Intercultural impoliteness

The paper argues that impoliteness may work differently in intercultural interactions than in L1 communication. Most researchers (cf. Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 2009, 2010; Haugh, 2011) analyzing impoliteness within one language seem to agree that no act is inherently impolite, and that such a condition depends on the context or speech situation that affects interpretation. This may not be quite so when interlocutors use not their L1 but another language as the medium of communication. It is hypothesized that the priority of semantic analyzability of an utterance for nonnative speakers and their L1-based prior experience in meaning processing has a profound effect on how politeness/impoliteness is processed. As a result, the polite or impolite load of expressions and utterances may be lost or an evaluative polite/impolite function may emerge where it should not. Focusing on propositional meanings interlocutors may sometimes be unaware of impoliteness because it is conveyed implicitly or through paralinguistic means that function differently for speakers with different L1 backgrounds.