https://biblio.ugent.be/ Ghent University Academic Bibliography 2000-01-01T00:00+00:00 1 monthly https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8701307 Van Herck, Rebecca Dobbenie, Babette Decock, Sofie 2021 This cross-cultural study examines the differences in communicative styles between English and German email responses to customer complaints by analysing their discourse structure (through a rhetorical move analysis) and the frequency of first-person references (Iandweand their different forms). The framework is given byHouse (House, Juliane. 2006. Communicative styles in English and German.EuropeanJournal of English Studies10(3). 249–267.), who suggests that English speakers tend to use a more interpersonal (i.e., people-oriented) communicative style, while German speakers show a preference for a transactional (i.e., content-oriented) style. In addition,first-person references within the genre of email responses to complaints are associated with either the customer service agent’s personal or corporate identity. The data consist of 150 English and 84 German authentic emails. The results of the move analysis reveal that the discourse structure of both data sets is mainly similar, but the few differences point into the direction of support for House’s framework, in particular the dimension on addressee- or content-orientation. Although agents generally use more we than I-references in both data sets, thus exhibiting mainly a corporate identity, they tend to use the opposite in some moves (e.g., Apology), which points to pronominal shifting across move level, as suggested in previous research (Zhang, Yi &Camilla Vásquez. 2014. Hotels’ responses to online reviews: Managing consumer dissatisfaction. Discourse, Context and Media 6. 54–64.). Overall, the German agents use more we-references compared to their British colleagues. Finally, agents use pronominal shifting within move level to distance themselves from the company. application/pdf https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8701307 http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8701307 http://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2021-2003 https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8701307/file/8701308 https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8701307/file/8701308 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess INTERCULTURAL PRAGMATICS ISSN: 1612-295X ISSN: 1613-365X Languages and Literatures Linguistics and Language Communication Language and Linguistics computer-mediated communication email responses to customer complaints first-person pronoun interpersonal and transactional moves move analysis online complaint management SERVICE RECOVERY COMMUNICATION IMPACT Person- versus content-oriented approaches in English and German email responses to customer complaints : a cross-cultural analysis of moves and first-person pronouns journalArticle info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion