ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 examines how foreign-language interlocutors achieve meaningful interpersonal relations through building rapport, solidarity and supportiveness, showing affect and concern for others. The ability to engage in everyday relational communicative situations such as small talk, chatting, gossiping, storytelling, service encounters and business social talk can significantly contribute to successful target-language interpersonal talk. This chapter studies how bilingual interactants attain convergence and agreement, success and celebration. In order to understand how bilingual speakers, approach interpersonal work in terms of preparedness, awareness of relational practices and personal and interactional expectations, I follow a cross-cultural relational pragmatics approach which builds on Halliday's functional model of language i.e. ideational, interpersonal and textual language functions. At the same time, in order to obtain a first-hand and emic understanding of bilingual relational ability, Mexican English-language users were asked to reflect on their experiences of successful relational work. Research focusses on interactants’ self-reported sense of achievement and satisfaction as they often actively seek out interactional opportunities for achieving positive rapport. To further understand foreign-language relational use, research participants also reflected on study-abroad experiences in terms of how they engaged in relational work and achieved successful interaction.
