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[spiral78]

Apologies for huffiness - I was under fire from other quarters at the time.

A question regarding your take on the intercultural communication and politeness issue (I did a similar module in the course of my MA studies).
Would you have any idea how narrow such a topic could be in terms of Phd study (am not sure how much direct experience you have with this, but I'll try to pick your brains a bit in case there's something that can help me make a decision)? I'm not eager to compare world register issues, but would be interested in narrowing that significantly to reflect the most common kinds of interaction in my target zone. This would essentially be Europeans using English to communicate on professional levels with each other and the odd native speaker. Asia and the Middle East, while obviously very worthy of study, don't play such a huge role in my target work zone. yeah, I know, we all do business with people from those regions - but it simply isn't prevalant here and I'm eager to narrow the doctorate topic to something directly useful and interesting in my personal context.