The impact of linguistic choices and (para-)linguistic markers on the perception of Twitter complaints by other customers: an experimental approach
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Nicolas Ruytenbeek
Nicolas Ruytenbeek is an assistant professor in digital and multilingual communication at the Department of Linguistics since October 2022. He is a member of the Multimodality, Interaction and Discourse (MIDI) research group, and visiting researcher at Leiden University (LUCL) and the University of Lille (STL). He is the author of Indirect Speech Acts (2021, CUP). His main research interests are experimental approaches to politeness, speech act comprehension and production, with a focus on digital (multilingual) contexts.
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Sofie Decock
Sofie Decock is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the German Section of the Department for Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University. She is a member of the research group MULTIPLES – Research Centre for Multilingual Practices and Language Learning in Society. She conducts research on digital business communication, with a focus on complaints, reviews and webcare, and on discursive representations of otherness and body semiotics in travel texts.
Ilse Depraetere is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Lille; she is a member of the UMR 8163 – STL – Savoirs Textes Langage. She has published widely on tense, aspect and modality, the semantics/pragmatics interface being in the foreground of her publications. She is, with Chad Langford, the author of
Advanced English Grammar. A linguistic approach (second edition, 2019, Bloomsbury).
Abstract
This paper addresses how the realizations of different constitutive components of Twitter complaints shape the perception of these complaints by other customers. We present three experiments on French language in which we test how customer complaint perception is impacted by the realization of the complainable (Exp. 1), of the entity responsible for the complainable (Exp. 2), and of the customer’s wish for the complainable to be remedied (Exp. 3). The results of Exp. 1 indicate that the perceived likelihood that the complaint will be responded to by the company is highest when the complainable is realized as a combination of an assertion + question + picture. In Exp. 2, we found that, in comparison with the use of the discourse marker dites to refer to the entity responsible for the complainable, the use of a noun phrase or the absence of this component increases perceived politeness. Finally, our data from Exp. 3 reveal that, compared to the use of an imperative to voice the customer’s wish for the complainable to be remedied, “indirect” request forms, and preparatory interrogatives, in particular, are perceived as more polite, as expressing lower dissatisfaction, and as decreasing the likelihood of a response from the company.
Funding source: Universiteit Gent
Award Identifier / Grant number: BOF.PDO. 2019.0010.01
About the authors
Nicolas Ruytenbeek is an assistant professor in digital and multilingual communication at the Department of Linguistics since October 2022. He is a member of the Multimodality, Interaction and Discourse (MIDI) research group, and visiting researcher at Leiden University (LUCL) and the University of Lille (STL). He is the author of Indirect Speech Acts (2021, CUP). His main research interests are experimental approaches to politeness, speech act comprehension and production, with a focus on digital (multilingual) contexts.
Sofie Decock is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at the German Section of the Department for Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University. She is a member of the research group MULTIPLES – Research Centre for Multilingual Practices and Language Learning in Society. She conducts research on digital business communication, with a focus on complaints, reviews and webcare, and on discursive representations of otherness and body semiotics in travel texts.
Ilse Depraetere is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Lille; she is a member of the UMR 8163 – STL – Savoirs Textes Langage. She has published widely on tense, aspect and modality, the semantics/pragmatics interface being in the foreground of her publications. She is, with Chad Langford, the author of Advanced English Grammar. A linguistic approach (second edition, 2019, Bloomsbury).
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Research funding: This work was funded by Universiteit Gent (no.: BOF.PDO. 2019.0010.01).
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Multimodal mitigation: how facial and body cues index politeness in Catalan requests
- “I look with deep gratitude and admiration…” – praising and complimenting in papal speeches
- Experiments into the influence of linguistic (in)directness on perceived face-threat in Twitter complaints
- The impact of linguistic choices and (para-)linguistic markers on the perception of Twitter complaints by other customers: an experimental approach
- (Im)politeness as a tool to categorize interactive discourse markers of Arabic in radio shows
- The embodied enactment of politeness metapragmatics
- Politeness of nonverbal hospitality in Saudi and British female interactions
- Borrowing of address forms for dimensions of social relation in a contact-induced multilingual community
- (Im)politeness on Facebook during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Book Reviews
- Mugford, Gerrard. 2019. Addressing Difficult Situations in Foreign-Language Learning. Confusion, Impoliteness, and Hostility
- From speech acts to lay understandings of politeness: multilingual and multicultural perspectives
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Multimodal mitigation: how facial and body cues index politeness in Catalan requests
- “I look with deep gratitude and admiration…” – praising and complimenting in papal speeches
- Experiments into the influence of linguistic (in)directness on perceived face-threat in Twitter complaints
- The impact of linguistic choices and (para-)linguistic markers on the perception of Twitter complaints by other customers: an experimental approach
- (Im)politeness as a tool to categorize interactive discourse markers of Arabic in radio shows
- The embodied enactment of politeness metapragmatics
- Politeness of nonverbal hospitality in Saudi and British female interactions
- Borrowing of address forms for dimensions of social relation in a contact-induced multilingual community
- (Im)politeness on Facebook during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Book Reviews
- Mugford, Gerrard. 2019. Addressing Difficult Situations in Foreign-Language Learning. Confusion, Impoliteness, and Hostility
- From speech acts to lay understandings of politeness: multilingual and multicultural perspectives
