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Interpersonal strategies in international business emails: The intercultural pragmatics perspective

  • Ping Liu

    Ping Liu, Ph.D., is professor at The Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics and School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, P.R. China. She has published articles in Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, Pragmatics and Society, Pragmatics & Cognition, Applied Pragmatics, and East Asian Pragmatics. Her research interests include metapragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, and business discourse.

    und Huiying Liu

    Huiying Liu, Ed.D., is associate professor at School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, P.R. China. He has published articles in Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics & Cognition and East Asian Pragmatics. His research interests include pragmatic competence, politeness studies, and BELF.

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 7. November 2023
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Abstract

Business email has a significant impact on commercial activities and organizational image. Intercultural pragmatics is the new development of pragmatics, moving its focus from mono-cultural communication to multi-cultural communication, aiming to describe how communicators seek, activate, and create common ground to complete tasks in intercultural communication contexts. Drawing on 1,477 separate English emails exchanged between a Chinese auto parts export company and its business partners in different parts of the world, we find, from the intercultural pragmatics perspective, that different types of interpersonal strategies, i.e., alliance building, other-caring, and self-enhancing/defending, are employed to construct virtual intimacy and to create and highlight interpersonal relationship dimensions in international business communication. These strategies are intended to facilitate the accomplishment of communication tasks by creating emergent common ground, reflecting the dynamics and interculturality of business communication. This research deepens our understanding of the mechanism of relationship management in international business communication.


Corresponding author: Huiying Liu, School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P.R. China, E-mail:

About the authors

Ping Liu

Ping Liu, Ph.D., is professor at The Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics and School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, P.R. China. She has published articles in Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, Pragmatics and Society, Pragmatics & Cognition, Applied Pragmatics, and East Asian Pragmatics. Her research interests include metapragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, and business discourse.

Huiying Liu

Huiying Liu, Ed.D., is associate professor at School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, P.R. China. He has published articles in Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics & Cognition and East Asian Pragmatics. His research interests include pragmatic competence, politeness studies, and BELF.

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers.

  1. Research funding: This study is part of the research outcome by the “Business Discourse Research Innovation Team” funded by the Department of Education of Guangdong Province, China (No. 2021WCXTD007). This study is also supported by Project 21AYY011 on the socio-pragmatic study of online harmonious discourse construction and its leading mechanism, funded by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences, PR China.

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Published Online: 2023-11-07
Published in Print: 2023-11-27

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