Payment offers, suggestions to share expenses and payment negotiation sequences on initial dates in Germany and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Settling the bill is often an integral and unavoidable part of initial dates. The speech acts of payment offers and suggestions to share expenses have been shown to play a key role in payment negotiation, and to also reveal gender variation (Barron, 2025). From a pragmatic standpoint, however, our understanding of payment negotiation is confined to the cultural context of the United Kingdom (Barron, 2025). The present paper addresses this research gap by focusing on payment negotiation interactions broadcast in Germany and in the United Kingdom (UK) on the first date reality television series, First Dates – ein Tisch für zwei and First Dates. Examining the speech acts of payment offers and suggestions to share expenses, and payment negotiation sequences, the analysis takes a cross-cultural perspective on how interactants negotiate the wider payment event, also with a view to the interaction of gender conventions. In so doing, the study also adds to the naturalistic data on offers and suggestions and at the same time to research on pragmatic analyses of reality TV shows. Findings highlight cross-cultural variation on a sociopragmatic and discoursal level in speech act sequencing and in the use and status of suggestions to share expenses across cultures, and a correlation between gender and speech act choices in both cultures. On a pragmalinguistic level, cross-cultural variation is recorded, with a higher level of directness in payment offers in the UK. Findings have implications for cross-cultural understanding and for foreign language teaching.