This is the final pre-publication version of: Culpeper, Jonathan, Shauer, Gila, Marti, Leyla, Mei, Meilian and Minna Nevala (2014) Impoliteness and emotions in a cross-cultural perspective. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 30: 67-88. There may be minor infelicities and typos. Impoliteness and emotions in a cross-cultural perspective Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University, UK), Gila Schauer (Universität Erfurt, Germany), Leyla Marti (Boğaziçi University, Turkey), Meilian Mei (Zhejiang University of Technology, China) and Minna Nevala (University of Helsinki, Finland) Abstract This study investigates the emotions one experiences when one participates in impolite discourses. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether different cultures experience different emotions in the light of discourses deemed impolite. We begin by discussing the nature of impoliteness, pointing out that key concepts such as “face” and “sociality rights” seem to be closely connected to particular emotions. We discuss the role of cognition in the mediation of emotion, arguing that it is essential in the explanation of impoliteness, and indeed cultural variation. We analyse 500 reports of impoliteness events generated by undergraduates based in England, Finland, Germany, Turkey and China. We extract emotion labels from our data and classify them into emotion groups. Our results suggest that there is less cultural variation at higher level emotion categories, but more at lower level. For example, our Chinese and Turkish data suggests that our informants contrast with the other datasets in experiencing sadness to a greater degree. 1. Introduction Navigating the field of impoliteness research is daunting. There is no agreed definition of politeness or impoliteness (Bargiela-Chiappini, “Face and impoliteness”; Locher and Bousfield, “Introduction”, p. 3). Even the terms that can be used for such notions are controversial (why not use civility instead of politeness, or rudeness instead of impoliteness?). In fact, in this paper we use the term impoliteness as a cover term. (Im)politeness clearly involves particular behaviours, but it cannot be reduced to a fixed list of linguistic forms or behaviours that are guaranteed to have polite or impolite meanings on all occasions (perhaps something that might be more associated with etiquette manuals). Consider that the expression thank you could be said in such a way and in such a context that its meaning could be construed as impolite (e.g. sarcastic). Deciding on whether thank you is polite or impolite involves more than simply decoding semantic meanings; it involves inferring interpersonal meanings in context. More specifically, impoliteness refers to behaviours, verbal or non-verbal, which evoke particular (mental) attitudes. The idea that politeness is subjective and evaluative is fairly frequently stated in the politeness literature (e.g. Eelen, A Critique; Watts, Politeness; Spencer-Oatey, “(Im)Politeness”; Ruhi, “Intentionality”). (Im)politeness concerns behaviours which evoke impoliteness attitudes, or, more specifically, judgments that a behaviour is unexpected, unacceptable and/or unwanted. Such attitudes can be evoked in any participant; even a speaker of something impolite may judge their