Communication Strategies for Building and Maintaining Collaborative Relations: A Sino-American Case Study of Rapport and ‘Politeness’

The aim of this research was to examine the communication strategies used to build and maintain collaborative relations: to identify which strategies were perceived to be rapport-enhancing, which were perceived to be rapport-undermining, and how participants responded to the latter in order to maintain rapport. The data for the study were collected during a three-week visit to the USA by a delegation of senior Chinese government officials who wanted to enhance their links and positive relations with their counterpart organisation in the USA. Various types of data were collected, the main ones being video/audio recordings of the official meetings and metapragmatic comments made by the Chinese delegates at daily evening meetings when they discussed their daytime experiences. It was found that the delegates were extremely conscious of any progress or undermining of their key goal for the visit, regularly commenting on this. They were very appreciative of the US hosts’ relaxed interaction style and for the ways in which they built common ground. Their main complaints related to the interpreter’s behaviour. The findings are discussed in relation to pragmatic research into (im)politeness, rapport management and the impact of context. Delegates seemed unaware of possible differences in interlocutors’ normative expectations associated with communicative events, especially speaking procedures and role responsibilities. The article ends by making some professional development recommendations in relation to this.