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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 31:2 (2021) ► pp.198–224

Metapragmatic comments on relating across cultures

Korean students’ uncertainties over relating to UK academics

ORCID logo | Shanghai Jiao Tong University
ORCID logo | University of Warwick

This paper analyses postings made by student applicants on Korean online communities about how best to handle interactions with potential future PhD supervisors at UK universities. The questions they posed reveal the lack of relevant contextual information they experienced, especially around the rights and obligations of supervisors. This paper thus analyses students’ metapragmatic comments and argues for greater attention to be paid within interpersonal and intercultural pragmatics to interactional goals and conceptions of role relations, especially the rights and obligations associated with them. The analysis has revealed that background information on role relations is of great importance for relational management and communication planning in high stakes intercultural interaction. This suggests that potential cultural variation in the perceived rights and obligations associated with a given role (in this case, PhD supervisor) and their implications for assessments of role relations are of central concern.

Keywords: role relations, intercultural relations, metapragmatics, interactional goals, uncertainty, rights and obligations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Multidisciplinary perspectives on relating across cultures
    • 2.1Discourse perspectives on relating
    • 2.2Participants and relating
    • 2.3Culture, framing and relating
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data collection
    • 3.2Analytic procedures
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Comments and questions on role responsibilities and power
    • 4.2Comments and questions on communication protocols
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Goals and issues of uncertainty
    • 5.2The impact of culture: Emic perspectives and ‘being Korean’
    • 5.3Implications for interpersonal and intercultural pragmatics
  • 6.Concluding comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 30 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20004.kim
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