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Politeness in Professional Contexts
Much like in everyday life, politeness is key to the smooth running of relationships and interactions. Professional contexts, however, tend to be characterised by a plethora of behaviours that may be specific to that context. They include ‘polite’ behaviours, ‘impolite’ behaviours and behaviours that arguably fall somewhere between – or outside – such concepts. The twelve chapters making up this edited collection explore these behaviours in a range of communication contexts representative of business, medical, legal and security settings. Between them, the contributions will help readers to theorize about – and in some cases operationalize (im)politeness and related behaviours for – these real-world settings. The authors take a broad, yet theoretically underpinned, definition of politeness and use it to help explain, analyse and inform professional interactions. They demonstrate the importance of understanding how interactions are negotiated and managed in professional settings. The edited collection has something to offer, therefore, to academics, professionals and practitioners alike.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 311] 2020. vi, 326 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 31 July 2020
Published online on 31 July 2020
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. Introduction: Politeness in professional contextsDawn Archer, Karen Grainger and Piotr Jagodziński | pp. 1–22
- Part I. Politeness in medical contexts
- Chapter 2. Learning to manage rapport in GP trainee encounters: A discursive politeness approachTristan Emerson, Leigh Harrington, Louise Mullany, Sarah Atkins, Dick Churchill, Rachel Winter and Rakesh Patel | pp. 25–54
- Chapter 3. Team interaction in healthcare settings: Leadership, rapport-building and clinical outcomes in ad hoc medical teamsMałgorzata Chałupnik and Sarah Atkins | pp. 55–84
- Chapter 4. Take care of yourself: Negotiating moral and professional face in stroke rehabilitationKaren Grainger | pp. 85–106
- Chapter 5. Politeness and relational work in novel digital contexts of healthcare communicationOlga Zayts and Fefei Zhou | pp. 107–126
- Part II. Politeness in business and organisational contexts (including emails)
- Chapter 6. Managing rapport in team conflicts: Dealing with “the elephant in the room”Carolin Debray | pp. 129–150
- Chapter 7. Intercultural (Im)politeness: Influences on the way professional British Sign Language/English interpreters mediate im/polite languageRachel Mapson | pp. 151–178
- Chapter 8. Towards a folk pragmatics of call centre service encountersPiotr Jagodziński | pp. 179–198
- Chapter 9. “I always use the word please”: The production and perception of English and Spanish workplace emailsVera Freytag | pp. 199–224
- Chapter 10. “Music for your breakfast” relational work in a sole trader’s intercultural business emailsElizabeth Marsden | pp. 225–248
- Part III. Politeness in legal and security contexts
- Chapter 11. Judicial questioning: How context shapes facework strategiesKaren Tracy | pp. 251–272
- Chapter 12. Keeping airports safe: The value of small talkDawn Archer, Cliff Lansley and Aaron Garner | pp. 273–298
- Chapter 13. The value of facework in crisis negotiation: With a focus on barricade situationsDawn Archer | pp. 299–322
- Index | pp. 323–326
“Politeness in Professional Contexts stands out as a sample of pioneering research at the interface of politeness research and business communication. It contains corpus-based research, ethnographic studies, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses also taking into account participant’s impressions. As a result, it achieves a rich picture of facework and rapport management in different professional contexts. This is a completely coherent volume that provides new insights into face work strategies and (im)politeness-related issues in a variety of professional
settings. There is also a clear continuity between this volume and recent publications in the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, such as Freytag (2019) devoted to business communication, and Ogiermann & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2019) edited volume that gives a central place to participants’ conceptions and co-construction of (im)politeness. Finally, this volume invites follow-up research on the role played by interpersonal variables in facework strategies, and on the intercultural dimension of professional interactions. I have no doubt that it will appeal to politeness scholars, of course, but also to researchers in business communication and (intercultural) pragmatics.”
settings. There is also a clear continuity between this volume and recent publications in the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, such as Freytag (2019) devoted to business communication, and Ogiermann & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2019) edited volume that gives a central place to participants’ conceptions and co-construction of (im)politeness. Finally, this volume invites follow-up research on the role played by interpersonal variables in facework strategies, and on the intercultural dimension of professional interactions. I have no doubt that it will appeal to politeness scholars, of course, but also to researchers in business communication and (intercultural) pragmatics.”
Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Ghent University, on Linguist List 32.2056 (15 June 2021).
“This book demonstrates the importance of understanding how interactions are negotiated and managed in professional settings, thus provides unique insight into the issue of politeness in professional practices. [...] The book is also accessible to professionals and practitioners due to its detailed illustrations of concepts and examples to demonstrate how pragmatic concepts work in real situations. The well-explained rationales and concrete linguistic realizations are helpful to put into practice. This book makes a substantial contribution to the empirical as well as the theoretical study of interactions in professional contexts.”
Jiabei Hu & Yongping Ran, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, in the Journal of Pragmatics 180 (2021).
“Politeness in Professional Contexts is highly recommended reading for researchers in the field of linguistics (interactional pragmatics, sociopragmatics, interpersonal pragmatics), law, business, medicine, psychology, IT, and so on. Given the book’s take on the practical aspects of the professional context, practitioners and professionals with relevant backgrounds should also find it of interest.”
Maria Tsimpiri, University of East Anglia, in Pragmatics and Society 13:1 (2022)
“I have no doubt that it will appeal to politeness scholars, of course, but also to researchers in business communication and (intercultural) pragmatics.”
Stanca Măda, Transilvania University of Brașov, in Language and Dialogue 12:3 (2022).
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Archer, Dawn
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Biss, Danielle C
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