Re-invitation as Sequential Relational Repair in Post-Refusal Cross-Cultural Interactions

The study treats post-refusal re-invitation in Chinese-English cross-cultural interaction as a form of sequential relational repair. It combines conversation analysis with interpersonal pragmatics. What the data suggest is that the friction has little to do with lexical misunderstanding. It seems to grow instead from asymmetric expectations about how sequences should close, and from conflicting assumptions about whether a refusal is enough to end an invitation sequence. Discourse-completion tasks and retrospective interviews show something worth noting. The same re-invitation move may be read as warmth by some participants and as intrusion by others, depending on social distance, formality, and how much intercultural exposure they have had. Localized mitigation, things like softening disclaimers and meta-commentary, appears to offer a practical resource. These moves may help repair the relationship before any conflict becomes visible.

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