Speech styles and functions of speech from a cross-cultural perspective

Language Use and Persuasion: Multiple Roles for Linguistic Styles

“…It should be noted that the effects described here are based largely on research conducted in ‘Western’ cultures such as the United States, which has a particular cultural and linguistic context. It is likely that certain styles such as powerless language may be strategically adopted in persuasive appeals or conversation in other cultures as a matter of politeness or culturally specific norms (e.g., face‐saving strategies or to elevate the reader’s status and show respect; Chakorn, 2006; Schroder, 2009) rather than as sign of low status or expertise. Thus, message recipients’ perceptions of the message and source may be moderated by the culture in which the recipient resides.…”

Face as an interactional construct in the context of connectedness and separateness

“…9 This preference for 'being opaque',, also called jeitinho, implies the idea of a certain cultural 'skill' or 'flexibility' developed in order to survive in a non-functional society where there is a necessity for a constant situational adaption and where the line between the private and public sphere is quite blurred. As a consequence, in Brazilian everyday communication direct disagreement is avoided and face saving strategies which show affiliation are preferred (Meireles 2001(Meireles , 2016; the phatic, poetic, and appellative speech styles are more salient (Schröder 2010); and as a result of the predominance of personal relationships, the 'kind-heartedness' (bondade) which has been condensed in the Brazilian narrative of the 'cordial man' (homem cordial; Buarque de Holanda 1995 [1936], 553-556) sustains the wish for harmonious relations, affiliation, as well as agreement, as can be shown even in today's Brazilian interaction and communication practices (Schröder 2014a;Schröder & Viterbo Lage 2014;Viterbo Lage 2013). This topic was objective of a study on face issues that compared the Argentinean and Brazilian version of Big Brother: Barbosa de Lima (2012) reveals two completely different tactics to get the audience's vote: While the Argentinean habitants of the public housing being filmed were oriented toward an image of being coherent personalities who defend their opinions and stand for their convictions, the Brazilians were more oriented toward an image of being nice and avoiding the expression of strong opinions or the defense of polemic attitudes.…”

“…The first level to be considered is the intimate relationship in which the German cultural value of 'coherence' comes into play, along with 'openness', as 'saying what one really thinks' plays an important role: Studies on divergent communication styles have brought out (Schröder 2003(Schröder , 2010 that the German subjects under analysis tended to assign a higher value to the correspondence between words, thoughts, and acts than the Brazilian subjects in these studies. DaMatta (1997DaMatta ( [1979) has shown the extent to which the Brazilian concept jeitinho incorporates a culture-specific technique of escaping from direct forms of talk, as we have discussed in the preceding section.…”

The interplay of (im)politeness, conflict styles, rapport management, and metacommunication in Brazilian–German interaction

“…While the "self-enhancement verbal style" can be found in individualistic-oriented Western cultures and is characterized by selfdefensive, controlling, dominating, and competitive patterns, participants of collectivistic-oriented Eastern cultures tend to act in a more integrating, avoiding, and compromising way, showing more mutual or other-face concerns. Comparative work on German and Brazilian communication patterns in contrast to other cultures (Günthner 2008;House 2003;Markowsky and Thomas 1995;Pearson and Stephan 1998) or even contrasting the two cultures in question (Schröder 2010;Meireles 2001;Carvalho and Trevisan 2003) allude to the hypothesis that in Ting-Toomey's terms, the Brazilian conflict style should be describable as more collectivistic and oriented toward an interdependent self, in comparison to the German style, which seems to be more individualistic and focused on the independent self. However, one main objection to this theory is concerned with the polarizing macrocategories, which put entire cultures on a scale as if they were essential, homogeneous, and monolithic entities.…”