Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jan 1996

Power and Politeness

MARGARET BAKER GRAHAM ; CAROL DAVID

Abstract

In addition to reflecting the social and power relationships between the writer and the reader as well as the degree of imposition, politeness strategies in administrative writing also reflect the values of the organization. Operating in the egalitarian climate perpetuated in a university setting, administrators obscured their legitimate power when they wrote nonroutine memos to faculty. Hiding and de-emphasizing their empowerment by using indirectness, tentativeness, indebtedness, and personalization, academic administrators achieved a high level of politeness. This intensified politeness contrasts with the moderated politeness used in a corporation that openly accepts hierarchy and promotes efficiency. This study, therefore, offers a context-based approach to analyzing administrative writing, an approach that can be used to uncover discourse strategies in other organizational sites.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
1996-01-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651996010001001
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. Friess (2013)
    “Bring the Newbie Into the Fold”: Politeness Strategies of Newcomers and Existi…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Friess (2011)
    Politeness, Time Constraints, and Collaboration in Decision-Making Meetings: A …
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Rogers et al. (2003)
    Reconceptualizing Politeness to Accommodate Dynamic Tensions in Subordinate-to-…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Cites in this index (2)

  1. Baker et al. (1994)
    The rhetoric of power: Political issues in management writing
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. HAGGE et al. (1989)
    Linguistic Politeness in Professional Prose
    Written Communication
Also cites 5 works outside this index ↓
  1. Cherry, Roger D. (1988)
    10.1016/0378-2166(88)90020-3
    Journal of Pragmatics  ↗
  2. 10.1177/002194369403100403
     ↗
  3. 10.1016/0090-2616(77)90035-3
     ↗
  4. 10.5465/amr.1986.4283106
     ↗
  5. 10.1177/0893318994008001002
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 6 View in citation network →

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