¿qué::? ¿cómo que te vas a casar? congratulations and rapport management

Abstract

Using Spencer-Oatey’s (2005) rapport management theoretical framework, this article examines Peruvian Spanish-speakers’ behavioral expectations, types of face respected/threatened and interactional wants when congratulating. Analysis shows that participants’ interactional wants were mainly relational; they exhibited a rapport-maintenance orientation using strategies that, although apparently violating the equity principle, relfected their interdependent self-construals (Markus and Kitayama 1991). Along the same lines, participants enhanced their own identity and respectability face, and in doing so, also enhanced the interlocutor’s respectability face by making her the beneficiary of their concern for her. Although gender differences were found, these were not statistically significant.