Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 10:2 (2019) ► pp.205–229

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Responding to customer complaints on English and Polish corporate profiles on Twitter

 | Jagiellonian University
Published online: 5 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.15019.ter
Abstract
The study investigates the strategies used by English and Polish companies in the process of handling customer complaints on Twitter. Since English and Polish are recognized as representatives of negative and positive politeness cultures, respectively, the analysis was to examine if there are differences in politeness conventions in customer-provider interaction on Twitter. The study found that although similar strategies are used by English and Polish companies in responding to complaints, the frequency of the respective strategies is different. The results of the analysis confirm differences in the use of positive and negative politeness strategies as well as differences in the level of directness in interaction between English and Polish profiles.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Handling everyday and business complaints in offline and online interaction
  • 3.Materials and methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Attending to the complaint
    • 4.2Offers of assistance
      • a.Offer of help
      • b.Confirmation of corrective action
      • c.Suggestions and advice on corrective actions
    • 4.3Apologies
      • a.Expression of apology
      • b.Acknowledgment
      • c.Explanation
    • 4.4Evasive strategies
      • a.Denial of responsibility
      • b.Criticizing the complainer
    • 4.5Thanks
    • 4.6Greetings, address terms, discourse markers
    • 4.7Response speech act sets
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (41)
References
Aston, Guy. 1995. “Say ‘Thank you’: Some Pragmatic Constraints in Conversational Closings.” Applied Linguistics 16/11: 57–86. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, and Elite Olshtain. 1984. “Requests and Apologies. A Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP).” Applied Linguistics 5/31: 196–212. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper. 1989. “Investigating Cross- Cultural Pragmatics: An Introductory Overview.” In Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies ed. by Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper, 1–34. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burton, Suzan, and Alena Soboleva. 2011. “Interactive or Reactive? Marketing with Twitter.” Journal of Consumer Marketing 28/71: 491–499. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 2003. “Globalizing ‘Communication’.” In New Media Language ed. by Jean Aitchison, Diana Lewis, and Simon Jenkins, 27–35. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deutschmann, Mats. 2003. Apologising in British English. Umeå: Umeå University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2005. “Yes, Tell Me Please, What Time is the Midday Flight From Athens Arriving? Telephone Service Encounters and Politeness.” Intercultural Pragmatics 21: 253–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, Kevin P. Gwinner, Gianfranco Walsh, and Dwayne D. Gremler. 2004. “Electronic Word-Of Mouth via Customer-Opinion Platforms: What Motivates Customers to Articulate Themselves on the Internet?” Journal of Interactive Marketing 18.1: 38–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1969. “Sociolinguistics and the Ethnography of Speaking.” In Social Anthropology and Language ed. by Edwin Ardener, 47–93. London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakubowska, Ewa. 1999. Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Politeness in the Case of Polish and English. Katowice: WUŚ.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jansen, Bernard, Mimi Zhang, Kate Sobel, and Abdur Chowdhury. 2009. “Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 60.11: 2169–2188. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Agnieszka. 2013. “Brytyjczycy [The British].” In Jak zwracają się do siebie Europejczycy [How Europeans Address Each Other] ed. by Małgorzata Marcjanik, 187–204. Warszawa: Warszawa Unversity.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lillqvist, Ella, and Leena Louhiala-Salminen. 2014. “Facing Facebook: Impression Management Strategies in Company-Consumer Interactions.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 28.1: 3–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lubecka, Anna. 2000. Requests, Invitations, Apologies and Compliments in American English and Polish. A Cross-Cultural Communication Perspective. Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marcjanik, Małgorzata. 2000. Polska grzeczność językowa [Polish Linguistic Politeness]. Kielce: WSP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Etykieta językowa [Linguistic etiquette].” In W kręgu grzeczności. Wybór prac z zakresu polskiej etykiety językowej [In the Range of Politeness. A Selection of Papers from the Area of Polish Linguistic Etiquette] ed. by Małgorzata Marcjanik, 85–96. Kielce: WAŚ.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matzat, Uwe, and Chris Snijders. 2012. “Rebuilding Trust in Online Shops on Consumer Review Sites: Sellers’ Responses to User-Generated Complaints.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 181: 62–79. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Monzoni, Chiara Maria. 