Rapport management theory and culture

HELEN SPENCER-OATEY

Kecskes: Research on politeness has predominantly focused on linguistic

features and on the speaker. The perspective of hearer/receiver has usually
been missing. On several occasions you have criticized the politeness theory
of Brown and Levinson (1987) and oered an alternative to explain the es-
sence and role of (im)politeness in intercultural communication by revising
the understanding of face and introducing a group dimension to the individ-
ual dimension of B&L. However, in your rapport management theory you
seem to keep their speaker-centeredness to some extent. How do you think
your theoretical construct should be modied to incorporate a hearer/
receiver perspective, or, if you think it is already there, what parts of the
theory should be made more explicit to demonstrate how a balanced view
of both speaker and hearer is present in it?

Spencer-Oatey: I am surprised that you regard my rapport management

theory as rather speaker-centered, because, if anything, I feel it is more
hearer-centered. For example, in my rst exposition of it in 2000, I ex-
plained it as follows:

I suggest that rapport (harmony) between people can be threatened in two main
ways: through face-threatening behaviour and through rights-threatening behav-
iour. When people threaten our rights, they infringe on our sense of social entitle-
ments; for example, if someone tries to force us to do something, but we feel s/he
has no right to expect us to do this, s/he threatens our equity rights. Similarly, if
someone speaks to us in a way that is too personal for our liking, we may feel s/
he has threatened our (non-) association rights. The result is that we feel oended,
uncomfortable, annoyed or angry; however, we do not necessarily feel a loss of
face. Sometimes, though, peoples treatment of us may not simply irritate or an-
noy us; it may go a step further and make us feel as though we have lost credibil-
ity or have been personally devalued in some way. When this happens, our face
has been threatened, and we talk of losing face. This can happen when people
criticize us or oppose us, or make us look small in some way (Spencer-Oatey,
2000: 16).

Intercultural Pragmatics 2-3 (2005), 335346 1612-295X/05/00020335

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336 Helen Spencer-Oatey

All the examples in this paragraph refer to the reactions of the hearer.
Similarly, my discussion of speech acts has taken a very hearer-centered
approach:

. . . orders/requests are not necessarily face-threatening: they may be face-

threatening, but need not always be. For example, if we are ordered to do some-
thing menial that we feel is below us, and we feel devalued in some way, then we
may perceive the order to be threatening to our identity face. On the other hand,
on a dierent occasion, we may feel pleased or even honoured if someone asks us
for help, feeling that it shows trust in our abilities and/or acceptance as a close
friend. In this case, the request can give us face. . . . Compliments are typically
face-enhancing speech acts, in that they are usually intended to have a positive ef-
fect on interpersonal relations. . . . On the other hand, if the receiver feels that a
compliment is too personal, and reects a more intimate relationship with the
complimenter than s/he feels comfortable with, the compliment can have a dier-
ent eect: it can threaten the receivers sense of association rights (Spencer-Oatey,
2000: 1718).

Fundamental to my approach is my belief that politeness is concerned

with (dis)harmony in social relations and that peoples perceptions of this
are subjective social judgements. The main focus of my work has not
been on linguistic strategies per se, and hence not directly on the choices
that speakers make. Rather, I have been trying to explore the bases on
which people make their social judgements in authentic interactions.
These bases aect the deliberations, conscious or otherwise, of both
speakers and hearers (as speakers consider which linguistic strategies to
use and their possible impact, and as hearers evaluate what they have
heard). My research suggests that, while face is a crucial base factor, we
need (a) to broaden our understanding of it from Brown and Levinsons
(1978/1987) conceptualisation, and (b) to incorporate other elements. My
thinking and understanding is continuing to develop as I carry on re-
searching the area.
With regard to the conceptualisation of face, I have emphasised the
importance of incorporating both personal/independent and social/
interdependent perspectives (cf. Markus and Kitayama 1991), and in my
earlier work this was identied as two dierent types of face: quality face
and social identity face (2000, 2002). However, it is not always easy to
distinguish these two categorically, and so more recently (2005), in order
to gain a clearer understanding, I have been drawing on work by the so-
cial psychologist, Shalom Schwartz (e.g., 1992; 2001) on personal values
and applying them to our understanding of face. Gomans (1967: 5)
classic denition refers to face as the positive social VALUE that a per-
son eectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken

