Exploring Politeness in Business Emails: A Mixed-Methods Analysis 9781788925969

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Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

LANGUAGE AT WORK Series Editors: Jo Angouri, University of Warwick, UK and Rebecca Piekkari, Aalto University Business School, Finland Language at Work is a new series designed to bring together scholars interested in workplace research. The modern workplace has changed significantly in recent years. The international nature of business activities and the increasing rate of mobility around the world create a new challenging environment for individuals and organisations alike. The advancements in technology have reshaped the ways employees collaborate at the interface of linguistic, national and professional borders. The complex linguistic landscape also results in new challenges for health care systems and legal settings. This and other phenomena around the world of work have attracted significant interest; it is still common however for relevant research to remain within clear disciplinary and methodological boundaries. The series aims to create space for exchange of ideas and dialogue and seeks to explore issues related to power, leadership, politics, teamwork, culture, ideology, identity, decision-making and motivation across a diverse range of contexts, including corporate, health care and institutional settings. Language at Work welcomes mixed-methods research and it will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, international management, organisation studies, sociology, medical sociology and decision sciences. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

LANGUAGE AT WORK: 4

Exploring Politeness in Business Emails A Mixed-Methods Analysis

Vera Freytag

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/FREYTA5952 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Freytag, Vera, 1986- author. Title: Exploring Politeness in Business Emails: A Mixed-Methods Analysis/ Vera Freytag. Description: Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book explores the contextual complexities of workplace emails by comparing British English and Peninsular Spanish directive speech events. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis the book offers an innovative approach to the study of politeness”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019022076 (print) | LCCN 2019981202 (ebook) | ISBN 9781788925952 (hardback) | ISBN 9781788925969 (pdf) | ISBN 9781788925983 (kindle edition) | ISBN 9781788925976 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Commercial correspondence. | Business ethics. Classification: LCC HF5721 .F754 2019 (print) | LCC HF5721 (ebook) | DDC 177/.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022076 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019981202 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-595-2 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https​://ww​w.fac​ebook​.com/​multi​lingu​almat​ters Blog: www.c​hanne​lview​publi​catio​ns.wo​rdpre​ss.co​m Copyright © 2020 Vera Freytag. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by NBN.

Contents

Tables and Figures

vii

Abbreviationsx 1 Directive Speech Events in Business Emails 2 A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events

1 39

3 A Cross-Cultural Analysis of English and Spanish Email Directives81 4 The Contextual Complexity of Email Directives

120

5 The Study of Politeness in Business Emails: Concluding Observations169 Appendices183 References208 Index221

v

Tables and Figures

Tables

Table 2.1 Size of the BE and PS data sets 49 Table 2.2 Purposes of email interactions in the BE and PS data sets 49 Table 2.3 Distribution of social variables across the BE and PS data sets 51 Table 2.4 Head act strategies employed in the present study 63 Table 2.5 Internal syntactic downgraders 70 Table 2.6 Internal lexical and phrasal downgraders 71 Table 2.7 External downgrading modifiers 72 Table 2.8 Internal and external upgrading modifiers 74 Table 2.9 Sequencing strategies surrounding the directive head act 75 Table 3.1 Significant cross-cultural differences between BE and PS email directives 82 Table 3.2 Summary of co-occurrence patterns between head acts and modifiers 83 Table 3.3 Cross-cultural distribution of sentence types and subtypes 84 Table 3.4 Sentence type distribution (in %) in previous studies 86 Table 3.5 Cross-cultural distribution of directive perspectives and subtypes 88 Table 3.6 Distribution of head act strategies and subtypes 92 Table 3.7 Comparison of politeness means of English, Spanish, Hebrew and Turkish 96 Table 3.8 Relationship between BE head act strategies and modifiers 114 Table 3.9 Relationship between PS head act strategies and modifiers 115 Table 4.1 Significant effects of socio-contextual variables in email directives 121

vii

viii Tables and Figures

Figures

Figure 1.1 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 3.6 Figure 3.7 Figure 3.8 Figure 3.9 Figure 3.10 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6 Figure 4.7 Figure 4.8 Figure 4.9 Figure 4.10 Figure 4.11 Figure 4.12 Figure 4.13 Figure 4.14

Strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978]) 14 Mixed method framework for the study of cross-cultural speech events 40 Identification process of directives applied in the present study 58 Cross-cultural distribution of head act strategies 91 Cross-cultural distribution of modifiers 99 Cross-cultural distribution of downgraders 100 Frequency distribution of syntactic downgraders 101 Frequency distribution of lexical downgraders 102 Frequency distribution of external negative politeness downgraders 104 Frequency distribution of external positive politeness downgraders 106 Distribution of positive and negative politeness downgraders 108 Cross-cultural distribution of upgraders 110 Frequency distribution of sequencing strategies 113 The effect of addressee sex on sentence type use in female directives 123 The effect of addressee sex on sentence type use in male directives 124 The effect of addressee sex on perspective use in female directives 125 The effect of addressee sex on perspective use in male directives 126 The effect of addressee sex on head act strategy use in BE directives 128 The effect of addressee sex on head act use in PS female directives 129 The effect of addressee sex on head act use in PS male directives 129 The effect of social distance on sentence type choice 133 The effect of social distance on perspective use 135 The effect of social distance on BE head act strategy use 137 The effect of social distance on PS head act strategy use 137 The effect of social distance on downgrader use 139 The effect of social distance on upgrader use 141 The effect of ranking of imposition on sentence type choice 145

Tables and Figures  ix

Figure 4.15 The effect of ranking of imposition on perspective use 147 Figure 4.16 The effect of ranking of imposition on head act strategy use 148 Figure 4.17 The effect of ranking of imposition on downgrader use 149 Figure 4.18 The effect of ranking of imposition on upgrader use 151 Figure 4.19 The effect of power on sentence type choice 154 Figure 4.20 The effect of power on perspective use 155 Figure 4.21 The effect of power on BE head act strategy use 156 Figure 4.22 The effect of power on PS head act strategy use 157 Figure 4.23 The effect of power on downgrader use 158 Figure 4.24 The effect of power on upgrader use 160 Figure 4.25 The effect of purpose on sentence type choice in BE email directives 162 Figure 4.26 The effect of purpose on sentence type choice in PS email directives 162

Abbreviations

B Estimate BE British English BIC Bayesian information criterion CA Conversation analysis CCP Cross-cultural pragmatics CCSARP Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project CI Confidence interval CMC Computer-mediated communication CoP Community of practice CP Cooperative Principle DCT Discourse completion task FTA Face-threatening act FTF Face-to-face GLMM Generalized linear mixed model IFID Illocutionary force indicating device P Power PP Politeness Principle PS Peninsular Spanish RI Ranking of imposition SAT Speech act theory SD Social distance SE Standard error TAP Think-aloud protocol

x

1 Directive Speech Events in Business Emails

In the era of globalization, a growing number of workplaces are bringing together people of different cultural backgrounds who are faced with the challenges of working together and communicating effectively. Such workplaces are ideal for conducting a study on language behavior, as managers and employees engage in a variety of speech events to achieve their goals, either in their first language (L1) or in a different language, depending on to whom they are talking. Irrespective of the particular goal that is being pursued, business practitioners engage in both transactional and interactional talk (Angouri & Marra, 2011; Brown & Yule, 1983), i.e. talk that functions mainly to transfer information, and talk that is used primarily to maintain social relationships. Workplace communication, therefore, also offers a fruitful source for the study of verbal politeness phenomena, as it allows insights into how people formulate their speech events in a way that enhances the chances of success without harming their relationship with others. Research into institutional discourse originated in the early 1990s with the ground-breaking publications of Talk and Social Structure (Boden & Zimmermann, 1991) and Talk at Work (Drew & Heritage, 1992). Since then, the bulk of studies on institutional discourse has grown exponentially (cf. Section 1.3), but has mainly focused on English-speaking contexts, has been set in the university context due to issues of data accessibility and is mainly limited to spoken discourse. In the last few decades, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has revolutionized workplace communication, yet it has attracted the attention of very few researchers in linguistic pragmatics to date. The current book aims to fill the research gaps identified in the fields of institutional discourse (more specifically business discourse) and CMC by investigating politeness phenomena in English and Spanish business emails. More specifically, I compare the realizations of directive speech events in emails written by British English (BE) and Peninsular Spanish (PS) L1 users in a workplace located in Spain.1 I chose to investigate directives (i.e. attempts to get the addressee to do something, cf. Searle, 1976) for three reasons: (1) their important role and frequent use in 1

2  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

business interaction; (2) the sustainable amount of literature available on directives, serving as a useful standard of comparison; and (3) the lack of systematic studies on English and Spanish directives that are based on spontaneously occurring data in business contexts. The present study also includes various types of directives in the analysis, i.e. requests, commands, advice and suggestions, whereas most of the earlier studies were limited to the investigation of one of the latter types. By considering the situated nature of the directives produced, including external modification and sequencing strategies (cf. Section 2.4), this project is concerned with a systematic analysis of speech events rather than speech acts. In other words, the study goes beyond a mere sentence-based approach to the analysis of directives by taking the email discourse as the unit of analysis. 1.1  Objectives and Outline of the Book

By providing a comparison of English and Spanish business emails, this study aims to add a new dimension to the research field of cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP), in particular, where the research to date reveals three major limitations. Firstly, most studies in CCP, including those that compare English and Spanish, are based on data elicitation techniques such as role-plays or discourse completion tasks (DCTs; cf. Kasper, 2000). It has been found, however, that these elicitation techniques do not produce data comparable to naturally occurring discourse (cf. Flöck, 2016), suggesting that researchers should focus on authentic language data. Secondly, apart from the lack of comparative studies that systematically investigate directives in naturally occurring discourse, CCP research has revealed a dearth of studies that systematically account for the effects of both social and discourse contexts on language use. While there is an increasing awareness of the context-sensitivity of language, studies that establish which exact contextual factor leads to the choice of one particular strategy over another are still sorely needed. Thirdly, time and time again it has been argued that CCP and politeness research should not only focus on language production, but it should also take into account the perception of linguistic strategies. Nevertheless, studies that systematically investigate language perception are still few and far between. This book aims to address the research gaps identified above in the following four research dimensions: (1) Pragmalinguistic dimension: How are directives realized in English and Spanish business emails? What kind of patterns with regard to the realization of directives can be established for English and Spanish?

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  3

(2) Cross-cultural dimension: Are there differences in the ways L1 users of the BE language variety and L1 users of the PS language variety compose directive speech events in business emails? (3) Sociopragmatic dimension: To what extent do the socio-contextual factors sex, social distance, ranking of imposition, power and purpose of interaction have an effect on the choice of directive realization strategies in BE and PS business emails?2 (4) Perception dimension: How do BE and PS email writers perceive the directive head act strategies in business emails in terms of directness and politeness? The present project aims at offering a new perspective and a more holistic picture of directives by investigating them along these four dimensions and finding out what forms directives can take in English and Spanish; what differences exist between the directives found in the two languages; which socio-contextual factors lead to the choice of a particular strategy; and finally, how the strategies are perceived. More specifically, it introduces an innovative study with regard to both the object of the study and the methodology employed. The languages English and Spanish were selected for this study because not only are they important on a global scale but they also remain under-investigated from a contrastive perspective. While such a contrastive perspective is, of course, not new, the present study addresses the research gap identified in CCP by relying on data from spontaneously occurring discourse in specific sociocultural contexts, as they are concerned with business interaction in a very specific community of practice (cf. Section 1.3). The data further represent instances of CMC, more specifically emails. In other words, the data used for analysis come from a less-researched genre (business interaction) as well as from a channel (CMC) which is exponentially gaining in importance in our industrialized society. There is still a significant lack of empirical studies on actual CMC from a CCP perspective in the pragmatics literature. With regard to the methodology employed, the present project proposes a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The answers to the first two research questions are thus based on a qualitative categorization and a quantitative comparison of the BE and PS directive speech events. While this first step is a worthwhile endeavor in its own right, as it addresses the lack of systematic studies based on authentic data in CCP, the study of the effects that socio-contextual factors have on linguistic choices adds another dimension to the current state of research. The third research dimension is thus approached qualitatively through an assessment of the contextual variables, and quantitatively by systematically measuring the effects of these variables. The insights gained from these analyses of the production data are complemented by a mainly

4  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

qualitative small-scale study on the perception of the directive head act strategies identified by the target audience. This last step aims at addressing the gap in CCP research by moving away from a purely productionbased paradigm to including the perception of discourse strategies. It is hoped that this mixed-method approach provides illuminating insights for the study of politeness in CCP research, in particular. In this chapter, I provide an elaborate account of the theoretical framework employed in order to clarify how I have conceptualized directive speech events and why I have employed a mixed-method approach to the analysis of the BE and PS directives in the present project. Since the definition of directives draws on insights from speech act theory (SAT) and traditional and recent theories of verbal politeness, and since the methodological approach is informed by various interrelated theoretical concepts, I first outline the early speech act and politeness theories, which generally aim at finding universal principles of human communication. I then present the criticism that has been put forward against the traditional views on politeness and illustrate how pragmatics researchers have increasingly attached more importance to the social discourse context in their conceptualizations of politeness. As the present project contributes to the field of cross-cultural pragmatics, I outline different, but interrelated, conceptualizations of culture, including the definition of culture in cultural anthropology and CCP (Section 1.2). The theoretical framework ends with an overview of the concepts which have served as the methodological foundation of the present study, viz. the concept of communities of practice (CoP), institutional discourse and CMC, including a concise overview of previous studies that are considered relevant for this book (Section 1.3). In Chapter  2, I provide a synopsis of the framework employed by presenting the specific mixed-method approach and defining directive speech events as the present study’s unit of analysis (Section 2.1). I further outline the methodological approach of both the production and pilot perception study while providing information about the email corpus and the collection of metapragmatic insights, the workplace and the role of email, as well as the composition and comparability of the email data sets (Section 2.2). I then present the assessment procedure and distribution of the social variables sex, social distance, power and imposition (Section  2.3), followed by an outline of the identification procedure of the directives, the coding scheme underlying the production data analysis and the statistical analysis employed (Section 2.4). The chapter ends with a synopsis (Section 2.5), in which I specify my research questions, which have guided the data analyses, and formulate hypotheses that follow from earlier research findings. Chapter  3 provides the answers to the first two research domains by presenting the results of a cross-cultural comparison of BE and PS email directives according to the analytical levels, i.e. directive head acts

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  5

(Section 3.1), modification strategies (Section 3.2) and sequencing strategies (Section 3.3). I further outline the co-occurrence patterns found for the directive head act and modifier strategies (Section 3.4). In addition, a discussion of the results regarding the directive head act strategies (Section 3.1) is supplemented by the findings of the directness and politeness ratings. In Chapter  4, the answers to the third research dimension, i.e. the effects of the contextual factors on strategy choice, are discussed according to the individual social variables, viz. writer sex and addressee sex (Section  4.1), social distance (Section  4.2), imposition (Section  4.3) and power (Section  4.4). I further address the influence of the purpose of interaction on strategy choice (Section 4.5). The results regarding the fourth research dimension, obtained through a pilot perception study, are incorporated into Chapters  3–5, where they support the interpretation of the findings and conclusions are made. In the final chapter of the book, I discuss theoretical, methodological and practical implications (Section 5.1) that follow from the findings and provide some suggestions (Section  5.2) that will hopefully guide future research in the field of CCP and business discourse. 1.2  Speech Acts, Politeness and the Matter of Culture The more descriptions we acquire about the phenomena of linguistic politeness, the more we realize how little we in fact know about the range of possible expressions of politeness in different cultures and languages. (Ide, 1989: 97)

Since the late 1980s, there has been immense and continuous growth in intercultural and cross-cultural research as a result of globalization, greater population mobility and advances in technology, which has facilitated long-distance communication. Research into language use and variation within and between cultures, including the study of linguistic politeness phenomena, falls into the scope of pragmatics, which has its origins in the Oxford School of Ordinary Language Philosophy and developed in the 1950s.3 Pragmatics can be broadly defined as ‘the study of meaning in context’ (cf. Archer & Grundy, 2011: 2). The assumption is that the meaning conveyed in communicative acts (such as directives) is created within a specific sociocultural context, which therefore must be taken into account in the deconstruction of meaning. Early pragmatics theorists assumed that linguistic strategies, including politeness strategies, are governed by underlying rules, principles or maxims that can be identified through a formal logical analysis of verbal propositions in isolation (cf. Janney & Arndt, 1993: 14). These theories

6  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

focus on the postulation of universal categories and can therefore be said to follow the paradigm of universality. They include Austin’s and Searle’s SAT, Grice’s conversational maxims as well as the traditional politeness theories proposed by Lakoff, Leech’s Politeness Principle (PP) and maxims of politeness, and finally Brown and Levinson and their search for universals of politeness. As Ide (1993: 7) contends, it is ‘natural […] to infer that those early works on politeness presuppose universal principles of language use’ because they were heavily influenced by Grice’s and Austin’s attention to universal principles of language use. Their theories, however, were met with criticism as a result of an Anglocentric bias and were challenged primarily by non-Western and non-Anglo-Saxon scholars whose empirical research contradicted the universality hypothesis, which led to the development of new models and concepts that emphasized the context-sensitivity and diversity of politeness.4 These research strands therefore follow the paradigm of diversity.5 The attention to first-order knowledge and contextual factors is reflected in the so-called discursive or postmodern approaches to politeness, including Locher and Watts’ framework of relational work as probably the most influential one. Despite mainly making use of secondorder theories, the studies within the field of CCP can also be seen as following the paradigm of diversity as their goal is to reveal cultural differences in language use.6 Instead of assuming there to be underlying common principles, the scholars of this research strand consider the distinctive patterns of thought and expression in different languages as natural products of human cultural evolution (cf. Hall, 1976). Based on an anthropological definition of culture, the concepts of CoP and the methodological approaches implied in the studies of institutional discourse and CMC also belong to the paradigm of diversity in the sense of context specificity. The differences between these two paradigms often seem to be insurmountable, as universality, on the one hand, and diversity, on the other, are usually treated as mutually exclusive features. However, findings of cross-cultural studies provide contradictory evidence as most researchers agree that there are partial correspondences in the speech act performance across languages while simultaneously revealing cultural differences. The classification of linguistic phenomena as universal or context and culture specific therefore seems to be a matter of degree instead of a strict categorical distinction. This book shows that the most fruitful way to investigate these phenomena is a combination of multiple methods integrating insights from both paradigms (see Chapter 2). In the following section, I provide an overview of the frameworks used to date to investigate directives in order to provide a coherent theoretical and methodological framework that unifies the different concepts. This book will show how, if combined, elements of the practical

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  7

and theoretical approaches can serve as a framework to bridge the gap between the two paradigms and that an integrative approach can offer a fruitful way to shed light on cross-cultural politeness phenomena from different perspectives. Speech act theory

Austin’s (1975 [1962]) How to Do Things with Words is generally regarded as the first attempt at a systematic account of language use and constitutes the most influential pioneering contribution to pragmatics, as it offered an alternative to truth-conditional semantics at a time of increasing dissatisfaction with the latter approach. Austin’s (1975 [1962]: 5) central claim is that apart from transferring information, language is used to perform actions and that utterances such as ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ cannot be assessed in terms of truth, but in terms of felicitousness instead. His work proposes a threefold distinction which is applicable to all utterances and consists of (1) Locutionary act: The act of saying something, which is further segmented into the phonetic act (i.e. the sounds produced), the phatic act (i.e. the vocabulary and grammar used) and the rhetic act (i.e. the sense and reference of utterance). (2) Illocutionary act: The act which has a certain force in saying something and specifies which action is being performed by the speaker. (3) Perlocutionary act: The act which is the achieving of certain effects by saying something (cf. Austin 1975 [1962]: 109). Later on, Austin (1975 [1962]: 150–152) states that there are five ‘very general classes’ of related and overlapping speech acts, which are classified according to their illocutionary force. In Austin’s terminology, directives are referred to as exercitives. Unfortunately, his sudden death prevented further development of his ideas. It was primarily his student Searle (1969) who further developed and systematized his work. Searle focused almost exclusively on the illocutionary act. He used the term speech act interchangeably with illocutionary act (cf. Sbisà, 2006) and extended Austin’s concept of felicity conditions to a set of constitutive rules necessary for the successful performance of a speech act. Searle’s (1975) article ‘Indirect Speech Acts’ introduces the distinction between primary and secondary illocutionary acts as characteristic features of indirect speech acts. While secondary illocutionary acts refer to the literal meaning of an utterance, primary illocutionary acts concern the intended meaning, which has to be inferred by the addressee. Thus, in Example (1) the primary illocutionary act is a directive for sending the

8  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

rates derived from the secondary illocutionary act of a statement to the effect that the writer still has not received the rates for which he has been waiting. (1) As of today I have not yet received the rates for the hotels we discussed (E227)7 Searle explains that the addressee subconsciously goes through a long list of inferential steps to derive the primary illocution from the literal illocution. In order to explain the indirect nature of an indirect speech act, Searle claims that in addition to needing a theory of speech acts, certain general principles of cooperative conversation, such as the mutually shared background information of the speaker and the addressee, and an ability on the part of the addressee to make inferences, are needed. While Searle remains vague in accounting for the successful usage of indirect utterances, Grice, another Oxford language philosopher, proposes a much more sophisticated approach to this matter. While Austin and Searle attempted to find out what kind of actions are performed by using language and how these can be systematized, Grice, on the other hand, focused on accounting for the fact that ordinary conversations function very well despite the frequent use of indirect utterances. Grice (1975: 45) introduces the Cooperative Principle (CP) as a basis for his theory and formulates it as follows: ‘Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’. The CP is specified by four maxims of conversation: quantity, quality, relation and manner. As per the CP, we expect our interlocutors to adhere to those maxims to produce a maximally effective talk exchange. However, people often do not follow, but, according to Grice’s terminology, they flout one or more of the maxims instead. The maxim of quantity refers to the appropriate amount of information given in an utterance and can thus be flouted by providing either too little or too much information. According to the maxim of quality, people should not tell lies or state facts for which they lack evidence; thus, this maxim is flouted whenever a false fact has been stated. It is in a way superordinate to the other maxims because these come into operation only on the assumption that the maxim of quality has been satisfied (cf. Grice, 1975: 46). The maxim of relation is concerned with the relevance of an utterance in view of a certain context and is therefore flouted when a speaker provides irrelevant and out-of-context information. The fourth and last maxim (manner) refers to the degree of clarity and is flouted whenever a speaker phrases an utterance in an ambiguous way. Thus, flouting one or more maxims brings conversational implicatures into play, i.e. inferences