2008. “Introducing Direct Complaints Through Questions: the Interaction Achievement of ‘Pre-Sequences’?” Discourse Studies 10.1: 73–87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009b. “Politeness and Indirectness across Cultures: A Comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian Requests.” Journal of Politeness Research 51: 189–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “About Polish Politeness.” In Linguistic Insights 132: Speech Acts and Politeness across Languages and Culture,s ed. by Leyre Ruiz de Zarobe and Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe, 27–52. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Apology Discourse.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, 1–6. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olshtain, Elite. 1989. “Apologies across Languages.” In Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies ed. by Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper, 155–173. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olshtain, Elite, and Andrew D. Cohen. 1983. “Apology: A Speech Act Set.” In Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition ed. by Nessa Wolfson and Elliot Judd, 18–35. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olshtain, Elite, and Liora Weinbach. 1987. “Complaints: A Study of Speech Act Behavior among Native and Non Native Speakers of Hebrew.” In The Pragmatic Perspective: Selected Papers from the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference ed. by Jef Verschueren and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi, 195–208. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. “Interlanguage Features of the Speech Act of Complaining.” In Interlanguage Pragmatics ed. by Gabriele Kasper and Shoshana Blum-Kulka, 108–137. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Page, Ruth. 2014. “Saying ‘Sorry’: Corporate Apologies on Twitter.” Journal of Pragmatics 621: 30–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pałka, Patrycja. 2009. Strategie dyskursywne w rozmowie handlowej [Discursive Strategies in Business Interaction]. Katowice: Śląsk.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sifianou, Maria. 2013. “The Impact of Globalization on Politeness and Impoliteness.” Journal of Pragmatics 551: 86–102. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sparks, Beverley A., and Graham L. Bradley. 2014. “A “Triple A” Typology of Responding to Negative Consumer-Generated Online Reviews.” Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research 20.2: 1–27.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suszczyńska, Małgorzata. 1999. “Apologizing in English, Polish and Hungarian: Different Languages, Different Strategies.” Journal of Pragmatics 311: 1053–1065. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Swani, Kunal, Brian Brown, and George Milne. 2014. “Should Tweets Differ for B2B and B2C? An Analysis of Fortune 500 Companies’ Twitter Communications.” Industrial Marketing Management 431: 873–881. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tereszkiewicz, Anna. 2015. “Zachowania grzecznościowe w interakcji handlowej na Twitterze [Politeness Behaviours in Business Interaction on Twitter].” Media-Kultura- Komunikacja Społeczna 11.4: 65–80.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Przykro nam to słyszeć :( – reakcje firm telekomunikacyjnych na skargi i zażalenia klientów publikowane w serwisie Twitter [We’re Sorry to Hear That :(- Reactions of Telecommunication Companies to Customers’ Complaints Published on Twitter].” Poradnik Językowy 31: 17–29.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trosborg, Anna, and Philip Shaw. 1998. “Sorry Does Not Pay My Bills: Customer Complaints in a Cross Cultural Setting.” Hermes Journal of Linguistics 211: 67–94.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Norel, Nienke, Piet Kommers, Joris Van Hoof, and Joost Verhoeven. 2014. “Damaged Corporate Reputation: Can Celebrity Tweets Repair It?” Computers in Human Behavior 361: 308–315. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vásquez, Camilla. 2014. The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1985. “Different Cultures, Different Languages, Different Speech Acts. Polish vs. English.” Journal of Pragmatics 91: 145–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhang, Mimi, Bernard Jansen, and Abdur Chowdhury. 2011. “Business Engagement on Twitter: A Path Analysis.” Electronic Markets 211: 161–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhang, Yi, and Camilla Vásquez. 2014. “Hotels’ Responses to Online Reviews: Managing Consumer Dissatisfaction.” Discourse, Context and Media 61: 54–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Feng, Wei & Leyang An
2024. Making up or taunting?. Pragmatics and Society 15:3 ► pp. 400 ff. DOI logo
El-Dakhs, Dina Abdel Salam & Mervat M. Ahmed
2023. A pragmatic analysis of students’ complaints and professors’ responses to complaints: A case study of an Egyptian private university. Cogent Arts & Humanities 10:1 DOI logo
El-Dakhs, Dina Abdel Salam & Nermine Galal Ibrahim
2022. Egyptian parents’ responses to children's complaints focusing on the influence of sex and age. Journal of Pragmatics 200 ► pp. 52 ff. DOI logo
Tereszkiewicz, Anna
2020. Complaint management on Twitter – evolution of interactional patterns on Polish corporate profiles. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 30:3 ► pp. 405 ff. DOI logo
Tereszkiewicz, Anna
2021. Rejecting consumer complaints in customer encounters on Twitter - the case of English and Polish brand communication. Journal of Politeness Research 17:2 ► pp. 189 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue