Pragmatic Empathy as a Grand Strategy in Business Letter Writing

Zhang, Xu; Qian, Wang

doi:10.5539/elt.v11n8p14

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…Other elements, such as euphemism and empathy, are assessed by several researchers. More precisely, euphemism in business letters is sketched by Wang (2016) and Wang (2018), whereas pragmatic empathy is featured by Zhanghong and Qian (2018).…”

Section: English Business Lettersmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Egos Collide: The Linguistics of Aggressiveness in English, German, and Hungarian Business Letters – A Contrastive Approach

Kovács

Sopon

2022

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

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The subject of verbal aggressiveness seems to be marginalized in the context of business correspondence. Our paper sets out to fill in this niche, as it exposes the linguistic patterns of this phenomenon within business letters. The study commences with a conceptual framework within which the most relevant theoretical findings applicable to business correspondence in general and to verbal aggressiveness in particular are foregrounded. Next, through a descriptive approach, it presents a series of linguistic markers to identify the morphological, syntactic, and semantic constructions for the expression of aggressiveness. For this purpose, the article scrutinizes authentic business letters in English, German, and Hungarian, and then it juxtaposes data contrastively to conclude that offensive emotions materialize in relatively similar linguistic structures in these languages, i.e. through verbs and modal verbs of obligation, necessity, and impossibility, verbs in the first-person singular, conditional and result clauses, and time adverbials. Furthermore, given the linguistic characteristics of the aforementioned languages, business letters also exploit specific tools, such as inversion, fronting, and the emphatic “do”, to communicate hostile and threatening messages. Due to the large variety of linguistic resources provided, we deem that verbal aggressiveness alters, reshapes, and enriches the business discourse. It therefore deserves a proper place in the rhetoric of business correspondence.

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Section: English Business Lettersmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Egos Collide: The Linguistics of Aggressiveness in English, German, and Hungarian Business Letters – A Contrastive Approach

Kovács

Sopon

2022

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

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discursive pragmatic approach to the third person pronoun ta in Chinese computermediated communication

Sluchinski

2020

EAP

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This study examines the persuasive discourse of institutional accounts on Sina Weibo which contains the genderless non-standard third person pronoun ta written in the Roman alphabet instead of standard Chinese characters. Mandarin Chinese originally used the single character ? (ta) to refer to the third person ‘he', ‘she', and ‘it', which later gave way to three separate written ‘standard' forms: ta ? ‘he', ta ? ‘she', and ta ? ‘it' all with the same pronunciation. From a discourse analysis perspective, the study incorporates the ‘three-move structure' textual analysis methodology to shed light on both contemporary language use and one of the most under-studied interpersonal dialogic practices in Chinese computer-mediated communication: ta. The research shows that the environments in which ta appears are associated with two main goals: (1) generating monetary profit and (2) generating engagement with services/ideologies.

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Analysis of Empathic Dialogue in Actual Doctor-Patient Calls and Implications for Design of Embodied Conversational Agents

Salman¹,

Richards²

2021

ijcol

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Children's Hospital at WestmeadEmbodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are virtual agents that exhibit humanlike verbal and non-verbal behaviours. When it comes to eHealth, ECAs can provide vital support to patients by being more reachable. In order to make ECAs more effective, humanlike empathy expressed during conversation through relational cues is essential. Empathy revolves around a wide range of verbal and non-verbal behaviours that include, for example, the choice of words in social dialogues. Owing to the COVID-19 situation, there was an opportunity to record online consultations in the Incontinence Clinic and Sleep Clinic at the Children's Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia. The present study analysed these human dialogues using qualitative research methods to understand the role of empathic dialogue used by the medical team. The qualitative analysis of the live calls used psychology-based relational cues derived from conversational characteristics of humans to build a coding framework around the most relevant themes. Statistical analysis was used to compare relational cue usage between healthcare roles. Finally, using the framework dialogues of the medical team and two ECAs known as Dr Evie (eVirtual Agent for Incontinence and Enuresis) and SAM (Sleep Adherence Mentor) were compared to provide recommendations for health practitioners and future ECA dialogue development.

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Pragmatic Empathy as a Grand Strategy in Business Letter Writing

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

When Egos Collide: The Linguistics of Aggressiveness in English, German, and Hungarian Business Letters – A Contrastive Approach

When Egos Collide: The Linguistics of Aggressiveness in English, German, and Hungarian Business Letters – A Contrastive Approach

discursive pragmatic approach to the third person pronoun ta in Chinese computermediated communication

Analysis of Empathic Dialogue in Actual Doctor-Patient Calls and Implications for Design of Embodied Conversational Agents

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