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 Rapport management theory and culture 337

during a particular contact [my emphasis], so I believe there is much

to be gained by exploring our understanding of values. Schwartz has de-
veloped a framework for exploring peoples values that has been empiri-
cally validated in over 44 dierent cultural groups. Using the statistical
technique known as smallest space analysis, he represents a large number
of fundamental values in multidimensional space, and he groups them on
the basis of their proximity/distance. All of his data show a very similar
structure: a circular pattern of adjacent values, usually showing ten main
categories of values. There are also a number of oppositions such
as self-transcendenceself-enhancement and openness to change
conservation. Some of these values are primarily independent value
constructs, such as competence, intelligence, self-enterprise, freedom;
others are primarily interdependent value constructs, such as loyalty,
helpfulness, justice, obedience. Yet others have both independent and in-
terdependent elements. (See Spencer-Oatey 2005 for more details.) The
strength of this framework for our understanding of face is that it can
help us conceptualise the numerous dierent types of face claims that
people may make in dierent contexts, at dierent times and even simul-
taneously, and it allows us to build up a richer picture of peoples face
sensitivities than Brown and Levinsons (1978/1987) twofold distinction
into positive and negative face aords. Negative face concerns can be
linked with Schwartzs value self-direction, but Schwartzs framework
oers a much richer picture of the various types of positive face concerns
that people may have.
I believe it is also important to remember that people may make face
claims not only in relation to themselves as individuals, but also in rela-
tion to the groups that they belong to. For example, if intelligence or hon-
esty is an important value for me, I may nd it face-threatening not only
if someone accuses me personally of being stupid or dishonest, but also if
they accuse (members of ) my family, religious or ethnic group of being
like that. The closer my sense of identication with the accused group,
the stronger my sense of face threat will be.
In terms of other elements aecting peoples social judgements of
rapport/politeness, my earlier work (2000, 2002) referred to peoples per-
ceptions of sociality rights, and distinguished these from face concerns.
More recently (2005), I have developed the concept of sociality rights by
exploring notions of prescribed, permitted, and proscribed behaviour, and
by considering the various bases of peoples behavioural expectations. As
with face, the aim is to identify the key factors that people use to make
judgements associated with harmonious or conictual interpersonal rela-
tions. The bases are neutral with respect to speaker or hearer; they apply
equally to both.

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338 Helen Spencer-Oatey

Although this work on the bases of rapport/politeness judgements ap-

plies equally to speakers and hearers, it is a fair criticism to say that, in
much of my work, I have focused more on the self than on the other, no
matter whether the self is a hearer or a speaker or each consecutively (as
in most interactional discourse). Clearly this is inadequate. When people
interact with each other, they not only need to make dynamic judgements
as to whether their own face has been enhanced, maintained, or damaged,
and whether their sociality rights have been enfringed or upheld; equally
or even more importantly, they need to consider their interlocutors face
sensitivities and behavioural expectations, and the extent to which those
needs are being considered and met. They need to consider not only their
own interactional rights, but also the interactional rights of their interloc-
utor(s), and hence their interactional obligations towards the interlocu-
tor(s). Eective rapport management depends on mutual sensitivity and
on each interlocutor nding an appropriate balance between meeting
his/her own needs and the needs of the other(s). This is something that I
had simply assumed previously but had not explicitly stated until recently
(2005: 116).

