Intercultural Interactions 101 - advice for your year abroad

Are you about to go on a year abroad? Are you studying/living in a foreign county? Or are just interested in intercultural interactions? Then this blog is for you!

What is this blog about?

Our blog was made primarily to help British university students prepare for the challenges, mysteries and surprises that their studies abroad will bring, but far be it from us to gatekeep all the wonderfully useful knowledge that the field of Intercultural Pragmatics offers from anyone else who is interested. Whether you are here to learn or just for fun, let us express our humble welcome to our small corner of the Internet. (And who knows, you might even find some fun situations to put your blorbos in.)

What even is Intercultural Pragmatics?

While the 'intercultural' bit of this expression might be obvious to everyone, 'pragmatics' could be a bit trickier to de-code -- but that is why we are here. Essentially, pragmatics refers to how langauage (any and all language) is used in context.

@American Pragmatics Association - taken from the AMPRA Facebook page (link embedded in picture)

This comic shows how the same utterance can be used to achieve different goals based on different contexts. Context here can mean many things, like participants, location, shared history, etc. In a sense Pragmatics looks at a meaning deeper than what individual words or sentences express.

Be not afraid!

Now, although this might look a bit complex at first, we all use pragmatics instincually in many cases. The purpose of our blog is to show you cases where expressing meaning might not come so instinctually, that is, to prepare you for all the intercultural encounters you will experience on your year abroad. Like how if you invite a new friend over for 'tea' there, they most likely will never even think of food.

To summarise, Intercultural Pragmatics looks at how people from different cultures use language to interact with each other. To present you with at least one, nice, non-jargon-filled quote:

Intercultural pragmatics (...) is concerned with the way in which the langauge system is put to use in social encounters between human beings who have different first langauges but communicate in a common langauge, and usually, represent different cultures. (Kecskés, 2022)

And if that quote didn't scare you off, in your spare time, please put your university access to good use and read the introduction to Intercultutral Pragmatics that this was taken from. Believe us, your future self will thank you.

Why is this useful to you?

As it might've become obvious by now, people from different cultures speak differently in systematic ways. While the UK is in many ways a multicultural place, for many students, going on a year abroad will be the first time that you will interact with others, who have no or little experience with British culture and it's norms.

We in no way mean to imply that you can prepare for all intercultual situations you will find yourself in just by learning about intercultural pragmatics. However, just being aware of what differences you might expect, how your words might be understood differently than how you mean them or learning what situations to look out for could go a long way in making sure your year abroad is as fun as it can be.

By introducing some interesting (and hopefully fun) examples from topics like interactional rituals and cultural scripts, and demonstarting some strategies for building common ground in intercultural interactions, we hope to make your future experiences as smooth-sailing as possible and to share knowledge about a field we are all passionate about.

Tagging system:

To accommodate a wider audience, you might notice that we have some posts that are more theory-heavy and some that are more fun with many examples. To easily find the content most useful to use, we came up with a simple tagging system:

#educate me: for posts that expend a little more on linguistic theories that we think you might find useful and interesting (still in simple terms and with some wonderful memes if we do say so ourselves)

#advice: for friendly advice presented in a more informal way (like how your besties spill the tea)

#practical examples: for posts that bring up some fun examples, focusing on some specific cultural situations (whilst poking fun at British interactional norms, for your enjoyment)

Thank you for your interest and we hope you enjoy traversing our blog! :)

I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase, and I'm sure we’ve all preached it at some point. But, let’s be honest, everyone is guilty of making judgements about a person, before they know anything about them- it's human nature. This is not always necessarily a bad thing; as you may have seen in our last post on ‘common ground’, this is a natural thing that occurs that helps to improve the success of our communication with a new person.  

However, these preconceptions may lead us to become unsure of how to interact with a person, or how they may respond to the things we say; especially if that person is from a different cultural background to yourself. 

Kecskés (2014) has a very technical name for this idea- the ‘not sure’ approach. 