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  9

that need to be made by the addressee in order to identify the speaker’s intended message and thereby restore the CP. In addition, Grice (1975: 47) recognizes that there might be a need to add further maxims to the CP, for instance a maxim of politeness: ‘There are, of course, all sorts of other maxims (aesthetic, social, or moral in character), such as “be polite”, that are also normally observed by participants in talk exchanges, and these may also generate nonconventional implicatures’. He did not, however, pursue this further. In a similar vein, Searle (1996 [1975]: 177) asserts that ‘[t]he chief motivation – though not the only motivation – for using these indirect forms is politeness’. Apart from these minor hints at the motivation for indirectness, the ordinary language philosophers discussed above have mainly accounted for the dimensions of clarity and efficiency of communication. They have not, however, paid much attention to the social dimension of communication. This has changed with a generation of scholars who have sought to give the social dimension of language use a legitimate place in pragmatic theorizing through the study of politeness phenomena. Politeness theories

Since the 1970s, various approaches have been developed, often with competing viewpoints regarding the understanding and conceptualization of politeness and the methodology suggested. Referring to the paradigm changes that have occurred in the field over time, Grainger (2011) proposes a distinction between the first wave of politeness theories, the second wave, also referred to as the postmodern or discursive approach to politeness, and the third wave, which seeks to combine the latter two. The first wave refers to the traditional Gricean approaches and includes Lakoff (1973) and Leech (1983) as well as Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]). In the course of the following sections, it will be shown that these first wave approaches follow the aforementioned paradigm of universality while the second and third wave models belong to the paradigm of diversity in that they emphasize the significance of context and lay perceptions. In her paper ‘The Logic of Politeness, or Minding Your P’s and Q’s’, Lakoff (1973) states that Grice’s conversational maxims that underlie the CP function as rules, which enable speakers to transfer the informational core of their speech acts as clearly as possible. Additionally, she points out the insufficiency of grammars that are solely based on syntactic and semantic rules and suggests that certain pragmatic rules should also be incorporated into a grammar: ‘We should like to have some kind of pragmatic rules, dictating whether an utterance is pragmatically well-formed or not, and the extent to which it deviates if it does’ (Lakoff, 1973: 296). Lakoff therefore sets up two basic rules, which she calls Rules of Pragmatic Competence: 1. Be clear and 2. Be polite. Adherence to these

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rules, or at least to one of them, depends on the communicative intention of the speaker: If the delivery of the message is the central communicative intention, the speaker will preferably pay attention to the clarity of a statement and mainly follow the first rule, whereas if the status of the interlocutors or the situation itself are in focus, politeness, i.e. the second rule, will be of greater significance. Lakoff (1973) sets Grice’s conversational maxims in relation to her first rule of pragmatic competence (Be clear), and maintains that these maxims are often violated in everyday conversations. In analogy to the first rule, she posits three sub-rules of politeness in addition to her second rule of pragmatic competence (Be polite): ‘Rule 1: Don’t impose, Rule 2: Give options, and Rule 3: Make Addressee feel good – be friendly’ (Lakoff, 1973: 298). Lakoff’s theory of politeness raises a number of issues. In particular, the idea of postulating rules in the field of pragmatics has justifiably been met with criticism. Watts (2003), for instance, remarks that the principle of pragmatic well-formedness cannot be applied to utterances, but only to the realm of sentences. Utterances might be evaluated as ‘pragmatically appropriate’, but not as ‘pragmatically well-formed’ (Watts, 2003: 59). Watts (2003) additionally formulates a list of questions which he considers unanswered in Lakoff’s theory, for example questions about the nature of pragmatic competence and whether pragmatic rules are to be evaluated as normative rules, as Watts maintains that they cannot function as algorithmic rules comparable to those in generative grammar. Díaz Pérez (2003) further claims that it is impossible to explain the complex and diverse notion of politeness in terms of rules and finds the subordination of Grice’s conversational maxims in her first rule quite inappropriate. García Vizcaíno (1998) and Sifianou (1992) both object to the number of rules Lakoff sets up in her politeness model. While García Vizcaíno (1998) claims that the first and second politeness rule can be reduced to one because they do not differ significantly but represent a cause and consequence relationship, Sifianou (1992) argues that politeness is a much more complex phenomenon than the sum of three rules. These are just examples of objections raised against Lakoff’s approach to politeness. In sum, her model does not explain why speakers produce (im)polite utterances, and the postulation of a rigorous set of rules cannot adequately account for the complex nature of politeness. In Leech’s (1983) account, politeness is treated within the domain of interpersonal rhetoric (as opposed to textual rhetoric), which consists of at least three sets of maxims, namely those associated with Grice’s CP, those falling under a PP and those associated with an Irony Principle. Leech (1983: 19) defines politeness as ‘strategic conflict avoidance’, which ‘can be measured in terms of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of a conflict situation’ and ‘the establishment and maintenance of comity’.

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  11

His definition is different to Lakoff’s in that Leech describes politeness as strategic conflict avoidance, implying that a person who is being polite expends a conscious effort to avoid conflicts. From the statement that polite behavior aims at establishing and maintaining comity, it can be inferred that other forms of behavior are evaluated as subverting those aims and that politeness can therefore be considered as unmarked behavior and impoliteness as marked behavior (cf. Watts, 2003: 50). In line with Lakoff, Leech finds it necessary to introduce a PP in addition to Grice’s CP. It reads: ‘“Minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs” […] (“Maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs”)’ (Leech, 1983: 81; original emphasis). The major function of the PP is the regulation of the ‘social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place’ (Leech, 1983: 82). The PP, however, not only constitutes an addition to the CP, but should be seen as a necessary complement as it explains why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean. The PP thus serves as the missing link between Grice’s CP and an utterance that contains a violation of one (or more) of the conversational maxims. To clarify this aspect, Leech (1983: 80) provides the following example, which shows that the application of the CP alone does not always suffice: (2) A: We’ll all miss Bill and Agatha, won’t we? B: Well, we’ll all miss BILL. According to Grice’s account, B flouts the maxim of quantity by not including Agatha. However, B seems to imply that he will not miss Agatha, but does not wish to give this information explicitly in order to avoid creating offense. The discourse marker well in the preface of B’s utterance can be further interpreted as an indication of neglecting the CP, compensated by following the PP. In analogy to Grice, Leech suggests a finer differentiation of the PP based on six maxims of politeness, each of which can be further divided into two sub-maxims. The six politeness maxims are associated with at least one Searlean illocutionary type. The maxims relevant for directives (impositives according to Leech’s terminology) are tact and generosity, which operate along the dimensions of cost and benefit. While the tact maxim is oriented to the addressee, the generosity maxim describes the dimensions for the speaker. In Example (3), the writer employs two devices to minimize the cost to the addressee following the tact maxim: the use of an interrogative form and the downtoner maybe. (3) Can you let me know if we can have a contract there for S12 and maybe send me S11 rates? (E9)

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Leech (1983: 107) assumes that in English-speaking society the tact maxim is probably ‘the most important kind of politeness’. He also explains that a higher degree of politeness can be achieved by using more indirect strategies: ‘(a) because they increase the degree of optionality, and (b) because the more indirect an illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be’ (Leech, 1983: 131–132). Leech’s conceptualization has been criticized for a number of reasons, but mainly because it lacks a clear explanation of how his model could be applied. Also, the cognitive load placed upon the speaker and addressee by the number of maxims and scales proposed (cf. Díaz Pérez, 2003: 107; Watts, 2003: 69), his (implicit) claim of universality and his assumption that politeness is speech-act inherent (cf. Fraser, 1990: 227; Watts, 2003: 69) have been met with criticism.8 Although Leech (1983: 80), in passing, concedes that the politeness maxims might operate differently in different societies, his claim that illocutions are inherently polite or impolite overrules the alleged context-sensitivity in his model. According to a number of researchers (Baxter, 1984; Coupland et al., 1988; Kasper, 1990; Wilson et al., 1991), Brown and Levinson’s theory, published in 1978 and again as a revised edition in 1987, has been the most influential and coherent politeness model proposed so far. As with Lakoff’s and Leech’s approach, Brown and Levinson’s theory is built on Grice’s concept of conversational implicatures. This is shown through the authors’ construction of a model person who is equipped with rationality in order to derive from one’s communicative goals the optimal means of achieving these goals (Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978]). The model person is further endowed with face, which constitutes the crucial concept in Brown and Levinson’s model. It was adopted from Goffman (1967), who defines face as follows: The term ‘face’ may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes – albeit an image, that others may share, as when a person makes a good showing for his profession or religion by making good showing for himself. (Goffman, 1967: 5)

While Goffman applies the concept of face to both mediated as well as direct encounters and to spoken interaction as well as non-verbal behavior, Brown and Levinson’s major concern lies in the linguistic manifestations of facework (cf. Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). Brown and Levinson do, however, agree with Goffman in the overall conceptualization of face as something that can be lost, maintained or enhanced, and therefore must be constantly assessed in interaction. As every individual is vulnerable to loss of face, and as one’s face normally depends on the maintenance of that of

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others, the attempt to maintain each other’s face leads to a mutual benefit for the interlocutors during a conversation. Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]) claim that, apart from differences in the conceptualizations of face in different cultures, the mutual awareness of public self-image or face in a society and the social necessity to attend to it in interaction are universal. They do not regard respect for face as a norm or value subscribed to by members of a society, but treat the aspect of face as basic human wants. According to the authors, face is divided into two fundamental components, i.e. negative face and positive face. Negative face constitutes the desire to be unimpeded in one’s actions while positive face implies people’s want to be approved of by others. Referring to these face components, Brown and Levinson distinguish between two types of politeness: positive and negative politeness. While positive politeness comprises strategies that are oriented toward the addressee’s positive face, negative politeness strategies appeal to the addressee’s negative face. A further key concept in Brown and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) model are face-threatening acts (FTAs). FTAs involve speech acts that intrinsically threaten face, and thus run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker. They can be classified in two ways: whether positive or negative face is being threatened or whether it is mainly the speaker’s or the addressee’s face that is at stake. Orders, requests and advice are examples of acts that primarily threaten the addressees’ negative face want as these acts all constrain their freedom of action. Criticism, complaints, insults and any other expressions that cast a poor light on the addressee and leave the impression that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feelings are acts that threaten the positive face want. Brown and Levinson (cf. 1987 [1978]: 67), however, explain that some FTAs intrinsically threaten both negative and positive face, for instance complaints and interruptions. Examples of acts offending the speaker’s negative face are expressions of thanks, excuses, unwilling promises or offers, while apologies, confessions and the lack of control over one’s own feelings might cause direct damage to the speaker’s positive face. In light of the assumption that members of society want to maintain each other’s face during social interaction, all interactants would try to avoid any FTA, or alternatively, choose appropriate linguistic strategies in order to minimize the face-threatening nature of the move they are about to make. Brown and Levinson postulate five possible strategies to carry out an FTA ordered by the gravity of face threat, as shown in Figure 1.1. The choice of the most adequate strategy depends on an estimate of the threat posed against the speaker’s or addressee’s face. If the act is very likely to cause too much harm to the addressee’s face, the most appropriate strategy might be the fifth, i.e. not to do the FTA at all.

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lesser 1. without redressive action, baldly estimated risk of face–loss to addressee

on record Do the FTA 4. off record

with redressive action

5. Don‘t do the FTA

2. positive politeness 3. negative politeness

greater

Figure 1.1   Strategies for doing FTAs (Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978])

To perform the FTA off record, as stated in the fourth strategy, means to make an implicit statement through a hint, as in (4). (4) You didn’t answer me this one??? (E191) The alternative is to do the FTA explicitly on record, further distinguished into performing the FTA baldly, the most direct and therefore also the least polite strategy according to the proposed hierarchy, as in (5). (5) Ponla visible en el sistema de Steve y mío (S320). (‘Make it visible in Steve’s and my system’) The remaining two strategies imply doing the FTA with redressive action, i.e. by mitigating the face threat through the use of negative or positive politeness strategies. For instance, a writer who wants the addressee to forward an email to another person will be evaluated as more polite when using negative politeness (as in Example 6) than a writer who asks for a quick reply and uses positive politeness (as in Example 7): (6) Disculpe que te moleste […] Serias tan amable de Reenviárselo [sic]? (S107) (‘Sorry for disturbing you […] Would you be so kind to forward it to him?’) (7) please reply me before this date. Have a lovely day! (E157) By writing Have a lovely day!, the writer appeals to the addressee’s positive face; the former preface Disculpe que te moleste… downgrades the threat against the addressee’s negative face. Brown and Levinson give numerous examples of politeness strategies that address the addressee’s positive and negative face. While doing so, they refer to three different languages, i.e. English, Tzeltal and Tamil, in order to demonstrate that there are striking parallels in the expression of

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politeness across these languages, thus indicating universality. The two authors present a list of 15 sub-strategies for downgrading the threat against the addressee’s positive face, and 10 sub-strategies of politeness addressed to the addressee’s negative face. There is a common view that negative politeness plays a more important role in Western culture. Brown and Levinson (cf. 1987 [1978]: 129) claim that while positive politeness is the essence of familiar and joking behavior, negative politeness is ‘the heart of respect behavior’. The first of the 10 sub-strategies of negative politeness is conventional indirectness, which can be interpreted as the result of two opposing wants, namely the desire for directness and clarity, on the one hand, and the need for downgrading the potential threat against the addressee’s negative face on the other. For example, the question (8) can you explain to [name] and agree different recovery formula… (E147) is conventionally interpreted as a request and not as a question about the addressee’s ability to explain the case, apart from very special circumstances. Further ways to mitigate negative face threat are hedges, minimizations of impositions, expressions of pessimism and deference, apologizing (and admitting the impingement) and impersonalizing speaker and addressee.9 According to the authors, certain a priori payoffs are associated with each of the strategies for performing an FTA. With the use of (redressed or non-redressed) on-record strategies, the speaker can get credit for clarity and demonstrable non-manipulativeness. The payoffs for the use of (non-redressed) bald on-record strategies in particular are described in terms of maximum efficiency. The plus-redress strategies give the speaker the opportunity to satisfy the addressee’s respective face wants, at least to some degree. The use of off-record strategies gives the speaker the opportunity to avoid accountability and responsibility for the action performed and to satisfy the negative face wants to a greater extent than through the use of negative politeness strategies. In Brown and Levinson’s framework, the seriousness or ‘weightiness’ of an FTA can be computed by adding up three factors which Brown and Levinson 1987 [1978]: 74) call sociological variables: • The social distance (D) of speaker and addressee (a symmetric relation). • The relative power (P) of speaker and addressee (an asymmetric relation). • The absolute ranking (R) of impositions in the particular culture.

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The weightiness (W) of the FTA, i.e. the sum of these sociological variables, increases as each of the parameters increases. Brown and Levinson (1987: 76) account for this correlation in the following equation:

Wx = D(S,H) + P(H,S) + R x

The choice of a linguistic strategy thus depends on the weightiness of the FTA. As shown in Figure 1.1, the strategies for doing FTAs are numbered from 1 to 5 and correlate with the perceived weightiness. This computing scheme palpably reflects the authors’ assumption that interlocutors are rational agents who calculate the cost and benefit of pursuing their aims and act strategically throughout. It also supports the view that Brown and Levinson offer as a production model of politeness by trying to explain how speakers produce politeness linguistically and why they prefer one strategy for doing FTAs over others (cf. Watts, 2003: 85). After the publication of their first edition, Brown and Levinson’s were accused of offering an oversimplified and under-analyzed approach for the assessment of politeness. In response to that, they provided a detailed reassessment of their work in the second edition (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978]: 15–17), in which they defended their claim that D, P and R are crucial in determining the level of politeness by presenting a list of research studies that have come to the same conclusions, but acknowledged that sometimes a more complex composition of parameters may be involved in predicting politeness assessments, including factors such as liking, the presence of an audience and formality. Brown and Levinson are still criticized by some for considering D, P, R as independent variables instead of considering the fact that the ranking of an imposition within a specific society depends on the configuration of both distance and power, making the two conceptually superordinate (Watts et  al., 1992). Fraser (1990) additionally remarks that even if it was possible to compute the weightiness of an FTA, it would still not be clear whether all parameters contribute equally to the result. A critical view on traditional politeness theories

Apart from the objections against the computation of politeness, Brown and Levinson’s theory has been subject to further and more severe points of criticism. These basically challenge (1) their overall conceptualization of politeness (e.g. Coupland et  al., 1988; Kasper, 1990; Sifianou, 1992; Watts, 2003; Werkhofer, 1992) and the exclusion of impolite and faceaggravating language use (Culpeper, 1996; Culpeper et  al., 2003; Kienpointner, 1997; Lachenicht, 1980); (2) their claim of a direct correlation between indirectness and politeness (e.g. Blum-Kulka, 1987; Grainger & Mills, 2016; Sifianou, 1993); (3) their claim of universal validity with regard to the dualistic notion of face (e.g. Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003; Mao,

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  17

1994; Matsumoto, 1988; Placencia & García, 2007) and the importance placed on autonomy wants (e.g. Nwoye, 1992; Placencia, 1996); as well as (4) the authors’ essentialist view of politeness and face as stable concepts (e.g. Eelen, 2001; Fraser & Nolen, 1981; García Vizcaíno, 1998; Locher & Watts, 2005; Meier, 1995; Mullany, 2006; Turner, 1996; Watts, 2003). As a reaction to these shortcomings in Brown and Levinson’s work, new models have been developed which mainly address the complexity of interpersonal relations and communicative interactions. This paradigm shift has been referred to as the discursive turn in pragmatics and is characterized by the fact that its adherents take a socio-constructionist approach (as opposed to the former quite essentialist approach) to the study of language use. Accordingly, the general assumption is that meaning is fluid and constructed between participants in discourse and therefore cannot reside in linguistic items or speech acts. The following sections give an overview of the framework of relational work by Locher and Watts (2005), the most influential model of the discursive approaches. Grainger (2011, 2013) classifies their model as belonging to the second wave of politeness studies (along with Eelen, 2001; Mills, 2003) and further distinguishes a third wave of discursive politeness studies, which represents the interactional direction of pragmatics (Arundale, 2006, 2010; Haugh, 2007). Both waves, nevertheless, take a discursive approach as opposed to the Gricean first wave approach and belong to the paradigm of diversity, as they ‘[question] the homogeneous nature of languages, and instead [focus] on the diversity within any particular language group, which inevitably results in different views of what counts as polite or impolite’ (Grainger & Mills, 2016: 11; my emphasis). The role of context in discursive approaches to politeness

Locher and Watts’ (2005) contribution marked a shift in the conceptualization of politeness and face as well as in the perspective, the methodology and the object of study. Their framework can be considered as marking a paradigm shift in that it proposes a different underlying world view, as briefly mentioned above, and heavily influenced other proponents of the discursive approach. Relational work is defined as ‘work individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others’ (Locher & Watts, 2005: 10). The authors criticize Brown and Levinson for only taking into account face threat mitigation without considering aggressive, rude or just appropriate, unmarked or politic behavior which would not be judged as polite. They therefore consider politeness as constituting only a small part of relational work and define the latter as a discursive concept which arises out of interactants’ perceptions and judgments of their own and others’ verbal behavior.