Kecskes: Culture is said to be characterized by both regularity and variabil-

ity (e.g., Gumperz 1982). Your denition of culture (Spencer-Oatey 2000:
4) seems to put emphasis on regularity rather than variability, although
it does not deny the importance of the latter. Currently, however, there has
emerged a constructivist approach that focuses on variability, arguing that
cross-cultural encounters create an entirely new context in which the rules
that will govern the relations between cultures do not yet exist and hence
must be constructed. Norms in this view arise directly out of the communi-
cative process, occasioned by the need of individuals to coordinate their ac-
tions with others. Several researchers (e.g., Bulcean and Blommaert 1997;
Blommaert 2001; Rampton 1995) argue that culture is situational in all
its meanings and with all its aliated concepts and depends on the context
in which concrete interactions occur. Culture cannot be seen as something
that is carved in every member of a particular society or community. It
can be made, changed, manipulated and dropped on the spot. What do you
think about this approach? How do you think regularity and variability re-
late to each other in culture?

Spencer-Oatey: There are endless denitions of culture, and one that

I have given is as follows: Culture is a fuzzy set of attitudes, beliefs,
behavioural conventions, and basic assumptions and values that are
shared by a group of people, and that inuence each members behaviour
and each members interpretations of the meaning of other peoples

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 Rapport management theory and culture 339

behaviour (2000: 4). I believe that culture, by denition, is concerned

with regularities within a social group; however, as I explain below, this
regularity does not preclude variability. On the contrary, regularity and
variability go hand in hand.
The regularities that constitute the culture of a group (in other words,
the manifestations of a groups culture) can be various, including the
following:
 Basic assumptions and values
 Beliefs, attitudes, and ideologies
 Laws/rules/regulations
 Goals and missions
 Policies and strategies
 Perceptions of role relationships, including rights and obligations as-
sociated with them
 Behavioural rituals, conventions, and routines (linguistic and non-
linguistic), and understandings/interpretations of them
 Artifacts and products
Social psychologists, in their research into cross-cultural issues, have pri-
marily focused on basic assumptions and values as the key manifestation
of culture, and this emphasis has had a major impact on applied elds
like international business/management, where intercultural issues are
typically explained almost exclusively in terms of cultural values. More
recently, a number of social psychologists (Leung et al. 2002) have called
for a broadening of the conceptual tools used for cross-cultural analysis,
and proposed the use of general beliefs or social axioms (see also Bond et
al. 2004). However, this is still a very narrow focus, and so Bond, Zegarac
and Spencer-Oatey (2000) argue that yet other elements need to be in-
cluded. So I fully support Gumperzs (e.g., Gumperz 1982; Gumperz and
Roberts 1991) emphasis on other manifestations of culture, such as per-
ceptions of role relationships, and verbal and non-verbal communicative
conventions. In fact, I would argue that even more elements should be in-
cluded in studies of intercultural interaction, including at least the ele-
ments I have listed above.
Holliday (1999) maintains that we can regard a social group as having
its own culture when there are regularities (such as in behavioural con-
ventions) among the group members that help to bring cohesion to the
group: When a researcher looks at an unfamiliar social grouping, it can
be said to have a small culture when there is a discernible set of behav-
iours and understandings connected with group cohesion (Holliday
1999: 248). I agree with Holliday (1999) that the culture of a group is in-
extricably linked with the regularities that occur within the group and

