The book opens with an odd fact of our time: we grow up having our writing corrected at every turn, and yet the actual writing most people do goes far beyond what is considered “correct English.” If we imagine a basic continuum of writing in English, it ranges from informal to formal, personal to impersonal, and interpersonal to informational writing. That range allows us to do all kinds of different things with writing. But only a small part of it is considered “correct,” because of what the book calls Language Regulation Mode. The introduction explains Language Regulation Mode, how it fixates on errors, and how it makes it hard to think about writing any other way. We learn to see writing only through the lens of writing myths, which tell us only some writing counts, and only some writers are smart and will succeed. Then, the introduction offers an alternative: Language Exploration Mode, which focuses on patterns instead of errors, and learning more about the diverse language of our world today--a continuum of informal digital writing, workplace writing, formal school writing, and otherwise, all correct for its purpose.

This chapter presents some of the most significant studies in the history of intercultural pragmatics (IP) research that have applied the methodology of corpus pragmatics (CP). In fact, the use of corpora has been an essential contribution to IP in crucial areas such as formulaic language, context and common ground, or politeness research, among others, with the conviction that CP has redefined the conceptualization of pragmatic competence in a globalized world. The chapter follows a topical structure in which critical areas of research from an intercultural and corpus pragmatic perspective are addressed, like the role of the lingua franca; the use of academic, professional, and scientific language; cross-cultural studies; prosody, multimodality, and computer-mediated communication and learner's corpora. In all these areas, the chapter highlights the significant research concerns and achievements that have helped to shape IP as an essential discipline in current linguistic theory. A final section with conclusions and ideas for further research will ensue.

Academic writers with different linguistic backgrounds communicate scientific findings following objective norms, although they do so in different ways, as is evidenced in intercultural studies. This chapter focuses on the identification of boosters and hedges used by Spanish and Chinese researchers to persuade readers about scientific findings in engineering and linguistics. The objectives were to categorize and compare the frequencies and functions of hedges and boosters used by nonnative writers of English, to study whether there are any linguistic and cultural differences, and to identify boosting and hedging features different from those used in English as a mother tongue. The material was a corpus of 120 academic papers on linguistics and engineering papers written by Spanish and Chinese researchers. Boosters and hedges were spotted and occurrences extracted and classified with METOOL, a tool designed to identify metadiscourse markers. In the results, it was shown that Chinese writers used more boosters and hedges than their Spanish peers. To conclude, it was observed that although Chinese and Spanish writers tend to be assertive in their mother tongue, mitigation was used to adopt an academic style.

This chapter explores the conceptualisation of interactional politeness and associated research. It investigates three interrelated questions: (1) who studies politeness; (2) what is ‘politeness’ and how is it related to culture; (3) what are the main data types in which the politeness–culture interface can be captured. The chapter first points out that along with pragmaticians – academics specialising in the study of language use – linguistic politeness has been studied across a diverse cluster of areas. Being aware of this diversity is important because in a pursuit of intercultural politeness we should not limit our research to pragmatics only. Following this discussion, the chapter overviews the key features of politeness, by arguing that (1) it is a relational phenomenon, which (2) follows (linguistic) patterns, (3) means different things, depending on who attempts to define (or interpret) it, and which (4) comes into existence partly in interaction, and partly by not engaging in interaction (e.g. a person may get criticised for not doing something in interaction). The chapter argues that in pragmatics insufficient work has been done to capture the politeness–culture interface. Finally, the chapter overviews the main data types in which politeness in intercultural encounters can be studied.