THE MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICT IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION: THE PRAGMATICS OF CERTAIN SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES
Keywords:
disagreement, fact-threatening act, illocution, locution, mitigation marker, modal verb, non-factive verb, politeness, request, whimperativeAbstract
In this paper I examine correlations between meanings of a number of English syntactic structures and their usages as mitigation markers in workplace discourse. These are the whimperatives (the (bare) imperative, can/could you and will/would you patterns) and the non-factive and modal constructions (I think, P and the must/would frames). Basing my research on genuine linguistic examples, and working within the theoretic frameworks of Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Politeness Theory, I show how the particular configurations of illocutionary components in the semantic formulae for the given patterns may account for the motivation in their systematic use as mitigation markers in business communication.
References
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Brown, Levinson 1987: P. Brown, S. C. Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goffman 1959: E. Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life, New York: Anchor Books.
Grice 1989: P. H. Grice, Studies in the way of words, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Kerebrat-Orecchioni 1997: C. Kerebrat-Orecchioni, A multilevel approach in the study of talk-in-interaction, Antwerp: Pragmatics, 7, Antwerp, 1-20.
Levinson 1983: S. C. Levinson, Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mišković 2003: M. Mišković, Talking attitudes, in: C. Inchaurralde, C. Florén (eds.), Interaction and cognition in linguistics, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 99-110.
Sacks 1992: H. Sacks, Lectures on conversation I, Oxford: Blackwell.
Wierzbicka 1991: A. Wierzbicka, Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Wierzbicka 1996: A. Wierzbicka, Semantics: Primes and universals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Published
10-26-2010
How to Cite
Mišković-Luković, M. (2010). THE MANAGEMENT OF CONFLICT IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATION: THE PRAGMATICS OF CERTAIN SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES. Nasleđe, 7(16), 133–144. Retrieved from http://nasledje.kg.ac.rs/index.php/nasledje/article/view/306
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