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Relational work is thus conceptualized as comprising ‘the entire continuum of verbal behavior from direct, impolite, rude or aggressive interaction through to polite interaction, encompassing both appropriate and inappropriate forms of social behavior’ (Locher, 2004: 51). The authors argue that much of the relational work carried out will be perceived as unmarked appropriate behavior and will stay largely unnoticed. Marked behavior, on the other hand, can be either positively marked or negatively marked. Positively marked behavior corresponds to behavior perceived as polite, politic and appropriate, whereas negatively marked behavior is judged as either impolite, non-politic and inappropriate or over-polite, non-politic and inappropriate. Thus, polite behavior is also always politic while politic behavior can be either polite or non-polite. Locher and Watts also adopt Goffman’s notion of face in their concept of relational work. They, however, criticize Brown and Levinson for having distorted Goffman’s original understanding of face by assuming that face inherently resides in an individual. Concerning this matter, Watts (2003: 105, original emphasis) argues that the ‘Brown and Levinsonian “member” […] appears to have already constructed, prior to the interaction, a self-image that s/he wants to be upheld by society’ and is claimed to have ‘a stable core of values lodged somewhere in the individual’. Instead, Goffman (1967: 31) defines face as an image ‘pieced together from the expressive implications of the full flow of events in an undertaking’, thus, in any form of social interaction. Face should therefore be understood as a dynamic concept that is constructed discursively with the other members of the group and is socially attributed in each instance of interaction. This implies that any individual has a potentially infinite number of faces. Locher and Watts (2005: 12) thus argue that ‘[f]aces, in other words, are rather like masks, on loan to us for the duration of different kinds of performance’. We can take the example of a woman who might perform the role of a teacher, a mother, a wife, a cook or a child, depending on the context in which she finds herself. It is up to the other participants engaging in the interaction as to whether or not they accept the performance by assigning face or not. With regard to the perspective suggested for the interpretation of meaning, Locher and Watts place a much greater importance on the addressee and other discourse participants’ evaluations of verbal behavior. While the first wave scholars mainly follow the Searlean approach by associating meaning with speaker intentions and thus consider politeness to be inherent in speech acts, the second wave scholars object to this view and instead claim that meaning is discursively negotiated and constructed between the interlocutors and is thus highly context dependent. As a consequence, Locher and Watts emphasize the need for distinguishing between first-order politeness and second-order politeness (cf. Eelen, 2001; Watts, 2003; Watts et al., 1992). They give the following explanation:

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By first order politeness (politeness1) we understand how participants in verbal interaction make explicit use of the terms ‘polite’ and ‘politeness’ to refer to their own and others’ social behavior. Second order politeness (politeness2) makes use of the terms ‘polite’ and ‘politeness’ as theoretical concepts in a top-down model to refer to forms of social behavior. (Locher & Watts, 2005: 15)

The authors justify the importance of this distinction and the need for including politeness1 in the study of politeness on the basis of two arguments. Firstly, they maintain that, until the 1990s, lay references to politeness only very rarely matched the theoretical definitions in most of the literature. Secondly, Locher and Watts claim that taking the social context into account when assessing evaluations of politeness or appropriateness is inevitable. The shortcomings of a mere politeness2-based analysis are illustrated in the following examples: (9) please advise straight away if you do (E291) (10) any chance you could do him a good deal? (E64) According to politeness2, Example  (10) would be perceived as more polite than (9) since politeness is thought to correlate with the degree of indirectness, as explained earlier.10 Locher and Watts (2005: 15) point out that it all depends, however, on the social context: ‘[…] any shift in the social context of the interaction will lead to significant shifts in those possible perceptions of politeness’. While most people would probably not evaluate (10) as a polite request but just as appropriate in a given social context, many people might perceive Example  (9) to be too direct, but not necessarily impolite. Example (11) may support this view: (11) Heeellloooooooo???? (E265) Without contextualizing the indirect directive for an email reply in (11), an English L1 user is likely to feel that (11) is a rude or impolite directive due to the excessive use of question marks and letters to emulate prosody. However, if the social distance between the writer and addressee is low, as is the case in the example of the present data, this form of linguistic behavior will most probably be interpreted as good-humored banter and is thus likely to be perceived as appropriate within the social context. The following email directive exemplifies the reverse case: (12) Could you be so kind to tell me if I used the right email address? (E42) In a social context where the relationship between sender and addressee is very close, (12) would be quite inappropriate and probably perceived

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as over-polite or ironic. So without considering the context, L1 users of English might still classify (12) as polite although they intuitively react negatively to this directive. Locher and Watts (2005: 16) thus draw the conclusions that, firstly, ‘individual reactions to what is commonly thought of as realizations of politeness may vary even when the social context is kept constant’, and secondly, ‘no linguistic expression can be considered to be inherently polite or impolite’. The methodology that results from this discussion and understanding of politeness involves a focus on L1 user assessments of politeness in a discursive, bottom-up and data-driven approach based on the methods of conversation analysis (CA). The main interest, however, should not be in real instances of disagreement over the terms polite, impolite, etc., but rather in the ‘discursive structuring and reproduction of forms of behavior and their potential assessments […] by individual participants’ (Locher & Watts, 2005: 16). The analysis of the discourse data should therefore be based on the analyst’s interpretations, which, however, would contradict their overall emphasis on lay perceptions. The authors disapprove of retrospectively asking the participants about their perceptions since this would entail a conscious evaluative process, which might lead to answers that do not correspond to what the participants perceived at the time of production. The object of study following from this philosophical and theoretical framework is necessarily constituted of larger stretches of naturally occurring discourse instead of isolated speech acts. Second wave scholars hereby often refer to CoP (cf. Section 1.3) as a fruitful source for the study of discourse and politeness issues. It is especially Locher and Watts’ interpretive approach and the dominant role of the analyst that was met with criticism. Grainger (2013: 36), for instance, accuses the authors of ‘over-interpret[ing] utterances in terms of the contextual norms without empirical evidence for doing so’. She refers to Locher and Watts’ (2005) analysis of a dinner party conversation, where the authors conclude that one compliment on the food that had been served is unmarked and therefore not evaluated as polite, but politic, whereas the second compliment on a girl’s appearance is marked and therefore considered an instance of politeness. Grainger (2013: 34) rightly contends that this interpretation only reflects the analyst’s subjective opinion and lacks independent criteria. Even if the analyst participated in the interaction (as in the case of Locher’s dinner party conversation), the analyst’s interpretation may still not necessarily be a reliable account of the speaker’s intention at the time of production. In a similar vein, Haugh (2007: 303) sees the role of the analyst in postmodern approaches as an ontological problem because it basically only serves ‘to explicate of the participants understandings or perceptions of politeness’ in contrast to the privileged role in Brown and Levinson’s and other

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traditional politeness theories. Thus, participants become the analysts of their own interactions, which leads to a conflation of the roles of participant and analyst and reduces the analyst to merely reflecting participant perceptions of the interaction (cf. also Mullany, 2005; Terkourafi, 2005). Furthermore, such a postmodern approach requires, in the first place, access to these addressee evaluations (Mills, 2011). The use of addressees’ post hoc evaluations, as for example called for in Spencer-Oatey’s (2000b, 2002, 2009) rapport management model, risks reducing politeness theory to an account of what terms people use for evaluating their behavior in different situations, without trying to explain the linguistic choices (Terkourafi, 2005). Being aware of the challenges post-event interviews imply, Spencer-Oatey (2011: 3570), however, rightly maintains that participants’ reflections ‘should not be regarded negatively as “only post hoc reconstructions” but rather as helpful sources of new insights that can supplement those gained from the study of discourse’. The author thus calls for ‘build[ing] up a rich, in-depth picture of the range of concerns and evaluations, both positive and negative, that interlocutors may hold and (re-)construct’ (Spencer-Oatey, 2009: 152). Returning to Locher and Watts’ framework (Locher, 2010; Locher & Watts, 2005; Watts, 2003), there are three further epistemological issues worth mentioning. The first problem refers to the fact that investigations of how English speakers talk about politeness do not coincide with Locher and Watts’ (2005: 17) first-order-based definition of politeness as ‘salient or marked behavior’. Instead, studies have shown that people associate the term polite with notions such as ‘respectful’, ‘considerate’, ‘pleasant’, ‘friendly’ and ‘appropriate’ (Haugh, 2007: 299–300). Haugh (2007) further questions the validity and utility of the four-way categorization of relational work as it has not become clear in what sense these categories are positively or negatively marked and whether they are intended as a first-order representation of addressees’ evaluations or as a second-order analytical tool. The third epistemological issue refers to the theoretical base from which the discursive approach draws. Locher (2004: 91) considers speakers’ intentions, and addressees recognizing those intentions, as underlying politeness; however, such an intentionbased view is inconsistent with a social constructivist or interactional perspective on communication and politeness as a joint and collaborative social practice (Arundale, 2006: 195; Haugh, 2007: 301). Critics of the discursive approach thus constitute the third wave scholars according to Grainger’s (2011, 2013, 2018) categorization. She classifies Arundale (2006, 2010), Haugh (2007), Terkourafi (2005) and herself as scholars of this category as they all favor a sociological approach to the analysis of interactional data based on the claim that some fundamental insights of speaker-based and second-order politeness have been dismissed too easily in favor of privileging addressee evaluations. They instead call for an approach which combines fundamental

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insights from Gricean pragmatics with ethnomethodology. More specifically, the scholars suggest theoretically grounded interactional analyses combined with ethnographic studies of metapragmatic discourse to account for language-in-interaction. Thus, instead of only representing participants’ evaluations of politeness, the analyst justifies an interpretation by focusing on what participants interactionally achieve and make relevant in talk, supplemented by ethnographic data and different types of first-order evaluations, e.g. classificatory (addressee judgments) or metapragmatic (‘talk about politeness as a concept’ [Eelen, 2001: 35]) evaluations. In contrast to the paradigm shift of the discursive turn, the interactional approach did not mark such a significant change but took up fundamental insights from both the first and second wave of politeness research. Grainger (2011: 171) points out that most third wave scholars, including herself, ‘may well consider themselves to be part of the post-modern or discursive trend, not least because they retain both an emphasis on contextualized, naturalistic discourse data and an interest in participants’ constructions of meaning in interaction’. As neither the face constituting theory proposed by Arundale (2006, 2010) nor Terkourafi’s (2005) frame-based view offer a framework which could be applied to the study of cross-cultural politeness phenomena, I will not discuss them further. Nevertheless, Terkourafi’s methodological approach of integrating a context-sensitive micro-level analysis into a model, which considers empirical regularities (frames) based on a datadriven study, constitutes a promising and innovative direction for the study of politeness phenomena in interactions. Agreeing with the view that some of the concepts of traditional pragmatics have become too easily discredited and indeed make an important contribution to the analysis of institutional data (Harris, 2003), CCP (O’Driscoll, 2007) and workplace interaction (Holmes et al., 2012), this book aims at contributing to the third wave of politeness research strand by offering an integrative approach to the study of politeness. More precisely, I have adopted tools and concepts from traditional politeness in the identification and analysis of directive speech events (such as Austin’s [1975 (1962)] notion of uptake and Brown & Levinson’s [1987] categorization of positive and negative politeness), while embedding the analysis in a constructivist, interactional framework that considers the different layers of context, including the institutional roles and relationships of the email writers (cf. also Grainger’s [2018] neo-Brown and Levinson approach). While it has been pointed out several times that conceptualizations and perceptions of politeness may vary between cultures, researchers often seem to avoid a clear delineation of what they actually mean by the notion of culture. This is not very surprising, as ‘a shared understanding of the word cannot be relied on’ (Blommaert, 1998). To arrive at a

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global understanding of culture, which underlies the present study, I will elaborate on different approaches to the notion of culture in the following sections. Conceptualizations of culture You can master grammar and the dictionary, but without culture you won’t communicate. (Agar, 1994: 23)

This quote highlights the fact that language cannot be abstracted from culture. Agar even introduces the term languaculture to describe this interrelationship and maintains that culture ultimately gives language its meaning (cf. Broszinsky-Schwabe, 2011). This view is in line with the cultural-anthropological approach to culture, which conceptualizes culture as dynamic and emergent in social interaction. In this vein, the American anthropologist Geertz, whose understanding of culture has been largely adopted in this book, takes culture to be ‘webs of significance he [man] himself has spun’ (Geertz, 1973: 5). These webs are a complex of values, thoughts, ideals, rules and meanings, which are encoded in symbols. Geertz (1973: 12) understands culture as a semiotic concept which ‘does not exist in someone’s head’, but is ‘public […] as meaning is public’. Culture is therefore not to be found in the individual mind, but in the ‘flow of social discourse’ (Geertz, 1973: 20). Geertz, in contrast to other scholars of the field, does not equate culture with learned behavior, or language behavior, but instead sees behavior and social interaction as texts wherein culture can be read. The starting point for a definition of culture is the implicit view that ‘human beings can be classified into “distinctive groups”, and that these cultural groups are recognizable by the practices of those who belong to them’ (Sealey & Carter, 2004: 131; original emphasis). In the most widely known and applied models of cultural analysis, i.e. those developed by the cultural anthropologist Hall (1976), Lewis (1999) and social psychologist Hofstede (1980), cultural groups have been mainly equated with nation states. While Hall became particularly known for his categorization of cultures into high-context vs low-context cultures and into monochronic vs polychronic cultures (cf. Hall, 1976; Hall & Hall, 1990), Lewis (1999, 2005) proposes a threefold distinction of cultures in his model, viz. linear-active, multi-active and reactive. He, for example, claims that linear-active cultures, such as the UK, and multi-active cultures, such as Spain, ‘are diametrically opposed in nearly all that matters – punctuality v unpunctuality, calm v emotion, logic v intuition, facts v feelings, scientific v flexible truth, loquacity v taciturnity, restrained v unrestrained body language’ (Lewis, 2013). Hofstede, whose model has an even greater impact on intercultural communication research and training than the

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previous two, assigns nation states a culture score along four dimensions. These dimensions can be defined as ‘aspect[s] of a culture that can be measured relative to other cultures’ (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 23) and comprise power distance, collectivism vs individualism, femininity vs masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance.11 Hofstede (1980) developed his model based on questionnaire data of IBM employees obtained in 50 countries. All of these three cultural models have been very influential and frequently applied in intercultural research and management training. The authors were nevertheless confronted with fundamental criticism, mainly for having created a holistic and static image of national cultures, which leads to stereotypes and does not allow any flexibility in the course of intercultural interactions (cf. Casper-Hehne, 2010). Instead, intercultural interaction is established only in terms of the practices and values associated with the respective cultures of the participants. Also, the methods of data collection have been criticized. Kotthoff (2002), for example, remarks that people are often not aware of their behavior patterns and that interviews and questionnaires alone do not suffice, and that it is more important to take naturally occurring intercultural conversations into account. Results generated from questionnaire data alone can provide only limited insights into actual interaction processes in intercultural communication. There are also several critics who question the representativeness of the samples and thus also the validity of the results in the first place (cf. McSweeney, 2002). A further central objection lies in the theorists’ monolithic approach to culture without considering any internal differentiations or tendencies toward globalization (cf. CasperHehne, 2010: 7). Finally, Hofstede’s proposed dimensions, including descriptions such as femininity as consensus driven and masculinity as success driven, lack empirical and theoretical foundation. A monolithic understanding of culture can also be found in the field of CCP, in which scholars have generally focused on cultural differences at a language level. In the following section, I will give a brief overview of the field. Cross-cultural pragmatics

As a sub-discipline of pragmatics, CCP lays the focus much more on the study of discourse than the approaches to intercultural communication presented so far. Research studies in CCP traditionally also reflect the idea, however, that language and culture are synonymous (cf. Geluykens & Kraft, 2008: 15). As a consequence, scholars have gathered data from L1 users of different languages, mostly on the basis of so-called DCTs, which elicit the production of speech acts as in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). The differences in the speech act realization between the languages were

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then ascribed to diverging cultural norms of politeness and directness.12 While in most CCP studies, Brown and Levinson’s theory served as an underlying framework for the assessment of politeness in relation to the sociological variables, Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989) coding scheme was often used for the analysis of directness, especially their categorization of directives into direct (as in Example  13), conventionally indirect (as in Example 14) and (non-conventionally) indirect super-strategies (as in Example 15). (13) Llamame [sic] (S7) – ‘Call me’ (14) Could you offer us something along these lines? (E10) (15) Can’t pay more than [amount] pppn. (E71) The overall result in studies comparing directive speech acts between English and Spanish in the CCP literature is that Spanish speakers tend to favor more directness than English speakers, irrespective of the language variety under study (cf. Díaz Pérez, 2005; Hofmann, 2003; Márquez Reiter, 1997). On the other hand, (Canadian and British) English speakers choose more conventionally indirect and indirect strategies compared to (Costa Rican, Peninsular and Uruguayan) Spanish speakers. As an explanation for the frequent use of imperative constructions in her Spanish data, Márquez Reiter (1997: 163) maintains that it ‘can be seen as an indication of positive politeness’ compared to the often-claimed negative politeness orientation of English speakers (cf. also Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2005; Recuero, 2007). While a cross-cultural study of speech behavior between different languages is per se the most worthwhile way to explore cultural differences, the fact that it is the ‘flow of social discourse’ (Geertz, 1973; my emphasis), not isolated speech acts, in which culture can be read needs to be taken seriously. Furthermore, the results obtained from the use of DCTs mostly support already existing national stereotypes, such as the polite Brit or the modest Chinese. Research of this kind is merely based on the contrastive analysis of speech conventions, without taking the actual cross-cultural discourse into account.13 In sum, there is an urgent need to expand the field of CCP by using alternative frameworks to account for the emergent and situational nature of cultural phenomena in speech. Instead of, or rather, in addition to, a top-down approach based on an essentialist view of culture, a bottom-up approach analyzing actual speech behavior while taking the larger context into account can lead to insights into cultural norms: What can be observed and analyzed in intercultural communication are different conventions of communication, different speech styles, narrative patterns, in short, the deployment of different communicative repertoires. For as far as identity is concerned (cultural, ethnic identity),

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identity can be an inference of these styles: people can identify selves or others on the basis of such speech styles. But in actual fact, not culture is deployed, but communicative repertoires. (Blommaert, 1998: 6; my emphasis)

Referring to Gumperz (1982), Blommaert employs the term identity in connection with culture. Social identity can be interpreted in two ways, according to Geluykens and Kraft (2008). On the one hand, social identity can be understood as referring to relatively stable speaker attributes on a macro-level, such as region, ethnicity, age, gender and social class. On a micro-level, social identities can be seen as constructed through social interaction with others and therefore defined dynamically in terms of how we position ourselves in a specific situation and context (cf. also Schiffrin, 1996). In a similar vein, Schneider and Barron (2008) make the useful distinction between macro-social factors and micro-social factors responsible for language variation. Their five types of macro-social variation are region, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender and age.14 Schneider (2012: 1028) emphasizes that these factors should be understood as social constructs and further maintains that the study of these ‘social identities requires time and careful ethnographic observation as practiced e.g. in cultural anthropology’ (my emphasis). Unlike the macro-social factors, the micro-social factors refer to variation with regard to social power, social distance and other situational factors. For the study of social identities, the concept of CoP provides a useful framework as it allows access to the communicative repertoires of particular groups of speakers. Against a homogeneous and essentialist conceptualization of culture (as nation state or language), which fosters stereotyping without taking into account individual differences and differences among organizations, industries, professions and other groups, the concept of CoP offers an alternative approach to the study of CCP. As the concept has ultimately served as a basis for this study, its development and dimensions will be explained in more detail in the following section. 1.3  Communities of Practice, Institutional and Computer-Mediated Discourse

During the last decade, many scholars in the field of sociolinguistics and politeness research have investigated language phenomena within a corporation or a workplace and explicitly conceptualized it as a CoP (cf. e.g. Holmes et al., 2012; Hössjer, 2013; Saito, 2011). These scholars refer to Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992), who introduced the concept of CoP to language and gender research and whose definition differs from Lave and Wenger’s (1991) approach in the fact that it does not focus on the process of learning. They define a CoP as:

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An aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. As a social construct, a CoP is different from the traditional community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992: 464)

By describing a CoP as a social construct, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet emphasize the fact that it is a dynamic, rich and complex concept constructed in social practice and that it therefore offers more to researchers than concepts such as the speech community (cf. Gumperz, 1971; Labov, 1972; Preston, 1989) or the social network (Kerswill, 1994; Lippi-Green, 1989; Milroy, 1987).15 The main difference between a speech community and a CoP is that a speech community is based on shared norms and evaluations of norms and that membership may be defined externally, while a CoP is based on shared practices and that membership is internally constructed (Holmes & Meyerhoff, 1999: 179). A social network does not require regular and mutually defining interaction as opposed to a CoP, but can be constituted of people who have limited or infrequent contact. The difference between the two concepts thus lies in the nature of the contact between their members (Holmes & Meyerhoff, 1999: 179f.). A CoP also differs from a nexus of practice (Scollon, 2001) in that the latter focuses on the study of social actions that do not necessarily require membership of any predefined group, e.g. buying coffee at a coffee shop, and thus work at a lower level of social organization than a CoP (cf. also King, 2014; Lane, 2014). Mills (2002) highlights the benefits that the field of linguistic politeness can have from a CoP perspective and defines politeness in a CoP approach as follows: Politeness should be seen as a set of strategies or verbal habits which someone sets as a norm for themselves or which others judge as the norm for them, as well as being a socially constructed norm within particular communities of practice. (Mills, 2002: 77)

The concept of CoP therefore offers a productive means of combining micro-level and macro-level analyses since the study of a CoP involves both a detailed micro-level ethnographic analysis of discourse in context as well as a description of the meaning and distinctiveness of the CoP in a wider context, thus a macro-level analysis. Studying a CoP therefore combines quantification with an ethnographic analysis that accounts for individuals’ linguistic choices. In a similar vein, Holmes (1998: 325) explains that ‘the patterns, generalizations, and norms of speech usage which emerge from quantitative analyses provide a crucial framework

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which informs and illuminates the ways in which individual speakers use language’. As will be shown in Chapter 2, this mixed-method approach, which includes micro-level, qualitative and macro-level, quantitative analyses, has also been taken in the present study to reveal patterns of language use and to establish which exact contextual factors lead to the linguistic choices made by the members of the business corporation under study. Following King (2014), it is necessary that researchers who take a CoP approach in their research reliably demonstrate that the group of people under study actually functions as a CoP. Based on the ethnographic approach taken in the present study (outlined in Section 2.2), the description of the group of email writers as a CoP is claimed to be justified for three main reasons. Firstly, the three travel agencies, which the CoP comprises besides the hotel resort, have exclusivity contracts with the hotel, which means that they are the exclusive provider of guests for a specific number of rooms. This close cooperation between the agencies and the hotel organization had existed for more than a year at the time of data collection. As a consequence, and a second argument, the email writers consider each other as colleagues because they interact on a regular basis and work for one shared goal, namely filling the rooms and apartments with guests.16 Thirdly, and most importantly, the linguistic analysis of the email data has shown that the members of the CoP have developed a shared repertoire over time and reveal certain features that are characteristic of a CoP, such as ‘inside jokes’ and the ‘absence of introductory preambles’ (Wenger, 1998: 130–131). Many email exchanges of the present corpus do not contain any contextualization markers, such as reference markers or greetings, as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4 (see e.g. Example 127 in Section 4.2). Also, when I arrived at the workplace as a participant observer, I was unable to follow most of the work-related conversations during my first weeks and had to learn the jargon of the CoP, just as King (2014: 70–71) describes, the ‘do nows and whats’. Therefore, members of a CoP do not need to be members of the very same institution, but may work for different institutions. In a similar vein, King (2014) points out that aggregates of people who work for the same employer may be members of ‘imagined communities’ or ‘communities of alignment’ but may not necessarily constitute a CoP as they do not interact with each other (King, 2014: 63). Mutual engagement is therefore the crucial criterion of a CoP, driven by three elements: contribution to the pursuit of a joint enterprise, negotiation of meaning and the development of shared practice (Wenger, 1998). As a study that takes a CoP approach in the investigation of crosscultural communication, this project also belongs to the domain of institutional discourse. In the following section, I will discuss some characteristic features of institutional discourse, and workplace discourse in particular, before turning to the channel of communication which has

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largely replaced other forms of communication in institutions during the last decades: computer-mediated communication. Institutional discourse

Institutional discourse is often used as a cover term and can, depending on the institution under study, be further divided into workplace discourse, usually between members of one institution; business or professional discourse, usually between members of different institutions; and scientific or academic discourse, between scientists of the same or different institutions (Geluykens & Kraft, 2008). The underlying assumption of scholars in this field is that the institutional environment, be it academic or business, puts a number of constraints on discourse and that institutional discourse therefore differs from ordinary discourse. The distinctive features of institutional discourse are, for example, an overall task and goal orientation (Renkema, 1993), an institution-specific linguistic repertoire, specialized turn-taking systems with relatively rigid discourse roles and constraints on participants’ contributions, and an asymmetry of role relationships between participants regarding power balance and knowledge contribution (Geluykens & Kraft, 2008). As the participants in this study are all members of one business institution, or at least of closely connected, cooperating institutions, the study can be said to contribute to the field of workplace discourse in particular. In the 1990s, there was a shift in the methodology employed in linguistics research on workplace communication (parallel to the discursive turn in pragmatics), which involved moving away from research relying on questionnaires, interviews or field notes toward ethnographic observations and audio or video recordings of naturally occurring discourse. Boden and Zimmermann’s (1991) Talk and Social Structure and Drew and Heritage’s (1992) Talk at Work were probably the earliest, most influential publications. The latter’s approach in analyzing actual conversations between professionals and lay people is based on their insight that ‘[…] rather than starting from sentence meanings, analysis should begin from the study of sequences of actions and the ways in which context forms a resource in their interpretation’ (Drew & Heritage, 1992: 13). This insight and the crucial role attributed to the analysis of recordings of authentic workplace conversations are reflected in the numerous studies that have subsequently followed in the field, two of which are particularly worth mentioning: the ‘Language in the Workplace’ (2010) project by Holmes et  al. of the Victoria University of Wellington and Lorenzo-Dus’ (2011) publication of Spanish at Work. Since the start of the Language in the Workplace project in 1996, the research team around Holmes has collected authentic conversational data from more than 30 New Zealand workplaces comprising recordings of approximately 2000 interactions involving over 700 people. Their focus of analysis is

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politeness phenomena, referred to as relational practice, including small talk, humor, gendered talk, leadership and power (e.g. Holmes & Marra, 2004; Holmes & Stubbe, 2003). As a reaction to the focus on an Anglo context in institutional discourse and against the assumption that the findings could simply be applied to non-Anglo settings, Lorenzo-Dus (2011) published a collection of case studies that provide insights into the ‘particularities and specificities’ of a range of discourse practices within various workplace settings in the Spanish-speaking world. Lorenzo-Dus (2011: 7–8) also highlights the paradigm of diversity and context specificities of studies within an institutional frame, which she contrasts to ‘the Galilean scientific paradigm of searching for generality and similarity’. Previous studies on directives in institutional offline communication

The literature on Spanish directives in institutional discourse include Placencia’s (1995) study on telephone conversations, King’s (2011) study on Spanish directives in business letters, Márquez Reiter (2002) as well as Bravo (1996; cited in Hernández-Flores, 1999). The (offline) production of English directives within an institutional setting has been studied in both written communication such as business letters and memos (e.g. Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris, 1996; Geluykens, 2008, 2011; Pilegaard, 1997; Yeung, 1997) and spoken discourse (e.g. Jones, 1992; Pufahl Bax, 1986; Vine, 2004, 2009). The findings of these studies provide evidence for the situated nature of directives and the impact of contextual and discursive factors on the choice of a particular directive strategy. As the studies differ from the present study at least with regard to the channel of communication, comparability between the studies is limited. Nevertheless, since email communication can resemble both oral dialogues and written letter-style communication (Dürscheid & Frehner, 2013), it is crucial to investigate in which respect the directives produced in institutional email communication differ from those realized in spoken and written institutional discourse.17 I will therefore relate back to these findings when I discuss my results. Workplace communication has been revolutionized by technologically mediated means. As the channel of communication is a further variable putting constraints on discourse, it will be discussed in more detail in the following section. Computer-mediated communication

Although face-to-face (FTF) interaction still plays a major role in institutional discourse and pragmatics research in general, there has recently been growing interest in the study of language use in CMC as a reaction to the continuing digitization and industrialization of our society.

