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This paper examines how politeness strategies are used in Omani schools and professional development classrooms. It is a qualitative study following an interactional sociolinguistic analysis approach. The study adopts Brown and Levinson (1987) model to analyse the use of politeness and the notion of face in two different contexts.

This is a qualitative study because it includes descriptive findings. It will follow an interactional sociolinguistic analysis approach and adopts Brown and Levinson (1987) model to analyse the use of politeness and the notion of face in two different contexts. It aims at studying student–teacher interaction in two different groups: Omani private school and Professional development Academy. Two classes will be attended in the school and two classes in the Academy. A mix of female and male teachers from both groups will be observed. The first age group is young learners of grades 7 and 9 and the age range of the second group is adult learners aged between 25 and 40 years old.

The results are as follows: young learners want to be perceived with their positive face while adult learners with negative face. More face saving acts (FSA) are performed by teachers than face threatening acts (FTAs). More FTAs are performed by young students than adult students. More FSAs are performed than FTAs by female teachers than their counterparts. All teachers agreed that when their face is put into threat, they will save it even if it meant putting the student's face in threat. These results imply that there is a big awareness of politeness and face in the modern day Omani classroom in different contexts and that teachers are actually using it and trying to help students to be aware of it.

The findings of this study will reverberate throughout the field of education and pedagogical techniques since before this study, there has not been sufficient investigation exploring politeness strategies or FSAs of adults in this age group in Oman. In fact, there have not been sufficient studies conducted in this area in Oman within all age groups. To this purpose, this paper will contribute to the existing literature in this field by examining how politeness strategies are used and factors that directly affect their use in the classroom in a new context, Oman. Moreover, the analysis that is presented in this study conveys valuable information for future research exploring this topic but within a broader age range and a bigger sample.

Implicitly, the negotiation literature has generally assumed that, if economic gains are sufficient, individuals will negotiate. However, recent research has begun to consider the social costs incurred by negotiating. This paper aims to develop a conceptual model of the role of one of those social costs – threat to face – in the decision of whether to negotiate or not to negotiate.

The approach was to combine relevant literature from face theory and from negotiation to develop and support a model of the role of face in the decision to negotiate or not to negotiate.

A model was developed which proposed that, if people believe that negotiating will result in a loss of face, they are less likely to negotiate in situations that they recognize are potentially negotiable. Six variables are proposed to be antecedents to the belief that negotiating could result in loss of face. These six are divided into categories of social context (social roles and status), individual differences (face threat sensitivity and negotiation self‐efficacy), and knowledge (knowledge of negotiation scripts and knowledge of negotiation content).

The question of why some people do not negotiate when the potential for economic gains would suggest that they should negotiate has received very little attention in the negotiation literature. This model provides one theoretical approach for exploring this phenomenon.

This study attempts to identify and analyze the pragmatic functions of religious expressions, that is, invocations that include the name of Allah (God), in naturally occurring social interactions in Najdi Arabic, which is spoken in Central Saudi Arabia.

Drawing on the speech act theory and politeness model, an analysis of the data illustrates that religious expressions, in addition to their prototypical religious meanings and uses in everyday interactions, are employed to communicate a wide range of pragmatic functions.

These include signaling the end of a conversation, persuading, mitigating and hedging, showing agreement and approval, reinforcing emphasis, expressing emotions, seeking protection from the evil eye, conveying skepticism and ambiguity, expressing humor and sarcasm, and showing respect and honor. The embedded multifunctional dimension of religious expressions in the present data is interpreted as serving as a politeness marker with which speakers promote both positive politeness (by showing solidarity, claiming common grounds, and building rapport) and negative politeness (by reducing imposition and emphasizing personal autonomy).

This study further highlights the interplay between religion, culture, and language use in Najdi Arabic.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative impact of positive and negative face threats in conflict scenarios on the relational quality between disputants. This study also sought to determine whether the contextual variables of relational distance and power differential mediated this relationship as predicted by politeness theory.