Have you ever met someone from a different culture, whose first language wasn’t English, and you found yourself ‘letting go’ of any mistakes they may make in the language, or providing more information than necessary to ensure they understand you? This is a clear example of the ‘not sure’ approach; you made a preconception that this individual may not understand you as well if you spoke ‘normally’, but were not sure on the level of their understanding, so took extra steps to ensure they understood.  

This doesn’t only occur for ‘native’ speakers of a language, it can also occur from the ‘non-native’ speaker’s point of view. This speaker may have encountered interactions where communication went a little wrong and may anticipate these mistakes in new interactions by giving more information, using more gestures, and/or repeating themselves more.   

It’s important to be aware of these ideas during your year abroad, as these techniques to ensure understanding are likely to be used by others and yourself, whether that be consciously or unconsciously.  

If you feel very confident in the language of the country you are visiting, try not to be offended if you feel someone is ‘dumbing down’ the language for you when they realise you are ‘non-native’- they only want to ensure their communication is successful.  

Good luck! 

We’ve all been there; you’re meeting someone for the first time, you don’t know anything about them, and you’re desperately trying to find something (ANYTHING) that you have in common to fill the uncomfortable silence.  

I’m sure you’ve thought about all the new people you’re going to be meeting during your year abroad, and, unfortunately, you may have to go through that first awkward interaction process many times. Efforts to establish common ground will have to be made, and you may well find yourself asking a stranger about their mum’s potato salad recipe, or where their sister went to university in an effort to do this. 

Kecskés and Zhang (2009) suggest that there is some shared knowledge that exists prior to an interaction (they call this core common ground). For example, if you move into a student accommodation during your year abroad and meet your flatmates for the first time, you can quite easily assume that your flatmates are also fellow students, and you can assume this prior to your first interaction with them. In addition to core common ground, there is also the idea of emergent common ground. From the name, you can probably guess that this is shared knowledge that emerges as you interact with a person, and that you can use in future interactions. For example, as you chat, you may come to share the knowledge that you and the person you are interacting with met before in Spain in July 2010, and made a sandcastle together on the beach (this interaction actually happened to me). 

So, now that you know the importance of establishing common ground, you can put our new shared knowledge to good use when you arrive in your year abroad destination. The easiest way to approach this is by talking about what you already know you have in common- whether that be the accommodation you live in, or the matching jumper that you both happen to be wearing; more and more shared knowledge can only blossom from there. If not, well, maybe you guys just aren’t meant to be friends, and that’s ok! 

Everyone’s feeling awkward, you might as well just take the leap and ask about their favourite dance move- it might be the same as yours! 

Good luck! 

In previous posts you might have learnt about Face-Threatening Acts and how different attitudes to (im)politeness might lead to different interactional styles between cultures. These are all very useful to be aware of before going on a year abroad. Here we would like to introduce a concept that builds on politeness theory, but takes a different, deeper take on how people manage interpersonal relations.

Helen Spencer-Oatey's model of Rapport Management offers a new, broader framework for conceptualising how relations between people are navigated and negotiated in social interactions and helps researchers highlight where culture might play a significant role in interactions.

For international and year abroad students, managing rapport (harmony-disharmony) among their peers is especially crucial, as they are often separated from their usual social networks, and interacting with fellow students but with different cultural backgrounds is their only means of socialising. As such, for us the most interesting part of the model will be elements it identifies, which can be subject to cultural variation.

But before that:

What are the 3 bases of rapport?

Spencer-Oatey conceptualised 3 bases of rapport: face sensitivities, sociality rights and obligations, and interactional goals. According to the model, each of these need to be taken into account when managing rapport, as any behaviour that impacts them will affect relational dynamics between the participants of an interaction.

Face sensitivities: We focus on Brown and Levinson's concept of positive and negative face in terms of politeness in a different post, so here we just want to point out Spencer-Oatey's three-level perspective on it. According to this model, face can be affected on not just an invididual level, but also an interpersonal level and a group level. This is essentially a deeper take on a similar concept as 'positive face' - the intricacies of wanting to be appreciated and approved of others, i.e. seen in a positive light. Like how you might not monologue about SuperWhoLock in a new environment to save individual face, but on a fandom post on Tumblr you might claim that knowledge as value in terms of your role in the social group.

