Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies

The realization of the speech act of inviting is susceptible to situational and sociocultural context. To issue an appropriate invitation, speakers must respect cultural norms and use politeness strategies accepted in each communicative culture. The aim of this study is to identify conventionalized...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Elena Shorokhova, Palma Peña-Jiménez
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2025-06-01
Series:Russian Journal of Linguistics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/44886/24940
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849430922950082560
author Elena Shorokhova
Palma Peña-Jiménez
author_facet Elena Shorokhova
Palma Peña-Jiménez
author_sort Elena Shorokhova
collection DOAJ
description The realization of the speech act of inviting is susceptible to situational and sociocultural context. To issue an appropriate invitation, speakers must respect cultural norms and use politeness strategies accepted in each communicative culture. The aim of this study is to identify conventionalized linguistic patterns and politeness strategies common in the realization of everyday invitations in Spanish and Russian. The analyzed corpus consists of 662 written samples collected through the Discourse Completion Task. The samples correspond to three communicative situations with different configurations of pragmatic parameters of social distance and power. The study offers a taxonomy of most productive invitation formulae in Russian and Spanish, grounded in the proposals of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) and García (2008). The analysis is based on the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) and supported by the worksheet of the ES.POR.ATENUACION project (Albelda Marco et al. 2014). The findings indicate the presence of similar tendencies in Spanish and Russian: when greater distance and/or higher status of the interlocutor is perceived, speakers give preference to deference politeness strategies, while solidarity politeness strategies prevail in situations of closer proximity. The predominant differences are observed in the selection of invitation sub-strategies. Despite being classified as solidarity cultures, each language exhibits distinct linguistic patterns.
format Article
id doaj-art-e10a7bc7db764d0aaf5bc658cf0a136c
institution Kabale University
issn 2687-0088
2686-8024
language English
publishDate 2025-06-01
publisher Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)
record_format Article
series Russian Journal of Linguistics
spelling doaj-art-e10a7bc7db764d0aaf5bc658cf0a136c2025-08-20T03:27:48ZengPeoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)Russian Journal of Linguistics2687-00882686-80242025-06-0129236238510.22363/2687-0088-4104520951Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategiesElena Shorokhova0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7584-6196Palma Peña-Jiménez1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3732-7483Rey Juan Carlos UniversityRey Juan Carlos UniversityThe realization of the speech act of inviting is susceptible to situational and sociocultural context. To issue an appropriate invitation, speakers must respect cultural norms and use politeness strategies accepted in each communicative culture. The aim of this study is to identify conventionalized linguistic patterns and politeness strategies common in the realization of everyday invitations in Spanish and Russian. The analyzed corpus consists of 662 written samples collected through the Discourse Completion Task. The samples correspond to three communicative situations with different configurations of pragmatic parameters of social distance and power. The study offers a taxonomy of most productive invitation formulae in Russian and Spanish, grounded in the proposals of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) and García (2008). The analysis is based on the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) and supported by the worksheet of the ES.POR.ATENUACION project (Albelda Marco et al. 2014). The findings indicate the presence of similar tendencies in Spanish and Russian: when greater distance and/or higher status of the interlocutor is perceived, speakers give preference to deference politeness strategies, while solidarity politeness strategies prevail in situations of closer proximity. The predominant differences are observed in the selection of invitation sub-strategies. Despite being classified as solidarity cultures, each language exhibits distinct linguistic patterns.https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/44886/24940invitationspeech actpolitenesssituational contextsociocultural contextspanishrussian
spellingShingle Elena Shorokhova
Palma Peña-Jiménez
Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies
Russian Journal of Linguistics
invitation
speech act
politeness
situational context
sociocultural context
spanish
russian
title Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies
title_full Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies
title_fullStr Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies
title_full_unstemmed Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies
title_short Invitations in Spanish and Russian communicative cultures: Sociocultural context and politeness strategies
title_sort invitations in spanish and russian communicative cultures sociocultural context and politeness strategies
topic invitation
speech act
politeness
situational context
sociocultural context
spanish
russian
url https://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/viewFile/44886/24940
work_keys_str_mv AT elenashorokhova invitationsinspanishandrussiancommunicativeculturessocioculturalcontextandpolitenessstrategies
AT palmapenajimenez invitationsinspanishandrussiancommunicativeculturessocioculturalcontextandpolitenessstrategies