Chapter 8 discusses the processes involved in building and maintaining satisfactory relationships.It covers politeness theory, facework, morality, and how these contribute to relationship homeostasis.

Chapter 5 examines a key phenomenon in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics, namely, linguistic politeness and impoliteness. While politeness popularly describes ‘proper’ behaviour, as a technical term it encompasses all kinds of behaviour by means of which language users express that they take others’ feelings into account. Similarly, impoliteness not only refers to rude language but rather it covers all types of behaviour that are felt to cause offence. Politeness and impoliteness have been the most researched phenomena in the field, and in chapter 5 we provide a summary of those politeness- and impoliteness-related phenomena which are particularly relevant for cross-cultural pragmatic inquiries.

The concept of ‘face’ has received considerable attention in im/politeness research given the powerful influence of Goffman and Brown and Levinson, in particular. In recent years, mostly due to the discursive turn, researchers have questioned the tight yoking between face and im/politeness and have sought different ways to better understand these concepts. This chapter offers a brief critical exploration of the concept of ‘face’ and its derivative concepts of ‘face-threatening acts’ and ‘facework’. Furthermore, it discusses some of the developments in the area such as the needs for finer distinctions and alternative ways of conceptualizing ‘face’, the appeal to return to the broader Goffmanian concept and the needs for distinguishing between lay and scientific constructs of face and disentangling face from im/politeness. ‘Face’ is a term which is located in sociology, as it relates to the person, to the self and to identity, whereas the derivative ‘face-threatening act’ draws heavily on pragmatics and, more specifically, on speech act theory. The related term ‘facework’ may provide a kind of link between the two. This chapter offers an overview of these interconnections and suggests possible directions in the study of ‘face’.

Using as an example an exchange between Donald Trump and FBI director James Comey in the Oval Office in February 2017, this chapter revisits in a post-structuralist perspective canonical concepts from pragmatics and sociolinguistics , such as Austin’s performative, Searle’s speech act, Goffman’s participation framework and Brown and Levinson's concept of politeness through facework. It shows the workings of symbolic power in the most mundane interaction rituals. It introduces the notion of institution, not only in the form of particular organizations such as the Government, the Family, the Army, or the Church, but also any durable social relation which endows individuals with power, status and resources of various kinds, for example, membership in a club, association, corporation or online community, but also more unspoken relations of wealth, race, ethnicity or gender that represent institutionalized forms of symbolic power. These institutions give people authority, legitimacy and the right to speak and be listened to. Communicative practice is therefore not just the ability to speak correctly and appropriately, but an individual and institutional struggle to be heard and taken seriously.