Relating to others and (not) getting along: What triggers evaluative reactions?

There has been a growing focus within (im)politeness theory on evaluation – the subjective judgements that people make on the appropriateness of verbal and non-verbal behaviour and of the interlocutors involved. However, to date there is insufficient clarity over the factors that trigger those evaluations. Often this is explained in terms of breach of norms, but there are various conceptual and empirical difficulties associated with this. This paper argues for greater attention to be paid to personal wants and concerns as additional evaluative grounds and proposes labelling these ‘personal interactional concerns’ (PICs). This concept is in line with much (im)politeness theory as well as with theorising in interpersonal psychology. Relevant literature from these fields is first reviewed to identify the range of triggers or interactional concerns that have been identified by different scholars. A dataset of metapragmatic comments, plus some associated discourse data, is analysed to identify the factors that interlocutors refer to when reflecting on their recent interactions with unfamiliar professionals. The aim is to explore (a) what triggers or concerns participants refer to and (b) whether the additional concept of PICs is helpful for explaining individual variation. The article ends by arguing that greater clarity on these trigger factors is important not only for theoretical reasons, but also for the support they can offer in helping people reflect more meaningfully on relationally salient incidents that they experience. • This case study explores what factors trigger evaluative reactions. • It draws on spontaneous metapragmatic comments and associated discourse data. • It finds breaches of social norms only partially account for the findings. • It argues that personal interactional concerns (PICs) affect people's judgements. • It maintains that PICs can be helpful for professional development purposes.