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Very well-structured padlet and I like your colorful background.
1. Well, as a Chinese person, the first thing that came to my mind for this question is that Chinese people work very hard and they even take extra hours in the evening, which might probably have an effect on me that I might want to work very long hours in order to show my willingness for work.

2. I think in the workplace if you are in a high position, that means you would have very high power and you don't need to care about politeness because people have to listen to you and do their work. In daily life situations, I think politeness depends on how we communicate. For example, if I am chatting with my friends and family on WeChat, we don't need to worry about politeness. However, if I need to communicate with my colleagues, I will need to use formal language regardless of where we are communicating.

From Yue He

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Any communication is a risk, especially in a transcultural context. Even if the intention is to convey politeness, due to cultural diversity, people from different backgrounds will have different understandings and expressions of politeness, which is a risk to their own faces and the face of others.

With the progress of globalization, people will face more and more transcultural scenes in their work and life. We need to respect and understand, consider the compatibility of sociocultural norms of participants, and explore new interactional norms like HSBC (Holmes & Schnurr, 2017).

Thus, we can reduce the communication uncertainty and risk caused by cultural differences by learning transcultural knowledge, improving transcultural intelligence and skills, and seeking guidance from people or institutions with transcultural experience so that politeness and respect can be correctly transmitted and felt.

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In the early 2000s, HSBC launched the memorable classic " World's Local Bank" campaign to re-strengthen its global marketing, emphasizing the importance of local cultural knowledge for international banks. It uses a series of humorous advertisements to show the farce and misunderstanding that cultural differences can bring. Although advertisements utilize humorous marketing techniques, they can lead the audience to think of the potential risks and disastrous consequences that cultural differences may bring about in real business (White, 2003).
For example, the Chinese host may think the British clearing the plate as a sign that he is still hungry, question the standard of hospitality and the sincerity and strength of the company, or even be misinterpreted as arrogance. For the British guest, the meal is painful, and it is rude to be served without first asking for preferences and being forced to learn Chinese culture. Moreover, when only involvement or independence is emphasized, the other may be threatened, and conflict exists. The Chinese communication environment during the whole meal will tilt the balance of involvement towards the Chinese host's side, giving the British a sense that his independence is restricted and threatened. In reality, these cultural differences and misunderstandings are likely to lead to communication barriers or contradictions, increase communication costs, reduce communication efficiency in business cooperation or negotiation, and even lead to failure.
Thus, the AD successfully conveyed to customers that HSBC, as one of the world's largest international banks, has never underestimated the "importance of local knowledge" as a global player. It respects and values cultural differences and understands the subtleties they bring. It operates local banks in more than 80 countries around the world in a 'Glocalize Strategy' and is fully invested in understanding multiple perspectives to provide stable and lasting business relationships for local customers, with the advantage of offering a high-quality global service.

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According to the advertisement, the British may be appointed as a representative of a  British company to have international business with the Chinese. Generally, their power in the formal workplace is mostly communicated at the same level, thus tending to -p. They come from different countries, so they are far away in terms of distance and relationship,+D.
However, in such an informal business dinner with Chinese culture as its home turf, this detachment from the formal business context could upset the balance of power between the British and the Chinese. Despite the Chinese host's "guest first" approach, this cultural and environmental strangeness can make the British feel less powerful and turn to +P, adopting an independent politeness strategy and remaining largely silent. Scollon et al. (2012) have stated that when two participants respectively use the "involvement" and "independence" strategies, the person who uses the "involvement" strategy indicates a higher status.  In addition, this informal business dinner with Chinese characteristics brings little distance (-D) involvement strategy because its warm, relaxed atmosphere helps close the relationship and distance.
As a result, it leads to a Hierarchical Politeness System (+P, -D) in advertising situations. In this exotic setting, it was clear that the British were deeply uncomfortable with the involvement tactics of the Chinese, who thought they were treating him with respect and decency. In the face of the eel soup he hated, the British had cleared the plate three times to show respect and gratitude to the Chinese out of politeness as well as a certain strength difference and pressure under the misunderstanding of each other's culture.

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This advertisement displays a special scenario that a group of businessmen participate in an informal business interaction in a restaurant. In China, the drinking table culture is an essential part of informal meetings and plays a significant role in keeping interpersonal relationships. The Chinese businessmen believe that negotiating with partners through an informal meal can accelerate a closer connection and make it easier for them to seek more sustainable cooperation.
Chinese drinking table culture also highly associates with the notion of face. In China, the face is called “mian-zi”. Mao (1994) illustrated that people’s “mian-zi” depends on two aspects that it is “granted” by other people and as well as to be “earned” by oneself. In the advertising, the Chinese host “grants” mian-zi by sitting at the head of the table because the chair position represents his power. At the same time, he “earns” mian-zi by consistently offering the eel soup because he thinks the British guest appreciates the meal. His behavior displays his politeness to the guest. In other words, the Chinese host uses an involvement strategy by showing positive politeness. It also reflects that this Chinese leader wants to entertain guest and shows his generosity.
However, the knowledge of politeness in this informal business is insufficient. The interaction between them does not look as successful as they expect. On the one hand, the misunderstanding occurs because they underestimates the cultural differences at first. On the other hand, the politeness of the Chinese host intensifies the transcultural communication issue.