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Especially in the workplace context, where urgency and task efficiency are central, email and other forms of CMC have largely replaced written memos, letters and much of telephone and FTF interactions (cf. Waldvogel, 2007). The main advantages of email over other channels of communication include the swift transmission of information to many others irrespective of their locations and time zones; the fact that the sender can think over and modify the message before sending without disturbing the recipient; and that it provides a record of the communication (cf. Dürscheid & Frehner, 2013). Research on CMC in the field of pragmatics and politeness has been mainly fostered by the works of Herring (1996, 2001, 2007), with both Baron (1984, 1998, 2003, 2008) and Crystal (2001, 2004) making significant contributions. Baron’s work has primarily focused on the question of how technology changes the way we write. Baron (2003: 93) draws the conclusion that ‘writing in general has become more speech-like, thanks in part to conscious pedagogical decisions and in part to changing social attitudes about how we present ourselves to others’. Crystal has become particularly known for coining the term Netspeak to account for the specific linguistic features and structural elements of email and other modes of CMC. Among the Netspeak features typical for email, he lists various types of abbreviation, the tendency to use all lower case, new spelling conventions and the rather minimalistic use of punctuation or an unusual combination of punctuation marks (Crystal, 2001: 134–138). Petrie (1999: 26) added the use of trailing dots, capitalization, quoting back the previous email, excessive use of exclamation marks or question marks and the use of non-alphanumeric characters and emoticons as what she calls ‘emailisms’. The introduction of a term like Netspeak has, however, been partly met with criticism as it may not adequately account for the various linguistic features and text types written online (Dürscheid & Frehner, 2013: 39). Herring’s most important contribution in her extensive list of publications is probably her classification scheme for CMC (e.g. Herring, 2007), in which she brings together the relevant technological (medium) and social (situation) factors that influence the discourse usages within CMC. This scheme is particularly applicable as it does not rely on individual communication modes such as email, blog or chat, but is organized in clusters of features (facets) that are independent of each other. Email is classified in the model as asynchronous communication with one-way message transmission, which means that the communication partners do not need to be logged in simultaneously and cannot see how the other is typing the message. Despite the classification of email as an asynchronous medium, in specific contexts it is used as a synchronous medium, resulting in chatlike conversations. Dürscheid and Frehner (2013) therefore maintain that email does not necessarily need to be located at the written end

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of the communication (‘orality-literacy’) model by Koch and Oesterreicher (1994) as letters are, for example. Instead, emails vary between the conceptually oral and conceptually written ends of the continuum depending on the synchronicity and other contextual factors of email usage. Collot and Belmore (1996: 14) conclude that ‘[m]essages delivered electronically are neither “spoken” nor “written” in the conventional sense of these words’. This view of a hybrid nature of email language has also been supported by more recent studies on business email discourse (e.g. Kankaanranta, 2006). With regard to the workplace context, scholars have frequently addressed the question of the extent to which the description of email as a lean medium (according to the media richness theory; cf. Daft & Lengel, 1984) holds true. Due to the lack of non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, intonation or body language, and the lack of social presence in general, email has traditionally been viewed as less personal than FTF or telephone communication. It has therefore often been described as a lean medium, incapable of communicating rich information and suitable only for task-based informational and unambiguous messages. More recent studies in business discourse have, however, shown that, far from being lean, email is in fact capable of conveying rich information and is used for both relational and transactional work (e.g. Huang et al., 1998; Machili, 2014; Markus, 1994; Waldvogel, 2005, 2007; Zmud & Carlson, 1999). Researchers claim that CMC users make use of features such as emoticons to express feelings and attitudes as substitutes for what is expressed in FTF via facial cues (e.g. Crystal, 2001; Halvorsen, 2012; Skovholt et al., 2014; Vandergriff, 2014). In her contrastive study on small talk between the emails of a digitally based CoP and a physically based CoP, Hössjer (2013) finds that the use of relational (small) talk in emails seems to be largely dependent on the kind of organization and the relationship between the communicating participants. While a large amount of small talk can be found in the email data of the digitally based workplace, the employees of the physically based workplace mainly use email for task-based issues and thus seem to conduct relational talk mainly via FTF interaction. These findings again highlight the contextsensitivity of language use, which naturally also applies to CMC. With regard to directives in institutional email discourse, the opportunity for the sender to design, edit and revise his/her directive before sending has been frequently emphasized (cf. Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007; Duthler, 2006; Merrison et al., 2012). The asynchronicity of emails can thus be, and apparently often is, strategically used to construct more elaborate locutions in order to get the recipient to be maximally compliant. In view of the directness and politeness levels employed in email directives compared to other channels of communication, scholars have, however, come to diverging results. While Duthler (2006) concludes that email directives are more polite than voicemail directives, Biesenbach-Lucas’ (2007) email

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data reveal a higher use of imperative and hint strategies than conventionally indirect strategies typically found and associated with politeness. Waldvogel (2005) compares her email directives to directives found in other corpora of authentic discourse and comes to the conclusion that email directives tend to be more direct than those in letters and faxes but less direct than directives in spoken discourse. However, attempts to find medium specificities in terms of politeness and directness have ignored the significant influence of other contextual variables such as the institutional frame, the power relationship and social distance between sender and recipient, the language backgrounds and so forth. There is no doubt that the communication channel, the asynchronicity and physical distance involved in email communication in particular, has a considerable impact on the discourse strategies chosen. Nevertheless, the medium cannot be abstracted from other contextual factors in the explanations of language variation. Research on English and Spanish directives in workplace CMC is still very scarce, as mentioned above. Three studies that are particularly relevant for this book are Waldvogel’s (2005) account of email directives in the workplace context and Lorenzo-Dus and Bou Franch (2013) and Callahan’s (2011) contrastive studies of English and Spanish directives in student–lecturer emails. Previous studies on directives in institutional online communication

In one part of her PhD project, Waldvogel (2005) analyzed 190 email directives, which she identified in the corpus of 515 emails collected in two workplaces, an educational organization and a manufacturing plant, both located in New Zealand. Similarly to the present study, emails were investigated using an ethnographic approach allowing the researcher to control for contextual variables. With regard to the directive head acts, Waldvogel categorized the directives according to major sentence types, as was done in Geluykens (2008). The combined corpora reveal the following frequency distribution of sentence types: 20% imperatives, 42% interrogatives (further distributed into 22% interrogatives with modal can, 17% with other models and 3% non-modal interrogatives) and 38% declaratives. The high use of interrogatives can, according to Waldvogel, be explained by the immediacy of the medium and the fact that the email writer usually expects a prompt response. Letter writers seem to avoid the interrogative strategy due to the time lag involved between issuing the request and receiving a reply (cf. Yli-Jokipii, 1994). Waldvogel (2005) considers declaratives as ‘the least face-threatening form of a directive’. This is somewhat problematic given the fact that this category includes obligation statements (as explicity shown in Example 16): (16) You and I and X need to discuss these relationships (example AC1b in Waldvogel, 2005)

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need/want statements and performatives, which count as direct strategies in Blum-Kulka’s (1989) taxonomy. This ambiguity is also reflected in the way Waldvogel translates Pufahl Bax’s (1986) results of spoken directives into sentence-type categories.18 With regard to the low number of imperatives in email directives compared to FTF interaction, Waldvogel maintains that more facework needs to be done in emails because of the lack of non-verbal cues. Waldvogel’s (2005) conclusion that email directives ‘appear to lie somewhere between the directives of spoken discourse and written letters’ needs further investigation, also taking the type of institutional frame (academic vs business) into account. Considering the fact that the degree of politeness cannot be evaluated on the basis of the head act sentence types alone, Waldvogel divides email directives into backgrounded messages (i.e. the directive is preceded by supporting or enabling moves), foregrounded messages (i.e. the directive is stated first, then followed by legitimation) and bare directives.19 She analyzes the frequency distribution in relation to the power constellation in the email directives and concludes that bald commands and foregrounded messages are more often chosen by higher-status writers, which indicates a positive correlation between status and directness. Waldvogel, however, also finds that lower-status writers make use of imperatives and often lack mitigating elements while most of the directives produced by higherstatus writers are mitigated. The author states that the overall egalitarian attitude in the New Zealand workplaces might be an explanation and concludes that politeness is ‘very relative and context dependent’ (Waldvogel, 2005). Concerning the variable of gender, Waldvogel did not find any significant effects, whereas social distance appears to influence the choice of directive strategy as ‘the more indirect and formal’ declarative strategy combined with downgraders is used between distant colleagues. In contrast, email directives between close colleagues feature a higher use of imperatives. Waldvogel’s results therefore indicate a positive correlation between social distance and politeness, supporting Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim (cf. Section 1.2). Another factor which seems to influence language use in emails is the type of participation structure (cf. Herring, 2007) as Waldvogel observes a higher degree of face redress in the (oneto-many) emails to groups than in the (one-to-one) emails to individuals. With regard to the variable of imposition, the author has been unable to arrive at meaningful conclusions, as 90% of her email directives imputed a low degree of imposition. Along with status and social distance, Waldvogel contends that workplace culture is a factor that correlates with linguistic variation. As the author remains vague on which grounds workplace culture is defined and operationalized, Waldvogel’s (2005) interpretation of the manufacturing plant as revealing a ‘friendlier and more united culture’ than the educational organization based on the fact that ‘more direct forms show greater familiarity and solidarity’ lacks

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further empirical justification. Despite these shortcomings, Waldvogel’s findings are relevant for the study presented in this book as they provide valuable insights into the production of English email directives in the workplace context. The only account of a comparison of email directives between the language varieties BE and PS is the study by Lorenzo-Dus and Bou Franch (2013). Their corpus consists of 100 (50 PS and 50 BE) interactioninitiating emails sent by undergraduate students to lecturers. Despite the difference in institutional setting, the results are valuable for the contrastive analysis discussed in Chapter 3. Having adopted Blum-Kulka’s (1989) taxonomy for directives, the authors analyze the opening and closing sequences, as well as the directive head act and supportive move strategies of the emails in view of (in)directness and (in)formality. With regard to the head act strategies, the PS writers most often choose want statements, followed by query preparatory strategies and mood derivable strategies. In contrast, the BE writers most frequently use the query preparatory strategy, followed by the mood derivable and the want statement. The few remaining strategies consist of hedged performatives and mild hints. Supporting previous DCT-based results, direct strategies prevail in the PS data while conventionally indirect strategies are the most frequent strategy in the BE data. Concerning the form and frequency of supportive move strategies, the study reveals a wider variety in the BE data. While grounders are the most frequently chosen strategy in both data sets, the PS writers tend to only make further use of request enforcements whereas the BE writers also frequently use the apologizing strategy and offering goods. Along with the strategies of request enforcements and offering goods, LorenzoDus and Bou Franch also added the self-identification strategy to the coding scheme. This strategy is often used in the PS email openings, while greetings are the most frequent opening move in both languages. Concerning the closing sequences, the BE writers most frequently use signature and thanking moves. In the PS data set, the three most frequent closing moves are thanking, leave-taking and signature. The authors’ main conclusion based on these findings is that the relatively high use of PS direct strategies can be explained by the immediacy of the medium and previous offline/online contact between the participants, as well as an expectation of task efficiency within the academic context. They thus argue that directness found in the PS data through the use of direct head act strategies and request enforcements can be described as an ‘unmarked directness’, which is complemented by a relatively high degree of formality in the PS openings and closings (Lorenzo-Dus & Bou Franch, 2013). The BE data, in contrast, can be described as revealing a higher degree of indirectness matched with informality. Due to the academic context and the inclusion of requests for information in Lorenzo-Dus and Bou Franch’s (2013) study, it is

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necessary to keep in mind that the comparability of the results to the findings presented in Chapter 3 is limited. The claim concerning informality in BE and formality in PS is further supported by Callahan (2011), who conducted a pilot study comparing an English student–lecturer email to a Spanish student–lecturer email, both written by L1 users of the respective languages asking for a letter of recommendation. Despite this very limited corpus, it is worth mentioning that Callahan found a higher use of positive politeness markers in the BE data set than in the Spanish data set, which contradicts the general view that Spanish speakers orient more toward positive face needs while English speakers place higher importance on negative face concerns. There are further studies on the realization of English email directives (cf. Alcón Soler, 2015; Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007; Duthler, 2006; Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011; Félix-Brasdefer, 2012; Merrison et  al., 2012; Pan, 2012). However, as these studies are usually set in a university context and mainly take an interlanguage pragmatics perspective by focusing on the differences between L1 and LX email directives, it is doubtful that the results will be of direct relevance to the findings of this book. In sum, scholars have found that email directives reveal a higher use of direct (imperative or mood derivable) strategies than the conventionally indirect strategies which are usually found and are regarded as the prototypical directive strategy of English L1 users. The increasing degree of directness has been explained by the immediacy of the medium, a relatively low social distance between sender and recipient and the expectation of task efficiency in the university context, as outlined in Lorenzo-Dus and Bou Franch’s (2013) study. Also, there has been a steady increase in the number of studies on business emails that use English as (business) lingua franca (e.g. Kankaanranta, 2006; Machili, 2014; Skovholt et  al., 2014). While the importance and need of this research stream are undisputable in today’s increasingly globalized world, the studies are of limited relevance here as this book only takes into account language use by email writers in their L1. Nevertheless, I take into account some of the findings and relate them to the present study where they generate additional insights and support the evaluation of the results. In order to adequately account for all, or at least most of the factors that, along with the medium of communication, influence speakers and writers to choose a particular linguistic strategy over another, a multimethod approach is indispensable (Geluykens, 2007). An overview of the current status of politeness research within the fields of CCP, institutional discourse and CMC has shown that there is a research gap in offering an innovative and integrative framework that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to come as close as possible to detecting the webs of significance on which the production and perception of language are based (cf. Geertz, 1973).

Directive Speech Events in Business Emails  37

This book attempts to fill this research gap by offering an alternative, mixed-method framework for cross-cultural analyses. Notes (1) In line with Dewaele (2017), I have adopted the terms first language (L1) and foreign language (LX) users instead of the traditional dichotomy native vs non-native speakers throughout the book. Also see Davies (2014) for a critical discussion on the concept of the native speaker. (2) The terms pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics were introduced by Leech (1983) and Thomas (1983). While pragmalinguistics refers to the intersection of pragmatics and linguistic forms, sociopragmatics focuses on the interface of sociology and pragmatics (Kasper & Roever, 2005). (3) The term pragmatics was, however, first introduced by the American philosopher Morris (1983; cited in Levinson, 1983: 2), who defined it as the study of ‘the relation of signs to interpreters’. (4) I intentionally refer to models and concepts instead of theories because the latter presuppose predictability to at least some degree, which postmodern politeness researchers have denied. (5) The use of the term paradigm might be somewhat misleading here. It is understood in a broader sense as a common focus within the different approaches rather than an underlying philosophical framework. (6) First order and second order refer here to the distinction that has been made in politeness in order to refer to participants’ (or emic, insider) understanding of politeness on the one hand, and the theoretical construct or scientific conceptualization of politeness (i.e. second order) on the other. (7) In the course of the book, I refer to examples from my data sets and provide an ID for each email directive with ‘E’ and ‘S’ referring to the British English and the Peninsular Spanish data sets, respectively. The examples may be simplified and shortened for reasons of clarity, but only if this does not affect the meaning of the example in any way. (8) Although Leech never explicitly considers his framework as universal, he does not deny a universal application of his model either. Watts (1992: 46), Held (1992: 131) and Wierzbicka (1985: 145), among others, critically remark that Leech’s Politeness Principle is derived from an essentially British attitude toward politeness. (9) For a detailed overview of positive and negative politeness strategies, see Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]: 101–211). (10) It has to be acknowledged, though, that Brown and Levinson (1987: 142) are indeed aware of context-sensitivity, as they at one point state: ‘one has to be cautious in generalizing across contexts’. They, however, go on to argue that ‘generalizations about the relative politeness of expressions’ can be assumed to hold ‘where Wx is held constant and at a value where (say) the speaker is trying to be as negatively polite as possible’ (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 142). The authors then list a number of strategies (from indirect to direct) and claim that these rank from polite to impolite in the aforementioned contexts. Leech (1983), on the other hand, postulates a positive correlation between indirectness and politeness without mentioning the role of context, as outlined above. (11) Hofstede later adds long-term vs short-term orientation as a fifth dimension and indulgence vs restraint as a sixth dimension. (12) There is the common view that while the field of CCP focuses on culture specificities in language use, the field of contrastive pragmatics concentrates on pragmalinguistic universals based on the assumption that language use, and speech acts in particular, operates by universal principles (Barron, 2003: 23).

38  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

(13) DCTs can indeed be a useful research instrument as long as they are not interpreted as reflecting actual language use (cf. Bou-Franch & Lorenzo-Dus, 2008). (14) Schneider (2012) contends that there can be further factors, such as religion, that have an impact on language use. (15) The dimensions along which a CoP is distinguished from other sociolinguistic and social psychological frameworks, including social identity theory, speech community, social network and social constructionist approaches, are discussed in greater detail by Holmes and Meyerhoff (1999). (16) More information on the workplace can be found in Section 2.2. (17) See also Saito and Cook (2017) for a recently published overview of spoken directives in workplace discourse with a focus on gendered discourse, in particular. (18) Based on Waldvogel’s (2005: table 8.2) quantification it appears as if she has mixed up the declarative with the interrogative category in the interpretation of Pufahl Bax’s (1986) results of spoken directives. (19) This distinction has been adopted from Iedema (1997), who claims that foregrounded directive messages tend to signal higher status while backgrounded messages suggest lower status. Waldvogel’s data provide some result for this claim.

