Redressive actions following commiserations in online discussions
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In Brown and Levinson's (1978) seminal classification of positive politeness strategies, commiserating belongs to the subgroup referred to as human-relations wants, e.g. being cared about. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of a corpus consisting of several Internet discussion boards has shown that it is also one of the most frequent positive politeness strategies used there. All the threads under examination are dedicated to the so-called women's topics, such as dieting, pregnancy, infertility, or mothering. Members of these close-knit communities find it necessary to express sympathy in order to enhance each other's positive face and avoid face-threatening acts arising from the sensitive nature of these topics. However, the analysis of the corpus has also revealed that to commiserate merely by saying you are sorry is not enough. In many cases, the interlocutors find it necessary to add complex redressive actions to boost the illocutionary force of their statements. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to introduce these actions and describe their rapport-building function seeking to facilitate smooth communication within online communities. |