Relational Rituals and Communication

The pragmatics of mimesis: A case study of intercultural email communication

“…In a computermediated communication context (particularly in the case of business email; see Zhu, 2003), in which the interactants have limited clues about the other's immediate evaluative moments, adopting the other's conversation topic is a primordial method of alignment, thus coconstructing a locally conventionalised conversation topic. This conventionalised style may transform into ritual if and when the interactants begin to play with it (Donald, 2013, p. 189), such as in the form of jokes (Kádár, 2013), hence transforming it into an in-group performance. As one participant, Liz (the first author), was present throughout all email conversations, it was possible to analyse how her use of certain greeting and sign-off tokens 5 changed in her conversations with her different clients and whether she developed, or began to develop, conventionalised practices with the other participants.…”

“…In this particular case, Ruth soon states she has insufficient funds for the transcriptions to continue, so this practice barely has a chance to get going before it no longer has a reason to function. This parallels how some rituals can be situated in a specific time and context, ceasing to exist once the need for them has passed (see Kádár, 2013Kádár, , 2017 for examples of this in face-toface interaction).…”

“…Convention and ritual are widely applied concepts in pragmatics, which are often used in interchangeable ways (see more on this problem in Kádár, 2013). Thus, it is useful to attempt to capture the main differences between them.…”

“…Before further discussing how mimetic strategies can be used to create lasting practices, let us first define convention and ritual as two key aspects of interconnectedness in the focus of our study (based on Kádár, 2013;Terkourafi & Kádár, 2017). Convention and ritual are widely applied concepts in pragmatics, which are often used in interchangeable ways (see more on this problem in Kádár, 2013).…”

Review of “Politeness, Impoliteness, and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction by Dániel Zoltan Kádár”

“…Heckling is a social action that triggers aggression because it upsets the interactional order and violates situated interactional rights (Kádár 2014). Moreover, countering the heckler is a ritualistic phenomenon if one approaches it by combining Turner's (1969Turner's ( , 1982 anthropological framework with Kádár's theory that defines ritual as an interactionally (co-)constructed action (Kádár 2012(Kádár , 2013. Following Turner (1982), the author defines heckling and countering the heckler as a dramatic event, which is evaluated by its watchers (third-party participants) as judges: the watchers frame the participants of the duel as winner and loser, and so participation in this duel is a struggle for face for both the heckler and the public speaker/performer (PSP).…”