To test the hypotheses, a 2 × 2 × 2 design was implemented manipulating the variables face (positive and negative), relational distance (business and personal) and power differential (high and low power differential). Participants read one of the eight scenarios, then responded to the dependent variables which focused on the impact of the face threats on relational quality between the participants. Subjects were recruited using the M-Turk, Amazon platform. Manipulation checks were carefully constructed to ensure subjects understood them.

The results of this study indicated that positive face threats have significantly more impact on relational quality between disputants than negative face threats. Moreover, context did not mediate these results. Neither relational distance nor power differential impacted the extent to which positive face threats compromised the relationship between the disputants.

This is the first study to explore the impact of face threats on relational outcomes in conflict. Prior studies focused only on the extent to which contextual variables would impact the choice of face threats that disputants might make in response to power and relational distance differences. This result suggests that face threats play a significant role in determining relational outcomes in conflict settings.

This study suggests that practitioners, such as mediators or group facilitators, should take steps to limit the kinds of positive face threats that disputants exchange during conflict. If positive face threats are allowed to escalate, then they can severely compromise the willingness of disputants to trust and continue to work toward an integrative solution.

Political divisions often appear to widen in the context of positive face threats as individuals seek to belittle the identities of their opponents. As these face threats escalate, they can result in polarizing language that disempowers these individuals from wanting to work together in a trusting relationship to accomplish important social goals.

This is the first study to explore the relative impact of positive and negative face threats on the relational quality of disputants in conflict. It is also the first to explore the extent to which context mediates the impact of face threats.

Financial analysts' roles and incentives mean that they have conflicting identities to maintain towards investors and firm managers. The authors study how analysts adopt various politeness strategies in their questioning to establish socially desirable identities in the Q&A of publicly accessible earnings calls.

The study is based on a sample of US firms with extreme earnings changes. 46 transcripts of end-of-year earnings calls were investigated with the help of linguistic discourse analysis, drawing on frameworks of face and linguistic politeness. For each transcript, the authors identified the structure of the face-threatening acts (FTAs) that arise when analysts ask probing questions and ascertained what specific politeness strategies, if any, are used by analysts to mitigate those FTAs. The authors examine how analysts perform identities through politeness in language and compare analysts' politeness behaviour and identity construction in the increasing earnings sub-sample with the decreasing earnings sub-sample.

Analysts negotiate different identities according to specific social contexts, promoting their identity as (1) competent professionals when firms report problematic performance by asking questions in a confrontational manner with few politeness strategies and (2) dependents of the firm by asking questions in a more polite manner when firms experience satisfactory performance. Analysts aim to present a socially desirable face in Q&A to influence managers' and investors' perceptions.

The study raises awareness about linguistic politeness as a communication strategy in the Q&A in earnings calls. It thereby enables managers and analysts to use linguistic politeness consciously and strategically and to recognise such use by others.

This study complements existing literature on earnings conference calls as part of external corporate communications by focusing on analysts' use of language when interacting with manages. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to show that politeness underpins analysts' language use as a device for identity negotiations. This is important to understand because analysts' identities vis-a-vis managers and investors is closely related to the stability of the financial system.

Based on interviews with 27 victims’ family members and survivors, this chapter explores how memory of the Oklahoma City bombing was constructed through participation in groups formed after the bombing and participation in the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. It first addresses the efficacy of a collective memory perspective. It then describes the mental context in which interviewees joined groups after the bombing, the recovery functions groups played, and their impact on punishment expectations. Next, it discusses a media-initiated involuntary relationship between McVeigh and interviewees. Finally, this chapter examines execution witnesses’ perceptions of communication with McVeigh in his trial and execution.

Aims to examine consumer politeness, an interaction style that may prevent a dissatisfied customer from complaining about a negative service encounter, and seeks to determine the relationship between politeness and the propensity to engage in various types of complaining behavior.

