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how imposing its requests were to the user by redressing these requests according
to B&L's theory of politeness.
16.3.3
Rapport
The feeling of rapport can be described as being “in sync” with another person:
communication takes place fluently and both interaction partners are roughly on the
same level. In our corpus, we see the effects of both the presence and absence of
this feeling. Suspect factors 2 and 12 in Table
16.2
and police factors 1 and 2 in
Table
16.3
were interpreted as rapport (rapport-like descriptions).
Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal (
1990
) conceptualised rapport in order to identify
non-verbal correlates. Their description of the nature of rapport focuses on the
interaction process as a whole and relies on three components of rapport:
mutual
attention
,
positivity
and
coordination
. To develop and maintain rapport, interaction
partners need to be mutually attentive so that they can achieve a focused and
cohesive interaction. Moreover, their interest in the other party should remain at
a high level during the course of an interaction. Figure
16.3
shows a schematic
view of relative importance of mutual attention and the other two factors of rapport
over time. Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal mention that being positive towards each
other is important during the build-up of rapport, yet becomes less important as
time passes during interaction. An example of this is language usage among teens,
where insults (a sign of low positivity) are the order of the day (Wang et al.
2012
).
Lastly, Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal describe coordination as having a harmonious
relationship between partners—this is the key term related to the feeling of being
“in sync” and is the factor that becomes more important over time.
Attention
Positivity
Coordination
Fig. 16.3
Importance of the
three components of rapport
over time [from
Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal
(
1990
)]
Early
Late
Time
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