Dans une société où nous souhaitons désormais donner du sens à notre travail, remplir une mission, les organisations à but non lucratif (OBNL) constituent de plus en plus un milieu professionnel attrayant. Cet intérêt s’est également répandu au sein de la communauté scientifique qui cherche à comprendre la particularité de ce contexte organisationnel. Certain.e.s chercheur.e.s remarquent que les conflits sont mal perçus dans ce type d’organisations qui prône la collaboration, tandis que d’autres soulignent l’omniprésence de conflits dans toutes organisations. Les concepts de face et de figuration sont souvent utilisés pour analyser le conflit organisationnel. Cependant, peu de recherches, voire aucune, adoptent ce cadre théorique pour étudier le conflit dans des OBNL. La face et la figuration étant co-construites durant l’interaction, ce mémoire s’intéresse ainsi particulièrement à ce contexte analytique « méso ». Au sein de celui-ci, il est d’ailleurs primordial de prendre en compte la dimension interculturelle qui est intrinsèque à tout milieu organisationnel, notamment à Montréal. À partir d’une étude qualitative réalisée au sein d’une organisation à but non lucratif montréalaise, ce mémoire cherche à comprendre, au moyen d’observations de réunions d’équipe et d’entrevues, la manière dont les membres d’une OBNL gèrent leur face et leur figuration lors d’interactions interculturelles. Grâce à une analyse des actes de langage, les résultats de cette recherche révèlent que les tensions sont effectivement perçues comme inappropriées, mais que les participant.e.s utilisent des stratégies de figuration pour les diminuer ou les cacher et orienter leur figuration vers des objectifs transcendants. / In a society where many workers seek to engage in meaningful, mission-centered work, non-profit organizations (NPOs) are an increasingly attractive workplace. NPOs’ focus on employee engagement, participation and collaborative practices has sometimes meant that scholars have neglected the unique challenges of managing conflicts in this organizational context. Some researchers state that conflict is viewed as inappropriate for NPOs, whereas others argue that conflict is ubiquitous in all types of organizations. Although, the concepts of face and facework are often used to examine organizational and intercultural conflicts, few if any empirical studies have analyzed conflict in NPOs using this theoretical framework. As face and facework are co-constructed in and through interaction, this thesis focuses specifically on this “meso” analytic level, while also taking into account the intercultural dimensions of interactions. Based on observations of team meetings and interviews with team members of a culturally-diverse NPO in Montreal, this thesis aims to understand how members of the organization managed their face and facework during intercultural interactions. Relying on an analysis of speech acts, the results revealed that tensions are indeed viewed as inappropriate, but that participants used facework strategies that avoided or minimized them and oriented their facework to transcendent objectives.

En quoi peut consister l’énonciation dans le sens d’un énoncé ? Telle est l’interrogation à laquelle nous tentons de répondre dans cette thèse. Défendant une approche discursive du sens (Carel 2011, Ducrot 1984), nous nous fixons l’objectif de mettre en lumière une conception de l’énonciation dans cette perspective. Notre défi majeur est ainsi de démontrer, de manière concrète, une énonciation qui n’est pas conçue comme une sorte d’événement du monde relatif à la production d’un énoncé. Il s’agit en effet de cette conception de l’énonciation, d’ailleurs prise pour aller de soi, lorsque la plupart des auteurs (Kleiber 2008, Recanati 2008) interprètent un énoncé contenant une expression déictique tel que « Je suis Français » ou « Il fait chaud ici ». Défendant une approche référentielle du sens, ces auteurs sont amenés à repérer le référent correspondant à l’occurrence du mot « je » ou celle du mot « ici », avec la signification de l’un et l’autre mot prise respectivement comme « celui qui produit l’occurrence de je » et « le lieu où l’occurrence d’ici est produite ». Étant donné qu’un tel repérage du référent implique, de manière inévitable, de chercher dans la production de l’énoncé concerné, l’énonciation se présente ainsi comme extralinguistique et comme l’événement constitué par la production de l’énoncé. En nous appuyant, non sans une certaine liberté, sur les travaux respectifs de Benveniste (1966) et de Ducrot (1984), nous nous proposons de dresser le portrait d’une autre conception de l’énonciation qui relève plutôt du système linguistique lui-même, à la différence de celle dépendant ainsi de l’univers extralinguistique. À partir d’un fondement sémantique dégagé des travaux de ces deux auteurs, ainsi que des éléments que nous développons sur cette base, nous faisons des analyses portant essentiellement sur les marques de pronoms, afin d’illustrer la conception de l’énonciation que nous défendons. Qu’il s’agisse de l’analyse comparative entre « Je sais que p » « Tu sais que p » « Elle sait que p », ou celle entre « Je suis beau » « Tu es beau » « Il est beau », nos analyses impliquent