Intercultural Pragmatics: Integrating Diverse PragmaticStyles in Multicultural Academic Discourse

Globalization, migration and the mingling of cultures in one community has made this world highly multicultural. This interconnectedness brings the need to interact and have different relationships with people from various cultures which poses challenges for people who would cross the borders of the countries altogether with their cultural boundaries. While diversity brings rich academic environment it also includes contemporary challenges, particularly in terms of pragmatic competence. This paper’s aim is to examine how language is used in academic contexts preserving divergent pragmatic styles for politeness, directness, argumentation and critical engagement in academic communication. A qualitative analysis of students’ e-mails and their communication with professors is used to identify key points of intercultural pragmatic friction because different cultures have different norms which are essential to be taught in terms of concrete strategies for pragmatic norms and intercultural communication. Finally, the study concludes that teaching pragmatic norms explicitly can help students navigate academic discourse more effectively by fostering mutual respect for diverse communicative styles without demanding cultural assimilation. Keywords: Intercultural communication, Pragmatics, Pragmatic Styles, Culture