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340 Helen Spencer-Oatey

that help bind the members together as a group. However, this does not
mean (and Holliday does not imply) that a given social group necessarily
has to manifest regularities in each of the elements listed above in order
for it to be regarded as having its own culture. For example, members of
a work-based community of practice (Wenger 1998), which can be re-
garded as having its own culture because of the shared repertoire that
emerges through the groups mutual engagement in a joint enterprise,
may share various regularities that are associated with their specic prac-
tice (including, for example, work-related behavioural conventions and
routines, artifacts, assumptions about role rights and obligations etc.).
However, those same members may simultaneously hold very dierent
beliefs about life (e.g., religious beliefs) from each other, or may each
make very dierent assumptions about the rights and obligations of fam-
ily members. So in other words, the group may show cultural patterning
in certain aspects but variability in others.
There is also a contextual basis to the regularities and variation. For
example, if a group develops an informal, personalised style of interac-
tion, in which joking and teasing is common and in which personal self-
disclosure is valued, this does not mean that these group members will
necessarily interact in the same way with other people. It is possible that
they may, but it is equally possible that they may regard that as inappro-
priate and hence show very dierent behaviour in dierent contexts. On
the other hand, it is equally possible that certain very deep-seated cultural
attributes will not be contextually based. For example, members of social
groups who uphold the value of hierarchy in the management of relation-
ships may apply that value in a range of contexts (e.g., at work, in the
family, in the community), even though it may be operationalised dier-
ently in each of these contexts. Similarly, members of social groups who
stress the fundamental equality of relationships may uphold this across a
range of communicative situations, although again it may be operational-
ised dierently in dierent contexts. So whilst I would agree that culture
should always be studied and analysed in specic contexts, I would not
agree with Blommaert (1998) that culture, in all its meanings and with
all its aliated concepts, is always situational, and always depends on
the context in which concrete interactions occur. Even though behaviou-
ral and communicative conventions are typically situationally dependent,
very fundamental assumptions and values can be pan-situational (despite
being operationalised dierently in dierent contexts).
Moreover, although I believe that the culture of a group refers to the
regularities that exist within that group, this does not mean that the cul-
tural manifestations are either uniformly distributed within the group or
are uniformly upheld across dierent contexts. Culture is an individual

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 Rapport management theory and culture 341

construct as well as a social construct, and so variability is inevitable. Av-

ruch (1998) explains this as follows:
. . . culture is a derivative of individual experience, something learned or created
by individuals themselves or passed on to them socially by contemporaries or an-
cestors. . . . by linking culture to individuals and emphasizing the number and di-
versity of social and experiential settings that individuals encounter, we expand
the scope of reference of culture to encompass not just quasi- or pseudo-kinship
groups (tribe, ethnic group, and nation are the usual ones) but also groupings
that derive from profession, occupation, class, religion, or region. This reorienta-
tion supports the idea that individuals reect or embody multiple cultures and
that culture is always psychologically and socially distributed in a group (Av-
ruch 1998: 56).

Variability can therefore occur:

 between members of a given social group
 across situational contexts
 in the cultural manifestations that are common to a given social group
When social psychologists refer to cultural norms, they are not in fact
implying uniformity. On the contrary, they regard them as kinds of
behavioural/attitudinal means, which by denition entail distributional
variability. Here, Wengers (1998) explication of communities of practice
adds further insights:
The ability to have multiple levels of involvement is an important characteristic of
communities of practice . . . Indeed, because it is dened by engagement rather
than a reication of membership, a community of practice can oer multiple,
more or less peripheral forms of participation. From this perspective, a commu-
nity of practice is a node of mutual engagement that becomes progressively looser
at the periphery, with layers going from core membership to extreme peripherality
(Wenger 1998: 1178).
As Corder and Meyerho (forthcoming) point out, people may be pe-
ripheral members of a community of practice (and, in my view, of any
cultural group) either because they choose (for whatever reason) not to
adopt all the practices associated with core membership, or else because
they are novices in that community. So this points to another aspect of
variability in culture: the variability that occurs over time. When a new
social group forms, its group-specic practices emerge over time; in other
words, its culture gradually develops. However, sooner or later the cul-
tural manifestations of the group stabilise, and so new members of the
group have to be inducted into/learn the culture through socialisation,
training and so on. Meanwhile, (some of ) the cultural manifestations of
the group can themselves change over time, either through innovation or

