Interpersonal strategies in international business emails: The intercultural pragmatics perspective

Abstract Business email has a significant impact on commercial activities and organizational image. Intercultural pragmatics is the new development of pragmatics, moving its focus from mono-cultural communication to multi-cultural communication, aiming to describe how communicators seek, activate, and create common ground to complete tasks in intercultural communication contexts. Drawing on 1,477 separate English emails exchanged between a Chinese auto parts export company and its business partners in different parts of the world, we find, from the intercultural pragmatics perspective, that different types of interpersonal strategies, i.e., alliance building, other-caring, and self-enhancing/defending, are employed to construct virtual intimacy and to create and highlight interpersonal relationship dimensions in international business communication. These strategies are intended to facilitate the accomplishment of communication tasks by creating emergent common ground, reflecting the dynamics and interculturality of business communication. This research deepens our understanding of the mechanism of relationship management in international business communication.