(Im)politeness in cross-cultural encounters

In this article I will first discuss the notions of ‘politeness’ and ‘impoliteness’ including a multilevel model of politeness and impoliteness that relates universal levels to culture- and language-specific ones. Given this framework and my earlier postulation of a set of parameters along which members of two linguacultures differ in terms of communicative styles and preferences conventionally holding in a particular linguaculture, I will provide several examples of cross-cultural interactions in academic advising sessions. These examples will be discussed and some conclusions about misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication and ways to mitigate or avoid them will be drawn.