Professor Helen Spencer-Oatey, Director of the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, gave a wonderful lecture at 7 P.M. on Nov. 29th 2015 at the Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
In this speech, she starts by describing the main features of Spencer-Oatey’s (2008, 2009) Rapport Management Model. After giving a brief definition of rapport, she describes how her starting point within politeness theory differs from that of many other analysts, and then explains how the concepts of face sensitivities, perceived sociality rights and obligations and interactional goals are interwoven and inseparable components constituting the bases of rapports.
After this, she takes a recent personal experience as a case study example to explore the extent to which the model can be applied to authentic data. Using a combination of written and oral data (including online chat and text message) from a series of interrelated customer service interactions, she guides all the teachers and graduates there to involve in the discussion of how and why rapport was affected in spite of the superficially polite wording from the side of customer service.She ends the speech by pointing to aspects that still need further research and conceptualization.
Professor Spencer-Oatey’s lecture is very insightful and draws a new picture of how to understand the face and politeness from the perspective of interpersonal functions and mutually related socio-cognitive components.
