A Study Of American Businesspeople's Rapport Management In Requests

People's interactional sequences are often collected for generalization studies,with the purpose of understanding all kinds of language usages under politeness-relevant frameworks.However,not much attention has been paid to how businesspeople use language to maintain their interpersonal relations while achieving their original goals in a natural environment.The current study is,therefore,devoted to analyzing how a group of American businesspeople manage their interpersonal rapport with different kinds of people under different types of conditions--all business-related.The popular American reality show,The Apprentice,is taken as the data source for this qualitative study,and the theory of rapport management proposed by Spencer-Oatey is adopted as the analytical framework.The study finds that efforts,both verbal and non-verbal,for managing interpersonal rapport in communications,are used by these American businesspeople and diversified situational factors led by the factor of power very often influence people's linguistic behaviors.For Donald Trump,who has the greatest power in the show,it seems that little concern is needed for maintaining the hearers' face in requests.Common members usually use indirect or tactical requestive strategies if they want to get others to do something.Another finding is that sociality rights and obligations often play a dominant role in the American business-related circle.Finally,while getting the business done is the most important job for businesspeople,the process of achieving this goal is often influenced by people's concern for face,sociality rights and obligations.Behind all these situations,a number of factors play an influential role,among them are power,social distance,message content,activity type,to name just a few.The degree of their influence may vary depending on the conditions,but acknowledging their existence is often crucial for understanding how requests are used and why they are used in their current forms.The study has some important implications.For both businesspeople and EFL learners,needs for managing face merit people's attention almost all the time.For those with relatively bigger power,little concern of this aspect may seem needed.But even in this situation,chances are that paying due respect for the hearers is still necessary.For businesspeople in particular,the influence of sociality relations between parties in conversations often play a crucial role in shaping the expectations and behavioral rules people hold for those involved.Finally,while getting the information transferred and the interactional goals realized is often considered to be the utmost important job for almost all human conversations,the way of doing this job may come under all types of situational influence that needs attention.