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This research clarifies the interpersonal concept of attentiveness and its relationships to politeness and culture.

December 21, 2025Contrastive Pragmatics0 citationsOpen Access

Attentiveness as an Interpersonal Notion: Im/politeness, Culture and Contrastive Pragmatics

SFSaeko FukushimaDalian University of Foreign Languages

Key Points

This research clarifies the interpersonal concept of attentiveness and its relationships to politeness and culture.
Clarified the concept of attentiveness and its conditions for emergence during interaction.
Reviewed existing research on attentiveness, primarily in Japanese contexts.
Proposed future research directions in contrastive pragmatics.
Attentiveness is crucial for understanding politeness in different cultures.
The study highlights the need for broader research in cross-cultural contexts.

Abstract

Abstract The interpersonal concept, attentiveness (analogous to kikubari/kizukai 気配り / 気遣い in Japanese), is clarified and discussed. First, attentiveness is described and explained, focusing on how it works, and what kinds of conditions and motives are needed for it to arise during interaction. Then, attentiveness is discussed in relation to im/politeness. Research on attentiveness has been mostly conducted in Japanese or using Japanese as a springboard in cross-cultural studies. Lastly, I propose future directions for attentiveness research that highlight its potential to broaden the scope of contrastive pragmatics.

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