Abstract

Consonant with a trend toward investigating professional writing in naturalistic settings, this discourse-analytical study of a corpus of “suggestion letters” written in a Big Eight accounting firm demonstrates how auditors use negative politeness strategies to meet the complex demands of potentially threatening interactional situations. The study substantiates Brown and Levinson's claim that politeness is a linguistic universal by showing that the same politeness strategies found in speech also occur in written communication. Analysis of negative message strategies in ten leading textbooks shows that business communication pedagogy needs to modify strictures on the use of passives, nominalizations, expletive constructions, and hedging particles in light of research on the exigencies of real-world linguistic interaction.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1989-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088389006003004
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (16)

  1. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Technical Communication Quarterly
  4. Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Show all 16 →
  1. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Written Communication
  5. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  6. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  7. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  8. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  9. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  10. Written Communication
  11. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

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