Sociality rights and obligations: This base of rapport elaborates on how besides face sensitivities, people develop expectations for behaviour and interactional styles based on the rights and obligations tied to their roles within a social network. Not every role will percieve a certain speech act as face threatening or at least not in the same way. Think of it like this - within a family, could a grandparent not request a grandchild to bring them a book while using an imperative form? But if the grandchild were to order the grandparent to bring them something, that would surely not look good for them. In this sense, making a request with an imperative was within the rights of one social role and was not percieved as an FTA, but that is not the same for everyone.

Interactional goals: Interactional goals were the third factor introduced by Spencer-Oatey and added only later to the model. We have talked about how speech acts served specific purposes and similarly, people have specific goals when interacting with others. These goals can be transactional (task-focused), relational (relationship-focused) or a mixture of both and how one goes about achieving them can be very dependent on culture.

So, how does culture affect rapport management?

Now that we know what base concepts the model consists of - and so, what things to keep in mind when building rapport with new, intercultural peers - we can move on to what specific elements of intercultural interactions may be subject to cultural variation.

Let us highlight a few elements that Spencer-Oatey mentioned in her article, when discussing the model:

people's assessments of the context

underlying values, like level of respect for hierarchy

preferred interactional styles (e.g. level of (in)formality, directness/indirectness)

lingusitic conventions for the use of terms and phrases

an inventory of strategies available in a language (e.g. the existence of honorifics)

Congratulations for making it through another one of our theory-based posts! We hope that reflecting on everything you've just learnt about rapport management will help you navigate the art of establishing new social networks in an intercultural environment. Now you know what differences to look out for - the rest is up to you. We will definitely be cheering for you :)

In previous posts, you may have heard about speech acts and theories related to (im)politeness. Sometimes interactions don’t always go to plan, and people become offended by something you may have intended to have the complete opposite effect. For example, you may have tried to compliment a girl for having beautiful eyes and she has aggressively responded with ‘are my looks the only thing you care about!!!’. Or you might have told a guy in the club that you were born in May, and he responded by saying he can’t talk to you anymore because you’re a Taurus and your horoscopes are incompatible. 

We’ve already touched on theories of politeness in previous posts- but not as much why politeness may occur. 

Brown & Levinson suggest that politeness comes from the idea of ‘face- based perspectives’- the proposition that everyone wants to present a certain way in society, and that most speech acts are an inherent threat to this self-image. Therefore, politeness is a way of combatting this threat. We have both a desire to be appreciated and approved of (Brown & Levinson call this positive face), and a desire to be autonomous and, frankly, unbothered by others (negative face). 

They also touch on the idea of ‘face-threatening acts’ (FTAs)- speech acts that pose a threat to our public self-image.

For example, a teacher’s criticism of your assignment may be inherently threatening to the desire to be perceived as intelligent, even if they only mean it as a way for you to improve. As such, the teacher will likely make efforts to combat this threat by utilising forms of politeness in their speech.  

Of course, how you strive for harmony in your social interactions is influenced by more factors than just saving face. While Brown and Levinson undoubtedly laid down strong foundations in the field of politeness research, some new, more detailed frameworks have been formulated since then. In another post- more theory-heavy post- we will introduce you to Spencer-Oatey's model if you would like to learn about the intricacies of rapport management. 

Good luck! 

These also relate to unspoken norms in conversation and how we handle certain speech routines, for example, we tend to be indirect when asking someone for something: ‘could you pass the salt?’. Although it’s framed as a question it would be very weird if they replied, ‘yes I can’ and didn’t follow through with the action. As you could probably guess at this point, this is not necessarily the case in other languages or cultures.