2 A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events

While most of the studies in cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP) have focused exclusively on the analysis of production data, as discussed in Chapter  1, I argue that the study of cross-cultural speech event behavior has to be expanded through quantitative and qualitative analyses of emic evaluations within the institutional frame in order to arrive at more holistic findings.1 This book’s study of cross-cultural speech event phenomena is therefore informed by an analysis of the impact of macro- and micro-social factors as well as by a more micro-level, ethnographic study into the dynamic construction of language and politeness norms within a specific community of practice (CoP). Figure 2.1 provides an overview of the framework proposed for cross-cultural studies. The combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses of both production and perception data provides a more profound understanding of cross-cultural speech events, such as English and Spanish directives in the present study. 2.1  Email Directives: A Speech Event Analysis

The various theoretical frameworks and empirical studies discussed so far influence the way directive speech acts are understood and analyzed. It is for this reason that I have not yet presented a detailed delineation of how the linguistic variable directive is defined and operationalized. The definition employed in this book is informed by all the frameworks presented in Chapter 1 in order to arrive at a more holistic and integrative understanding of the variable. Speech act theory is based on the insight that language is used to perform actions, which includes getting others to do things. It has mainly focused on speaker meaning and has made explicit the conditions under which a directive can be felicitous and successful. According to Walker (2013: 461), speech act theory is ‘more concerned with the competence of language users than with their actual performance of speech acts’. Traditional politeness theories have linked speech acts to theories of social interaction in order to explain the motivation for speakers’ frequent use 39

40  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

traditional CCP

- broad cross-cultural language patterns - influence of macro- and micro-social factors

qualitative

perception

quantitative

qualitative

quantitative

production

institutional context

- emic evaluations in terms of politeness and directness - CoP norms

understanding of English and Spanish speech events Figure 2.1   Mixed method framework for the study of cross-cultural speech events

of indirect speech acts, still dedicating most of the attention to the speakers and their (polite) intentions. Discursive approaches to politeness have since shifted the focus to relational aspects, emphasizing the fact that both speaker and addressee construct meaning in the evolving discourse. Language use and politeness issues are now widely seen as socially situated practices within a particular CoP. As a consequence, conversation analytical (bottom-up) methods have been employed to investigate social actions in the sequential structures of talk-in-interaction. As I focus on the properties not only of the illocutionary value, i.e. the directive speech act, but also on the interactional value, i.e. the sequential design including external modification strategies surrounding the directive proper, I apply a speech event-based analysis instead of a speech actbased analysis in the present study. This coincides with Merrison et al.’s (2012: 1079) assumption that ‘the particular design of the sequential and componential structure of requests in situated contexts is used to accomplish both identity and relational work’ (cf. also Ho, 2010; Jensen, 2009; Rogers & Lee-Wong, 2003). The term speech events was introduced by Hymes (1972), who distinguishes it from speech situations and speech acts. Speech events occur within speech situations, for example a conversation (speech event) during a party (speech situation). A speech act is the individual utterance that forms the minimal unit of analysis for ethnographies of communication, such as a joke within a conversation. Hymes (1972: 56), more

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  41

precisely, defines a speech event as ‘be[ing] restricted to activities, or aspects of activities, that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech. An event may consist of a single speech act, but will often comprise several’. Based on this definition, Levinson (1992) considers the term speech events as roughly equivalent to his notion of activity types. He defines these as […] any culturally recognized activity, whether or not that activity is coextensive with a period of speech or indeed whether any talk takes place in it at all […] In particular, I take the notion of an activity type to refer to a fuzzy category whose focal members are goal-defined, socially constituted, bounded events with constraints on participants, settings, and so on, but above all on the kinds of allowable contributions. ­(Levinson, 1992: 69; original emphasis)

Activity types thus determine the ability of those involved in institutional talk to ascertain how ‘what one says will be “taken” – that is, what kinds of inferences will be made from what is said’ (Levinson, 1992: 97), so we can safely assume that any member of a society or a CoP is familiar with the dos and don’ts of certain institutional contexts. Thus, instead of limiting the analysis to isolated utterances with a directive function (speech acts), I account for the whole speech event including sequencing moves such as greetings and closings, repetition of directives and relational talk that are all aspects of the activity of negotiating and getting others to do something in business emails (cf. Section 2.2).2 While Merrison et al. (2012) state that their use of the term requests refers to the same inducement to act expressed by Austin’s (1975 [1962]) exercitives and Searle’s (1976) directives, I use directives as a cover term for requests, commands, advice and suggestions. Directives in the present study thus comprise acts of varying degrees of directive force in both asymmetrical and symmetrical situations, i.e. between email writers of both equal and unequal rank in the workplace hierarchy. Due to the existence of unequal power relations in the workplace setting, the email writers may not have the same entitlement to produce a directive. In the present study, however, the majority of the email directives (568 out of 632) were exchanged between senders and recipients of symmetrical power relations, which can be explained by the overall flat hierarchy prevalent in the workplace under investigation. In the literature on directives, many researchers have made distinctions between commands, orders, requests, suggestions and advice based on criteria as to whether the directive is of benefit to the speaker or addressee, or whether the directive allows for non-compliance, based on the interlocutors’ power relations. Suggestions and advice, for example, have often been regarded as differing from other directive acts in that

42  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

they are in the addressee’s rather than in the speaker’s interest (cf. Fraser, 1974; Hindelang, 1978; Searle, 1969; Wunderlich, 1976). In a similar vein, the production of orders and commands has often been limited to superordinate–subordinate situations, in which the addressee is not entitled to deny the directive (cf. Pufahl Bax, 1986; Vine, 2004). However, further empirical evidence is needed to determine whether language users actually employ these distinctions when identifying the directive force. In the present study, directives include the following necessary features: • a speech event that expresses the writer’s desire for an addressee to perform a future non-verbal action (cf. Edmondson & House, 1981; Holmes, 1983; Searle, 1969); • a speech event that the writer and addressee may have unequal rights to produce depending on their social ranking in the workplace hierarchy (Waldvogel, 2005). Directives are further characterized by the following (optional) features: • a speech event that is conventionally realized by a wide variety of linguistic strategies (cf. Searle, 1975); • a potential face-threatening act (FTA) that can be realized by various strategies including mitigating and aggravating strategies (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987; Watts, 2003); • a potential FTA that might threaten the addressee’s negative face (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987; Trosborg, 1995); • a rapport-sensitive speech event that might be either face-threatening or face-enhancing (cf. Spencer-Oatey, 2000a); • a linguistic act that is not inherently im/polite but might be perceived differently by the interactants (cf. Locher & Watts, 2005); • a linguistic practice socially constructed in the situated contexts of a CoP (cf. Merrison et al., 2012; Mills, 2002); • a linguistic action that can be identified by the researcher through reliance on the addressee’s successful interpretation which is manifested in the uptake (cf. Austin, 1975; Grainger, 2013); • a linguistic action that is followed either by a non-verbal response (fulfillment of directive) or by a verbal response signaling acceptance or non-compliance (cf. Rauniomaa & Keisanen, 2012; Turnbull & Saxton, 1997). This list of features is based on the underlying holistic understanding of directives in the present study. The last two aspects have not been addressed so far and refer to the identification of directives, which can

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  43

be a somewhat challenging endeavor when working with authentic language data. In contrast to other speech events (e.g. apologies), directives often do not contain an obvious illocutionary force indicating device (IFID; Searle, 1969) and if they were to, might even be misleading (cf. Geluykens, 2008). I have therefore identified speech events according to the addressee’s interpretation of it as a directive. For most email directives, there was an uptake in the form of an email reply, which involved acceptance, denial or a further form of negotiation. In most cases, if a verbal response was missing, I was able to identify other cues in subsequent emails that indicated the directive interpretation by the addressee. This approach is in line with the sequential, interpretative method used in conversation analysis, or interactional linguistics (Kern & Selting, 2013; Selting & Couper-Kuhlen, 2000). The procedure I used for identifying directives will be covered in more detail in Section 2.4 (cf. Figure 2.2). The following section provides an overview of the workplace where the data of the present study have been obtained, the procedures of data collection employed, the coding categories applied, as well as the (statistical) methods of data analysis. 2.2 Database: Collection and Comparability of Data Sets Email corpus

The study’s email corpus consists of 600  emails, of which 300 were exchanged between 69 first language (L1) users of British English (BE) and 300 between 72 L1 users of (Peninsular) Spanish (PS), from March to August 2011. The emails were written by managers, business partners and employees of either a Spanish hotel resort or one of the British and Spanish travel agencies with which they closely cooperated. The emails were collected approximately one year after their production so the participants were not aware of any research goals when the emails were written, in order to avoid any potential effects of the Observer’s Paradox (cf. Labov, 1972), the risk of a decrease in the authenticity of the language data as a result of the subject being aware of the presence of the researcher (observer). While one might assume this is self-explanatory for studies on email data, some researchers (cf. Duthler, 2006; Woodfield & Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2010) have in fact prompted their participants to write email directives anonymously to professors or have gathered email data through written discourse completion tasks (DCTs), thereby creating an unnatural environment. The speech events of the email exchanges in the present study include task allocations, problem-solving, price negotiations and further issues concerning the operative and strategic management of the workplace under study.

44  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

Collection of metapragmatic insights

As pointed out in Chapter  1, one of the aims of the present study was to investigate the email writers’ perception of directives in terms of politeness and directness and to gain some insights into the overall email behavior of the CoP. In order to achieve this, an online questionnaire was sent out to the BE and PS email writers.3 The decision to conduct the perception study online was based on reasons of time- and cost-efficiency. Also, at the time of this second stage of data collection, some of the participants were no longer employed at the same workplace and were only accessible via email. The questionnaire contained 10 tasks: two rating scales for politeness, six questions on general email use and behavior and two rating scales for directness. The six questions were based on Waldvogel’s (2005) study and represented a mix of open-ended and multiple-choice questions, which aimed at investigating individual preferences with regard to the relative frequency of email use compared to the use of other communication channels, the purposes of email use and the role of the different communication modes in the workplace in general. The participants’ answers to these questions provided interesting insights into the overall role of email communication in the workplace and were thus helpful in the interpretation of the results. In addition, the questions served as distractors as they were placed in-between the politeness and directness ratings in order to prevent the participants from discovering a direct link between the two concepts. The rating experiments were based on two situations ([i] a directive for an extension of an offer and [ii] a directive for an email reply) and the head act strategy types that were identified in the production data. The strategy types were presented in random order, and the participants were asked to rate the strategies on a nine-point scale, from (1) impolite to (9) polite in the politeness ratings at the beginning of the survey, and from (1) direct to (9) indirect in the directness ratings in the final part of the survey. The dimensions of politeness and directness were deliberately chosen in order to test the relationship between politeness and indirectness and to make the results somewhat comparable to Blum-Kulka’s (1987) and Marti’s (2006) findings. The selection of the two directive situations was based on the fact that they occurred relatively often in the two data sets and the participants could therefore easily identify with the email writer of the respective situation. Both an English and a Spanish version of the online survey were created with the online survey platform SurveyMonkey. The test was piloted with two English L1 users and one Spanish L1 user. In accordance with Blum-Kulka (1987: 135) and Marti (2006: 1846), the directive head act strategies were ‘stripped’ of both internal and external modifiers so that judgments of politeness and directness would

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  45

relate to the strategy type only. The informants also had the option to make comments on each of the ratings in an attempt to elicit metapragmatic data. Due to the limited number of participants (three BE and four PS email writers), the perception study was treated as a pilot study that assisted with the interpretation of the production data analysis. The workplace

The workplace used in the study was a hotel resort in Spain which cooperated closely with British and Spanish travel agencies. At the time of data collection, the hotel resort had a staff of 130 people, approximately a third of whom worked in the administrative areas and had either Spanish or (British) English as their L1. While the BE email writers were at least bilingual, as all of them were based in Spain and had at least some basic knowledge of Spanish, most of the PS subjects were multilingual with Catalan as their second language (L2) and English as their third language (L3) (or L2).4 While I excluded all the emails that contained L2 (English or Spanish) use from the database due to the scope of the present study, I took into consideration the fact that the L2 (or LX, in general) may influence one’s L1 use in my interpretation of the findings (cf. Dewaele, 2007). As the CEO and sales manager was an L1 user of South African English, his emails were not included in the present study, even though many of the collected emails were addressed to him. The remainder of the staff worked in food and beverage (F&B) and housekeeping. Emails were collected from administrative staff working in sales and marketing, human resources, finance, reservations management, events and catering, and quality management. In addition to the emails exchanged within this resort, the corpus includes emails sent between the sales and reservation departments and three travel agencies. The resort and the travel agencies had cooperated with each other for a longer period of time (at least one year) and shared the common goal of filling the rooms and apartments with guests. While the resort also cooperated with other travel agencies, the three included in the corpus had exclusivity contracts with the resort, which meant that they were the exclusive providers of guests for a specific number of hotel rooms, apartments and villas. According to statements made by the subjects, the close business partnership made them consider each other as colleagues despite them theoretically working for different companies (cf. also Section 1.3). Before collecting the data, ethical issues were discussed with key people in each organization. A memorandum of understanding was agreed upon and signed by both the hotel and sales manager of the resort and by me. It covered the protection of the organizations and people’s identity, the storage of the data and how retrospectively informed consent would be gained. The manager sent around an email message notifying all staff

46  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

and business partners about the research and that some archived emails would be used and anonymized to protect confidentiality. All subjects involved were given the opportunity to ask questions before providing their consent. It was agreed that the names of the people, companies and marketing campaigns and other specific information about the location, prices or dates that appeared in the emails would not be published. I, therefore, invented new names in the examples presented or removed specific pieces of information and replaced them with a general description of the information in square brackets (e.g. [amount €]). The role of email communication in the workplace

In the small online survey outlined earlier, I asked the participants to provide some information about their general email behavior and usage. The answers reflected the overall high use of the email medium in the organization for a wide range of purposes. With regard to the amount of time spent on reading and writing emails, the majority of the subjects (five out of seven) reported that they invested more than two hours per day (which was the maximum of the options from which to choose) in communicating via email at work. They further indicated that they communicated most frequently via email to request that somebody do something, to give feedback, to pass on information, to request information, to collaborate on a document, to schedule a meeting and to thank somebody. The informants, however, seemed to prefer other communication channels when giving instructions, resolving conflicts, making complaints or seeking an opinion. In an open-ended question in which participants were asked to list the three most important purposes for writing emails, the BE participants’ most common answers were ‘communicating with hoteliers’, ‘exchange of contracts’, ‘documenting offers and reservations’ and ‘sending information’. The PS informants further mentioned ‘contactar para planear reuniones’ (‘getting in contact to plan meetings’), ‘contestar peticiones de clientes’ (‘answering clients’ requests’), ‘dar información día a día dentro de la empresa’ (‘exchanging day-to-day information within the company’), ‘comunicación con otros trabajadores/socios’ (‘communication with other employees/partners’), ‘cerrar contratos con empresas externas’ (‘concluding contracts with external companies’), ‘autorización’ (‘authorizing’) and ‘pasar un feedback’ (‘giving feedback’) as the most important purposes for their email use. The three BE subjects and two of the PS subjects, however, also reported that there were specific work purposes for which they would not use email. Regarding this, one BE participant listed ‘inputting offers, calculations for contracts and offers, system controls’ while another BE participant stated that he would not ‘fire someone’ via email. The PS comments were somewhat similar in that one participant mentioned that

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  47

he would not discuss work-related topics that required a lot of discretion or tact via email (‘tema laborales que requieren mucha discreción o tacto’), while the other PS participant indicated that she would not carry out concrete work tasks (‘ejecutar los trabajos concretados’) over email. The third BE participant added a somewhat longer statement to the question: Some more delicate issues require a personal phonecall. When contacting new hoteliers I don’t know I will try to speak with them and follow up with an e-mail. I believe personal contact means a lot, if you speak to someone they start to form an opinion of you by the sound of your voice and your attitude.

This comment is in line with the media richness theory (cf. Section 1.3), which proposes that ‘the greater the likelihood of a message being misinterpreted, the greater the need for rich media’ (Waldvogel, 2001: 5). Zmud and Carlson (1999) investigated the perception of the richness of different channels and concluded that email messages are less likely to be misunderstood if the sender and addressee know each other and the organization well and are aware of the capabilities and limitations of the medium. If these conditions are not met and the communication partners do not know each other, people may favor an alternative communication mode or use email alongside other channels of communication, as pointed out by the BE participant above. The comments indicating that the email medium is not suitable for discussing delicate topics support the view that email, at least in some contexts, represents a lean medium (cf. Section 1.3) rather than a rich medium as it lacks the conveyance of prosodic, paralinguistic and non-verbal cues, which are crucial for face work especially when dealing with delicate topics. In those cases, email users usually take measures to avoid negative outcomes by, for example, using the telephone from time to time to maintain personal relationships (Markus, 1994). Research, however, has also shown that managers may deliberately choose to employ email to avoid unwanted face-to-face (FTF) interaction (Markus, 1994). The overall frequent use of email in the workplace under study is further affirmed by the last question, which addresses the relative frequency of using emails in comparison to other communication channels (FTF, meeting, telephone, letters, fax, memos). With the exception of two PS participants and two BE participants who did not seem to engage in writing a letter, fax or memo, and one BE participant who apparently did not attend a meeting on the preceding day, all of the BE and PS participants reported that they had attended a meeting and communicated FTF, on the telephone, via email and even through letter, fax or memo on their most recent day at work. Of all these activities, two BE participants reported that they were mostly engaged in FTF communication,

48  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

while the remaining participants (four PS and one BE) stated that they employed emails most frequently. The fact that email represents the preferred channel of communication at the research site is further supported in the presentation of the data analysis, including the wide range of purposes for which emails were used (cf. Table 2.2). Markus (1994: 502) finds similar observations in her study and reports that ‘effective senior managers were found to use email heavily and even for equivocal tasks’. She therefore challenges the view of email as a lean medium and explains that ‘the adoption, use and consequences of media in organizations can be powerfully shaped by social processes such as sponsorship, socialization and social control which require social perspectives to understand them’ (Markus, 1994: 502). During the period of data collection, the hotel manager of the workplace under study stated that the previous manager attached great importance to email communication, primarily because it provides a record of the communication (cf. also Dürscheid & Frehner, 2013). The manager showed awareness of the negative effects of such a high use of email, such as a reduction in personal contact and information overload (cf. also Waldvogel, 2001), and had thus attempted to reduce the use of email in the workplace during the time of data collection. However, he stated that a reduction in the use of email in favor of an increase in personal contact seemed to be a slow process because it implied a change in longestablished behavior patterns. Comparability of the data sets

The criterion of comparability is often problematic when working with authentic discourse data, which is why many researchers in CCP rely on experimental data, as discussed above. Kasper (2000: 320) even goes as far as to claim that authentic data may not be a viable option when the research goal is to compare the use of pragmatic features between different speakers. Against this view and in line with, for example Manes and Wolfson (1981: 115), Golato (2003) and Bou-Franch and Lorenzo-Dus (2008), I maintain that elicited data cannot be interpreted as instantiations of actual language use and that naturally occurring discourse and ethnographic data are the only reliable data types for studying the richness of contextualized verbal exchanges. Aware of the fact that total comparability is not possible, at least not for natural language data, I nevertheless attempted to come as close as possible in comparing my data sets and maintain that it is sufficient with regard to the size of the corpora, writer groups and discourse situations and purposes. The size of the BE and PS data sets is shown in Table 2.1. The difference in the numbers of directives found in the two data sets can be explained by the fact that the PS emails were generally longer than

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  49

Table 2.1  Size of the BE and PS data sets Data set

Word count (email/word ratio)

Directives (email/directive ratio)

BE emails (n = 300)

19,814 (1:66.0)

338 (1:1.1)

PS emails (n = 300)

26,726 (1:89.1)

416 (1:1.4)

the BE emails (a ratio of approximately 89 words per PS email compared to 66 words per BE email), which might be due to the slight difference in the purpose of the email exchanges in the two data sets, as shown in Table 2.2. While most emails in the BE corpus dealt with price negotiations (19.8%), operative issues (16%), reservation and room availability directives (14.2%), approximately a third (32%) of all the PS emails were concerned with operative issues, such as task allocations and deployment, followed, at some distance, by price negotiations (13.2%), directives for an email reply (12.5%) and for sending important documents or specific information (12.5%). The differences between the two data sets with regard to discourse purposes created some limitations for comparability. However, as the emails of both data sets covered the same set of purposes, I suggest that the level of comparability is sufficient. No discourse purposes existed in either of the two data sets. Nevertheless, in the quantitative and qualitative analyses, I pay special attention to the impact of the email purpose on the strategies chosen by statistically measuring the effects. Concerning the English and Spanish email writers, comparability was ensured with regard to region as the present study focuses on only one L1 variety per data set, BE and PE, respectively. The writer groups were Table 2.2  Purposes of email interactions in the BE and PS data sets Purpose of email

BE

PS

n

%

n

%

Price/offer negotiation

67

19.8

55

13.2

Confirmation/clarification

40

11.8

32

7.7

Email reply

40

11.8

52

12.5

Reservation/availability

48

14.2

21

5.0

Documents/information

33

9.8

52

12.5

Operative issues

54

16.0

133

32.0

Forward information

18

5.3

11

2.7

Problem-solving

23

6.8

33

7.9

Appointment directives Total

15

4.5

27

6.5

338

100

416

100

50  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

also relatively homogeneous with regard to socioeconomic status and age since all email writers had an administrative job in the travel and tourism sector and were aged between 28 and 55. As these variables were not controlled for in the present study, it must be borne in mind that they may have an influence on the results. The influence of the other macroand micro-social factors was measured in the present study and will be outlined in the following sections. 2.3 Assessment and Distribution of Social Variables

Compared to the sociological variables (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978]) social distance (SD), power relationship (P) and degree of imposition, the variable sex was more directly observable. Although researchers in the social sciences are more interested in the much more complex phenomenon of gender rather than biological sex (cf. Schneider, 2012), I maintain that an analysis of sex differences is nevertheless useful as it facilitates comparison. This is in line with Cheshire (2002), who claims that […] speaker sex is intended to be a purposely broad, unrefined social variable that can be easily taken into account at the data-collection stage of research. If all researchers categorize speakers in the same, albeit simplistic way, we can ensure replicability and can draw useful comparisons between studies carried out in a range of communities. (Cheshire, 2002: 424–425)

The study of male and female speech or writing styles thus allows for a more refined, in-depth analysis of how writers construct gender in discourse. It is therefore not the objective of the present study to make generalizations on male versus female speech behavior as has been done, for example, by Lakoff (1975), who concludes that women’s speech can be characterized as more polite than men’s speech. Instead, starting from the assumption that gender is performative and emergent (cf. Butler, 1990; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2003; Mills, 2003), I maintain that gender and politeness are constructs that have to be studied in the context of a specific CoP while the (quantitative) study into speech events in relation to broader categories, such as sex, serves as a basis. The distribution of the email writers in the BE and PS data sets with regard to the variables sex, SD, imposition and power is displayed in Table 2.3. The number of email writers is quite similar in the two data sets (69 BE and 72 PS subjects). While the sex distribution in the PS data set is almost even (38 female and 34 male writers), the distribution in the BE data is less balanced as there are more female writers (43 compared to 26 male writers). This distribution is consequently reflected in the number of directives produced by female and male writers (cf. Section 4.1).

