The sociopragmatic dimension of language use and evaluations of interactional behaviour

Culture can influence how people communicate and the reasons behind linguistic choices. However, the evaluative process has been mostly neglected, particularly in comparative studies. This paper aims to fill this gap. It compares how two sets of participants, Italian and British-English speakers, rated own/others’ performances in roleplays involving different request scenarios and it unpacks how their perceptions of sociopragmatic variables, such as social distance and request’s weight, influenced their evaluation process. Follow-up retrospective interviews were employed and content-analysed, to unpack participants’ evaluations. The results showed cross-cultural differences in importance, interpretation and expectations attached to different variables and underlying values.