When East Meets West: A Comparative Analysis of Credibility and Persuasive Appeals in Cross-Cultural Email Negotiations between Genders

Abstract

The bulk of studies focusing on cross-cultural variations in persuasive appeals examines letters or newspaper articles (Al-Ali 2006; Alhudhaif, 2005; Bhatia, 2014; Connor et al., 1995; Ismail, 2010). It is rare for a study to examine persuasive appeals within intercultural settings via email communication for academic proposal purposes. Typical findings of these cross-cultural studies suggest that non-native English speakers do not use rational appeals as frequently as native speakers and focus more on effective appeals. However, these studies did not base their judgements on interactive communications and the cross-cultural comparison of newspapers or political texts is hardly comparable. To this end, this paper provides a more fine-grain analysis by linking between the new impoliteness framework and persuasive appeals (impeded within genre analysis) to explore gender and cultural differences. the differences in email negotiations persuasive appeals where relevant by using comparable email data written by both cultural groups (i.e. Australians and Saudis). The results indicate that both focused on rational appeals, using far fewer credible and affective appeals. However, there were significant differences in the way both cultures utilised these appeals. In the affective appeals, Saudi men made more compliments and used more emotional and (im) polite requests than Saudi females. With the credibility appeals, Saudi women made more self-promotional moves than men, portraying the self as competent and distinguished.