Politeness strategies and advice-giving in an online arthritis workshop
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Sandra Harrison
Abstract
This paper examines politeness strategies in relation to advice-giving in an online self-management programme for people with arthritis. Participants are asked to make weekly action plans, setting goals in relation to relevant topics such as diet and exercise, and a major online activity for participants is to give feedback to each other on these action plans. Thus participants online carry out face-threatening acts such as giving advice and criticizing elements of others' action plans. Participants use a variety of strategies to mitigate their feedback, including indirect suggestions framed as declaratives or rhetorical questions, and widespread use of positive politeness strategies. Participants make frequent use of short personal narratives in their feedback, demonstrating shared problems, concerns, and experiences, thus embodying positive politeness. This narrative feedback typically describes how the writer of the message has addressed the same problem as the recipient, and these narratives therefore also embody indirect advice. Moreover, by showing how the writer has addressed the problem, these narratives also serve to construct the writer as a self-managing expert patient.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & KG, D-10785 Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Applying politeness research to health care communication
- Hospitalk: Politeness and hierarchical structures in interdisciplinary discharge rounds
- “So, what test do you prefer?” Negotiating politic behaviour in an L2 prenatal genetic counselling setting in Hong Kong
- Politeness in institutional elderly care in Japan: A cross-cultural comparison
- Politeness strategies in question formulation in a UK telephone advisory service
- Politeness strategies and advice-giving in an online arthritis workshop
- Book reviews
- Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Applying politeness research to health care communication
- Hospitalk: Politeness and hierarchical structures in interdisciplinary discharge rounds
- “So, what test do you prefer?” Negotiating politic behaviour in an L2 prenatal genetic counselling setting in Hong Kong
- Politeness in institutional elderly care in Japan: A cross-cultural comparison
- Politeness strategies in question formulation in a UK telephone advisory service
- Politeness strategies and advice-giving in an online arthritis workshop
- Book reviews
- Contributors