donc certaines conséquences. D’une part, elles démontrent que les marques de pronoms peuvent comporter une valeur sémantique qui n’est pas relative à la référence ni à l’énonciation entendue comme un événement extralinguistique. D’autre part, elles permettent de voir que l’on peut rendre compte de ces éléments de sens non référentiels avec le cadre, inspiré de ces deux auteurs, que nous nous efforçons d’établir. / How to understand “enunciation” in the meaning of an utterance? This is the question we are trying to answer in this thesis. Defending a discursive approach to meaning (Carel 2011, Ducrot 1984), we set ourselves the objective of bringing light to a conception of enunciation in this perspective. Our major challenge, as a result, is to demonstrate with tangible illustrations an enunciation that is not conceived as a kind of “world event” relating to the production of an utterance. As we know, it’s about this conception of enunciation, taken for granted, when most authors (Kleiber 2008, Recanati 2008) interpret an utterance containing a deictic expression such as "I am French" or "It's hot here". Mostly defenders of the referential approach to meaning, these authors pick up the referent corresponding to the occurrence of the word "I" and that of the word "here", with the meaning of these two words taken respectively as "the one that produces the occurrence of I" and "the place where the occurrence of here is produced". Given that such an identification of the referent involves, inevitably, a look at the production of the utterance concerned, the enunciation thus appears extralinguistic and as the event constituted by the production of the utterance. Based on Benveniste (1966) and Ducrot (1984) respectively, though not without certain inspiration of our own, we try to sketch the outline of another conception of enunciation, which is the one that comes rather from the linguistic system itself, unlike the one that is dependent on the extralinguistic context. In order to illustrate this conception of enunciation, we conduct analyses mostly on pronouns, and the semantic foundation is drawn from the works of these two authors, as well as from the elements that we develop on this basis. In fact, whether it’s the comparative analysis between "I know that p" "You know that p" "She knows that p" or the one between "I'm beautiful" "You're beautiful" "He's (It’s) beautiful", our descriptions do entail consequences. On the one hand, they show that pronouns can have a semantic value that is neither relative to the reference nor to the enunciation taken as an extralinguistic event. On the other hand, our analyses show that we can account for the non-referential elements of meaning with the frame, inspired by these two authors, that we strive to develop.

This study examines the role of compliment topic by analyzing compliment responses by Japanese and American college students. Compliment responses can be seen as solutions for maintaining a balance between (1) a preference to avoid self-praise and (2) a preference to accept or agree with the compliment (Pomerantz 1978). Building on studies showing that response strategies can be influenced by compliment content and context, the study analyzed responses to compliments on ability, achievement, belongings, appearance, and personal characteristics by determining the subjects' choice of response strategy--categorized as acceptance, avoidance, or rejection--for each compliment topic. Compliment responses were elicited in a recorded, free-flowing conversation by the researcher or the English-speaking research assistant's issuing of compliments on traits of the participants based on information collected prior to the conversation by e-mail. Compliments were subtly dispersed throughout the conversation. Each compliment response was coded according to whether the overall response accepted, avoided, or rejected the credit attributed by the compliment, while the component parts of each response were coded by semantic formulas. The American group accepted compliments more often than the Japanese group and the Japanese group avoided and rejected compliments more often than the English group. But, contrary to a commonly held belief, the Japanese speakers did not overwhelmingly reject compliments, and instead used all three response types with a substantial frequency. The American participants overwhelmingly accepted compliments and almost never rejected compliments, but avoidance strategies were also commonly observed and should not be overlooked in the discussion of American English compliment response patterns. Furthermore, the study found relations between the content and structure of compliment responses and the type of compliment topic. Overall response strategies varied relative to compliment topic, as compliments on personal appearance were overwhelmingly rejected or avoided by both groups while those on belongings were largely accepted by both groups. Some response structures were also unique to a type of compliment topic, including the use of "wa" as a limit on the credit accepted in response to compliments on achievements or the use of "`a' + gratitude" as a means of demonstrating modesty in response to compliments on belongings.