For example, whilst the British homo cynicus would ask for a menu with a timid hand raised up halfway and a millisecond of eye contact, ‘Could you possibly get me a menu if you have a second sorry?’, a study (Wierzbicka, 2010 - citing Larina, 2008) of restaurant culture in Russia found that customers are direct (god forbid) when asking for a menu, using commands rather than questions, actually pretty logical when you think about it, considering it is a waiter’s job! So, the next time you’re on a dinner date with a Russian person and they’re ordering the waiter around, don’t get the ick!

This links to the idea of pragmatic transfer – when we apply norms from one culture to another. This can work fine sometimes, but has potential to cause some misunderstandings. For example, we like to say thank you in many different situations, but this might seem odd to someone of another culture. It could come off as insincere if said too much or in a situation that they thought didn’t really call for it. Before you know it you’ll be feeling like a weird spin-off of a kid’s story, ‘The boy who cried… thank you’??

Disclaimer: although homo cynicus has a general aversion to being social in the first place, intercultural interaction is by no means inherently going to cause problems!

I hope you've found this post useful and had a few laughs along the way!

Newly found evidence shows British people split off from our human ancestors around a million years ago, evolving into homo cynicus. The brain of which is divided into two hemispheres: the left, which produces feelings of shame and self-loathing, and the right, which produces feelings of shame and self-loathing. /sarcasm

This had led to many unfortunate characteristics such as: a severe debilitating need to apologise (even for things clearly not our own fault), a lack of capability for direct communication, and a deep craving of orderly queues, to name a few. This could give the impression that we are a polite and well-mannered people, when really these are purely defence mechanisms for when we must venture out from the warm confines of our dwellings, leave our beloved cups of tea behind, and do the dreaded… social interaction. /s

^Excurb1a’s ‘England a beginner’s guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KySFp0w7-hE&t=28s

Above: Highly classified records of the evolutionary split, retrieved personally for use in this blog from maximum security compartment below the crown jewels in the Tower of London. /s

The rest of the world is unaware of this fact of human evolutionary history, and therefore may find what we see as ‘normal interaction’ slightly odd, or even rude, to the absolute dismay of us politeness fiends. /s This brings us to the purpose of this post; to spread some awareness of different conversational and politeness norms across cultures, to prepare you for your year abroad (aside from leaking highly classified government documents)!

‘Phatic communion’, such as the British ‘you alright?’, is an example of a conversational routine. In true homo cynicus fashion, a perfectly acceptable response is to seemingly completely ignore the ‘question’ with an ‘alright’ in return. Really, this example acts as a greeting, and not a question at all, and we would be pretty taken aback if someone responded with a long list of their day-to-day struggles. These phrases, or mini conversational routines, are very useful for interaction abroad and are rarely taught in language classes, so it’s a great idea to be aware of some from the place you’re off to. For example, in Mandarin, ’chī le ma?’ meaning, ‘have you eaten?’, is not an invitation to get lunch, but a greeting. Saved you some potential embarrassment there.

Small talk also comes under phatic communion and serves a more social than informational purpose. However, there are different small talk norms across cultures. For us, it’s usually pretty devoid of actual meaning and by the fifth ‘weather’s nice, isn’t it?’ of the day, we’re left wondering why we even bother at all. One study (Beal, 1992) looked at small talk between French and Australian employees. When asked ‘how was your weekend?’ the Australian employees responded very briefly, (quite like the small talk habits of the homo cynicus) whilst the French employees responded in much more detail. Both types of responses were evaluated as rude by co-workers of the opposite group: the Australians thought the longer answer to their question showed their French co-workers being ‘self-centred’ and ‘insensitive to other people’, while the French employees thought the brief answer showed ‘indifference’ and ‘lack of sincerity’.

What do you think language is used for?

The most common answer to this question might be ‘to convey information’. That is in fact one correct answer, but is that really all language is about?

What is the Speech Act theory?

John Searle's Speech Act theory (the concept first introduced by philosopher J.L. Austin) argues that besides describing the world around us, language can also be used to perform actions or to make other people perform certain actions.

To present every linguist’s first example: when you say ‘It is cold in this room.’ are you just describing the temperature you feel? Or are you maybe asking someone near the open window to close it?

