This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Rudeness, whether real or perceived, can deeply affect cooperation, trust, and workplace culture. But judgements of what we consider rude aren’t confined to specific disrespectful words or phrases—they are shaped by the listener’s emotional processing, attention to non-verbal cues, and underlying moral stance.
In multilingual settings this complexity is compounded, as misunderstandings don’t just arise from vocabulary gaps or grammar mistakes. In fact, they often have more to do with ourselves—our own emotional and moral judgements of what others say and do—than the words being uttered.
If you frequently communicate in your second language, you’ll have encountered this regularly. Someone might speak to you calmly, clearly and without a hint of ill will, but still leave you with an uneasy thought: “they didn’t say anything wrong… but it felt rude.”
Our research sheds light on this phenomenon by looking at the intersection of pragmatics (how language is used in context), emotion research, bilingualism, and moral psychology.
Our recent study, published in Lingua, examined how people using their first and second languages rate impoliteness in workplace interactions. Our findings reveal that judgements of rudeness are not purely linguistic, or even solely cultural; they are deeply tied to emotions and moral intuitions.
Rating Rudeness in the Workplace
We recruited 55 first language (L1) English speakers and 45 Spanish speakers whose second language (L2) was English. Participants watched a series of video clips depicting workplace interactions involving requests, interruptions, disagreements, and directives. After viewing each clip, they were asked to:
- Rate how impolite the interaction seemed
- Report the emotions they experienced
- Complete a questionnaire measuring their moral values.
Using video clips rather than written dialogues allowed participants to respond to tone of voice, facial expression and gesture; that is, the same cues we rely on in real workplaces. This is crucial, because previous research shows that L2 users tend to rely more heavily on visual information such as body language when processing interactions in a foreign language.
Perceptions of Impoliteness
Our study revealed two major patterns.
First of all, second language speakers are more sensitive to rudeness. Spanish speakers using English as their L2 tended to rate the same interactions as more impolite than L1 English speakers did. Importantly, this does not mean they misunderstood the language.
One explanation is that L2 users may overestimate offensiveness, a pattern previously observed with taboo or emotionally loaded language in L2 contexts. Some clips also included swearing or tense exchanges, presenting a possible “red flag” for L2 viewers in situations that L1 speakers were able to interpret with more nuance.
Another explanation lies in attention: because processing speech in an L2 involves greater cognitive effort, participants may have relied more on facial expressions and gestures. Reading these cues as signs of tension or conflict may have led to higher impoliteness ratings.
It is also possible that L2 speakers may be more sensitive to cues they interpret as impolite and more alert to potential disrespect, perhaps due to underlying uncertainty about cultural or pragmatic norms.
The second finding was that emotional reactions are surprisingly similar across groups. Despite differences in perceived impoliteness, both groups reported similar emotional reactions to behavior they saw as impolite.
This is important because it challenges the idea that people feel less emotional when using an L2. In fact, emotions were just as strong in L2 as in L1. Many of these emotions reflected morality, and included empathy, anger at harmful behavior, and concerns about fairness and respect.
Actions violating the moral foundation of harm and care (for example, situations where someone was treated disrespectfully or someone’s well being was disregarded) triggered particularly strong emotional responses. Anger emerged as one of the dominant emotions, especially in clips where participants perceived bullying, sexism, or oppression.
Managing Multilingual Workplaces
Our findings have a number of both scientific and practical implications.
First, they revealed a degree of shared moral framework between different cultures. Emotional reactions to impoliteness seem to be rooted in similar moral values across language groups. This provides common ground that employers and intercultural trainers can build on in order to foster better communication.
Our study also emphasizes the need to look beyond linguistic proficiency when learning and teaching. Understanding rudeness isn’t just about knowing vocabulary—it’s also about reading social and emotional cues in context.
Educators therefore need to train people for real communication. L2 learners may benefit from explicit discussion of how gestures, taboo language, and emotional tone can be misinterpreted when attention is focused on only part of the interaction.
This kind of training also needs to be adapted to suit different contexts. Eastern cultures, for example, tend to be “high context,” meaning speakers may prefer indirect language with a high degree of caution, or what linguists call “hedging.” But people from “low context” cultures such as Russia may find explicit and direct language more honest and therefore more polite.
Having a greater awareness of the cultural and personal language rules that our colleagues follow can allow us to prevent misconstrued offense. It would be impossible to learn the language rules of every single society, but we can break down barriers by becoming more conscious of these differences—both when speaking or being spoken to in an L2.
Morality Matters
It’s tempting to think that judgements about politeness are purely cultural or linguistic. But our study shows that moral emotions—the instinctive feelings that tell us something is right or wrong—are central to how people perceive rude behavior, even when speaking in an L2.
Notably, participants in our study made frequent, spontaneous moral comments about what they saw, describing behaviors as misogynistic, bullying, or unfair. This shows that our evaluations of impoliteness often revolve around deeper issues of moral order, even when we are only observers of an interaction.
As workplaces become increasingly globalized, understanding not just language but also the emotional and moral lenses people bring to communication will be vital. Misunderstandings aren’t just mispronunciations—they can stem from how we read gestures, process emotion, and apply our moral judgement to what we see.
Irini Mavrou, Associate professor, Universidad Nebrija; UCL
Nicola McNab, Researcher and teacher trainer, Universidad Nebrija
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
