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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 10:2 (2019) ► pp.205–229

Responding to customer complaints on English and Polish corporate profiles on Twitter

| Jagiellonian University

The study investigates the strategies used by English and Polish companies in the process of handling customer complaints on Twitter. Since English and Polish are recognized as representatives of negative and positive politeness cultures, respectively, the analysis was to examine if there are differences in politeness conventions in customer-provider interaction on Twitter. The study found that although similar strategies are used by English and Polish companies in responding to complaints, the frequency of the respective strategies is different. The results of the analysis confirm differences in the use of positive and negative politeness strategies as well as differences in the level of directness in interaction between English and Polish profiles.

Keywords: negative/positive politeness cultures, customer complaints, apology, Twitter, English, Polish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Handling everyday and business complaints in offline and online interaction
  • 3.Materials and methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Attending to the complaint
    • 4.2Offers of assistance
      • a.Offer of help
      • b.Confirmation of corrective action
      • c.Suggestions and advice on corrective actions
    • 4.3Apologies
      • a.Expression of apology
      • b.Acknowledgment
      • c.Explanation
    • 4.4Evasive strategies
      • a.Denial of responsibility
      • b.Criticizing the complainer
    • 4.5Thanks
    • 4.6Greetings, address terms, discourse markers
    • 4.7Response speech act sets
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 5 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.15019.ter
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