Conceptualizations of respect in business negotiations

Abstract

International business negotiations are prone to several difficulties, one of the most fundamental of which being differences in cultural conceptualizations (Sharifian 2011). In order to explore how Brazilians and Germans conceptualizerespect in business negotiations, interviews in English with business negotiators were conducted and cultural conceptualizations analyzed. Following an ‘organic’ (Quinn 2005) and (mainly) qualitative approach to data, this paper presents: (a) the main conceptualizations found for both groups; (b) a cognitive-linguistic analysis of collocations of ‘respect’ found in the interviews; and (c) a preliminary sketch of group-level conceptualizations ofrespect in business negotiationsfor both groups. For Brazilians, the source domainslocationandvertical splittingwere salient, which points to the relevance of hierarchy. For Germans, the source domainhorizontal splittingand thesphere separationcultural schema were recurrent, which signals appreciation for the public-private sphere separation. These conceptual differences might have practical consequences in international negotiation scenarios.

Cultural conceptualizations of business negotiations in the Expanding Circle

“…Finally, I count on the concept of ‘conceptual script’ for the analytical procedures, which will be described below. I define conceptual scripts as holist conceptualization scenes, comprised of a set of source domains within a speech or discourse excerpt (Mendes de Oliveira, , p. 257). The identified source domains in all conceptualizations might be either of the image schematic and highly embodied type–for instance, verticality –or might be more elaborate and complex concepts, such as a certain cultural schema.…”

“…Wolf and Polzenhagen () explain that the emphasis on surface‐level aspects of language use is due to a structuralist leaning that disregards conceptual aspects. With the exception of relatively recent attempts to contest this dominance (Mendes de Oliveira, ; Sharifian, ; Wolf & Polzenhagen, ), research on conceptual aspects is still in its infancy in comparison with other (surface‐level linguistic) aspects within WE.…”

“…The comparison between ‘conceptual scripts’ (Mendes de Oliveira, ), ‘metaphorical scenarios’ (Musolff, ), and ‘metaphorical stories’ (Cameron et al., , pp. 138–144) as well as their contrasting features are described in Mendes de Oliveira (manuscript).…”