Two surveys served to develop and validate a scale for measuring politeness and tested the relationship between consumer politeness and complaining behavior. The specific items for the politeness scale were developed based on the distinction between negative and positive politeness as described by politeness theory.

The results suggest an inverse relationship between politeness and complaining behavior. The studies also find that polite and impolite consumers do not necessarily engage in the same types of complaining behavior.

In future studies, researchers may consider examining the conditions under which polite consumers do and do not voice complaints. Researchers may also consider investigating the possibility of a relationship between politeness and the opposite of complaining behavior, i.e. complimenting behavior.

Given that voice offers managers an opportunity to identify and then remedy problems, they should look for non‐threatening ways to encourage consumers to engage in this behavior. Managers may, for example, consider using positive politeness as a means for soliciting complaints.

This study introduces a sociolinguistic construct to help explain propensity to engage in complaining behavior. As such, it serves to identify and isolate one of the challenges managers face in addressing consumer complaints across a variety of service industries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what characterizes cyberbullying when it is performed in digital space and in an increasingly boundary blurred working life context.

Cyberbullying is explored through the lens of Erving Goffman’s theories on everyday life interaction and social media scholars understanding of social life on the internet today. The empirical material for the study is grounded in eight in-depth interviews with individuals who have been subjected to cyberbullying behavior in their professional life. The interview data were analyzed by means of thematic analysis.

Three key themes were identified: spatial interconnectedness, colliding identities and the role of the audience. The empirical data indicate that in order to understand cyberbullying in working life, it is necessary to consider the specific context that emerges with social network sites and blogs. Moreover, this study shows how social network sites tend to blur boundaries between the private and the professional for the targeted individual.

Cyberbullying in working life is a relatively under-researched area. Most existing research on cyberbullying follows the tradition of face-to-face bullying by addressing the phenomenon with quantitative methods. Given the limited potential of this approach to uncover new and unique features, this study makes an important contribution by exploring cyberbullying with a qualitative approach that provides in-depth understanding of the new situations that emerge when bullying is performed online.

This study seeks to understand Trump supporters’ behaviors on social media in the wake of a political controversy: US President Trump’s continued support for Judge Roy Moore’s candidacy for the US Senate representing the state of Alabama despite several allegations of sexual assault against him.

Few days before the special election was held in Alabama, an online survey was conducted among 325 supporters of President Trump to explore Trump supporters’ social media behaviors, including the unfriending/unfollowing contacts and speaking out about the controversy.

We found a negative presidential image to influence individuals’ loss of face, and such loss of face to impact unfriending/unfollowing behaviors on social media, as well as outspokenness. Furthermore, the differences between strong issue supporters and weak issue supporters’ opinions of climate perceptions and outspokenness were investigated.

Rather than using fear of isolation as the mediator between opinion climate and willingness to speak out, as is generally the case in the spiral of silence model (Moy et al., 2001), this study investigated the role of another affective indicator, loss of face on two social media behaviors, outspokenness, and unfollowing/unfriending contacts on social media.

Face threat sensitivity (FTS) has been found to influence objective negotiated outcomes when the threat to face is activated. The purpose of this study is to extend that research by testing whether FTS – which is defined as a propensity to act – is associated with the outcomes of negotiators when the threat has not been specifically activated. Face theory specifies that face threats can cause individuals to take proactive steps to avoid threats before they might occur.

Drawing on face theory and social role theory, the authors conduct a negotiation experiment and use hierarchical regression to test hypotheses concerning the relationship between FTS for sellers and buyers on negotiated outcomes in both distributive and integrative negotiations. The authors also use moderated regression to test if gender moderates the relationship between buyer and seller FTS and negotiation outcomes.

Results show that, when the threat is not activated, high FTS buyers pay more than low FTS buyers. Consistent with face theory and social role theory, this effect is moderated by gender, with the association being stronger for women buyers than for men buyers.

This paper exhibits that FTS can influence negotiator behavior even when FTS is not activated. This is valuable to negotiation scholars and practitioners who are interested in the role that individual characteristics play in negotiation behavior.