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342 Helen Spencer-Oatey

else through diusion. In other words, the variability of culture is also re-
ected in the changes that can occur over time.
How then do these understandings of regularity and variability in cul-
ture aect my approach to intercultural communication? I believe that it
is fully compatible with a constructivist approach. Wengers (1998) com-
ments on shared repertoires closely reect my views:
I call a communitys set of shared resources a repertoire to emphasise both its
rehearsed character and its availability for further engagement in practice. . . .
Histories of interpretation create shared points of reference, but they do not im-
pose meaning. Things like words, artifacts, gestures, and routines are useful not
only because they are recognizable in their relation to a history of mutual engage-
ment, but also because they can be re-engaged in new situations. . . . All have well-
established interpretations, which can be re-utilized to new eects, whether these
new eects simply continue an established trajectory of interpretation or take it in
unexpected directions (Wenger 1998: 83)

In specic encounters, people can uphold, manipulate or drop cultural

practices, according to their goals, preferences and so on. They have the
freedom to make those individual choices, and they can convey interac-
tional meanings through those choices. However, unlike Blommaert
(1998a), I do not believe that they make culture in a single encounter;
culture only emerges when patterns start to develop. In fact, Blommaert
(1998b), in his review of Rampton (1995), reports use of crossing (the
use of Panjabi, Caribbean creole and stylized Asian English within ado-
lescent peer-groups by speakers who cannot claim ownership rights to
these language varieties) in terms of patterns, albeit very complex ones;
for example:
Crossing into SAE [stylized Asian English] and Panjabi seems to occur mostly
in situations in which normal ways or conduct or rules of behaviour could not
be taken for granted and needed to be transgressed: risky situations, self-talk,
cross-sex talk, impropriety. . . . crossing does not abolish or eliminate the existing
ethnic stratications in society, but manipulates them situationally (Blommaert,
1998b: 121).
In other words, the strategic use of language depends on both regularity
and variability; variability often only takes on strategic meaning against
the backdrop of regularity. However, I do not believe that the variability
itself can be regarded as culture; at least, not until (or not unless) the vari-
ability itself becomes patterned in its occurrence!

Kecskes: You have emphasized several times that in order for us to better
understand intercultural communication we need a careful analysis of
actual intercultural interactions, along with meaningful unpackaging of

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 Rapport management theory and culture 343

culture as an explanatory variable (e.g., Bond, Zegarac & Spencer-Oatey

2000; Spencer-Oatey 2001). What principles and means do you think re-
searchers should use when they analyze actual intercultural interaction?

Spencer-Oatey: My emphasis on analysing actual intercultural in-

teractions has been aimed particularly at interculturalists (who are
frequently not linguists or communication specialists) who rely primarily
on ndings from generalised questionnaire studies that do not probe
contextually-based communication or interaction issues. I believe that
cross-situational generalisations are only valid if they are drawn from a
series of contextually-based studies. However, most linguists need less
convincing on this point!
As explained in my answer to your second question, I believe that more
analytic thought needs to be given to the various ways in which culture
may manifest itselfthat is what I mean by the unpackaging of cul-
ture. Most social psychologists have focused on values as manifestations
of culture, and have ignored everything else. Blommaert (1998a), when
talking about John Gumperzs work, also seems to link culture closely
with values in the following comment:
What can be observed and analyzed in intercultural communication are dierent
conventions of communication, dierent speech styles, narrative patterns, in
short, the deployment of dierent communicative repertoires. For as far as iden-
tity is concerned (cultural, ethnic identity), identity can be an inference of these
speech styles: people can identify selves or others on the basis of such speech
styles. But in actual fact, not culture is deployed, but communicative repertoires
(Blommaert 1998a, section 2).
Yet Gumperz himself (e.g., Gumperz and Roberts, 1991) states clearly
that he regards communication conventions as manifestations of culture.
So I believe there is a great need for a clearer identication of the range of
elements that can be manifestations of culture, and to avoid confusing
these manifestations with discussions and debates on what constitutes a
social/cultural group. Blommaert (1998a) also states the following re-
garding intercultural communication research:
Studying speech conventions of certain groups of people, and then contrasting
them with those of other groups of people, is of little use to the study of intercul-
tural communication. Nothing can a priori be inferred about what will happen
when members of both groups meet. And if and when they meet, all kinds of
things happen in the interaction itself: adaptation is often mutual, people shift
into a medium which is no ones property, cultural conventions get sacriced in
a split second while others are given overwhelming prominence, and so on. The
emergence of ethnically or culturally marked aspects of communicative behav-
ior is most often dominated by other than cultural factors. Frustration and anger,

