Cover not available
Part of
Current Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics
Edited by Istvan Kecskes and Stavros Assimakopoulos
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 274] 2017
► pp. 129–156

Chapter 6
Face-threatening e-mail complaint negotiation in a multilingual business environment

A discursive analysis of refusal and disagreement strategies

| Ghent University
| Ghent University

This paper builds on an authentic corpus of German- and French-language business e-mails on complaint refusals gathered at the sales department of a Belgian multinational company. Based on existing research in pragmatics and genre-analysis, our study offers a discursive analysis of company refusal strategies and customer disagreement strategies, while introducing a cross-cultural perspective. In particular, we examine the level of directness and the use of internal and external modification in these face-threatening speech acts in both languages. Our study reveals high levels of directness in the complaint refusal corpus, which we relate to the norm of clarity in business communication. However, while employees soften their refusal message through downgraders and neutral/positive external modification, customers tend to formulate their disagreement e-mails in a more aggravating way. For the latter, transactional goals tend to outweigh the interactional goal of interpersonal harmony. Our cross-cultural analysis confirms previous observations on French-German cultural and communicative differences, with French employees and customers displaying a stronger inclination towards elaborateness, dissent orientation, and (possibly) relationship-orientation.

Keywords: refusal, disagreement, German, French, business communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Authentic vs. simulated/experimental data
    • 2.2Complaint handling at our research site
    • 2.3Our corpus
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Refusal strategies
      • 3.1.1Direct strategies
      • 3.1.2Indirect strategies
        • 3.1.2.1Explanation
        • 3.1.2.2Partial acceptance
        • 3.1.2.3Alternative solution proposal
      • 3.1.3A prototypical initial refusal e-mail
      • 3.1.4Modification
        • 3.1.4.1Internal modification
        • 3.1.4.2External modification
    • 3.2Customer disagreement strategies
      • 3.2.1Direct strategies
      • 3.2.2Indirect strategies
        • 3.2.2.1Implied contradiction
        • 3.2.2.2Partial agreement
        • 3.2.2.3Explanation
        • 3.2.2.4Request for repair
      • 3.2.3A prototypical initial disagreement e-mail
      • 3.2.4Modification
        • 3.2.4.1Internal modification
        • 3.2.4.2External modification
    • 3.3E-mail length
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Refusal and disagreement e-mails: directness and modification
    • 4.2Comparing the two corpora
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.274.07dec
References
Angouri, Jo, and Miriam A. Locher
2012 “Theorising Disagreement.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1549–1553. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, Charles
1994 Explaining and Arguing. The Social Organisation of Accounts. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen, and Beverly S. Hartford
1991 “Saying ‘No’ in English: Native and Nonnative Rejections.” In Pragmatics and Language Learning, ed. by Lawrence Bouton, and Yamuna Kachru, 41–57. Campaign: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
2005 “Institutional Discourse and Interlanguage Pragmatic Research.” In Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring Institutional Talk, ed. by Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, and Beverly S. Hartford, 7–36. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Baron, Naomi S.
2003 “Why Email Looks Like Speech: Proofreading, Pedagogy and Public Face.” In New Media Language, ed. by Jean Aitchison, and David Lewis, 102–113. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Béal, Christine
1993 “Les Stratégies Conversationnelles en Français et en Anglais: Conventions ou Reflet de Divergences Culturelles Profondes?” Langue Française 98: 79–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beebe, Leslie M., Tomoko Takahashi, and Robin Uliss-Weltz
1990 “Pragmatic Transfer in ESL Refusals.” In Developing Communicative Competence in Second Language, ed. by Robin C. Scarcella, Elaine S. Andersen, and Stephen D. Krashen, 55–73. New York: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Beebe, Leslie M., and Tomoka Takahashi
1989 “Sociolinguistic Variation in Face-threatening Speech Acts.” In The Dynamic Interlanguage: Empirical Studies in Second Language Variation, ed. by Myriam R. Eisenstein, 199–218. New York: Plenum Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay
1993 Analysing Genre: Language in Professional Settings. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bjorge, Anne Kari
2012 “Expressing Disagreement in ELF Business Negotiations: Theory and Practice.” Applied Linguistics 33: 406–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper
(eds) 1989 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Campillo, Patrizia S., Pilar Safont-Jorda, and Victòria Codina-Espurz
2009 “Refusal Strategies: A Proposal from a Sociopragmatic Approach.” Revista Electronica de Lingüistica Aplicada 8: 139–150.Google Scholar
Chen, Hongyin Julie
1996 Cross-cultural Comparison of English and Chinese Metapragmatics in Refusal. PhD thesis, Indiana University. Available at: [URL] (accessed 4 April 2016).
Davidson, Judy
1984 “Subsequent Versions of Invitations, Offers, Requests, and Proposals Dealing with Potential or Actual Rejection.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 102–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Demangeat, Isabelle, and Markus Molz
2003 “So Nah und Doch So Fern: Deutsch-französische Kooperation.” In Handbuch interkulturelle Kommunikation und Kooperation. Band 2: Länder, Kulturen und Interkulturelle Berufstätigkeit, ed. by Alexander Thomas, Eva Kinast, and Sylvia Schroll-Machl. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul
1984 “Speakers’ Reportings in Invitation Sequences.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 129–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria
2010 “Cross-cultural and Situational Variation in Requesting Behaviour: Perceptions of Social Situations and Strategic Usage of Request Patterns.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2262–2281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. Cesar
2006 “Linguistic Politeness in Mexico: Refusal Strategies among Male Speakers of Mexican Spanish.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 2158–2187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frith, Hannah, and Celia Kitzinger