Or when a judge reads out the jury’s decision, are they only relaying an opinion, or do their words dictate what will happen with the defendant? Isn’t it their words that make that sentence be?

Why do you need to know about speech acts on your year abroad?

As you might've guessed, speech acts can be used and realised differently depending on cultural norms and assumptions, and the bad news is, some features of British English are exceptions rather than the norm across cultures.

Picture taken from 202semantics's blog from WordPress (link embedded in picture)

We will share some more specific examples of these differences in following posts, but our aim now is to give you a broad idea of what speech acts are and why they are not just a matter of politeness. And so when someone from a different culture tells you something that you would usually phrase as a question, you don't immediately think they are being rude or trying to offend you and send them to superhell.

Searle's 5 types of Speech Acts:

(Useful to understand, but not something that is crucial to most, so feel free to scroll to the next section.)

So what types of speech acts do we differentiate according to the theory?

Assertives: We use assertives to assert ideas, opinions and the like. This is how we present facts and claims like 'I rewatched Good Omens yesterday'.

Directives: Directives are when a speaker is trying to direct someone else to do something. This can take multiple forms, like an order, a request or even offering advive. For example 'You should read some books by Terry Pratchett'.

Declarations: Think of how a priest can declare two people husband and wife. Declaratives are expressions that can bring about a change in the world.

Expressives: Here a speaker makes a statement about their own feelings and attitudes about something. For example, you can express an apology or gratitude. 'I appreciate that you warned me to bring tissues when watching the end of Good Omens season 2.'

Commissives: When you commit to doing something in speech, that is a commussive speech act. This could involve a vow, a promise, a bet, etc. Like when you promise to not make your blorbo suffer anymore (even if we all know it is not going to happen).

Don't panic! This might all sound too complicated and not seem like something that will be of actual use to you. What is the point of knowing the names of things we do effortlessly every day, right? But now comes the interesting part, and the one that is relevant to us:

How are these speech acts actually realised? And how are they different depending on culture?

Remember that all 5 types of speech acts refer to functions that we use langauge for. They serve a specific purpose. (Academically, we would refer to these as illocutionary acts, if you'd like to read more about them.) Now comes the question: how are we going to achieve these purposes?

There are certain types of sentences we might use for certain types of purposes. This is a concept you might be more familiar with. To elicit an answer, you would generally use an interrogative sentence, that is, you would ask a question (Did you read the book?). To issue an order in a directive you would generally use an imperative sentence (Give me all your books!).

But is there only one way to achieve a purpose in speech? What happens when the type of sentence we use does not match its function?

The difference is what we call an Direct and Indirect Speech Acts.

A good way to demonstrate this is in how you would make a request. When the function of a sentence matches the purpose of it, we have a direct speech act:

'Close the window.'

But as a British student, aren't you more likely to make make this request through an indirect speech act, by using an interrogative sentence?

'Could you close the window?'

Picture taken from Arnold Zwicky's blog from WordPress (link embedded in picture)

You might've noticed that in the last point I wrote 'as a British student'. Did you think after reading the example something along the lines of 'isn't this just being polite?'. You are absolutely right in that accoring to British cultural values this is the polite way to make a request.

However, what is considered polite and impolite can differ starkly depending on culture. What you consider polite in English, might come across as downright condesceding in other languages and cultures. Moreover, differences in language use and the use of speech acts in this case have been shown to be caused by aspects of culture that run way deeper than merely politness (e.g. intimacy, spontaneity, directness, etc.).

Some great examples of such differences can be found in Wierzbicka's work about Polish vs English speech acts and she explains how English tends to place heavy restrictions on the use of imperative sentences, while using interrogative forms extensively. I sincerely recommend skimming through the article to help reflect on what a native British English speaker would find 'normal' in speech that speakers of other languages might not.

And this is all from us about speech acts - congratulations for making it to the end of this long post! This might've been more theory-heavy than some of our other posts with fun examples, but we hope it helps you approach those with a clearer perspective :)