Linguistic politeness across Austria and Italy: Backing out of an invitation with an instant message

The study compares how native speakers of German from the area Innsbruck (Austria) and Italian Rome (Italy) perceive communicative act backing out an invitation for dinner at last minute, in a situation low social distance. purpose is twofold: to shed light on orientation Austrian languages/cultures terms linguistic politeness, expand empirical cross-cultural research less-commonly investigated speech act. Data collected by means discourse completion task (DCT) are triangulated with responses assessment question metapragmatic comments, analyzed following quantitative approach. analysis DCT findings shows some cross-group differences choice realization strategies internal modifiers. However, overall results reveal more similarities than between two populations regarding informants’ perception face threat last-minute cancellations. This seems disprove idea that groups belong different cultural frameworks politeness orientation, least as far it concerns specific under investigation.