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344 Helen Spencer-Oatey

powerlessness or a feeling of threat may trigger ethnic style (cf. Giles & Johnston
1986) (Blommaert 1998a, section 2).

I agree with Blommaert that what will happen in an intercultural interac-

tion (or in fact, in any interaction) can never be predicted with any real
accuracy. In fact, one of my papers (Spencer-Oatey and Xing, 2003) illus-
trates how two similar interactions that occurred in almost identical con-
texts, resulted in extremely dierent outcomes and were evaluated very
dierently by the participants concerned. Nevertheless, how will we ever
be able to identify what ethnically or culturally marked aspects of com-
municative behaviour are if we have never studied the speech conventions
of certain groups of people? And if such behaviour is often triggered by
aective factors, surely that is a crucial feature of intercultural interaction
that we need to gain insights into! Studying dierent groups of people in-
teracting in given contexts provides useful background information, as
Gumperz and Roberts (1991) demonstrate, and is valuable from that
point of view. However, Blommaert is right in emphasising that any in-
sights we gain into the communicative repertoires of given social groups
must NOT be used mechanisticallythe dynamics of intercultural inter-
action are far more complicated than this. On the other hand, the insights
can usefully inform expectations, so long as those expectations are always
held loosely and with an open mind.
Important goals for interculturalists are to make intercultural commu-
nication more eective, to promote equal opportunities and to improve
intercultural relations. So I believe that a vital element of research in this
area should be the gathering of data on participants reactions to and in-
terpretations of specic interactions. John Gumperz (e.g., 1982) has done
this extensively in his work, and a few linguists (e.g., Bailey 1997, 2000;
Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2003, 2004, 2005) have also done so. However,
a large proportion of linguistic studies simply focus on the linguistic fea-
tures, and there is no information from the participants as to how they
have interpreted or reacted to given language use. Cheng (2003) is a case
in point. Focusing on intercultural conversation, she provides very de-
tailed analyses of a range of pragmatic features in her corpus of intercul-
tural discourse, but none of her participants were asked to comment on
their subjective experiences. From a practical applications point of view,
I believe this is a serious weakness, because we cannot explore how inter-
actionally signicant or otherwise given language use is. In fact, the same
principle applies to research in politeness theory. As explained in my an-
swer to question 1, I believe that politeness is concerned with (dis)har-
mony in social relations and that peoples perceptions of this are subjec-
tive social judgements. It is therefore essential that researchers gather

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 Rapport management theory and culture 345

data on peoples reactions to language use, in addition to the discourse

data itself. In that way, we can begin to explore more eectively the inter-
relationship between language and social relations, no matter whether
they involve intracultural or intercultural relations.
Finally, I would like to emphasise the importance of longitudinal
studies of intercultural communication. Discourse studies typically focus
on specic, individual interactions, and in on-o interactions this is ne.
However, much intercultural communication occurs in relationships that
extend over time, and both transactional and interactional meanings may
also need to be negotiated over time. In an inter-governmental project
that I am currently managing, the British and Chinese senior manage-
ment teams discovered that they had fundamentally misunderstood each
others aims and objectives for the joint project after working and meet-
ing together for two years! This kind of problem poses quite a challenge
to researchers of intercultural communication, and certainly underlines
the danger of relying too exclusively on one-o recordings.

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