Cover not available
Part of
Politeness in Professional Contexts
Edited by Dawn Archer, Karen Grainger and Piotr Jagodziński
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 311] 2020
► pp. 225–248

Chapter 10
“Music for your breakfast” relational work in a sole trader’s intercultural business emails

| University of Huddersfield
Keywords: computer-mediated communication (CMC), culture, email, emoticons, intercultural communication, rapport, reciprocity, relational work, self-disclosure, sole trader
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Self-disclosure and relational work
  • 3.CMC cues and media sharing
  • 4.Email data
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Media and cultural sharing
    • 5.2Reciprocal self-disclosure
    • 5.3CMC cues
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.311.10mar
References (55)
References
Bargh, John. A., Katelyn Y. A. McKenna and Grainne M. Fitzsimons. 2002. “Can You See the Real Me? Activation and Expression of the “True Self” on the Internet.” Journal of Social Issues 58 (1): 33–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. 2001. “Attachment, Decay, and Social Network”. Journal of Organizational Behavior 22 (6): 619–643. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheung, Christy M. K., Zach W. Y. Lee and Tommy K. H. Chan. 2015. “Self-Disclosure in Social Networking Sites: The Role of Perceived Cost, Perceived Benefits and Social Influence.” In Durham Research Online: 1–36. [URL]
Cho, Thomas. 2010. “Linguistic Features of Electronic Mail in the Workplace: A Comparison with Memoranda.” Language@Internet 7: 1–28.Google Scholar
Coupland, Justine, Nikolas Coupland, Howard Giles and John Wiemann. 1988. “My Life in Your Hands. Processes of Self-disclosure in Intergenerational Talk.” In Styles of Discourse, ed. by Nikolas Coupland, 201–253. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 2006. Language and the Internet (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Darics, Erika (2010). Politeness in computer-mediated discourse of a virtual team. Journal of Politeness Research, 6(1), 129–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Felice, Rachele, and Gregory Garretson. 2018. “Politeness at Work in the Clinton Email Corpus: A First Look at the Effects of Status and Gender.” Corpus Pragmatics 2: 221–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Donald, Merlin. 2013. “Mimesis Theory Re-Examined, Twenty Years after the Fact.” In Evolution of Mind, Brain and Culture, ed. by Holly Pittman and Gary Hatfield, 169–192. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dragojevic, Marko, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles. 2016. “Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory.” In Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities Across Contexts ed. by Howard Giles, 36–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filik, Ruth, Alexandra Turcan, Dominic Thompson, Nicole Harvey, Harriet Davies and Amelia Turner. 2016. “Sarcasm and Emoticons: Comprehension and Emotional Impact.” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69 (11): 2130–2146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giles, Howard. 2016. “The Social Origins of CAT.” In Communication Accommodation Theory: Negotiating Personal Relationships and Social Identities Across Contexts, ed. by Howard Giles, 1–12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gimenez, Julio C. 2000. “Business E-mail Communication: Some Emerging Tendencies in Register.” English for Specific Purposes 19: 237–251. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in Public; Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Harper Colophon Books.Google Scholar
Gordon, Cynthia and Melissa Luke. 2012. “Discursive Negotiation of Face via Email: Professional Identity Development in School Counseling Supervision.” Linguistics and Education 23 (1): 112–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gremler, Dwayne. D., and Kevin P. Gwinner. 2008. “Rapport-Building Behaviors Used by Retail Employees.” Journal of Retailing 84: 308–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., Miles Kahler and Alexander H. Montgomery. 2009. “Network Analysis for International Relations.” International Organization 63 (3): 559–592. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan, Dieter Stein and Tuija Virtanen. 2013. “Introduction to the Pragmatics of Computer-mediated Communication.” In Handbook of Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 3–31. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, Jen-Hung and Stacy Huey-Pyng Shyu. 2009. “Building Personalised Relationships with Customers via Emails.” Total Quality Management 20 (6): 585–601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Incelli, Ersilia. 2013. “Managing Discourse in Intercultural Business Email Interactions: a Case Study of a British and Italian BusinessTtransaction.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34 (6): 515–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jiang, L. Crystal, Natalya N. Bazarova, Jeffrey T. Hancock. 2013. “From Perception to Behavior: Disclosure Reciprocity and the Intensification of Intimacy in Computer-Mediated Communication.” Communication Research 40 (1): 125–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Marcel Bax. 2013. In-group Ritual and Relational Work. Journal of Pragmatics, 58: 73–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Michael Haugh. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kankaanranta, Anne. 2006. ““Hej Seppo, Could You Pls Comment on This!”--Internal Email Communication in Lingua Franca English in a Multinational Company.” Business Communication Quarterly 69: 216–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laub Coser, Rose. 1960. “Laughter among Colleagues. A Study of the Social Functions of Humor among the Staff of a Mental Hospital.” Psychiatry 23: 81–95.Google Scholar
Law, Monica. 2008. “Customer Referral Management: The Implications of Social Networks.” The Service Industries Journal 28 (5): 669–683. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leider, Stephen, Markus M. Möbius, Tanya Rosenblat and Quoc-Anh Do. 2007. “How Much is a Friend Worth? Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks.” Research Department Working Papers, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston 07–11. [URL]
Liebman, Noah and Darren Gergle. 2016. “It’s (Not) Simply a Matter of Time: The Relationship Between CMC Cues and Interpersonal Affinity.” Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 16: 570–581.Google Scholar
