Complaints and Linguistic (In)Directness in BELF Emails
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6823954Keywords:
Complaints, linguistic (in)directness, BELF emails, pragmaticsAbstract
In line with the argument that linguistic (in)directness must be differentiated from perceived face-threat (Decock and Depraetere 2018), this paper explores linguistic (in)directness of complaints in 200 BELF emails which have been coded in terms of the presence of four constitutive complaint components: the complainable, the negative evaluation of the complainable, the person/company responsible for the complainable, and a wish for compensation. Positioned within both discursive pragmatics and diachronic pragmatics, this article probes into formal realizations of each component and deploys the concept ‘diachronicity’ to capture the dynamics of escalatory explicitness (or linguistic (in)directness) in authentic business emails. Data analysis reveals that complaint speech act in BELF emails is explicit (or linguistically direct) not only in terms of the overall number of constitutive components that is realized, but also in terms of the preferred component combinations characterized by three or four components (para)-linguistically expressed. Based on above investigations, the significant pattern can be described as that the complainer goes to the point what affair is not up to his expectation then explicitly addresses the complainee to take actions for remedy, and often also vents his negative emotions, suggesting the fact that BELF emails can be both goal-oriented and emotion loaded. The findings shed some light on speech acts research in both CMC, email more specifically, and BELF contexts.
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