[pt] O tema desta pesquisa é a realização dos atos de pedir, registrados em placas e cartazes não oficiais, localizados em espaços de circulação pública da sociedade brasileira. A partir de uma perspectiva interdisciplinar, este estudo pretende contribuir para uma melhor compreensão das questões identitárias e culturais trazidas na e pela língua, fornecendo subsídios relevantes para a área de ensino de português como segunda língua para estrangeiros (PL2E). Apesar de placas e cartazes objetivarem manter a informação necessária clara para o seu leitor e ativa na memória, nem sempre o principal conteúdo transmitido está explícito no enunciado, sendo construído, muitas vezes, por meio de uma informação subentendida. Para os aprendizes de PL2E, compreender essa mensagem não dita, sobretudo nos enunciados expressos pelos avisos de placas e cartazes não oficiais, requer não só um grande desafio, como também pode gerar interpretações equivocadas e visões distorcidas da cultura alvo. Tendo isso em vista, as formas de realização das estratégias discursivas relativas ao ato de pedir são descritas e analisadas, procurando-se verificar em que medida os fatores contextuais e culturais influenciam na escolha das estratégias linguísticas utilizadas para elaborar atos de pedir explícitos ou implícitos. Para tal, a fundamentação teórica desta dissertação baseia-se nos conceitos da Teoria dos Atos de Fala, da Sociolinguística Interacional, do Interculturalismo e da Antropologia Social. / [en] The theme of this research is the execution of the acts of asking, registered in unofficial signs and posters, located in public circulation spaces of the Brazilian society. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the identity and cultural issues brought in and by the language, providing relevant subsidies for the teaching of Portuguese as a Second Language for Foreigners (PL2E). Although signs and posters aim to keep the necessary information clear to the reader and active in memory, not always the main content conveyed is explicit in the utterance and is often constructed by means of implied information. For learners of PL2E, understanding this unsaid message, especially in statements expressed by unofficial placard and poster warnings, requires not only a major challenge, but can also generate misinterpretations and distorted views of the target culture. With this in mind, the ways in which discursive strategies regarding the act of asking are realized are described and analyzed, trying to verify to what extent the contextual and cultural factors influence the choice of the linguistic strategies used to elaborate explicit or implicit acts of asking. To this end, the theoretical foundation of this dissertation is based on the concepts of Speech Acts Theory, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Interculturalism and Social Anthropology.

An immense degree of linguistic diversity exists in the work force where it is possible for speakers of twenty-three home languages to come into contact on the work floor. The language of management in industry is predominantly English; while supervisors are primarily English- or Afrikaans-speaking. Misinterpretation of speaker intent plays a significant role in communication breakdown that occurs when management or foremen/supervisors communicate directly with workers who do not understand the two erstwhile official languages sufficiently or not at all. Reagan ( 1 986) hypothesized that the greatest number of problems are caused by what might be termed mutual ignorance, rather than by language difficulties. The aim of the thesis was therefore to establish what constitutes the mutual ignorance that leads to misinterpretation of speaker intent. The Hymesian model, the ethnography of speaking, was used as a model for an analysis of sociolinguistic features in factories in the Pretoria-WitwatersrandVereeniging area. For data collection a process of triangulation was used and qualitative and quantitative methods used. The Free Attitude Interview technique was used for unstructured interviews. Other methods include observation, and elicitation procedures such as the Discourse Completion Test, which were used in structured interviews. Language preference, forms of address and politeness markers were examined. Findings revealed that the major differences were found to be in the area of non-verbal behaviour. Speakers of Afrikaans and English are, on the whole, unaware of politeness markers used by speakers