Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 30:3 (2020) ► pp.405–430

Complaint management on Twitter – evolution of interactional patterns on Polish corporate profiles

| Jagiellonian University

The study concerns complaint management on Polish brand profiles on Twitter. The aim was to investigate selected language properties of corporate tweets and trace potential changes in the interactional patterns on the profiles occurring between 2015 and 2017. The study focuses on the structure and frequency of the respective strategies, as well as formality, the use of non-standard structures and emoticons. The study indicates the following directions of change: an increase in the use of address terms and explanations, a greater degree of language formality and indirectness, among others. The changes point to increased formulaicity and conventionalisation of expression, as well as an increased use of fixed patterns and templates. The changes constitute evidence of standardisation of the means of expression in customer encounters and a transfer of the conventions typical of other channels of interaction with consumers to the online context.

Keywords: customer encounters, Twitter, interactional patterns, corporate profiles, evolution
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Twitter as a medium
    • 2.2Complaint management online
  • 3.Materials and methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1The structure of tweets
    • 4.2Address terms
    • 4.3Apology acts
    • 4.4Offers of help and assistance
    • 4.5Performative requests
    • 4.6Denial and disagreement
    • 4.7Formality
    • 4.8The use of templates
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 20 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.17040.ter
References
Benoit, William L.
1995 Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies: A Theory of Image Restoration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google 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 Levinson
1987 Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brzozowska-Woś, Magdalena
2013 “Media społecznościowe a wizerunek marki [Social media and brand image].” Zarządzanie i finanse [Management and finance] 11: 53–65.Google Scholar
Chwiałkowska, Agnieszka
2014 “Media społecznościowe jako narzędzie budowania relacji z klientem przez mikro- i małe przedsiębiorstwa [Social media as a tool of building relations with a customer by micro- and small companies].” Studia i materiały [Studies and materials] 11: 124–137.Google Scholar
Coyle, James, Ted Smith, and Glenn Platt
2012 “ ‘I’m Here to Help’ How Companies’ Microblog Responses to Consumer Problems Influence Brand Perceptions.” Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing 6(1): 27–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Creelman, Valerie
2015 “Sheer Outrage: Negotiating Customer Dissatisfaction and Interaction in the Blogosphere.” In Digital Business Discourse, ed. by Erica Darics, 160–185. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Darics, Erica
2015 “Introduction: Business Communication in the Digital Age – Fresh Perspectives.” In Digital Business Discourse, ed. by Erica Darics, 1–16. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Dejnaka, Agnieszka
2014 “Media społecznościowe jako obszar pozyskiwania informacji zakupowej [Social media as an area of obtaining purchase information]”. Zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego. Problemy zarządzania, finansów i marketingu [Scientific journal of the University of Szczecin. Problems in management, finance and marketing] 361: 231–240.Google Scholar
Drzazga, Marek
2013 “Media Społecznościowe w procesie komunikacji marketingowej przedsiębiorstw handlu detalicznego z rynkiem [Social media in the process of marketing communication of retail companies with the market].” Studia ekonomiczne (Komunikacja marketingowa: Współczesne wyzwania i kierunki rozwoju) [Economic studies (Marketing communication: Contemporary challenges and directions of development] 1401: 98–111.Google Scholar
Einwiller, Sabine A., and Sarah Steilen
2015 “Handling Complaints on Social Network Sites – An Analysis of Complaints and Complaint Responses on Facebook and Twitter Pages of Large US Companies.” Public Relations Review 41(2): 195–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Eileen, and Rebecca Reuber
2014 “Online Entrepreneurial Communication: Mitigating Uncertainty and Increasing Differentiation via Twitter.” Journal of Business Venturing 291: 565–583. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Girginova, Katerina
2015 “Social CEOs: Tweeting as a Constitutive Form of Organizational Communication.” In Digital Business Discourse, ed. by Erica Darics, 40–60. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Herring, Susan C.
2012 “Grammar and Electronic Communication.” In Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol A. Chapelle. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley/Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ho, Victor
2017 “Giving Offence and Making Amends: How Hotel Management Attempts to Manage Rapport with Dissatisfied Customers.” Journal of Pragmatics 1091: 1–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jansen, Bernard, Mimi Zhang, Kate Sobel, and Abdur Chowdhury
2009 “Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 60(11): 2169–2188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Java, Akshay, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, and Belle Tseng
2007 “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities.” Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, San Jose, CA. Online: [URL]. DOI logo
Kozicka-Borysowska, Żaneta
2009 Akt mowy przeproszenia. Studium pragmalingwistyczne [Apology speech act. A pragmalinguistic study]. Szczecin: Wydawnictwo Print Group.Google Scholar
Kwon, Eun Sook, and Yongjun Sung
2011 “Follow Me! Global Marketers’ Twitter Use.” Journal of Interactive Advertising 12(1): 4–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ye, Lan, and Eyun-Jung Ki
2017 “Organizational Crisis Communication on Facebook: A Study of BP’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.” Corporate Communications: An International Journal 22(1): 80–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levy, Stuart E., Wenjing Duan, and Soyoung Boo
2013 “An Analysis of One-Star Online Reviews and Responses in the Washington, D.C., Lodging Market.” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 541: 49–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lubecka, Anna
2000 Requests, Invitations, Apologies and Compliments in American English and Polish. A Cross-Cultural Communication Perspective. Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka.Google Scholar
Lupa, Iwona
