Functional matching and strategic mismatching in political impoliteness reciprocity: unpacking 2025 Trump–Zelenskyy oval office meeting

In political contexts, how impoliteness and reciprocity are deployed and represented remains under-specified yet crucial for understanding interactional power and public perceptions. This study examines how impoliteness strategies and reciprocity unfold in high-stake political communications, drawing on the impoliteness strategy theory and the principle of (im)politeness reciprocity (PIR). Findings show that Trump preferentially deployed positive impoliteness strategies, Zelenskyy responded with negative impoliteness, while Vance engaged in with off-record impoliteness that reframed a dyad confrontation into a triad. Two reciprocity patterns emerged: functional matching, steered by Trump’s topic control where direct impoliteness is returned in kind, thereby escalating the use of impoliteness; and strategic mismatching, catalysed by Vance’s engagement, in which Trump pursues raised-threshold gratitude demands and Zelenskyy shifts to rights-asserting overlaps. The thank-you coercion strategy was repeatedly used in mismatching, presented coercive gratitude demands which discount prior thanks and convert geopolitical aid into interpersonal debt, thereby implying an imbalanced power relation. Overall, reciprocity in political context is normally functionally matched and power-sensitive. These findings extend PIR to institutional political communications and theorise thank-you coercion strategy in reciprocity.