of African languages. Afrikaans and English speakers are unaware of offensive non-verbal behaviour used by them. It is revealing that speakers of the official languages believe this to be the very area that makes communication possible, but it is the area in which they may cause offence. It was also found that speakers of African languages have adopted many of the features of the power dominant group at work. The findings of the research are important for the development of strategies for overcoming misinterpretation of speaker intent and negative stereotyping. This research was undertaken as part of the Human Sciences Research Council's programme entitled Language in the labour situation. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

La « norme facultative » n’est pas reconnue en droit. Pourtant, elle renvoie à un phénomène singulierauquel les juristes se trouvent de plus en plus confrontés. Celui-ci est porteur de normes non obligatoires, enmarge des instruments juridiques traditionnels. Ces normes ont en commun une mise en œuvre tributaired’un consentement préalable de leurs destinataires, ce qui signifie qu’elles sont laissées à leur libredisposition et qu’ils peuvent les utiliser entièrement ou seulement en partie, selon leur convenance.Facultatives, elles supposent la reconnaissance d’une normativité distincte de l’obligatoriété et del’impérativité. Elles tirent leur caractère normatif du fait qu’elles constituent à la fois des actes de langageayant force illocutoire et des modèles pour agir.En raison de leur originalité, leur intégration en droit est susceptible d’entraîner des bouleversementsdans la théorie des normes. En effet, la reconnaissance de la norme facultative conduit à s’interroger sur laplace du facultatif au sein des catégories de contenus normatifs. À côté des contenus normatifs classiquesconçus à partir de l’obligation, à savoir le prescriptif, le prohibitif et le permissif, le « facultatif » désigne unautre contenu normatif correspondant aux normes de faculté tournées vers le « normativement souhaitable ».Ces normes sont porteuses d’une faculté de choisir, autrement dit, une opportunité normative ouverte audestinataire et demandant à être saisie. Une fois qu’elles ont fait l’objet d’une adhésion, elles s’introduisentdans un « lien normatif». / The « voluntary norm » is not recognized in law. Yet, it refers to a peculiar phenomenon that juristshave increasingly to deal with. It is associated with noncompulsory norms, outside the traditional legal tools.These norms share a tributary implementation of a prior agreement from their recipients, which means theycan freely dispose of them and use them fully or partly, at their convenience.Being voluntary, the norms involve the recognition of a normativity distinct from the bindingnessand imperativity. They draw their standards-relative feature from the fact that they establish bothillocutionary speech acts and patterns to operate.As a result of their originality, their incorporation into law is likely to cause some changes in thetheory of norms. Indeed, the recognition of the voluntary norm leads to question the position of the voluntaryfeature within the categories of standards-relative contents. Besides the classical standards-relative contentsbuilt upon what is compulsory, that is the prescriptiveness, prohibitiveness and permissiveness, the“voluntaryness” refers to another standards-relative content which corresponds to the voluntary normsfocused on what is normatively desirable. These standards include the capacity of choice, in other words, astandards-relative opportunity opened to the recipient and asking to be seized. And once they obtain anadhesion, they get into a “standards-relative bond”.

Cette recherche sur corpus a pour objet les emplois de quando (quandoque, quandoquidem, quandocumque) dans différents genres textuels du latin préclassique au latin postclassique. À partir du CD-ROM de la Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina nous avons répertorié les occurrences de quando dans les Comédies de Plaute, les Discours de Cicéron, le De rerum natura de Lucrèce, l’Histoire romaine de Tite-Live et les Traités philosophiques de Sénèque. En principe, le terme en kw- peut servir d’adverbe interrogatif, indéfini ou relatif et de conjonction temporelle ou causale. Or la distinction de ces différents emplois ne peut se faire à l’aide de procédés classificatoires qui prendraient comme cadre d’analyse maximal la phrase en raison