Abstract

Foregrounding Intercultural Communication (Gudykunst & Kim 1997; Jandt 2010; Martin & Nakayama 2013, 2014; Nair-Venugopal 2003, 2009, 2015), this paper presents the results of examining the influence of the specific social categories of age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, mother tongue, and English language ability on the formation of self-selected groups and group work interactions of students in a private Malaysian university.  An interpretive framework was used to highlight how these social categories influenced the face-work (Goffman 1967) and politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987) strategies employed to manage rapport (Spencer-Oatey 2008, 2009) in order to achieve successful group work.  The study involved a total of 193 culturally diverse students in the Faculty of Management in the private university. Using an ethnographic approach, the participants were observed during group work sessions and the interactions audio-taped. The data corpus comprised transcripts of audio-taped recordings, close-ended survey questions, self-reports from post-hoc interviews, feedback from expert informants and field-notes from direct participant observations.  The study found that age and English language ability are significantly influential in the formation of self-selected groups, while age, gender, mother tongue, and English language ability were salient and influential in face-to-face group work interactions.