A cross-cultural pragmatic study of rapport-management strategies in Chinese and English academic upward request emails

Zhu, Wuhan

doi:10.1080/14708477.2016.1253707

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The preference for direct requests among Chinese peers on social media is in line with the findings for Chinese requests in face-to-face communication (Chen et al, 2013;Ren, 2018b;Lee-Wong, 1994) and in email communication (Zhu, 2016). The preference for direct requests among Japanese peers also mirrors the previous findings of Rose (1996) and Fukushima (1996Fukushima ( , 2000Fukushima ( , 2003Fukushima ( , 2012, but differs from other claims in earlier communication studies (e.g., Clancy, 1986;Yamada, 1994Yamada, , 1997.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…She emphasised that internal mitigators played a crucial role in Chinese requests. By investigating the academic emails that Chinese postgraduates sent to university instructors, Zhu (2016) found that the majority (more than 80%) of the emails used direct request strategies. Of these, expectation statements (e.g., 'I hope I have the opportunity to ask your advice') ranked first, followed by imperatives.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The speech act of request is the most researched speech act in pragmatics, regardless of contrasting between different languages (e.g., Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper, 1989;Fukushima, 2000;Chen et al, 2013;Ogiermann and Bella, 2020), within a pluricentric language (e.g., Barron, 2008;Ren, 2018b) or from the second language perspective (e.g., Woodfield and Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2012;Schauer, 2009). Previous studies have compared requests in Chinese and English (e.g., Yeung, 1997Yeung, , 2000Zhu, 2016) and compared requests in Japanese and English (e.g., Fukushima, 1996Fukushima, , 2000Fukushima, , 2003Hill, Ide, Ikuta, Kawasaki, and Ogino, 1986;Rinnert and Kobayashi, 1999). In addition, Rue and Zhang (2008) investigated request strategies in Chinese and Korean.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

Ren

Fukushima

2020

Contrastive Pragmatics

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This study investigates Chinese and Japanese requests in social media communication, focusing on the requests made between university students. The data consisted of 300 social media requests made by 30 Chinese university students and 304 social media requests made by 30 Japanese university students, respectively. The findings revealed that the Chinese and Japanese participants displayed more similarities than differences regarding the request strategy that they preferred to use among peers on social media. Both groups employed direct requests the most frequently, followed by conventionally indirect requests. Non-conventionally indirect requests were used the least frequently by both groups. The Japanese participants employed twice as many external modifiers as their Chinese counterparts. In contrast, the Chinese participants used considerably more lexical/phrasal internal modifiers than the Japanese participants. The findings are discussed in relation to factors such as social distance, living arrangements and new technologies.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

Ren

Fukushima

2020

Contrastive Pragmatics

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“…Openings and closings, on the other hand, are considered optional elements (Crystal, 2001;Bou-Franch, 2011). Cumulative research has in part provided some general understanding regarding the function and use of openings and closings sequences across different languages, but findings are generally presented within broader investigations of L2 emails (e.g., Chen, 2015;Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011;Savić, 2018;Zhu, 2017). Studies isolating openings and closings for independent examination are steadily growing (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2009;Bjørge, 2007;Bou-Franch, 2011;Codina-Espurz & Salazar-Campillo, 2019;Waldvogel, 2007) but few have investigated these stylistic features with Chinese learners of English (Zhu, 2015 is an exception).…”

Section: Openings and Closings In L2 English Emailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Openings and closings in institutionally-situated email requests

Halenko¹,

Winder²

2022

SAR

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The study abroad (SA) experience presents opportunities to enrich linguistic and cultural knowledge, but pragmatic development does not always follow a linear path. This investigation describes one interlanguage challenge: managing online interactions in upward email requests. Openings and closings in emails of two academic discourse communities are examined: (L1) English-speaking experts with three years of prior socialization into UK academic practices (n = 162) and (L2) Chinese English as a foreign language novices as newcomers on their SA stay (n = 159). The study aims to analyze sociocultural variance between the groups and whether a 10-month sojourn influences novice email practices. Results revealed novices and experts adopted markedly different strategies for interpersonal work. Experts tended to take a less formal, egalitarian stance when initiating emails while novices opted for increased levels of formality in structure and style. Most novices’ mismanagement could be traced back to first language influences or, more commonly, to an overreliance on formal letter writing techniques.

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“…English and Chinese are two languages that have been widely studied in pragmatics, mainly because of the large population of their users and the fascinating and different cultures that underlie their politeness (Leech, 2007). Numerous studies have explored and compared various speech acts, especially those related to Brown and Levinson's (1987) face theory such as gratitude, refusal, and requests, in English and Chinese (Zhu, 2017;Chang and Ren, 2020;House and Kádár, 2021;Li, 2022). However, the speech act of self-praise remains relatively understudied (Li and Wu, 2022;Xia and Jiang, 2022;Zhang and Aliya, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparative study of self-praise on English and Chinese social media: strategies, themes, and motivations

Wu,

Zhang,

Ren

2023

Front. Psychol.

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The act of self-praise, a novel and prevalent discourse pattern on social media across different cultures, is still understudied. As such, this study delves into self-praise from linguistic and psychological perspectives by examining and comparing the strategies, themes, and motivations of self-praise on English and Chinese social media. A discourse-based analysis of the data comprising 200 posts from Twitter (English) users and 200 posts from Weibo (Chinese) users revealed that Twitter users favored more unmodified explicit self-praise strategies, while Weibo users opted for more implicit self-praise strategies. Both groups employed explicit self-praise equally, but with different sub-strategies. The most prevalent themes were appearance, competence/performance, skills, virtues, and self-encouragement. Appearance was more dominant among Twitter users, whereas skills and self-encouragement were more popular among Weibo users. Both groups valued competence/performance and virtues, but with different virtues. Twitter users valued cherishing friendship, bravery, and maturity, whereas Weibo users stressed kindness, cherishing kinship, and thoughtfulness. Two semi-structured interviews conducted with six Twitter participants and six Weibo participants indicated that the motivations for online self-praise in both groups were psychological needs such as self-flattery, self-presentation, and self-encouragement, while commercial profit was a motivation only for Weibo participants. This study also discusses the social and cultural factors that may account for these differences and provides implications for future research on online self-praise.

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A cross-cultural pragmatic study of rapport-management strategies in Chinese and English academic upward request emails

Cited by 10 publications

References 27 publications

Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

Openings and closings in institutionally-situated email requests

A comparative study of self-praise on English and Chinese social media: strategies, themes, and motivations

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