2016 Media społecznościowe w marketingu i zarządzaniu. Wybrane zagadnienia z teorii i praktyki przedsiębiorstw [Social media in marketing and management. Selected issues from the theory and companies’ practice]. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Sophia.Google Scholar
Marcjanik, Małgorzata
2000 Polska grzeczność językowa [Polish linguistic politeness]. Kielce: WSP.Google Scholar
2006 “ABC grzeczności językowej [ABC of linguistic politeness].” In Polszczyzna na co dzień [Polish on an everyday basis], ed. by Mirosław Bańko, 231–310. Warszawa: WN PWN.Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina
2008 “Intra-Cultural Variation: Explanations in Service Calls to Two Montevidean Service Providers.” Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behavior, Culture 4(1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina, Sara Orthaber, and Daniel Kádár
2015 “Disattending Customer Dissatisfaction on Facebook: A Case Study of a Slovenian Public Transport Company.” In International Management and Intercultural Communication, ed. by Elizabeth Christopher, 108–126. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marwick, Alice. E., and danah boyd
2011 “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media & Society 13(1): 114–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meinl, Marja
2010 “ Electronic Complaints: An Empirical Study on British English and German Complaints On Ebay.” Doctoral thesis, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms- Universität Bonn. Online: [URL]
Ogiermann, Eva
2012 “About Polish Politeness.” In Linguistic Insights vol. 132: Speech Acts and Politeness across Languages and Cultures, ed. by Leyre Ruiz de Zarobe, and Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe, 27–52. Bern, CHE: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Ożóg, Kazimierz
1990 Zwroty grzecznościowe współczesnej polszczyzny mówionej (na materiale języka mówionego mieszkańców Krakowa) [Politneness acts in contemporary spoken Polish (On the example of the inhabitants of Krakow)]. Kraków: WN PWN.Google Scholar
Page, Ruth
2014 “Saying ‘Sorry’: Corporate Apologies on Twitter.” Journal of Pragmatics 621: 30–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ptaszek, Grzegorz
2009 “Telefoniczna rozmowa handlowa [Business phone call].” In „W czym mogę pomóc?” Zachowania komunikacyjnojęzykowe konsultantów i klientów call center [‘How can I help you?’ Communication and language behaviour of call centre consultants and clients], ed. by Krzysztof Kaszewski, and Grzegorz Ptaszek, 11–17. Warszawa: Semper.Google Scholar
2008 “ ‘Klient nasz pan’ – językowe wykładniki grzeczności i uprzejmości konsultantów call center w rozmowie telefonicznej z klientami [‘Client is our master’ – politeness strategies of call centre consultants in phone talks with clients].” In Język w mediach elektronicznych [Language in electronic media], ed. by Jerzy Podracki, and Ewa Wolańska, 105–112. Warszawa: Semper.Google Scholar
Rybalko, Svetlana, and Trent Seltzer
2010 “Dialogic Communication in 140 Characters or Less: How Fortune 500 Companies Engage Stakeholders Using Twitter.” Public Relations Review 361: 336–341. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria, and Angeliki Tzanne
2018 “The Impact of Globalisation on Brief Greek Service Encounters.” Journal of Pragmatics 1341: 163–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sparks, Beverley A., and Liz Fredline
2007 “Providing an Explanation for Service Failure: Context, Content, and Customer Responses.” Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research 31(2): 241–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sparks, Beverley A., and Victoria Browning
2010 “ Complaining in Cyberspace: The Motives and Forms of Hotel Guests’ Complaints Online .” Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management 19(7): 797–818. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sparks, Beverley A., and Graham L. Bradley
2017 “A ‘Triple A’ Typology of Responding to Negative Consumer-Generated Online Reviews.” Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research 41(6): 719–745. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagg, Caroline
2012 Discourse of Text Messaging. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Tereszkiewicz, Anna
2015 “Zachowania grzecznościowe w interakcji handlowej na Twitterze [Politeness conventions in business interaction on Twitter].” Media-Kultura- Komunikacja Społeczna [Media-Culture-Social Communication] 11(4): 65–80.Google Scholar
2017 “ ‘Przykro nam to słyszeć :(’ Reakcje firm telekomunikacyjnych na skargi i zażalenia klientów publikowane w serwisie Twitter [‘We are sorry to hear that :(’ Reactions of telecommunication companies to their customers’ complaints and claims published on Twitter].” Poradnik Językowy [Language Guide] 31: 17–29.Google Scholar
2019 “Responding to Customer Complaints on English and Polish Corporate Profiles on Twitter.” Pragmatics and Society 10(2): 205–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vásquez, Camilla
2011 “Complaints Online: The Case of TripAdvisor.” Journal of Pragmatics 431: 1707–1717. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Narrativity and Involvement in Online Consumer Reviews. The Case of TripAdvisor.” Narrative Inquiry 22(1): 105–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2015 “ ‘Don’t Even Get Me Started…’: Interactive Metadiscourse in Online Consumer Reviews.” In Digital Business Discourse, ed. by Erica Darics, 19–39. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Weller, Katrin, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Merja Mahrt, and Cornelius Puschmann
(eds.) 2014 Twitter and Society. New York: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele
2012 Discourse of Twitter and Social Media. How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Zhang, Jie, and Terry Daugherty
2009 “Third-Person Effect and Online Social Networking: Implications for Viral Marketing, Word-of-Mouth Brand Communications, and Consumer Behavior in User-Generated Context.” American Journal of Business 24(2): 53–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Mimi, Bernard Jansen, and Abdur Chowdhury
2011 “Business Engagement on Twitter: A Path Analysis.” Electronic Markets 211: 161–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Yi, and Camilla Vásquez
2014 “Hotels’ Responses to Online Reviews: Managing Consumer Dissatisfaction.” Discourse, Context and Media 61: 54–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Saleem, Aisha, Tahir Saleem & Asif Aziz
2022. A pragmatic study of congratulation strategies of Pakistani ESL learners and British English speakers. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education 7:1 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 april 2022. 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.