11 - Managing Politeness across Cultures

Summary

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.