2. Choose one of the two questions to answer.

(1)Have you ever been in a situation where you thought someone's behavior was impolite or inappropriate? According to the face theory, why do you think this behavior is impolite? And what kind of behavior do you think would be polite in that situation?

(2)Have you ever experienced communication failures because your sociopragmatic conventions are different from your interlocutors? If possible, could you share your experiences in terms of some of the five domains? 

※communication failures mean the rapport management failures 

To be specific, in the rapport management theory (Spencer-Oatey, 2010), every language is used in a wide range of linguistic choices for managing face, sociality rights and interactional goals in communication. The extent of three factors of linguistic options can vary from language to language. Among this process, the five domains play important roles.

The important point here is that the linguistic choices for promoting, sustaining or threatening the (dis)harmony of social relationships vary from one culture to another. In other words, differences among various cultural groups influence rapport management outcomes due to several aspects such as contextual assessment norms, sociopragmatic conventions and pragmalinguistics conventions. Among these aspects, sociopragmatic conventions refers to the culturally-based principles that underlie interactants' performance and interpretation of linguistic action. These include both culturally-based assessments of the typical characteristics of a given communicative activity and culturally-influenced dynamic assessments of actual communicative events. (Spencer-Oatey, 2010).

Involvement and independence are two paradoxical aspects of face. The involvement, also known as positive politeness, is concerned with the participants' desire for solidarity and approval from others. The independence, also referred to as negative politeness, highlights the participants' individuality, their right to avoid being imposed by others.

The three factors of power (P), distance (D), and the weight of the imposition (W) influence our choice of the politeness strategy. The vertical discrepancy between the participants of a hierarchical system is referred to as "power." Distance is related to solidarity and is most common in egalitarian relationships. The weight of the imposition refers to how important the topic of discussion is for the participants. There are many types of politeness systems in different communications due to the disparity of power and the distance between participants. The deference politeness system(−P, +D), the solidarity politeness system(−P, −D), and the hierarchical politeness system(+P, +/−D) are the three main ones.

Pan, Y. (2000). Politeness in Chinese Face-to-Face Interaction. Stamford, Conn. : Ablex Pub.

Ross, S.& Shortreed, I. (1990). Japanese foreigner talk: convergence or divergence? Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 1, 135-145.

Scollon, R., Scollon, S. W., & Jones, R. H. (2012). Intercultural communication : A discourse approach (3rd ed.). Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons.

Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Rapport management: A framework for analysis. In Helen  Spencer-Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk across cultures, 11-46. New York: Continuum. 

Spencer-Oatey, H. (2010). Face, (im)politeness and rapport. In Helen Spencer-Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. 11-47. London: Bloomsbury. 

【Why do these misunderstandings happen between Emily and French members? In other words, why did the failure in the rapport management happen here? 】
Because Emily and the French members don’t understand the fact that each society or culture has various sociopragmatic conventions in five domains, which have an effect on rapport management in interactions. For example, under American culture (more like Emily’s culture), it is quite natural for her to make suggestions based on her experiences or knowledge. So she did based on this sociopragmatic convention of hers. On the other hand, under French culture (more precisely the company’s culture) it should be avoided to make suggestions from outsiders based on their different countries' ways. 
☆We can't overgeneralize from her behaviors to the whole American culture!

In addition to power, distance, and imposition, other factors such as geography, language and culture can influence the politeness strategy choices of conversation participants. In some circumstances, the distinction between ingroup and outgroup communication will also be related to the language spoken or the register within that language (Ross & Shortreed, 1990). The clerk believes that service contact is egalitarian and purely pragmatic (Yuling Pan, 2000), so she does not defend Emily's face and directly points out Emily's grammatical errors. Therefore, it is understandable that the clerk adopts the independence strategy when communicating with Emily, who is from the United States and unable to use French proficiently and correctly.