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34 - Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics

from Part III - Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

By
Troy McConachy  and
Helen Spencer-Oatey
Edited by
Michael Haugh ,
Dániel Z. Kádár  and
Marina Terkourafi
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Dániel Z. Kádár
Affiliation:
Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages
Marina Terkourafi
Affiliation:
Leiden University
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Summary

This chapter examines cross-cultural and intercultural approaches to sociopragmatic dimensions of language use. After an initial introduction, the first main section clarifies and discusses some key concepts and issues, including ‘culture’ and ‘context’, as they have been conceptualized within cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics; the distinctions between cross-cultural and intercultural research perspectives; and context and the interconnections between context and culture.It then proceeds to review some of the main research findings deriving from cross-cultural work on speech acts and cultural scripts, as well as cognitive and sociocultural perspectives on sociopragmatic aspects of intercultural communication. It includes authentic samples of data that illustrate a number of the above issues. Finally, the chapter reflects on the main theoretical challenges and opportunities associated with addressing the sociopragmatic aspects of language use from cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives, providing a critical summary and identifying promising areas for future research.

Keywords

culturecontextcross-culturalintercultural commuincationspeech actscultural scripts
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 733 - 757
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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