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  51

Table 2.3  Distribution of social variables across the BE and PS data sets Distribution of social variables

Writer sex

Female Male

Total (writers) Writer–addressee sex

Male–male

n

%

62

38

53

26

38

34

47

69

100

72

100

100

30

129

31

15

4

56

14

3

43

10

Female group

12

4

28

7

196

58

96

23

5

1

64

15

338

100

416

100

Low

104

31

102

25

Medium

172

51

163

39

High

47

14

44

10

Group

15

4

107

26 100

Total (directives)

338

100

416

Low

238

70

341

82

High

100

30

75

18

338

100

416

100

12

4

13

3

308

91

260

62

Total (directives) Downward Equal Upward Total (directives)

%

10

Total (directives)

Power

n 43

Male–female

Female–female

Imposition

PS

Male group

Female–male

Social distance

BE

3

1

36

9

338

100

416

100

The sex of the addressee has also been coded, based on the assumption that language use in same-sex interactions may differ from the language employed in cross-sex discourse. More than half of the BE email directives (58%) were sent from a female writer to a male addressee, followed by male–male (30%) and quite a few male–female (4%) and female–female (4%) email directives. In the PS emails, most directives were exchanged between male participants (31%), followed by female– male (23%) and female-group (15%) email directive constellations. As some email writers produced more than one directive in the present corpus, the possibility of a random effect was considered and tested statistically. According to Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]), the variables SD, P and ranking of imposition (RI) have an influence on language use and, more specifically, on the degree of politeness invested. As these variables are situation and context specific in contrast to the more stable

52  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

macro-social speaker attributes, they can be described as micro-social factors of language variation (cf. Schneider & Barron, 2008). Due to the context specificity, an assessment of these variables requires ethnographic observation. In the present study, the variables were assessed based on participant observation, i.e. my own knowledge about the participants and the workplace, and on interviews with key people in the organization (the hotel manager and the assistant manager). Thus, the assessment procedure involved two steps: firstly, I assessed the value of the three variables for each email exchange, and secondly I interviewed both the manager and the assistant manager on the distance and power relationships between the sender and recipients of the emails as well as on the degrees of imposition involved. In the very few cases where my evaluation differed from the assessment provided by the managers, I opted for the latter due to their affiliation with the organization, which of course had been much longer than mine. The levels and distribution of the three sociological variables are presented in the following sections. Social distance is also known under the labels distance, solidarity, closeness, familiarity or relational intimacy (cf. Spencer-Oatey, 2008). It is characterized by the frequency of contact and length of acquaintance (cf. Slugoski & Turnbull, 1988), sense of like-mindedness and social similarity/difference (cf. Brown & Gilman, 1960), positive/negative affect (cf. Baxter, 1984) and familiarity in the sense of how well people know each other (cf. Holmes, 1990). Thomas (1995) explains the relevance of SD for the study of politeness as follows: It is best seen as a composite of psychologically real factors (status, sex, age, degree of intimacy, etc.) which ‘together determine the overall degree of respectfulness’ within a given speech situation. In other words, if you feel close to someone, because that person is related to you, or you know him or her well or are similar in terms of age, social class, occupation, sex, ethnicity, etc., you feel less need to employ indirectness in say, making a request than you would if you were making the same request to a complete stranger. (Thomas, 1995: 128)

While a number of researchers in CCP have operationalized SD in terms of contact only in that ‘–SD’ was ascribed to interlocutors who know each other and ‘+SD’ was used to describe strangers (cf. e.g. Díaz Pérez, 2006), it is important to keep in mind that the degree of SD depends on both the length of acquaintance and the degree of liking. It should therefore be acknowledged that SD represents a scalar (and not a binary) variable by offering at least a threefold distinction. As a consequence, SD was categorized into the following three levels in this book: (1) low SD: close colleagues, relationship beyond business partnership;

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  53

(2) medium SD: colleagues/business partners, have met in person; (3) high SD: distant colleagues, only email contact so far. For both the BE and PS emails, most (51% BE and 39% PS) directives were exchanged between ordinary colleagues or business partners, thus interlocutors with medium SD (cf. Table 2.3). The second most frequent level of SD between both BE and PS writers and addressees was a low SD (31% in the BE directives and 25% in the PS directives), followed by high SD relationships in 14% of the BE directives and 10% of the PS email directives. While the amount of one-to-many email directives was very low (4%) in the BE data set, more than a quarter (26%) of PS email directives were sent to a group. Along with the variable SD, many empirical studies have provided evidence for an association between language use and power, also referred to as social power, status, dominance or authority (cf. Spencer-Oatey, 2008). Brown and Gilman (1972) give the following definition for P: One person may be said to have power over another in the degree that he is able to control the behavior of the other. Power is a relationship between at least two persons, and it is nonreciprocal in the sense that both cannot have power in the same area of behavior. There are many bases of power – physical strength, wealth, age, sex, institutionalized role in the church, the state, the army or within the family. (Brown & Gilman, 1972: 255)

In the business context, coercive power and legitimate power are particularly relevant (cf. French & Raven, 1959). French and Raven (1959) explain that Person A can be said to have coercive power over Person B if A has control over negative outcomes, including the allocation of undesirable tasks that B wants to avoid. If A further has the right to prescribe or expect certain things of B, A can also be said to have legitimate power over B. Leichty and Applegate (1991) add that legitimate power can be the result of factors such as social status, rank or institutionalized role depending on the specific situation. A number of researchers have ascertained the effect of power on directives in particular, as outlined in Section 1.3. In the email directives of the present study, the variable P takes three different levels: (1) downward P: directive sent to a subordinate; (2) equal P: directive sent to an equal; (3) upward P: directive sent to a superordinate. In both data sets, the vast majority of directives were sent to status equals (91% of the BE and 62% of the PS directives; cf. Table  2.3). The low

54  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

number of email directives exchanged between status unequal writers reflects the general egalitarian workplace culture. It needs to be kept in mind, however, that the power distribution only refers to the email communication of the workplace. A study into the spoken discourse of the organization would most probably reveal more instances of downward and upward communication as the administrative staff communicates with the service or housekeeping staff almost exclusively FTF and not via emails. Email directives exchanged between employees of the hotel resort and the cooperating companies were also categorized as having an equal P based on the assessment interview with the hotel and sales manager, who justified this classification with the shared aim of cooperating companies. While the objective of the hotel resort is to fill the rooms and apartments with as many guests as possible by selling a specific number of contingents to the travel agencies at a preferably high rate, the travel agencies aim at acquiring valuable and upmarket hotels at a preferably low price to attract new and old clients. Neither the buying travel agencies nor the selling hotels can therefore be said to have power over the other. Instead, both depend on reaching an agreement and benefitting from it. Various scholars have found that the variables SD and P interrelate and that it is therefore sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two (cf. Thomas, 1995). In an organization, this may result in colleagues of the same hierarchical level maintaining a close relationship while a boss and an employee may share an interest in keeping some distance. This, however, is not necessarily always the case and can vary culturally. Spencer-Oatey (1997), for example, found in a study of British and Chinese perceptions of tutor–postgraduate relations that P and SD were significantly negatively correlated for the British participants, but unrelated for the Chinese respondents. Thus, while there was a link for the British participants between P and SD in that the greater the degree of P difference perceived, the greater the degree of SD perceived, there was no link between the two for the Chinese participants. Concerning the degree of impact of SD and P on language use, Wolfson (1988) claims that status differences may be overridden when people are close to each other, so upward communication can be informal and direct. This, however, presupposes a workplace culture that allows for the development of close relationships between status unequals in the first place; this certainly cannot be generalized. Another micro-social factor influencing strategy use is the degree (or ranking) of imposition (RI) associated with the speech event. While Spencer-Oatey (2008) prefers the term costs and describes RI as just one type of cost next to effort, time, inconvenience and risk, Thomas (1995: 130) defines RI simply as the answer to the question of ‘how great is the request you are making?’ and discusses the size of the imposition in terms of Goffman’s (1967) concept of free and non-free goods. Free goods, free services or free information are those things that are freely available, e.g.

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  55

asking someone the time or to pass the salt in a restaurant (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978]). Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]: 77) consider RI in proportion ‘to the expenditure of: (a) services (including the provision of time), and (b) goods (including non-material goods like information, as well as the expression of regard and other face payments)’. As RI, in contrast to SD and P, does not primarily refer to the writer– addressee relationship, Blum-Kulka and House (1989) set these variables apart by classifying RI as a context internal factor and SD and P as context external factors. They explain that ‘context internal factors are those features of the context directly related to its requestive nature, like the type of request goal, the degree of imposition involved for the speaker relative to the specific goal, and the prerequisites needed for compliance’ (Blum-Kulka & House, 1989: 131). Context external factors, on the other hand, ‘include the categories social distance and social power and participants’ rights and obligation, as reflected in the role constellation of the participants’ (Blum-Kulka & House, 1989: 131). RI and P are, however, closely related as the RI increases if the writer issuing a directive is not legitimated to do so and the addressee is not obliged to comply (cf. Fukushima, 2000). In the workplace context, a person’s job description and role determine whether he/she is obliged to comply with what it is he/she is being asked to do. Role determines P and to some extent SD, and the question of whether an imbalance is created through the debt incurred by issuing a directive. With regard to this, Spencer-Oatey (2000a) explains as follows: In the commercial world costs lead to debts if the bills are not paid. In the world of social interaction there is also a sense of indebtedness and a need for book balancing. For example, if someone does a favor for someone else, a slight equilibrium results with a greater favor leading to a greater disequilibrium. Balance needs to be restored. (Spencer-Oatey, 2000a: 36)

In emails, balance is often restored through the word thanks (cf. Waldvogel, 2005). It can be argued that most workplace situations are standard situations (cf. House, 1989: 115) in the sense that the addressee can be expected to be able and is obliged to carry out a directive and the writer can be expected to have the right to make it, and that therefore no real imposition is placed on the addressee. However, especially in flat hierarchy situations (cf. most of the email situations in the present study), there are quite clear differences in the RI so that it makes sense to distinguish between the directives on this basis. In the present study, two levels of RI are distinguished. The main criteria are the time and nature of the task, i.e. whether it is a routine task covered in the addressee’s work description or a task of a more

56  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

extraordinary nature involving a special favor and some expenditure of time. Based on these aspects, the following rating system was used: (1) low RI: routine task; (2) high RI: special favor. In both data sets, the vast majority of the email directives have been rated as containing a low RI: 70% in the BE and 82% in the PS data sets (cf. Table 2.3). Again, the directives have been judged in terms of RI according to the two-step assessment procedure previously outlined, my own evaluation, followed, and possibly modified, by insiders’ evaluations. In sum, the assessment of the macro- and micro-social variables has involved an elaborate ethnographic approach based on participant observation and interviews. It has to be acknowledged that, apart from the distinction between micro- and macro-social variables, there are different levels of situation dependency for the micro-social variables as imposition and purpose are completely dependent of the actual situation in which they are produced while distance and power remain fairly constant within the CoP. The somewhat uneven distribution of the various variable values in the BE and PS email directives are considered in the quantitative and statistical analyses. 2.4 Identification of Directives, Coding Scheme and Statistics Identification of directive speech events

Directives can take a wide range of different surface realizations, as discussed in the previous sections. While IFIDs, such as please, performative verbs or imperative forms are widely regarded as indexing the illocutionary force of a directive, this book accepts the view that no linguistic form can be taken to inherently convey a directive function. It may be true that the majority of speech events containing verbs such as request or ask in English and rogar or pedir in Spanish convey a directive intention. This is, however, not guaranteed unless the addressee interprets the message as a directive. The identification procedure of directive speech events is therefore based on a strict function-to-form heuristic in the present book. In order to ensure reliability in speech event identification, the addressee’s interpretation of an email as a directive has been taken into account. Virtually all the email directives considered in the analysis were followed by an uptake by the recipient which marked the initial email as a directive. Levinson (1983) comments as follows: Conversation, as opposed to monologue, offers the analyst an invaluable analytical resource: as each turn is responded to by a second, we find displayed in that second an analysis of the first by the recipient. Such an

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  57

analysis is thus provided by participants not only for each other but for analysts too. (Levinson, 1983: 321; original emphasis)

As emails resemble oral dialogues when they are synchronously used (cf. Dürscheid & Frehner, 2013), an email can be compared to a turn of a conversation. The verbal uptake by the addressee then provides the most reliable criterion for identifying instantiations of directives in naturally occurring discourse. There are, however, also situations (both in written and spoken conversations) where no verbal uptake is produced. Sbisà (2002) claims that the addressee does not necessarily have to produce an explicit verbal response for the speaker (or writer) to understand that the recipient has identified the directive. Instead, the author claims that the felicitous interpretation of an utterance is the default case as long as the speaker’s intention is not questioned otherwise: If a man dressed as a policeman stops my car and says ‘Your driving license, please’, I take it as an order and take for granted that he is a policeman, thereby endowed with the authority to give such orders to drivers. I might not know, nor have the opportunity to check, whether the person who advises me is really competent and the speaker too might not have reflexively evaluated his or her own competence before speaking. I do not even wonder whether the man who stops my car is a real policeman (as opposed to a thief in disguise). The satisfaction of felicity conditions is assumed by default, that is, as a first option and without raising the issue explicitly. (Sbisà, 2002: 425)

Based on this assumption, the very few email directives that lacked not only explicit verbal response, but also any kind of challenging comment (or ‘trouble talk’, cf. Flöck, 2016: 106) by the recipient, can be interpreted as indicating the correct identification of the writer’s intention based on contextual factors. The identification heuristic of directive speech events employed in the present study thus relies on a sequential, qualitative analysis. The procedure is based on three criteria: (1) whether a verbal uptake has been provided; (2) whether the addressee, the writer or the contextual information (based on interviews with participants) has produced the (explicit or implicit) cue indicating felicitous interpretation by the addressee; and (3) whether the directive was met with compliance or non-compliance. In the present study, five different types of directive interpretation were found, as illustrated in Figure  2.2 (cf. Flöck, 2016: 92; modified adoption). The directives of the present study were mainly identified on the basis of the recipient’s verbal uptake. This contained either (a) an explicit comment, which signaled compliance or non-compliance with the directive; or (b) an implicit cue of compliance or non-compliance. Example  (17)

58  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

explicit (a) verbal uptake implicit (b)

identification of email as directive non-verbal uptake

compliance non-compliance compliance non-compliance

further email by writer (c) further email by addressee (d) no cue, no ‘trouble talk’ (e)

compliance non- compliance

Figure 2.2   Identification process of directives applied in the present study

represents a type (a) directive, which is followed by an explicit verbal response signaling non-compliance (underlined) with the initial directive (bold). (17) Good Afternoon Steve, I hope you are well. We have noticed that we have a few dates where we are oversold on our Inland view single rooms. Would it be acceptable for us to use twins for singles, that we have available within our allocation, to cover these over bookings? Many thanks, Theresa (E187) – Response: Dear Theresa, I can help with particular dates and allotments however we cannot give you the doubles for single use. Sorry for this but let me know the dates to see if I can help. Kind regards, Steve Example (18) is a case of a type (b) directive in that its response contains an implicit cue by the addressee signaling non-compliance. (18) Dear Steve, We are now close to finalizing our team and will shortly be looking to pay a 30% deposit initially for 10 rooms (20 persons sharing) for 3 nights beginning Friday 20th May 2011 at [name] at [amount] Euros per person per night. Could you please let us have the amount required in Sterling and your account details including your IBAN number. Kind regards, Michael (E157) – Response: Dear Mr Michael, I am glad to hear that you will definitely be coming and have attached your Bank details for you. The total amount is […] and 30% would be […] obviously the final amount could vary according to the final number or room nights booked. If you could transfer the amount in Euros it would be a lot easier for us as the exchange rate changes continuously. As soon as we receive the deposit I shall confirm the amount received and your reservation. Kind regards, Steve When, however, an email with a verbal uptake by the addressee is missing, it can be assumed that the addressee has expressed compliance or non-compliance through a different channel, e.g. in a telephone or FTF conversation,

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  59

or has just followed the directive without commenting on it. The former case, i.e. the assumption that the addressee has expressed compliance or non-compliance through a communication channel other than email, is based on cues by (c) the writer or (d) the addressee in subsequent emails. Example (19) represents a type (c) directive, which was followed by another email by the writer indicating previous compliance by the addressee. (19) En la discoteca del bar podríamos poner música y dejar las copas a […] euros si puede ser o sino si es posible hacer la fiesta en lugar que tenéis un poco apartado donde se pueden hacer actividades. Sino dime tú cómo se podría hacer, es para poder hacer algo por la noche. Ya me dirás. Muchas gracias. Un saludo, Juan (S3) – Pues mira que rápido se ha solucionado, me parece estupendo!!! Te adjunto el contrato de [name]. Muchas gracias. Un saludo, Juan (‘In the disco of the bar we could play some music and sell the drinks at […] euros if that is possible, or, if not, it may be possible to hold the party in the separate room you have where different types of activities can be done. If not, you tell me how this could be done, it is to do something at night. Let me know. Thank you very much. Regards, Juan – Now look how quickly this has been solved, I think it is fantastic!!! I’ve attached the contract for [name]. Thank you very much. Regards, Juan’) Example (20), on the other hand, reveals the felicitous interpretation of José’s directive (bold) through an email in which the addressee (Guillermo) performs the directed action (underlined), thus a type (d) directive. (20) Aquí os adjunto la información de referencia que nos habían solicitado algunos comerciales de empresas participantes. Ruego se la hagáis llegar a TODAS las empresas que participaron. Tenemos un informe completo de [name], en el cual aparecen también los resultados del marketing viral, acciones de RR.PP., estadísticas del online, etc. Si alguien necesitara alguna información adicional a la proporcionada, ruego me lo indiquéis. Los datos que ofrecemos, siguiendo las indicaciones de nuestro Conseller, son los facilitados por [name] en su informe. Gracias, José (S25) – Buenos días, os adjunto información referencia al Uk roadshow. también os agradeceríamos que nos hicieseis llegar vuestros comentarios sobre la acción promocional. Muchas gracias, Guillermo (‘Here you find attached the reference information which some commercial managers of the participating companies have asked for. I request you to pass it on to ALL the companies that participated. We have a complete report of [name], which also contains the results of the viral marketing, PR campaigns, online statistics etc. If somebody needs further information in addition to the information provided,

60  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

I request you to indicate this to me. The details we are offering, following the indications of our minister, are those facilitated by [name] in his report. Thanks, José – Good morning, I’m sending you attached the information regarding the Uk roadshow. We would also be grateful if you could forward us your comments about the promotional actions. Thank you very much, Guillermo’) The final type (e) directive constitutes those very few instantiations in which neither a verbal uptake nor any further cue is provided, which may indicate felicitous interpretation by the addressee. If, however, the addressee did not produce any form of trouble talk, it is assumed, following Sbisà (2002), that the directive has been felicitously understood. Example  (21) represents such a type (e) directive. According to Sbisà (2002), the directive interpretation of strategies (bold) such as in Tom’s email is so conventionalized that the illocution can be taken to be understood by the addressee(s) if they do not challenge it. (21) Hi Steve, our Head of Yield has agreed to set the sales targets as 80% each month, so that we make sure that we maximize the sales for you outside the peak season. I need you to contact the [name] office every week and look at the seats left to sell, and decide between you what empty rooms (if any) are likely to be left and put through to the Yield Manager a suggestion. The yield manager will then confirm and action any hand back of rooms. I have input a new deposit of €[amount] to be repaid by deduction from Sept invoices, which Andrea has promised we should be able to get you before the end of April. Peter please set up on the Perf [name] recovery report 50 Units only from Jun to Sept, import into Topics costing etc. Thanks. Rebecca can you please get Martin to load these room in TOS, and can you please make sure that Company B is blocked. If there is anything wrong or that I have forgotten, please let me know. Tom (E21–E24) The interpretation of Tom’s directive intentions in the emails addressed to Peter and Rebecca are further supported by his frequent use of please. In summary, all emails are included in the analysis for which either the interlocutors provide explicit or implicit evidence for the felicitous interpretation of the directive or in which any kind of trouble talk regarding the writer’s intention is absent. This identification procedure generated a total corpus of 754 email directives, out of which the PS sub-corpus contains 416 email directives and the BE sub-corpus 338 email directives, as outlined in Table 2.1.

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  61

The coding scheme

The coding scheme for the analysis of the directives identified in this study is mainly based on Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) taxonomy. Their coding manual for requests and apologies (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989c) is particularly helpful because it accounts for the various components a directive sequence may include. Blum-Kulka et  al. (1989) distinguish between the directive proper (head act) and the modification strategies employed to reduce the face threat involved. Modification strategies are, however, used not only to downgrade but also to upgrade the directive force, e.g. through the use of a time intensifier strategy. Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989) coding scheme is informed by Pufahl Bax (1986) and Ervin-Tripp (1976), whose research studies have relied on naturally occurring language data, and could therefore be considered a useful framework for the analysis of the spontaneous email data in the present study although it was originally applied to DCT data. Since its introduction, numerous researchers in CCP and interlanguage pragmatics have adopted the coding scheme for the analysis of directives, thereby providing evidence for its validity. Nevertheless, it was necessary to add categories that are not covered by BlumKulka et al.’s (1989) categorization in order to account for the strategies employed in the email directives and the event nature of the present data, in particular. The coding scheme employed in this book thus distinguishes between the head act strategies and various modification strategies achieved by lexical, syntactic or sequencing devices. The following sections will outline the kind of head act strategies and modification strategies that the BE and PS participants used in their production of email directives. Head act strategies

Blum-Kulka et  al. (1989b: 17) define the head act of a directive as ‘the part of the sequence which might serve to realize the act independently of other elements’. It can thus be considered the core of a directive, thereby constituting a crucial part in the analysis of both the production and the perception data in the present study. Following more recent scholars, who have investigated the realization strategies of directives in service encounters (cf. Fox, 2015; Kuroshima, 2010; Lindström, 2005), this study also treats those strategies as directives that do not contain a directive proper but that have been traditionally referred to as pre-requests (cf. Levinson, 1983) or preparator modification strategies (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989c). These can be described as strategies in which:

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[t]he speaker prepares his or her addressee for the ensuing request by announcing that he or she will make a request by asking about the potential availability of the addressee for carrying out the request, or by asking for the addressee’s permission to make the request – without however giving away the nature or indeed the content of the request. (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989c: 287)

Research has shown that the production of such pre-requests or preparators often leads to the desired perlocution, i.e. the addressee carrying out the directed act, without having stated the directive proper at all. Fox (2015) explains that it is the institutional context which is responsible for the quick interpretation of the illocution, making a directive proper redundant.5 Walker (2014; cited in Fox, 2015: 44) thus argues that ‘[w]hat have been previously regarded as elements of delay preceding requests […] are perhaps better thought of as accountings for the activity of requesting’. In line with this view, Example (22) has been classified as a directive in the present study. (22) Do you have something he can plug his laptop and portable printer to??? (E281) Initially and without considering the context, (22) may be interpreted as a request for information or as a preparator questioning the precondition (availability of a plug connector) for compliance with the directive (providing him with a plug connector) that one might expect to follow. However, due to the workplace context and the contextual knowledge derived from previous emails, in which the writer organizes an appointment between the sales manager (addressee) and one of her colleagues to sign a contract, the addressee can be assumed to interpret (22) as a directive although a directive proper is missing. These cases have been coded as instantiations of the hint category as the directive force can only be interpreted with reference to the context and is not explicitly expressed. Blum-Kulka et al. (1989c) propose nine strategies for the realization of directives based on previous typologies of directive patterns (Ervin-Tripp, 1976; House & Kasper, 1981; Searle, 1975). Most of the nine strategies are also found in this study. However, a sub-strategy of the mood derivable strategy (non-imperatives), the pre-decided statement strategy and the embedded directive strategy have been added. Moreover, the need/want statement strategy has further been differentiated into explicit and implicit need/want statements, while the hint strategy in the present study represents a conflation of Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989c) strong hints and mild hints. Table 2.4 provides an overview of the head act strategies employed by both the BE and the PS email writers in the present study. In contrast to BlumKulka et al. (1989), the order of the strategies does not imply an a priori scalar characterization of the strategies in terms of their perceived directness.