d’ambiguïtés sémantiques et d’interférences fonctionnelles entre types de subordonnées. Aussi optons-nous pour une approche macro-syntaxique tenant compte des relations dépassant le segment phrastique et alliant les points de vue morpho-syntaxique et sémantico-énonciatif. D’abord, l’étude de quando, terme polyvalent susceptible de fonctionner à plusieurs niveaux de la structure phrastique, nous amène à nous interroger sur les niveaux d’insertion et la fonction de quando dans la phrase. Ainsi, les interférences fonctionnelles entre relatif et conjonction temporelle mettent en évidence la perméabilité des frontières entre fonctions syntaxiques. Ensuite, l’ambiguïté sémantique invite à dépasser le strict cadre phrastique et à considérer les inférences contextuelles du terme étudié en vue de distinguer notamment la valeur temporelle de la valeur causale de quando. Enfin, l’outil grammatical ne peut être appréhendé sans considération de sa valeur illocutoire. Par la grande diversité d’actes réalisés, l’analyse des emplois interrogatifs peut révéler certaines caractéristiques liées à l’écriture générique. Dans une approche empruntée à la grammaire fonctionnelle sera étudiée enfin la portée du terme au niveau du discours. Une telle analyse s’avère nécessaire pour caractériser l’emploi causal, dans la mesure où ce dernier intervient au niveau interpersonnel et non référentiel, et joue, dans la terminologie de la grammaire fonctionnelle, le rôle de satellite disjoint. En ce sens, cette étude prouve l’utilité d’une approche éclectique dans l’analyse des emplois de quando : le recours à différentes approches linguistiques, selon les besoins de l’interprétation, met en évidence la complémentarité des points de vue morpho-syntaxique et sémantico-pragmatique dans une description empirique des faits de langue et de discours visant à définir, à partir de données textuelles apparemment disparates, les valeurs de base des différents emplois de quando. L’intérêt de l’étude réside ainsi dans la polyvalence du terme, permettant d’aborder un large éventail de problèmes linguistiques voire extralinguistiques liés à la structure phrastique, au texte et à la situation de discours. / This corpus-based study analyses the use of quando (quandoque, quandoquidem, quandocumque) in different textual genres from Early to Postclassical Latin. From the Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina CD-ROM (BTL-4) we have listed the instances of quando in Plaute’s Comedies, Cicero’s Discourses, Lucretius’ De rerum natura, Livy’s History of Rome and Seneca’s Moral Essays. Quando can be used as an interrogative, indefinite and relative adverb or as a temporal or causal conjunction. But the classification of these different uses is not possible without a macro-syntactic approach that combines morpho-syntactic, semantic and enunciative points of view. First, the study of this multifunctional term raises the question of its integration in the sentence structure. Thus the functional interference of its use as a relative adverb and as a temporal conjunction shows that the frontiers between syntactical functions are malleable. Furthermore, the semantic ambiguity invites us to extend the analyses to the contextual inferences to distinguish for instance its temporal and causal use. Moreover we cannot analyse the use of quando without considering its illocutionary force: for instance the questions introduced by quando perform a great variety of speech acts which reveal certain characteristics of the literary genre. Finally, the methods of Functional Grammar are necessary to study the level quando affects in the sentence structure, as the causal subordinate clause provides information on the interpersonal level and can be considered as a disjunct satellite. In the light of these considerations, it is evident that an eclectic approach is necessary to study the use of quando: only different linguistic approaches, combining the morpho-syntactic, semantic and enunciative point of view in an empirical description of its occurrences, can define the value of the different uses of quando. Thus the significance of this study resides in the multifunctionality of quando which allows us to consider a large variety of linguistic and extra-linguistic problems occurring not only at multiple levels of the sentence structure, but extended even to the larger context of the speech interaction and intimately linked to the authors writing techniques and the speakers discursive intentions.