1999 “Just Say No? The use of Conversation Analysis in Developing a Feminist Perspective on Sexual Refusal.” Discourse Society 10: 293–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gains, Jonathan
1999 “Electronic Mail: A New Style of Communication or just a New Medium? An Investigation into the Text Features of E-mail.” English for Specific Purposes 18: 81–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geluykens, Ronald
2007 “Investigating Complaints in Business English: An Evaluation of Data Collection Methods.” In Economically Speaking: Essays in Honour of Chris Braecke, ed. by Katja Pelsmaekers, and Craig Rollo, 31–45. Antwerp: Garant.Google Scholar
Geluykens, Ronald, and Bettina Kraft
2006 “Eine Kontrastive Analyse des Beschwerdeverhaltens in Deutsch und Französisch als Muttersprache und Lernersprache.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Sprache und Sprachen 33–34: 3–13.Google Scholar
Gimenez, Julio
2000 “Business E-mail Communication: Some Emerging Tendencies in Register.” English for Specific Purposes 19: 237–251. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hagge, John and Charles Kostelnick
1989 “Linguistic Politeness in Professional Prose: A Discourse Analysis of Auditors’ Suggestion Letters, with Implications for Business Communication Pedagogy.” Written Communication 6: 312–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2015 Im/Politeness Implicatures. Berlin/ New York: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hayashi, Takuo
1996 “Politeness in conflict management: a conversation analysis of dispreferred message from a cognitive perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics 25: 227–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
House, Juliane
2006 “Communicative Styles in German and English.” European Journal of English Studies 10: 249–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Frank, and Daniel Janssen
2010 “Effects of Positive Politeness Strategies in Business Letters.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2531–2548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kakavá, Christina
1993 Negotiation of Disagreement by Greeks in Conversations and Classroom Discourse. PhD dissertation, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Koczogh, Helga V.
2014 “The Development of a Taxonomy of Verbal Disagreements in the Light of the P-model.” In The Evidential Basis of Linguistic Argumentation, ed. by András Kertész, and Csilla Rákosi, 133–178. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levy, Mike, and Margaret Murphy
2006 “Politeness in Intercultural Email Communication: Australian and Korean Perspectives.” Journal of Intercultural Communication 12. Available at: [URL] (accessed 4 April 2016).
Maier, Paula
1992 “Politeness Strategies in ‘Chairman’s Statement’ Sections in the Annual Reports of Finnish and British Companies.” In Talous ja Kieli, ed. by Nuolijarvi, Pirkko, and Liisa Tittula, 127–143. Helsinki: Helsinki School of Economics Publications.Google Scholar
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
2014 “Expressing Disagreement in English as a Lingua Franca: Whose Pragmatic Rules?” Intercultural Pragmatics 11: 199–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mauranen, Anna
1993 “Contrastive ESP Rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English Economics Texts.” English for Specific Purposes 12: 3–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meinl, Marja Ebba
2010 Electronic Complaints: An Empirical Study on British English and German Complaints on eBay. Dissertation, Bonn University. Available at: [URL] (accessed 4 April 2016).
Meyer, Katrin
2007 Interkulturelle Pragmatik: Aufforderungen, Entschuldigungen und Beschwerden. Eine Untersuchung zur interkulturellen Sprechhandlungskompetenz deutscher Austauschschüler in den USA. Dissertation, Hamburg University. Available at: [URL] (accessed 4 April 2016).
Murphy, Beth, and Joyce Neu
1996 “My Grade’s Too Low: The Speech Act Set of Complaining.” In Speech Acts across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language, ed. by Susan M. Gass and Joyce Neu 191–216. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rees-Miller, Janie
2000 “Power, Severity, and Context in Disagreement.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1087–1111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1987 “On the Preferences for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversation.” In Talk and Social Organisation, ed. by Graham Button, and John Lee, 54–69. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Schnurr, Stephanie, and Olga Zayts
2013 “‘I can’t remember them ever not doing what I tell them:’ Negotiating Face and Power Relations in ‘Upward’ Refusals in Multicultural Workplaces in Hong Kong.” Intercultural Pragmatics 10: 593–616. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siepmann, Dirk
2006 “Academic Writing and Culture: An Overview of Differences between English, French and German.” Meta: Translators’ Journal 51: 131–150.Google Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
2012 “Disagreements, Face and Politeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1554–1564. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria, and Angelika Tzanne
2010 “Conceptualizations of Politeness and Impoliteness in Greek.” Intercultural Pragmatics 7: 661–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stalpers, Judith
1995 “The Expression of Disagreement.” In The Discourse of Business Negotiation, ed. by Konrad Ehlich, and Johannes Wagner, 275–289. Berlin and NewYork: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swales, John M.
1990 English in Academic and Research Settings: Genre Analysis and its Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tanck, Sharyl
2004 “Speech Act Sets of Refusal and Complaint: a Comparison of Native and Non-native English Speakers’ Production.” TESOL Working Papers 4: 1–22.Google Scholar
Trosborg, Anna
1995 Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints, and Apologies. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Mulken, Margot, and Wouter van der Meer
2005 “Are you Being Served? A Genre Analysis of American and Dutch Company Replies to Customer Enquiries.” English for Specific Purposes 24: 93–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1985 “Different Cultures, Different Languages, Different Speech Acts: Polish vs. English.” Journal of Pragmatics 9: 145–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Kecskes, Istvan
2018. Intercultural Pragmatics. In Handbuch Pragmatik, ► pp. 140 ff. DOI logo
Rodriguez, Andrea
2022. Complaining. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 66 ff. DOI logo
Ruytenbeek, Nicolas, Sofie Decock & Ilse Depraetere
2023. Experiments into the influence of linguistic (in)directness on perceived face-threat in Twitter complaints. Journal of Politeness Research 19:1 ► pp. 59 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.