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Table 2.4  Head act strategies employed in the present study Strategy

Explanation

Example

(1)

Mood derivable (a) Imperative

Illocutionary force derivable from grammatical mood employed

Send us the invoices (E41)

(b) Non-imperative

Illocutionary force derivable from elliptical or agrammatical expressions

Any news please? (E244)

(2)

Locution derivable

Obligation expressed to carry out You will have to speak the act (also ‘obligation statement’) to [name]! (E248)

(3)

Performative (a) Explicit

Illocutionary force named explicitly We special request two by Means of a performative verb adjoining rooms (E242)

(b) Hedged

Naming of illocutionary force modified by hedging expressions

I would like to request accommodation (E133)

Need/want statement (a) Explicit

Writer explicitly states desire that addressee carries out an act (addressee and desired act mentioned)

I need you to contact the office every week (E21)

(b) Implicit

Writer implicitly states desire that addressee carries out an act (addressee and verb specifying act not mentioned)

I would need 3 single rooms (E31)

(5)

Preparatory

Illocutionary force expressed by conventionalized reference to preparatory conditions of directive

Please can you email me your phone number? (E3)

(6)

Conventionalized formula Illocutionary force expressed by formulaic linguistic means

Await to hear from you (E12)

(7)

Hint

Illocutionary force only interpretable by contexts, no reference to directive proper

Don’t think you have answered me on this one…? (E66)

(8)

Pre-decided statement

Illocutionary force expressed by optimistic assumption about the addressee’s compliance

We check all the details during the morning (E97)

(9)

Embedded directive

Illocutionary force embedded in a final adverbial clause

I’m sending you the contracts to look over (E236)

(4)

The mood derivable (as in Example 23) refers to directive strategies in which the illocutionary force can be derived from the grammatical mood of the verb (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989c: 278). It more precisely refers to the imperative as sentence type opposed to the interrogative and declarative. (23) Llámame cuando tengas un momentito… (S36) (‘Call me when you have a moment [diminutive]’) This category also contains elliptical strategies (as in Example 24), as well as the infinitive strategy in the PS data set (as in Example 25). The Spanish use of the infinitive instead of the imperative constitutes an ‘extremely popularized practice’ (Bou Franch 2016, pers. comm.) characteristic of colloquial, oral communication and is further considered an ‘incorrect’, ‘agrammatical’ use of the imperative (González Argüello, 2000: 386).

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As the directive function can be derived from both the elliptical and the infinitive forms, the two strategies have been conflated with the nonimperative sub-strategy of the mood derivable category. (24) Facturación directa (S129) (‘direct invoicing’) (25) Por favor, dejarlo de nuevo claro otra vez (S142) (‘Please state this clearly once again’) In locution derivable strategies (cf. Example  26), the writer expresses the obligation of the addressee to carry out an act by means of a modal verb of obligation or necessity (should, have to, need to, must, ought to in English and tener que, deber de, haber de, necesitar, estar obligado/a, hay que in Spanish). The illocutionary force can thus be derived from the semantic meaning of the locution. (26)  Como costumbre, debéis de comprobar que las instrucciones que dais luego se cumplen (S143) (‘As a habit, you have to check whether the instructions you gave have later been followed’) In performative strategies, the writer names the illocutionary force. This can be done either by means of a performative verb (cf. Example  27), namely request, ask, suggest in English and rogar, pedir, solicitar, sugerir, proponer in Spanish, or by a hedged version of the performative verb, i.e. a hedged performative (cf. Example 28). (27) Ruego me digas a la mayor brevedad posible que habeis [sic] decidido (S89) (‘I ask you to tell me as quickly as possible what you have decided’) (28) Te rogaría me informaras si estás interesado en participar (S330) (‘I would like to ask you to inform me if you are interested in participating’) Need/want statements refer to strategies which state the writer’s necessity or desire that the addressee carries out the act. While Blum-Kulka et al. (1989c) classifies this category as direct strategies, Trosborg (1995), for instance, considers need/want statements as conventionally indirect strategies. Others, again, categorize want statements as conventionally indirect strategies and need statements as non-conventional hint strategies (cf. Rinnert & Kobayashi, 1999). I argue that these divergent views can be explained by the difference in illocutionary force expressed in, on the one hand, need/want statements specifying both the agent and the verb of the directed action (cf. Example 29), and those which do not specify agent and verb (cf. Example  30). In this book, the former are referred to as explicit need/want statements while the latter are labeled implicit need/want statements.

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(29) Necesito que me pases los datos para poder hacer la factura definitiva (S235) (‘I need you to forward me the details to be able to write the definitive bill’) (30) Necesito todos los contactos de las diferentes personas (S357) (‘I need all the contact details of the different people’) The preparatory strategy (cf. Example  31) is often seen as the most conventionalized and most polite realization strategy of directives, as outlined in Section  1.2. In this strategy, the writer makes reference to the preparatory conditions of the directive by questioning or stating the addressee’s ability or willingness to comply. While Blum-Kulka et  al. (1989c) only account for the instances of questioning the preparatory conditions (Can you do X?) and thus label this category query preparatory, the present study also includes statements about the preconditions of the directive (You can do X). (31) Puedes reconfirmar que los precios son por hab/dia? (S249) (‘Can you reconfirm that the prices refer to room/day?’) With regard to the conventionalized formula strategy (cf. Example 32), the coding scheme used in the present study again diverges from BlumKulka et al.’s (1989c) coding scheme in that it is not limited to suggestory formula strategies, given their very low occurrence in the present study, which would not have justified such a fine-grained differentiation. Following Flöck and Geluykens (2015), the category instead also covers other routine formulae, which are more closely associated with the genre (business discourse) than suggestory formulae seem to be. (32) En espera de una respuesta por tu parte (S413) (‘Awaiting your response’) The hint strategy (cf. Example  33) in the present coding scheme represents a conflation of Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989: 47) differentiation into strong hints and mild hints, as previously mentioned. The authors differ between these two types of hints according to the number of contextual cues provided. While strong hints contain partial reference to the object or element needed for the implementation of the act, mild hints make no reference to the directive proper but are interpretable by the context only, according to Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). Although it is true that some hints are more tentative than others, such a distinction is problematic, as it presupposes an objective interpretation of the context based on a binary categorization. However, I agree with Márquez Reiter (2000: 87), who comments that ‘[a] mild hint could be interpreted as a strong hint depending upon the personality of the speaker […] and the relationship between the interlocutors’. By combining all hints into one

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strategy, the coding scheme of the present study follows later studies of hints in directives (cf. Achiba, 2003; Márquez Reiter, 2000; Schauer, 2009; Weizman, 1993). (33) Todos sabemos que el cuarto frío no es un vestuario (S54) (‘We all know that the cold room is not a wardrobe’) While Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) coding scheme ends with the hint strategies as the ninth strategy at the lowest end of their proposed scale, my coding scheme further includes the pre-decided statement strategy and the embedded directive strategy. As mentioned above, no a priori judgments on their inherent directness were made. In other words, the fact that these two strategies are listed as the 10th and 11th strategies does not imply that they are the least indirect, let alone most polite directive strategies. Pre-decided statements refer to strategies in which the writer reveals an optimistic attitude in view of the addressee’s compliance with the directive by expressing a certain degree of presumptuousness. The category has also been found in the study of students’ email requests to faculty by Economidou-Kogetsidis (2011), who associates this category with Brown and Levinson’s (1987: 126–127) Be optimistic strategy which implies ‘that it is nothing to ask or that the cooperation between S and H means that such small things can be taken for granted’. The strategy is usually operationalized by a declarative sentence type (as in Example 34). (34) Mañana lo revisamos todo (S140) (‘Tomorrow we check all of that’) The final category in the present coding scheme, the embedded directive (cf. Example  35), refers to those strategies in which the illocutionary force is embedded in a subordinate clause. More precisely, the writer may express the directive in an adverbial clause of purpose (I’m doing X so that you do Y). (35) Te paso el programa que tengo con horarios para que compruebes que son viables. (S346) (‘I’m sending you the program I have with the schedule so that you check whether it is viable’) Apart from the list of directive strategies, Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) also provide a ranking system in terms of directness associated with the individual strategies. They refer to the concept of (in)directness as ‘the relative length of the inferential path needed to arrive at an utterance’s illocutionary point’ (Blum-Kulka, 1987: 133). Thus, the more indirect a realization strategy, the longer the inferential path is expected to be

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on the part of the addressee. The authors further propose a threefold distinction in addition to the overall ranking of the nine strategies into three levels of directness (or super-strategies) based on whether the illocutionary force is conveyed directly, conventionally indirectly or nonconventionally indirectly, as briefly mentioned above. They thus suggest the following categorization: (1) direct strategies: mood derivable, locution derivable, explicit performative, hedged performative, want/need statement; (2) conventionally indirect strategies: query preparatory, suggestory formula; (3) non-conventionally indirect strategies: strong hint, mild hint. Most researchers who have adopted Blum-Kulka’s et  al.’s CCSARP coding scheme have also applied the threefold distinction to their data analysis. I will, however, not be adopting their ranking system because it is problematic in view of three crucial aspects. Firstly, the ranking is based on a priori etic (outsider) directness considerations without making recourse to emic (insider) evaluations. I, however, contend that perceptions of linguistic strategies in terms of in/ directness are context dependent and may vary between cultures. In analogy to politeness considerations, it is important that researchers also base their evaluations of directness on first-order perceptions and investigate both the production and the perception of linguistic strategies within the same context or the same CoP. The second point refers to the fact that Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989c) directness ranking scheme does not seem to correspond to first-order evaluations. As a matter of fact, Blum-Kulka (1987: 132) herself has conducted experiments measuring perceptions of indirectness in English and Hebrew directives ‘to check whether native speakers’ intuitions indeed confirm the psycholinguistic validity of the postulated scale across different languages’. Blum-Kulka’s (1987: 132) main conclusions include that there is ‘no linear relationship between indirectness and politeness’ and that there seem to be ‘language specific conventions of forms and means’ due to cross-linguistic differences found in both directness and politeness ratings, thus supporting my previous claim of culture specificity. Furthermore, the directness ratings in her study do not coincide with the ranking scheme proposed in the CCSARP (cf. Blum-Kulka, 1987: 137). While Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989) categorization of strong and mild hints as a separate directness level can be considered as justified based on the mean directness ratings, the grouping of the first five strategies as direct strategies in contrast to the grouping of the query preparatory and suggestory strategies seems, however, somewhat counterintuitive (cf. Blum-Kulka, 1987: 137).

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The third and final argument against the application of Blum-Kulka et  al.’s (1989c) directness ranking refers to the inconsistencies in the application of the coding scheme among researchers. As briefly outlined above, divergent views exist on, for example, the categorization of the want/need statement strategy. If the strategy is categorized as a direct strategy in one study, but as a conventionally indirect or non-conventionally indirect strategy in another, this will result in distorted conclusions when making comparisons at the super-strategy level. A cross-cultural analysis of directive head act strategies should therefore be based on formal categories, as proposed by Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989c) strategy types. An a priori classification of the formal categories into superordinate directness levels leads to simplified conclusions and neglects the culture- and context-specific nature of directness and politeness considerations. The perception of the individual strategy types should instead be studied by taking participant evaluations into account (cf. Section 2.3). With regard to the analysis of the head act strategies, the present study also takes the perspective the writer adopts in the realization of the directive into account. The writer can either emphasize the role of the addressee as the agent of the action by employing the second person (cf. Example 36), or the function of the writer as beneficiary of the directive by employing the first-person singular (cf. Example  37). The writer can alternatively adopt an inclusive perspective by referring to both writer and addressee by means of the first-person plural (cf. Example 38), or avoid this trade-off by employing an impersonal form (cf. Example 39). (36) Can you give me a better offer for this arrival? (E13) (37) Could I please have your confirmation? (E14) (38) Podemos añadir una nota destacando que la oferta acaba el [día]? (S268) (‘Can we add a note which emphasizes that the offer ends on the [day]?’) (39) se entiende que los precios sean más competitivos que el que tiene el hotel venta directa (S273) (‘it shall be understood that the prices are more competitive than those the hotel offers in direct sale’) Furthermore, the sentence types of the head act strategies were analyzed as separate categories. While the interrogative form is commonly viewed as a downgrading syntactic modifier (cf. Blum-Kulka et  al., 1989), this was not done in the present study since strategy types and sentence types are not independent variables but partly determine each other. The mood derivable strategy is operationalized by the imperative sentence type in the majority of cases while preparatory strategies are often realized by interrogatives. I will thus treat the imperative, interrogative and declarative sentence types as independent categories. Contrary to some

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researchers who seem to imply a direct correlation between impoliteness/directness and the use of imperatives, or between a higher degree of politeness/indirectness and the use of interrogatives and declaratives, such a correlation will not be assumed in the present book. As outlined earlier, not only the directives proper, but also everything surrounding the head act will be analyzed in the present study. Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989c) modification strategies have again served as a helpful starting point. As with the coding of the head act strategies, a number of categories have been added to the existing coding scheme or modified before adopting. The coding schemes proposed by Economidou-Kogetsidis (2011), Flöck and Geluykens (2015), Schauer (2009) and Sifianou (1992) have served as additional sources for the classification of the modification categories. The primary focus in the analysis of the modification strategies will not be on their position with regard to the head act strategy (internal vs external) but on their function with regard to the directive force (downgrading vs upgrading). Attention will also be paid to other discourse sequencing moves, which do not seem to have a specific mitigating or aggravating function with regard to the directive, such as orientation moves. As these kinds of discourse strategies can, however, be seen as establishing shared knowledge and thus grounds for solidarity between writer and addressee (cf. Merrison et al., 2012), they constitute an important part in the analysis of modification strategies in the present project. The modifiers with an obvious downgrading function (such as thanking sequences) or upgrading function (such as urgency markers) have been categorized as downgraders and upgraders, respectively. While the head act strategies are mutually exclusive, the modification strategies are not and are actually very often combined with each other. The following section provides further information on the types of downgrading, upgrading and sequencing modifiers identified and analyzed. Modification strategies: Downgraders

The illocutionary force and thus the potential face threat involved in the head act strategies can be downgraded internally through syntactic structures or lexical and phrasal elements, or externally through what BlumKulka et al. (1989b) call supportive moves. With regard to the syntactic modifiers (Table  2.5), it is important to mention that only the devices that are optional in the given context were considered (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989c: 281). Where, for example, the subjunctive mood of the verb in Spanish is obligatory due to the preceding conjugated verb, such as after ruego or agradecería, the subjunctive has not been categorized as a syntactic downgrader. Thus, only if it can be assumed that the writer has made the choice to employ a specific, usually more complex syntactic structure than necessary, does it count as a syntactic downgrader.

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Table 2.5  Internal syntactic downgraders Downgrader

Description

Example

Tense

Past tense is used as a distancing device

Quería confirmar si la idea es poner precio final de paquete en el folleto? (S280) (‘I wanted to confirm if the idea is to put the final price of the package into the brochure?’)

Aspect

Durative aspect marker I am hoping you will be able to do the same is used to minimize the with the September ones (E325) temporal validity of directive

Conditional clause

Irrealis state is invoked; illocution is expressed in the conditional clause

si lo pudieras tener mañana para repasar genial (S378) (‘If you could have it ready by tomorrow for revision, great’)

Subjunctive

Subjunctive is used as a distancing device

ya me concedas una visita para conocernos personalmente (S87) (‘Let me grant a visit so that we get to know each other in person’)

Conditional

Irrealis state is invoked as a distancing device

Could I change that meeting to 12.15? (E285)

The syntactic modifiers presented in Table 2.5 are mainly employed to create a metaphorical distance from the deictic center (I-HERENOW), thereby reducing the expectations of compliance with the directive (cf. Haverkate, 1992). With regard to the use of conditional verb forms, a difference in morphology between English and Spanish becomes apparent. Because English counts as a relatively analytic language, i.e. it has lost most of its inflectional morphemes, the conditional is expressed in the modal past, e.g. I would do it. As Spanish is a relatively synthetic language, grammatical information is often inherent in inflectional morphemes, such as the conditional in e.g. lo haría. Thus, while there is a distinction between the conditional and the past tense form of a modal verb in Spanish (e.g. conditional podría and imperfect podía), the two have conflated into one form in the English language (e.g. could). The category can therefore be equally described as the modal past category for the English data (cf. Flöck, 2016) whereas it only refers to the conditional verb form (and not to the modal past) in the Spanish data set. As all of the syntactic modifiers are used to create distance from the real world and refer to a possible world instead, they can be interpreted as appealing to the addressee’s negative face by increasing the possibility and freedom for the latter to say no (cf. Brown & Levinson, 1987). Apart from downgrading the head act syntactically, speakers or writers have the option to downgrade the potential face threat through lexical or phrasal downgraders (Table 2.6). The lexical and phrasal downgraders are employed to either underrepresent (hedge) or modulate (downtoner) the impact of the directive, or to move the focus to the writer’s subjective feelings about the directive (subjectivizer). These again can be seen as mainly addressing the negative face wants of the addressee by showing deference and reducing the

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Table 2.6  Internal lexical and phrasal downgraders Downgrader

Description

Example

Hedge/understater/ diminutive

Adverbial modifier used to underrepresent the state of affairs

¿las cierro o las dejamos un tiepito [sic] más? (S35) (‘shall I close it or do we leave it a bit longer [dim]?’)

Downtoner

Modifier used to modulate the Yes perhaps you could bring them impact of the directive in? (E319)

Subjectivizer

Writer’s subjective opinion visá-vis state of affairs expressed

Politeness marker

Optional element added to bid Please can you respond to my for cooperation emails (E213)

Appealer

Addressee-oriented elements added in a final position

Please let me know cost and availability Steve (E27)

Consultative device

Expression to involve addressee directly bidding for cooperation

sería posible pls. bajar el release a 0 días (S412) (‘would it be possible to reduce the release to 0 days’)

estaré encantado de que nos sentemos y busquemos una solución (S83) (‘I’d be pleased if we sit together and find a solution’)

imposition. The use of politeness markers (please or por favor), appealers or consultative devices, on the other hand, appeals to the addressee’s positive face wants by involving the addressee in the speech event bidding her/him for cooperation. Table 2.7 presents the external downgraders employed and analyzed in the present study. All these downgraders are either preceded or followed by a head act. The external downgrading modifiers again may appeal to the negative face wants of the addressee by showing deference (through the use of disarmer, apologizing), reducing the imposition (imposition minimizer), limiting the validity of the directive (condition) or increasing the addressee’s freedom of action by proposing an alternative to the directive (alternative). Writers may also appeal to the positive face wants of the addressee by preparing the latter for the directive (preparator, getting a precommitment), giving reasons for performing the directive (pre-grounder and post-grounder), attending to addressee’s needs (appreciation, thanking, offering reimbursement, specification for compliance with directive, positive consequences) or stressing common grounds (sweetener, smiley, trailing dots). Joking comments or mitigating boosters may further increase the mitigating effect of downgraders.6 Modification strategies: Upgraders

While usually there has been a focus on the mitigation of the face threat in CCP literature, as discussed above, the present study also accounts for the fact that the illocutionary force of directives may also be aggravated or upgraded. This can be readily observed in the business context due to the urgency and task efficiency involved in the different operative processes.

Description

Phrase added to discard potential objections the addressee might raise when confronted with directive

Apology for directive and imposition incurred

Attempt to reduce imposition placed on addressee

Validity of directive limited to a specific condition

Alternative action to directive provided

Preparation for ensuing directive without expressing content

Check on potential refusal before performance of directive

Reason, explanation or justification for directive preceding head act

Reason, explanation or justification for directive following head act

Appreciation or gratefulness expressed regarding future compliance with directive

Thanks for compliance expressed in pre-closing sequence

Offer of reimbursement of cost involved in directive

Downgrader

Disarmer

Apologizing

Imposition minimizer

Condition

Alternative

Preparator

Getting a precommitment

Pre-grounder

Post-grounder

Appreciation

Thanking

Reimbursement

Table 2.7  External downgrading modifiers

On top of your price reduction, a flight reduction from our side will be added (E44)

Thank you (E243)

If you could related these details to Susan we would be extremely grateful (E252)

Please can you email me your phone number so that I can give you a quick call (E3)

Para mejorarla, puedes hacerme indicaciones siguiendo la ficha técnica (S169) (‘In order to improve it, can you give me indications according to the technical specifications’)

Please can I ask you to help me with the following? (E42)

Nosotros necesitamos algo similar a lo que teníamos previsto (S88) (‘We need something similar to what we have planned’)

Could you be so kind to tell me if I used the right email address or to forward my email to the relevant person? (E39)

Si puedes pásame el programa cuanto antes (S232) (‘If you can, send me the program as soon as possible’)

Cuando puedas ya me pasas el comprobante (S236) (‘When you have time send me the voucher’)

Sorry to be a pain but we have to send the program by tomorrow (E257)

Sé que se pasa [€] de lo que me dijiste pero, si tu quieres, pruébalos el día 13 (S85) (‘I know it is more than the [€] you told me but, if you want, try them out on the 13th’)

Example

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Positive consequences of compliance with directive emphasized

Compliment employed to put the addressee into a positive mood

Emoticon added to express a positive emotion/attitude

Trailing dots indicative of embellishment or digression1

Joke or ironical comment added

Additional modifier used to increase mitigating effect

Positive repercussion

Sweetener/compliment/ingroup marker

Smiley

Trailing dots

Joking

Mitigating booster

1

cf. Colley et al. (2004: 370).

