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Call for abstracts for a special issue of Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology:

Norms and the assessment of communication contexts: multidisciplinary perspectives

Guest Editors: Helen Spencer-Oatey, Katharina Lefringhausen, Carolin Debray and Thomas Greenaway

There is increasing acknowledgement by psychologists and interculturalists that the ways in which culture influences people's behaviour is likely to be affected by characteristics of the situation.  Yet there have been very few studies that have taken this direction. In this special issue, we propose addressing this challenge from a multidisciplinary perspective, with a focus on communication contexts and the norms associated with people's assessments of those contexts.

We invite papers from relevant disciplines – notably, from cross-cultural psychology, pragmatics/sociolinguistics, and international business – on issues relating to this, including but not limited to the following:

• How do people from different cultural backgrounds assess the nature of given role relationships (e.g. manager–subordinate, shop assistant – customer)? 
• What rights and obligations are associated with given role relationships in different cultural groups?
• What descriptive, injunctive and/or intersubjective norms of given role relationships are held by (members of) different social groups?  
• What similarities and differences are there in how people from different cultural backgrounds conceptualise given communicative events (e.g. negotiation meeting, service encounter, dinner party, court case)?
• What research methods and tools can be used for probing contextual assessment norms? 
• Theoretically, how do culture and contextual assessments interrelate?

For further details of the special issue and this call, including how to submit, please see http://warwick.ac.uk/jccp_cfp_norms

For enquiries, please email Helen (helen.spencer-oatey@warwick.ac.uk) and Katharina (k.lefringhausen@warwick.ac.uk)

Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2017