapter explores the conceptualisation of interactional politeness and associated research. It investigates three interrelated questions: (1) who studies politeness; (2) what is ‘politeness’ and how is it related to culture; (3) what are the main data types in which the politeness–culture interface can be captured. The chapter first points out that along with pragmaticians – academics specialising in the study of language use – linguistic politeness has been studied across a diverse cluster of areas. Being aware of this diversity is important because in a pursuit of intercultural politeness we should not limit our research to pragmatics only. Following this discussion, the chapter overviews the key features of politeness, by arguing that (1) it is a relational phenomenon, which (2) follows (linguistic) patterns, (3) means different things, depending on who attempts to define (or interpret) it, and which (4) comes into existence partly in interaction, and partly by not engaging in interaction (e.g. a person may get criticised for not doing something in interaction). The chapter argues that in pragmatics insufficient work has been done to capture the politeness–culture interface. Finally, the chapter overviews the main data types in which politeness in intercultural encounters can be studied.

This chapter considers key aspects of the context that affect participants’ judgements of other people’s behaviour as well as their own. It starts by drawing an important distinction between context and the focal event and points out that while participants evaluate the focal event, that focal event is embedded in a context that frames interpretation and hence needs to be understood conceptually. The chapter explores it from two main angles: the scene and the participants, unpacking each of these angles in turn and considering how cultural factors may influence participants’ conceptualisation and interpretation of the various components of the context. The discussion not only emphasises that context is particularly important in intercultural encounters, but also that it cannot be limited to linguistic context, or even to aspects of contexts that can be studied with the conventional inventory of politeness research. Individuals bring a complex cluster of pre-existing extralinguistic and extra-contextual knowledge to interactions, and this cluster may underlie a striking variety of miscommunications in contexts where common ground is minimal. This, in turn, implies that any theory of context in intercultural politeness needs to be multidisciplinary in character. There are three main sections to the chapter: scene; participants; focal event.

This chapter explores what is meant by the complex concept of culture. It takes culture to encompass a range of patterns (including values, attitudes, beliefs, behavioural norms, schemas, role conceptualisation) that are common (i.e. generally shared) across members of a social group.We argue that there are three key notions associated with culture and its impact: cultural group memberships, cultural group identities and cultural patterning. In this chapter, we explore each of these elements and touch on the ways in which they may affect interaction. There are five main sections to the chapter: conceptualising culture; culture and social groups; culture and cultural patterning: fundamental issues; cultural patterning: perspectives; cultural patterning: cultural schemas and norms. The chapters in Parts II and III of the book explore in detail the impact of these various elements on intercultural interaction.

Chapter 7 explores three bases that people draw on when they make evaluative judgements of breaches of norms and expectations: interactional goals; face sensitivities and concerns; sociality rights and obligations. Together, these three elements form the first major component of the evaluation warrant: interpersonal sensitivities. For each of the bases of rapport, the chapter first considers how the facet has been conceptualised, and then considers the impact that cultural factors may have on the associated evaluation criteria. Lack of familiarity with norms and differing interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of certain behaviour are key ways in which culture can have an impact. The chapter three main sections: interactional goals; face sensitivities; sociality rights and obligations. In relation to the latter, the chapter considers the notion of conventions and conventionalisation, and note that breaches may or may not lead to negative evaluations. Sometimes they may simply be regarded as amusing or quaint, sometimes the behaviour may cause confusion, sometimes the breach may be (very) negatively evaluated.

Chapter 16 overviews the implications of the present book for future research on politeness. While politeness has been the focal point of the framework proposed in the book, it is important at the concluding stage to reflect on how this framework can advance research on politeness both inside and outside of the intercultural arena. The chapter considers in particular the following three questions: (1) what are the implications of the present book for research on relating? (2) How can the proposed framework advance understandings of the evaluation process through which politeness comes into existence? (3) What does the intercultural focus promoted in the book imply for politeness research?By investigating these questions, it is argued that present-day intercultural theory is capable of making an essential contribution in particular to these key areas of the politeness field. The chapter has three main sections: ‘performing’ relational management; understandings of the evaluation process; intercultural focus.

This final chapter of the book considers the implications of its findings for the intercultural field. The chapter explores a number of facets that are important both conceptually and from an applied point of view, including the relevance of ‘relating’ to intercultural competence and training, factors that affect the relating process, and the nature of the culture, context and behaviour interface. The chapter ends by suggesting some directions for future research. There are eight main sections in the chapter: intercultural relations and conceptions of intercultural competence; intercultural competence as behaviour: the contribution of interactional discourse; relational management as an interaction and evaluative process; the importance of context; exploring the interface of culture, context and behaviour; culture and social groups; intercultural relations and intercultural training; future research directions.

This chapter illustrates the operation of the analytic model we have elaborated in Part II of the book. The case comes from a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ American TV show in which members of the general public were tested as to whether they would intervene and help others in the face of public abuse. The incident has a complex participation structure, and as such triggers a complex set of polite and impolite evaluations. The goal here is to help the reader to deploy the concepts of the book’s model, including beyond relatively simple dyadic interpersonal interactions. The case is analysed in detail and then further data is provided for readers to try carrying out an analysis themselves.

This chapter focuses on the proactive management of relations in terms of ‘rapport maintenance’; in other words, the use of language to minimise or prevent causing offence. The chapter takes a communication-style approach and argues that directness–indirectness is a particularly important facet to be managed. This is not only because it is a key feature of politeness theorising, but because research has revealed widespread intercultural differences in people’s preferences for a given level of directness in a given context, and because this in turn can give rise to a range of interactional challenges and misunderstandings. The chapter also argues that other aspects of language use are important; its pays particular attention to the participation domain – how far simultaneous talk is acceptable and patterns of turn-taking and backchannelling. Finally, the chapter argues that the various communication styles that have been identified in the literature should not be viewed as dichotomies, but rather as continua. The chapter draws on relational dialectic theory to underpin this perspective. For all facets of ‘rapport maintenance’, both mindfulness and (convergent/mutual) accommodation are important.