Linguistic and relational strategies for advice giving in an online commercial context
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Wen Yuan
Wen Yuan holds a PhD in linguistics (2019) from Beihang University, and currently is an associate professor in linguistics at University of International Business and Economics. During 2016–2017, she was a visiting researcher in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests include cognitive accounts of pragmatic interpretation, and the interface between social psychology and pragmatics. She has published in
Philosophical Psychology ,Journal of Pragmatics , and several key Chinese journals. Her recent research focuses on examining the perlocutionary effects of different speech acts through a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches.Yue Jin is an associate professor in the E-Business Department in the School of Information Technology and Management at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China. She received her PhD in management science and engineering from the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University. Her research interests include online communities, social media, and digital economics. Her research has appeared in
Production and Operations Management ,Journal of the Association for Information Systems ,Electronic Commerce Research and Applications ,Information Systems and e-Business Management , among others.
Abstract
Studies on online advice-giving have focused on non-profit public platforms but rarely examined it in commercial contexts, where the advisor has the motive of seeking economic interests. This study investigates advice-giving in the first five-minute part of paid live talks, which is free but designed to entice the audience to pay for the remaining part. Transcripts of 123 five-minute recordings are collected. This study analyzes individual speakers’ use of discursive moves and the corresponding relational strategies, as well as their effectiveness in boosting online sales. The results indicate that four discursive moves, i.e., metacomment, general information, advice, and assessment, are the most frequently used, with a large majority of advice phrased in declaratives. Statistical analysis showed that inexperienced, non-expert, and low-community-status speakers tend to use more bonding, and expert, experienced, high-community-status, and male speakers prefer to use more hedging. In addition, the effects of bonding, empathizing, and hedging on sales are consistently positive, while those of criticizing are negative; the above effects are moderated by the speaker’s social status. This study adds to the understudied issue of advisors’ relational negotiations and their resultant outcome in public commercial contexts.
About the authors
Wen Yuan holds a PhD in linguistics (2019) from Beihang University, and currently is an associate professor in linguistics at University of International Business and Economics. During 2016–2017, she was a visiting researcher in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests include cognitive accounts of pragmatic interpretation, and the interface between social psychology and pragmatics. She has published in Philosophical Psychology, Journal of Pragmatics, and several key Chinese journals. Her recent research focuses on examining the perlocutionary effects of different speech acts through a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Yue Jin is an associate professor in the E-Business Department in the School of Information Technology and Management at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China. She received her PhD in management science and engineering from the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University. Her research interests include online communities, social media, and digital economics. Her research has appeared in Production and Operations Management, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Information Systems and e-Business Management, among others.
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 72302049) and the Scientific Research Laboratory of AI Technology and Applications, University of International Business and Economics. We are grateful to Professor Miriam Locher for explaining key terms in her advice frame and sharing with us important literature on coding. We also want to express our thanks to Professor Francis Y. Lin for polishing the language of our manuscript. Last but not least, we thank the two reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions towards improving our manuscript.
Specific examples of discursive moves and relational strategies.
| General relational strategies | Specific categories | Discursive moves | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Face-enhancing strategies | Bonding | greeting | 大家好 ‘Hello’ |
| welcome | 欢迎来到我的 live ‘Welcome to my live talk’ | ||
| acknowledgement | 谢谢大家来参加今天如何提高记忆力的这个 live ‘Thanks for coming to this live talk’ | ||