Locher, Miriam A. 2006. “Polite Behavior within Relational Work: The Discursive Approach to Politeness.” Multilingua 25 (3): 249–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam. A. 2013. “Relational Work and Interpersonal Pragmatics.” Journal of Pragmatics 58: 145–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A., and Richard J. Watts. 2005. “Politeness Theory and Relational Work”. Journal of Politeness Research 1 (1): 9–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Relational Work and Impoliteness: Negotiating Norms of Linguistic Behavior.” In Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, ed. by Derek Bousfield and Miriam Locher, 77–99. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen. 2017. “‘Small Talk Is Not Cheap’: Phatic Computer-mediated Communication in Intercultural Classes.” Computer Assisted Language Learning 30 (5): 432–446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manago, Adriana M., Tamara Taylor and Patricia M. Greenfield. 2012. “Me and My 400 Friends: The Anatomy of College Students’ Facebook Networks, Their Communication Patterns, and Well-being.” Developmental Psychology 48 (2): 369–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marsden, Elizabeth. 2019. “Relationship Management in Intercultural Business Emails. Unpublished PhD thesis”. University of Huddersfield. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marsden, Elizabeth, and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2017. “The Pragmatics of Mimesis: A Case Study of Intercultural Email Communication.” FLEKS Scandinavian Journal of Intercultural Theory and Practice 4 (1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McKeown, Jamie and Qilin Zhang. 2015. “Socio-pragmatic influence on opening salutation and closing valediction of British workplace email.” Journal of Pragmatics 85: 92–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin and James M. Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (May): 415–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Price, Linda and Eric J. Arnould. 1999. “Commercial Friendships: Service Provider-Client in Context Relationships.” Journal of Marketing 63 (4): 38–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scanlan, Martin and Margarita Zisselsberger. 2015. “The Formation of Communities of Practice in a Network of Schools Serving Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students.” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR) 20 (May): 58–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shao, Jing-bo, Jun-hui Zhang and Bei-bei Guo. 2014. “Research on the Influencing Factors of Customer Referral Behavior Based on Social Network – Application in the Catering Industry.” The Journal of High Technology Management Research 25 (2): 163–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Skovholt, Karianne, Anette Grønning and Anne Kankaanranta. 2014. “The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E-Mails: :-).” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19 (4): 780–797. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen and Jianyu Xing. 2003. “Managing Rapport in Intercultural Business Interactions: a Comparison of Two Chinese-British Welcome Meetings.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 24: 33–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stanley, Liz. 2015. “The Death of the Letter? Epistolary Intent, Letterness and the Many Ends of Letter-Writing.” Cultural Sociology 9 (2): 240–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Teh, Phoey Lee, Paul Rayson, Scott Piao and Irina Pak. 2015. “Sentiment Analysis Tools Should Take Account of the Number of Exclamation Marks!!!” International Conference on Information Integration and Web-Based Applications and Services (IiWAS) 2015: 4–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandergriff, Ilona. 2013. “Emotive Communication Online: A Contextual Analysis of Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) Cues.” Journal of Pragmatics 51: 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vaterlaus, J. Mitchell, Kathryn Barnett, Cesia Roche and Jimmy A. Young. 2016. ““Snapchat is More Personal”: An Exploratory Study on Snapchat Behaviors and Young Adult Interpersonal Relationships.” Computers in Human Behavior 62: 594–601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walther, Joseph B.. 2007. “Selective Self-presentation in Computer-mediated Communication: Hyperpersonal Dimensions of Technology, Language, and Cognition.” Computers in Human Behavior 23 (5): 2538–2557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walther, Joseph B., Celeste L. Slovacek and Lisa C. Tidwell. 2001. “Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? Photographic Images in Long-term and sShort-term Computer-mediated Communication.” Communication Research 28 (1): 105–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whalen, Juanita M., Penny M. Pexman and Alastair, J. Gill. 2009. ““Should Be Fun--Not!”: Incidence and Marking of Nonliteral Language in E-Mail.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 28: 263–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yuen, Wain, Sunny Sidhu, Gueorguie Vassilev, Sami Mubarak and Thomas Martin, James Wignall. 2018. Trends in Self-employment in the UK; Analysing the Characteristics, Income and Wealth of the Self-employed. Office for National Statistics. [URL]
Yum, Young-ok and Kazuya Hara. 2006. “Computer-Mediated Relationship Development: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11: 133–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Shanyang, Sherri Grasmuck and Jason Martin. 2008. “Identity Construction on Facebook: Digital Empowerment in Anchored Relationships.” Computers in Human Behavior 24: 1816–1836. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zummo, Marianna Lya. 2018a. “The Effect of CMC in Business Emails in Lingua Franca: Discourse Features and Misunderstandings.” International Journal of Society, Culture and Language 6 (1): 47–59.Google Scholar
. 2018b. “Troubled Talk in Cross-cultural Business Emails. A Digital Conversation Analysis of Interactions.” CULTUS Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication 10 (2): 57–75.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Virtanen, Mikko T & Riikka Nissi
2024. Negotiating joint commitment in collaborative work project: Focus on text-based requests and news deliveries in atypical work. Discourse Studies 26:3 ► pp. 402 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Ping & Huiying Liu
2023. Interpersonal strategies in international business emails: The intercultural pragmatics perspective. Intercultural Pragmatics 20:5 ► pp. 557 ff. DOI logo
Orthaber, Sara
2023. Introduction. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.