Chapter 7. Responding to bargaining moves in a digital era
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María Elena Placencia
Abstract
This chapter investigates the different ways in which sellers on Mercado Libre Ecuador, a virtual market place, refuse bargaining offers. Drawing on work on offers, refusals, bargaining, and computer-mediated discourse analysis, among other areas, and on the basis of a corpus of refusals taken from 227 buyer-vendor exchanges, it examines how refusals are realized, and the extent to which sellers pay attention to interpersonal concerns in their formulation of refusals. Despite the interactions being anonymous, most sellers were found to use one or more verbal strategies with a mitigating function (e.g. affiliative address, greetings, apologies, justifications, expressions of thanks). Possible factors exerting influence on this behaviour are considered. They include, for example, features of the genre and the site’s norms and controls in place.
Abstract
This chapter investigates the different ways in which sellers on Mercado Libre Ecuador, a virtual market place, refuse bargaining offers. Drawing on work on offers, refusals, bargaining, and computer-mediated discourse analysis, among other areas, and on the basis of a corpus of refusals taken from 227 buyer-vendor exchanges, it examines how refusals are realized, and the extent to which sellers pay attention to interpersonal concerns in their formulation of refusals. Despite the interactions being anonymous, most sellers were found to use one or more verbal strategies with a mitigating function (e.g. affiliative address, greetings, apologies, justifications, expressions of thanks). Possible factors exerting influence on this behaviour are considered. They include, for example, features of the genre and the site’s norms and controls in place.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of tables ix
- List of figures xi
- An introduction to technology mediated service encounters 1
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Section I. Social services
- Chapter 1. Language discordance and technological facilitation in health care service encounters 17
- Chapter 2. Context and pragmatic meaning in telephone interpreting 45
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Section II. Call centres
- Chapter 3. Managing verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated service encounters 71
- Chapter 4. Globalizing politeness? 97
- Chapter 5. Navigating commercial constraints in a service call 121
- Chapter 6. Call centre service encounters 145
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Section III. E-service encounters
- Chapter 7. Responding to bargaining moves in a digital era 173
- Chapter 8. Intensification in online consumer reviews 199
- Chapter 9. Relational practices on commercial Facebook wall interactions 223
- Index 245
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of tables ix
- List of figures xi
- An introduction to technology mediated service encounters 1
-
Section I. Social services
- Chapter 1. Language discordance and technological facilitation in health care service encounters 17
- Chapter 2. Context and pragmatic meaning in telephone interpreting 45
-
Section II. Call centres
- Chapter 3. Managing verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated service encounters 71
- Chapter 4. Globalizing politeness? 97
- Chapter 5. Navigating commercial constraints in a service call 121
- Chapter 6. Call centre service encounters 145
-
Section III. E-service encounters
- Chapter 7. Responding to bargaining moves in a digital era 173
- Chapter 8. Intensification in online consumer reviews 199
- Chapter 9. Relational practices on commercial Facebook wall interactions 223
- Index 245