The assumption underlying this study is that cultures differ in terms of politeness norms. Often people from different cultures approach one another in what they think is an appropriate manner and the outcome is miscommunication. This may be attributed to differing cultural norms and this study aims to examine what a sample of school learners perceive to be polite behaviour when making requests and their reasons for doing so. This study focuses on perceived politeness norms (Brown and Levinson 1978) in English across selected South African cultures. The individuals are seen as reflecting a cultural identity, using norms that they feel are appropriate in given situations. Previous researchers have endeavoured to show that politeness norms are universal, but it has emerged that this is not always the case. When people from differing language and cultural backgrounds come into contact they have to find a common ground for their interaction to be successful (Lustig and Koester 1999). Of particular interest is the way people request things, both the way they phrase their request and their reasons for phrasing it this way. In order to investigate this, twenty-nine same-sex pairs of Grade 10 learners were selected from three schools with different cultural backgrounds in Grahamstown. These learners were required to complete a Discourse Completion Test, which contained both Think-Aloud and Retrospection Procedures, while they were being audio-taped. This data was transcribed and analysed using a model that was developed and adapted to describe request strategies. This data is shown through the use of basic statistics, even though it is primarily qualitative. The data is given this qualitative dimension by looking at the factors that the co-conversants attend to. The recorded data shows that although second language speakers of English have a formula for requesting things, they are not always able to articulate why they use the request strategies they do. It appears that English first language speakers and speakers who have English as an additional language request things similarly, but the first language speakers have access to a greater variety of politeness strategies. They also attend to different contextual features. This shows that while the need to be polite seems to be universal, the expectations of the speakers will be different and while a first language speaker of English would not misinterpret the force of a given speech act, they may feel that the person who has English as an additional language is rude. Sensitivity is therefore called for in order to combat mutual negative stereotyping and misunderstandings. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

An immense degree of linguistic diversity exists in the work force where it is possible for speakers of twenty-three home languages to come into contact on the work floor. The language of management in industry is predominantly English; while supervisors are primarily English- or Afrikaans-speaking. Misinterpretation of speaker intent plays a significant role in communication breakdown that occurs when management or foremen/supervisors communicate directly with workers who do not understand the two erstwhile official languages sufficiently or not at all. Reagan ( 1 986) hypothesized that the greatest number of problems are caused by what might be termed mutual ignorance, rather than by language difficulties. The aim of the thesis was therefore to establish what constitutes the mutual ignorance that leads to misinterpretation of speaker intent. The Hymesian model, the ethnography of speaking, was used as a model for an analysis of sociolinguistic features in factories in the Pretoria-WitwatersrandVereeniging area. For data collection a process of triangulation was used and qualitative and quantitative methods used. The Free Attitude Interview technique was used for unstructured interviews. Other methods include observation, and elicitation procedures such as the Discourse Completion Test, which were used in structured interviews. Language preference, forms of address and politeness markers were examined. Findings revealed that the major differences were found to be in the area of non-verbal behaviour. Speakers of Afrikaans and English are, on the whole, unaware of politeness markers used by speakers of African languages. Afrikaans and English speakers are unaware of offensive non-verbal behaviour used by them. It is revealing that speakers of the official languages believe this to be the very area that makes communication possible, but it is the area in which they may cause offence. It was also found that speakers of African languages have adopted many of the features of the power dominant group at work. The findings of the research are important for the development of strategies for overcoming misinterpretation of speaker intent and negative stereotyping. This research was undertaken as part of the Human Sciences Research Council's programme entitled Language in the labour situation. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

Ce travail de thèse s’inscrit dans une perspective comparative et interculturelle. Sa mise en œuvre repose sur l’idée que c’est en observant ce qui se passe dans les interactions du quotidien que l’on peut mieux comprendre le rapport que les cultures entretiennent, et mettre au jour ce que les comportements observés dans chacune des cultures étudiées ont de spécifique. En s’appuyant sur l’analyse minutieuse et détaillée d’enregistrements effectués dans quatre sites commerciaux français et britanniques, l’étude tente de comprendre le comportement langagier des participants en le mettant en relation avec divers éléments du contexte (éléments relevant du micro-contexte : matériel discursif contigu aux énoncés étudiés ; du contexte situationnel : agencement du site, nombre de participants, finalité de l’interaction ; du macro-contexte : place occupée par les interactions de commerce dans les cultures en question, par les sites, valeurs culturelles d’arrière-plan). La finalité de cette étude (qui aborde les rituels d’entrée et de sortie d’interaction ; les remerciements ; la réalisation d’actes de langage directifs : questions, requêtes, offres ; les séquences conversationnelles) est d’obtenir une meilleure compréhension des profils communicatifs relatifs aux cultures française et britannique. / This thesis, which is of a contrastive and intercultural nature, is informed by the idea that it is by observing the behaviour of interactants in everyday interactions that the relationship between cultures can best be approached, and the specificity of the forms of behaviour encountered explored. Through the careful and detailed analysis of recordings taken in four different shops (French and British), the study aims to understand the linguistic behaviour of the participants by linking it to various contextual elements (micro-contextual elements: discursive material that surrounds the utterances analysed; situational elements: site layout, number of participants, interaction’s finality; macro-contextual ones: status of service encounters and of the types of shops selected, cultural values that underpin explored behaviour). The purpose of the study (which analyses opening and closing rituals; thanking; the way directive speech acts such as questions, offers and requests are performed; conversational sequences) is to provide a better understanding of the communicative styles that can be associated with French and British cultures.