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The notion of face is always applied in politeness studies because “face is the negotiated public image, mutually granted each other by participants in a communicative event” (Scollon et al., 2011). Moreover, according to Brown and Levinson (1987), maintaining faces for each other during the interaction is beneficial for interpersonal relationships. People engaging in appropriate behaviors refer to showing politeness to others and maintaining a face.

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In the past decades, many research studies have approached to analyze the influence of impoliteness and politeness behaviors on social interaction in varied workplace contexts (Holmes & Schnurr, 2017). Scollon et al. (2011) identified that the discussion of im/politeness is highly associated with the concept of interpersonal relationships. It also relates to emotional behaviors such as facial expression, postures, body and verbal language (Holmes & Schnurr, 2017).

The context analysis of im/politeness also includes the formal and informal business interaction in the workplace. In truth, understanding the im/politeness in both forms of business interaction is essential. The rapid globalization development has increased the chances of transcultural communication in workplaces. Meanwhile, many scholars also indicated that people’s interpretations of impoliteness and politeness become complex and differ in terms of the various regions and cultures (Schneider & Placencia, 2017; Sifianou & Blitvich, 2017). In other words, the different interaction manners will result in people that are easily exposed to workplace challenges. Thus, the contrasting behaviors in im/politeness will trigger issues in transcultural communication. This poster will conduct an in-depth discussion about im/politeness and mainly focuses on informal business interaction at this time.

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Aririguzoh, S. (2022). Communication competencies, culture and SDGs: effective processes to cross-cultural communication. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01109-4

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge. University Press.

Holmes, J., & Schnurr. S. (2017). (Im)Politeness in the Workplace. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness (pp.635-660). Palgrave Macmillan.

Kecskes, I. (2013). Intercultural pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mao, L.M. (1994). Beyond Politeness Theory: ‘Face’ Revisited and Renewed. Journal of Pragmatics.

Scollon, R., Scollon, S. W., & Jones, R. H. (2012). Chapter 3: Interpersonal Politeness and Power. In J. Wiley & Sons (3rd Eds.), Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach (pp.45-68). Wiley-Blackwell.

Schneiderm, K. P.,  & Placencia, M.E. (2017). (Im)politeness and Regional Variation. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness (pp.539-570). Palgrave Macmillan.

Sifianou, M., & Blitvich, C. C. (2017). (Im)politeness and Cultural Variation. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness (pp.571-600). Palgrave Macmillan.

Stephendrummond. [YouTube]. (2007, August 16 ). HSBC 'Eels' Ad [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_WAmt3cMdk

White, R. (2003). HSBC Uses Light Touch To Broaden Ad Campaign. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB106192428174675000

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1. How does an individual's cultural background affect the way they communicate in workpalce?

2. How do you think power, distance, and weight of imposition affect the politeness option?

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What the video talks about?

At the beginning of the advertisement, a group of people enters a Chinese restaurant, which seems they finish one-day work just now. Except for one English employee, the others are Chinese employees and one Chinese leader. The Chinese leader orders one sea eel soup for each one. However, the English employee seems uncomfortable when he eats the sea eel soup. At that time, a man says something about cultural traditions. According to English tradition, it is impolite and rude in case people do not finish the meal prepared by the hosts. Contrary to English tradition, according to Chinese tradition, in case guests finish all meals the host’s generosity is to be questioned. Therefore, the Chinese leader keeps ordering new sea eel soup for the English employee until the man cannot eat anymore and falls down from the chair. Finally, the advertisement emphasizes the importance of understanding local traditions for both companies and individuals.

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Our group chooses to analyze the advertisement of HSBC ‘Eels’ to analyze the importance of understanding how to communicate in transcultural environments. Accompanied by the globalization process, more companies choose to enter oversea markets, which leads to the emergence of multinational companies (Aririguzoh 2022). In those companies, employees tend to have different cultural backgrounds.

How to being polite and conducting efficient communication in transcultural environments is crucial for corporate management. Unless appropriate employee training and professional transcultural knowledge have been educated, cultural shocks sometimes happen.

Moreover, for employees, it is necessary for them to equip essential knowledge related to transcultural communication, which is conducive to avoiding embarrassing moments at work. Hence, our group desires to analyze the advertisement to increase transcultural awareness for people (Kecskes 2013).