ABSTRACT
Unit A7 begins by describing cross-cultural pragmatics, which is concerned with contrastive studies of the language of two or more social groups and which uses comparative data obtained independently from the different groups. It surveys studies of speech acts, such as requests, commands, offers, and invitations across cultures; examines how politeness principles vary from culture to culture and how what is polite in one culture can be impolite in another; and shows how different cultures observe cooperative maxims differently. The unit then describes intercultural pragmatics, which studies interactional data obtained when people from different societies or social groups communicate with each other using a lingua franca, sometimes focusing on pragmatic failure and culture clashes. It covers studies of politeness and cooperative maxims. It illustrates the theories by providing authentic examples from a variety of languages (German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish) and genres (conversation, meetings, tutorials, service encounters, emails, and online forums). Section B7 provides an example analysis, section C7 gives you the chance to analyse authentic texts, and section D7 introduces a reading by Karen Grainger, Sara Mills, and Mandla Sibanda.
