This study investigates how Chinese students in the United Kingdom experience, interpret, and respond to interactional challenges in everyday communication with host individuals. It builds on and extends previous work by adopting a constructivist paradigm and a sociopragmatic approach to explore the micro-level adjustment in challenging encounters. Using the Critical Incident Technique, the research collected qualitative data through questionnaires, monthly record sheets, and interviews with Chinese students at UK universities. Detailed incidents were analysed using the TRIPS Rapport Management Framework, which enables systematic examination of interpersonal triggers, contextual influences, and participants’ multidimensional responses. The findings reveal five key types of challenge—face, goal, association, fairness, and autonomy threats—arising from a complex interplay of cultural, relational, individual, and situational factors. Participants’ responses varied across emotional, cognitive, and behavioural dimensions. Adaptive reactions involved emotional regulation, mutual-focused reflection, and behavioural adjustment, while non-adaptive responses included disengagement, resistance, or reinforcement of fixed assumptions. The study identifies three patterns of learning from these encounters: beneficial learning through perspective change and behavioural adaptation; partial learning focused on incremental adjustment; and mistaken learning shaped by potential misattribution or limited reflection. These outcomes illustrate how adaptation unfolds through students’ interpretations of and responses to specific interpersonal challenges in the host environment. Overall, the thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of intercultural adaptation as a situated, emergent process of learning through the multidimensional management of everyday interactional challenges.
| Date of Award | 6 Jan 2026 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Claire Barber (Main Supervisor) |
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