| positive feeling | 非常高兴啊今天又和大家做分享了 ‘Very pleased to share with you…’ | ||
| well-wishing | 那我这次的分享呢希望给你带来很大的帮助 ‘I hope this talk can be very helpful to you’ | ||
| general information | 我们都知道我们的身体是由一个骨骼一个骨架所组成的 ‘As we all know, our bodies consist of…’ | ||
| assessment | 虽然说这个数码时代可能对我们年轻人来说就接触的比较多, 但对于现在的一个青少年来说, 其实也可以说跟我们是一样的啦 ‘Like we young people, a teenager has a great contact with the digital world’ | ||
| advice | 让我们一同来关注女性健康 ‘Let’s get together and call for attention to women’s health’ | ||
| Empathizing | assessment | 这也是大家比较关心的一个问题, 我相信大家都不愿意做手术, 去切除它 ‘This is an issue you are concerned with, and I believe you are reluctant to have resection operation’ | |
| advice | 希望大家以后再遇到这样的问题, 可以不再受到困惑, 可以不再受到他的恐吓 ‘(I) hope when (you) encounter such problems in the future, (you) will not feel confused or intimidated’ | ||
| Praising | assessment | 您这个问题问得很好 ‘you asked a very good question’ | |
| Face-saving strategies | Hedging | advice | 如果已经诊断了增生, 但是如果没有疼痛的症状, 可以等月经干净后再去做一次超生 ‘If diagnosed with hyperplasia of mammary glands but without any feeling of pain, (you) can go to the hospital for ultrasonic imaging of (your) mammary glands when (your) period ends’ |
| Face-threatening strategies | Boosting | assessment | 那么嗯, 在我们的眼中呢就是吃喝不愁的今天呃, 做一个身心健康的吃货成了一个难题, 很难很难做到 ‘So in our eyes, today’s world has an abundant food supply, but it is very very difficult to be a foodie, both mentally and physically healthy’ |
| advice | 所以呢, 我们一定要讲求搭配, 讲究平衡 ‘So we must have a balanced diet’ | ||
| Criticizing | assessment | 大家对精神分裂或者精神病这个病真的了解的其实并不多, 然后就经常会给他贴上标签呃 … ‘(You) don’t have much knowledge about psychosis, but (you) often tend to label it…’ | |
| advice | 一个病人多喘气, 他到底是不是哮喘也不是你说了算的 ‘When someone puffs a lot, you have no right to say whether he has asthma’ |
Examples of hedges:
Responsibility shields: 我想 ‘I think’, 在我看来 ‘from my point of view’, 据我所知 ‘as far as I know’, 也许 ‘perhaps’, 可能 ‘may/might’, 不一定 ‘uncertain’…
Downtoners: 大约 ‘about’, 部分 ‘partly’, 几乎 ‘almost’, 有些/一些 ‘some’, 相对 ‘relatively’, 或多或少 ‘more or less’…
Frequency adverbs: 经常 ‘often’, 有时 ‘sometimes’, 一般来说 ‘generally speaking’, 典型 ‘typically’, 总体上 ‘overall’, 大多数情况下 ‘in most cases’…
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- E-mpoliteness – creative impoliteness as an expression of digital social capital
- A cognitive-semiotic approach to impoliteness: Effects of conventionality and semiotic system on judgements of impoliteness by Russian and Swedish speakers
- Conceptualizations and evaluations of (im)politeness in Syrian Arabic
- Aggravated impoliteness in Chinese online negative restaurant reviews
- Linguistic and relational strategies for advice giving in an online commercial context
- How the police (over)use explicit apology language to manage aspects of their identity
- The in-group ritual of self-denigration in Iranian doctoral defense sessions: applied linguists’ attitudes, functions and perceptions in focus
- A corpus-assisted analysis of indexical signs for (im)politeness in Japanese apology-like behaviour
- “Write oneself into being”– Ha as an interpersonal pragmatic marker on WeChat
- Prosody influence on (im)politeness perception in Chinese-German intercultural communication
- Off-record indirectness in Jordanian Arabic
- Revisiting the binary view of honorifics in politeness research
- Japanese politeness revisited: from the perspective of attentiveness on Twitter
- Book Review
- Landone, Elena. 2022. Methodology in Politeness Research. Springer International Publishing. Hardcover ISBN 978-3-031-09160-5. eBook ISBN 978-3-031-09161-2 Price: Hb €99.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- E-mpoliteness – creative impoliteness as an expression of digital social capital
- A cognitive-semiotic approach to impoliteness: Effects of conventionality and semiotic system on judgements of impoliteness by Russian and Swedish speakers
- Conceptualizations and evaluations of (im)politeness in Syrian Arabic
- Aggravated impoliteness in Chinese online negative restaurant reviews
- Linguistic and relational strategies for advice giving in an online commercial context
- How the police (over)use explicit apology language to manage aspects of their identity
- The in-group ritual of self-denigration in Iranian doctoral defense sessions: applied linguists’ attitudes, functions and perceptions in focus
- A corpus-assisted analysis of indexical signs for (im)politeness in Japanese apology-like behaviour
- “Write oneself into being”– Ha as an interpersonal pragmatic marker on WeChat
- Prosody influence on (im)politeness perception in Chinese-German intercultural communication
- Off-record indirectness in Jordanian Arabic
- Revisiting the binary view of honorifics in politeness research
- Japanese politeness revisited: from the perspective of attentiveness on Twitter
- Book Review
- Landone, Elena. 2022. Methodology in Politeness Research. Springer International Publishing. Hardcover ISBN 978-3-031-09160-5. eBook ISBN 978-3-031-09161-2 Price: Hb €99.
