1 - Introduction

Summary

This chapter provides an introduction to the book. It starts with an introduction of readership, including all those who are interested in intercultural relations – in relating with people who have different national, linguistic, social, ethnic, religious or other backgrounds to ourselves. The focus, as the subtitle indicates, is therefore ‘relating across cultures’ – how people build, maintain and manage relations when communicating across group boundaries of various kinds, such as national, linguistic, ethnic. It then considers the two concepts within the main title of the book: ‘politeness’ and ‘intercultural’. It explains that we take a ‘relating’ perspective to politeness, and it offers a working definition of ‘culture’ as well as the notion of ‘intercultural’. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing together concepts and ideas from pragmatics, intercultural communication and cross-cultural and moral psychology, and we argue that such an interdisciplinary approach is vital for a topic like intercultural politeness. The chapter introduces the book's authors, providing some background to them, so that readers can understand the subjectivity of the authors' positions. The chapter also outlines the types of data the book uses throughout in support of its arguments. The chapter ends by briefly introducing the remaining chapters of the book.