Specification of directive added

Specification

recibe mi más cordial saludo (S187) ‘accept my most cordial greetings’)

Tell José the front window of the house is now flying the Barca flag and the car is decorated with the same (E251)

I suggest we atrt [sic] recover of EBO deposits from [date] at 100%, and then, the [amount] on the [rooms] as per contract from [date]… if that is possible (E143)

a ver si al fin podemos quedar un día :D (S29) (’maybe we can finally hang out one day :D’)

un felicitación por vuestra valiente apuesta de iniciar temporada a partir del [date] (S107) (‘congratulation on your brave move to start the season on the [date]’)

Estoy seguro de que tus clientes estarían encantados de alojarse en nuestro hotel (S30) (‘I am sure that your clients would be pleased to stay at our hotel’)

Could you offer us something along these lines for these dates – it can be any hotel/apartment, not necessarily the hotels/apartments we have contracted (E10)

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The use of upgrading modifiers, however, also seems to be a characteristic of the email medium. In this context, Duthler (2006) explains that the asynchronicity of emails results in an increased number of strategies that not only downgrade an offence but also attempt to minimize the right to refuse it. The aspect of plan-ability within asynchronous communication is what Merrison et al. (2012: 1081) refer to as a one-shot process highlighting the fact that the writer has ‘just one attempt to make good their request’. Thus, apart from appealing to the positive and negative face wants through relational talk, writers also have to make sure that they achieve their directive goals by performing transactional talk. As with downgrading modifiers, upgraders can occur either within or outside the head act. They can also be distinguished according to whether the negative face wants or the positive face wants of the addressee are being threatened. Table 2.8 provides an overview of the upgrading modifiers found and analyzed in the present study. By stressing specific elements of the directive, such as the degree of necessity (intensifier) and urgency (time intensifier), the need for a positive outcome (emphasis on urgency/positive outcome) and for the addressee’s compliance with the directive through repetition or emphasis markers such as capitalization or excessive use of exclamation marks (emphasis), the writer further threatens the addressee’s freedom of action, hence, the latter’s negative face wants. The illocutionary force of a directive can also Table 2.8  Internal and external upgrading modifiers Upgrader

Description

Example

Intensifier

Adverbial modifier used to stress specific elements of the directive

I really want to get something agreed to get the [hotel] in this first edition (E310)

Overstater

Exaggeration used to communicate Can you please quote me the best the need of the directive being met rates you can for the [hotel name] suites (E131)

Time intensifier

Temporal aspect of directive emphasized

necesito confirmación lo antes posible (S239) (‘I need a confirmation as soon as possible’)

Repetition

Repetition of directive employed

las cajas también se han de laminar, caja vacía, caja laminada (S56) (‘the boxes also have to be laminated, empty box, laminated box’)

Emphasis

Emphasis through capitalization, excessive use of exclamation or question marks, underlining or asterisk

*Solo compraremos de NITRILO (S336) (‘we only buy nitrile ones’)

Emphasis on urgency

Urgency/positive outcome emphasized external to head act

please email me back within 7 days of your receipt of this email (E15)

Complaint

Complaint/criticism expressed to achieve heightened effect

The rates have not got more attractive as the half board has been reduced to B&B, please see if you can do better (E28)

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  75

be increased by threatening the addressee’s positive face wants through the use of complaints or criticism. Sequencing strategies

Apart from head act strategies and strategies that downgrade or upgrade the directive force, the present study also takes into account certain discourse strategies of the speech event which may not have a primary downgrading or upgrading function, i.e. sequencing strategies. As outlined above, emails may conceptually resemble either written or spoken communication, depending on the context and synchronicity of email exchanges. It is therefore interesting to analyze the kinds of contexts and situations in which discourse moves such as greetings and closings or orientation moves have been employed by the writer and under which circumstances they have been left out. Table 2.9 presents an overview of the sequencing moves employed by the BE and PS subjects in the present study. The email writers may open an email with a form of greeting, which can be followed by a sequence where they introduce themselves (selfintroduction). If a preceding email or conversation is relevant to the proposition, the writer may refer back to it and signal the resumption of communication (reference marker). Emails may also contain sequences in which the writer provides some pieces of information which might not be related to the (following or preceding) directive but can still be seen as establishing shared knowledge and solidarity (orientation move). Writers may close their emails with a leave-taking formula (closing), signature only or both. Taken together, email directives in the business context consist of a particular (1) head act strategy that often co-occurs with (2) downgrading Table 2.9  Sequencing strategies surrounding the directive head act Sequencing move

Description

Greeting

Email opened with a greeting Hola Eva (S272)

Example

Self-introduction

Writer introduces himself/ herself

Please let me introduce myself, my name is Charlotte and I am the new Commercial Executive (E2)

Reference marker

Reference made to previous email or conversation to establish common ground

según conversación confirmamos dormir el [date] en el hotel [name] (S5) (‘according to our conversation we confirm that we will stay on the [date] in the hotel [name]’)

Orientation move

Discourse move employed to establish orientation and shared knowledge

Caroline is out of the office today so she has asked me to look at this matter in her absence (E203)

Closing

Leave-taking formula employed

Saludos cordiales (S243)

Signature

No leave-taking employed, signature-only closing

–

76  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

and/or (2) upgrading strategies as well as (3) sequencing strategies. Apart from the infinitive strategy found in the PS data set, which, following statements by several Spanish L1 speakers, has been categorized as a nonimperative, no category only exists in one of the data sets. Statistical analysis

In order to evaluate the significance of the results, the frequency distribution of the directive head act and modification strategies were statistically analyzed. More specifically, the significance of the cross-cultural differences in the use of individual strategies as well as the impact of contextual variables (sex, SD, P, RI, purpose) on the choice of a strategy was tested statistically. Given the fact that some participants produced more than one email directive in the present database, it has to be assumed that the different instances of data are not completely independent. To phrase it in statistical terms, the writer may be a random effect. In linguistic modeling, the possibility that the outcome may be attributed to writer or speaker variation is usually neglected. As early as the 1970s, Clark (1973) warned about the ‘language-as-fixed-effect fallacy’ in response to the many researchers in linguistics who all too easily generalize their findings ‘beyond the specific language materials they have chosen’. In a similar vein, Manning (2007) states: If you want to make statements about a population but you are presenting a study of a fixed sample of items, then you cannot legitimately treat the items as a fixed effect (regardless of whether the identity of the item is a factor in the model or not) unless they are the whole population. (Manning, 2007: 1)

Manning (2007: 1) goes on to explain that ignoring the random effect by not modeling ‘the often significant correlation between data coming from one speaker’ can lead to an underestimation of standard error estimates and thus invalid significances. The present study thus attempts to avoid this fallacy by conducting a multilevel analysis based on the use of generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) (cf. Field et al., 2012).7 The mixed-effect modeling was run in R, an open-source software for statistical computing, using the languageR (Baayen, 2013) and lme4 (Bates, 2010) packages.8 GLMMs are particularly appropriate for the present data as they combine the advantage of random effect modeling and the appropriate modeling of categorical outcome variables pertinent to logistic regressions. Mixed models are an extension of regression and thus follow the basic aim to predict categorical outcomes (here: head act and

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  77

modification strategies) based on predictor variables (here: language, sex, SD, P, RI, purpose). The procedure for building GLMMs is based on two approaches: either starting with a small model and adding in (random) coefficients (i.e. predictor variables) (cf. Field et  al., 2012) or starting with a ‘big model and trimming down’ (Manning, 2007: 9). In the present study, the latter procedure has been applied. The fit of the models (after making parameters random) are then compared by subtracting the log-likelihood of the new model from the value for the old. To measure the effect size, i.e. ‘the magnitude of an observed effect’ (cf. Field et al., 2012: 57), the values of the odds ratio have been considered in the present analyses. The odds ratio indicates ‘the change in odds resulting from a unit change in the predictor’ while the odds of an outcome occurring refer to the probability of an outcome occurring divided by the probability of that outcome not occurring (cf. Field et al., 2012: 319). A value greater than 1 indicates that the odds of the outcome occurring increase while the predictor increases. Conversely, a value smaller than 1 indicates that the odds of the outcome occurring decrease as the predictor increases. 2.5 Synopsis: Research Objectives and Hypotheses

Now that the theoretical framework and the methodology of the present study have been outlined, the research objectives can at this point be specified in a more detailed manner. The research questions the present study seeks to answer are thus the following: (1) How are directives realized in English and Spanish business emails? What kind of patterns with regard to the realization of directives can be established for English and Spanish? (2) Are there differences in the ways L1 users of the BE language variety and L1 users of the PE language variety compose directive speech events in business emails? (a) Do the BE and PS email writers use similar head act strategies in email directives and, if so, with similar frequencies? (b) Are there differences in the choice of modification strategies between BE and PS email directives? (c) Do BE and PS email writers use similar sequencing strategies in their workplace directives? (3) Which contextual factors have an effect on the choice of directive realization strategies in BE and PS business emails? (a) Does the sex of the email writer affect the choice of directive head act and modification strategies? Are there differences between BE

78  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

and PS in the degree of impact the sex of an email writer has on strategy choice? (b) Does the sex of the email addressee have an effect on the realization of directives? Are there differences in the choice of strategies in same-sex versus cross-sex email interactions? (c) Does the social distance between email sender and receiver have an impact on how a directive is realized? Are there differences between BE and PS in the degree of impact that social distance has on strategy choice? How is the social distance between members of a workplace constructed in email directives? (d) Does the power relationship between email sender and addressee have an effect on the choice of directive realization strategies? Are there differences between BE and PS with regard to the impact of power on email directives? How is power operationalized in business emails? (e) Does the degree of imposition of a directive have an influence on how the email writer formulates the directive? Are there differences in the way imposition affects the choice of directive strategy between BE and PS? (f) Does the purpose of an email directive have an effect on the choice of a particular head act and modification strategy chosen? Does purpose play a similar role in BE email directives compared to PS email directives? (4) How are directive head act strategies in business emails perceived? (a) How do L1 users rate the (im)politeness of BE and PS email directive head act strategies? Are there differences between the BE and PS politeness ratings of the head act strategies? b) How are the BE and PS head act strategies perceived in terms of (in)directness? Do BE and PS email writers perceive directness differently with regard to the realization of directive head acts? (c) Is there a linear relationship between indirectness and politeness? Based on previous findings that researchers have made in relation to directive speech events in English and Spanish institutional discourse, some hypotheses can be derived. (I) English and Spanish L1 users make use of similar types of directive head act strategies, but with different frequencies. While Spanish people more frequently employ what is commonly referred to as direct strategies, such as mood derivables, performatives and want statements, English L1 users more often opt for the (conventionally indirect) preparatory strategy. A similar pattern can be expected with regard to modification strategies.

A Mixed-Method Approach to the Analysis of Speech Events  79

(II) In both the BE and PS language varieties, people choose from a similar set of modification strategies but with different frequency distributions. The PS speakers seem to prefer strategies that appeal to the addressee’s positive face whereas the BE speakers seem to care more about negative face concerns. The discourse genre and the channel of communication are, however, expected to influence BE and PS directives in the following ways: (III) The business context may give rise to a generally more frequent use of urgency markers in the form of aggravation strategies and more straightforward, unambiguous messages. (IV) The email medium may have the effect that the writers carefully compose their directives by making use of a high number of modification and sequencing strategies. This is expected to be true for both languages under study. With regard to the effects of socio-contextual factors on the choice of directive strategies, researchers have not achieved unanimous results. However, from the majority of studies, the following tendencies can be predicted: (V) Against the stereotype that male speakers use a more authoritative and direct language style compared to female speakers, sex is not expected to have a significant effect on strategy use in the workplace context. (VI) The lower the social distance between the interlocutors, the lesser the need for downgrading the potential face threat seems to be. (VII)  In directives containing a relatively low degree of imposition, downgrading devices are not employed as much as in high imposition directives. (VIII)  In downward power relationships, downgrading strategies are expected to be employed to a lesser extent than in power equal or upward power situations. With regard to the perception study, very few predictions can be made due to the lack of research into emic perspectives. Based on the theoretical framework of this book, the following hypotheses can be formulated: (IX) As the participants are all members of a CoP, a shared set of politeness and directness norms may have been negotiated. Thus no high (cross-cultural and individual) variability in the ratings is expected.

80  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

(X) There does not seem to be a linear relationship between indirectness and politeness. Due to the workplace context, people may not perceive direct strategies as particularly impolite. In the following chapters, the results of the present study will be presented and discussed with regard to these hypotheses and previous research. Chapters 3 and 4 provide the findings of the production study and focus on the similarities and differences in the realizations of email directives between the two language varieties, as well as on the influence of socio-contextual variables on strategy choice. Due to the small sample of the perception study, I will treat the latter as a pilot study to support the interpretations of the production data analysis and will therefore incorporate the findings in the overall analysis of the BE and PS email directives. Notes (1) As the perception study is based on a small sample size in the present project and therefore treated as a pilot study, the focus has been put on a qualitative analysis of the data rather than a quantitative analysis (cf. Section 2.2). (2) As in numerous earlier works, the concept of speech events is understood to comprise both spoken and written communication. (3) The complete survey, both in English and in Spanish, can be found in Appendices B and C. (4) I have adopted Dewaele et al.’s (2003) definition of bilingualism, which includes ‘not only the “perfect” bilingual (who probably does not exist) or the “balanced” ambilingual (who is probably rare) but also various “imperfect” and “unstable” forms of bilingualism, in which one language takes over from the other(s) on at least some occasions and for some instances of language use’ (Dewaele et al., 2003: 1). (5) The felicitous interpretation of pre-requests as requests, however, also seems to apply to non-institutional contexts (cf. Flöck, 2016). (6) The classification of emoticons as downgraders is in line with Skovholt et al. (2014), who point out that emoticons function as softeners when they follow directives. I agree with the authors that emoticons may have different communicative functions depending on the context, such as strengthening expressives or marking irony. (7) Multilevel and mixed-effect models basically refer to the same thing, i.e. linear models that include both fixed effects and random effects and are used to model nested (hierarchical, multilevel) data. (8) R is freely available at http://cran.r-project.org.

3 A Cross-Cultural Analysis of English and Spanish Email Directives

The object of this study for cross-cultural comparison constitute 338 British English (BE) and 416 Peninsular Spanish (PS) directive speech events. I analyzed the head acts of directives in terms of sentence type, perspective and head act strategy type employed (cf. Section 3.1), as well as the internal and external modification strategies in terms of whether they fulfilled a directive force mitigating or aggravating function (cf. Section 3.2). Additionally, the sequencing strategies accompanying the directive head acts were investigated (cf. Section  3.3), as well as correlations between head act and modification strategies (cf. Section  3.4). In this chapter, I compare the results to those found in previous research and refer to the hypotheses pointed out in Section 2.5. The comparison of BE and PS email directives has, on the whole, yielded more differences than similarities in the frequency distributions of the analytical categories. It is, nevertheless, worth stressing that the same set of head act strategies, downgraders, upgraders and sequencing moves has been employed in both data sets. In other words, no strategy has been found to exist exclusively in one or other data set. The statistically significant differences between the BE and PS email directives are summarized in Table 3.1. The patterns that did not yield statistical significance should not be ignored, though, and will be described in the following sections. Field et al. (2012: 57) actually warn of a Type II error, i.e. assuming that there is no effect in a population when, in fact, there is an effect. In other words, even if an effect falls outside the 95% confidence interval, this does not necessarily mean that it represents a chance occurrence and not a genuine effect. However, because many of the differences and effects in the present study actually fall within the 95% confidence interval and can therefore be safely taken to represent more than just chance occurrences, I start by focusing on the statistically significant results. The patterns with regard to the sentence types used in the BE and PS directives head acts reveal a significantly stronger preference for declarative structures in the PS data while the BE writers opted for the interrogative most frequently and also revealed a higher use of imperative forms. 81

82  Exploring Politeness in Business Emails

Table 3.1  Significant cross-cultural differences between BE and PS email directives Analytical category

Cross-cultural differences

Head act: Sentence types

• Higher use of imperatives in BE • Stronger preference for interrogatives in BE • Stronger preference for declaratives in PS

Head act: Perspectives

• Stronger preference for addressee perspective (second person) in BE

Head act: Strategies

• • • • •

Modifier: Downgraders

• Higher use of devices in BE • Higher use of • Higher use of • Higher use of in PS

Modifier: Sequencing moves

Higher use of mood derivables in BE Stronger preference for preparatories in BE Higher use of performatives in PS Higher use of conventionalized formulae in PS Higher use of pre-decided statements in PS conditionals, politeness markers and consultative subjunctives and subjectivizers in PS pre-grounders and sweeteners in BE post-grounders, appreciation and specification

• Stronger preference for closings in BE • Higher use of reference markers in PS

Although these cross-cultural differences contradict previous research on directives in the two languages and thus constitute a surprising insight, they (for declaratives, in particular) still do not reveal much about the degree of directness, let alone the politeness conveyed. Interrogatives do, in fact, belong to either the conventionally indirect or indirect category of Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989a) taxonomy, while imperatives are the prime example of a direct strategy. Since declaratives can be classified as direct, conventionally indirect or indirect strategies, they require a more finegrained analysis. The analysis of the perspectives taken by the email writers in the directives reveal a higher level of directness in the BE email directives based on the BE email writers’ stronger preference for the use of the second person. They also use the mood derivable more frequently than the PS writers. The BE writers, however, also have a stronger preference for the preparatory strategy, which to some extent refutes the claim that there is a higher level of directness in the BE data. A relatively high level of directness can also be found among the PS writers, who reveal a significant higher use of performatives, pre-decided statements and conventionalized formulae. From this, we can conclude that a high level of directness is conveyed in both the BE and PS workplace emails. With regard to the directive modification level, a slightly higher downgrader-per-head act ratio can be found in BE and a somewhat higher upgrader-per-head act ratio in PS. This difference may be explained by the somewhat uneven distribution of email purposes (with regard to directives for reservation and operative tasks, in particular) between the two data sets. Both the BE and PS email writers show a strong preference for external downgraders that appeal to the positive

A Cross-Cultural Analysis of English and Spanish Email Directives  83

face. The statistically significant results reveal BE writers’ preference for downgrading the directives syntactically by using the conditional, whereas the PS writers opt more frequently for the subjunctive. With regard to lexical downgraders, a higher use of politeness markers and consultative devices can be found in the BE emails, compensated through a higher use of subjectivizers in the PS emails. The BE writers are further likely to mitigate their directives by means of pre-grounders and sweeteners, while the PS writers feature a higher use of post-grounders, appreciation and specification moves. There are no significant differences with regard to the upgrading behavior in the two data sets. It is worth mentioning that the PS writers show a somewhat stronger preference for time intensifiers and a higher use of intensifiers in general, while the BE writers are slightly more likely to upgrade their directives through a sentence-external emphasis on urgency. The analysis of the sequencing strategies reveals a stronger preference for closings among the BE email writers and a higher use of reference markers in the PS emails. As greetings and closings are more likely to be used in (usually asynchronous) high social distance (SD) situations, the fact that the BE email directives feature a higher number of high SD situations (cf. Table  2.3) may, at least partially, account for the latter cross-cultural difference. The analysis of co-occurrence patterns with regard to the use of head act and modification strategies shows that certain strategies are significantly more likely to co-occur than others. Both the statistically significant results and further observations that fall beyond the 95% confidence interval are summarized in Table 3.2. Both head act strategies that are classified as direct strategies according to Blum-Kulka et  al. (1989a), as well as conventionally indirect strategies, are found to significantly correlate with particular downgraders. Preparatories, for example, are likely to co-occur with Table 3.2  Summary of co-occurrence patterns between head acts and modifiers Statistically significant patterns

• Co-occurrence of the conditional with locution derivables, preparatories, need/want statements and others (pre-decided statements) • Co-occurrence of the subjectivizer with need/want statements, preparatories and conventionalized formulae • Co-occurrence of the politeness marker with mood derivables and preparatories in BE • Co-occurrence of thanking with preparatories • Co-occurrence of emphasis on urgency with locution derivables

Further tendencies observed

• • • •

Preparatories are likely to be downgraded in BE and PS Performatives are likely to be downgraded in BE Need/want statements are likely to be downgraded in PS Performatives, locution derivables and hints are likely to be upgraded in BE and PS • Need/want statements are likely to be upgraded in BE

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the conditional, subjectivizers, politeness markers and with thanking moves. Strategies that have been classified as direct in pragmatics literature, such as mood derivables and locution derivables, are likely to be further downgraded by means of politeness markers and the conditional, respectively. The analysis of co-occurrences of upgraders and head acts reveals that direct rather than indirect strategies are likely to be upgraded. Based on these findings, I argue that modifiers seem to have a dual function in that they, on the one hand, compensate the illocutionary force conveyed in the head act, and, on the other hand, may make the illocutionary force and intent of the directive head act transparent (cf. Faerch & Kasper, 1989; Flöck, 2016). While the results provide evidence for both compensation and transparency hypotheses in the case of downgraders, the upgraders seem to be used for transparency purposes in the present study. The following sections will provide an overview of the sentence types, directive perspectives and strategy types of the head acts, which the BE and PS subjects employed in their production of emails directives. 3.1 Directive Head Acts Sentence types

A comparison of the sentence types used in the BE and PS email directives reveals striking differences (cf. Table  3.3). While the BE email writers display a slight preference for the interrogative form (accounting for 41.1%), the latter constitutes the least frequently used sentence type in the PS data set (at 11.5%). Instead, nearly three out of four PS email directives (72.1%) are realized through the use of declarative forms (compared to 31.4% in the BE emails). Although imperatives are the least frequently employed sentence type in the BE data set, they still account for nearly twice as many directives as in the PS emails (27.5% in the BE emails compared to 16.3% in the PS emails).

Table 3.3  Cross-cultural distribution of sentence types and subtypes Sentence types

Subtypes

BE emails n

Imperatives

Imperative Non-imperative

Interrogatives

Interrogative active Interrogative passive

Declaratives

Declarative active Declarative passive

Total

%

PS emails n

%

86

25.4

50

12.0

7

2.1

18

4.3

131

38.8

48

11.5

8

2.4

0

0.0

101

29.9

289

69.5

5

1.5

11

2.6

338

100.0

416

100.0

A Cross-Cultural Analysis of English and Spanish Email Directives  85

The results have been tested statistically using the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM), factoring in the writer as random effect.1 The differences in the use of sentence types between BE and PS are statistically significant at p