Power

169 Chapter 7. Directness and Indirectness of Business Requests

[19a] is a prototypical Negotiation Request realized with a conventional indirect strategy. If it is realized with IMPERATIVES or RESULT, as in [19b] and [19c], the expected tactfulness is gone. If the Negotiation Request is realized with a POINT-TO, it is hard for E to know what is requested precisely. Thus, [19b], [19c] and [19d]

cannot replace [19a] while power and distance remain constant.

[20a] is a prototypical Consequence Request realized with POINT-TO, whereby R asks E to authorize a business partnership with R. Under such circumstances, E is at his liberty to comply or not. If such a request is realized with IMPERATIVES, RESULT or WANT, it is doomed to fail. It becomes clear that [20b], [20c] and [20d]

cannot replace [20a] while power and distance remain constant.

Finally, [21a] is a prototypical Regulation Request realized with RESULT. The main illocutionary (in)directness indicators in [21b], [21c] and [21d] do not have the ability to express the compelling force of abiding by business law or regulations, and are thus unable to replace [21a] as long as power remains constant.

In short, each category of business requests has a different rank of imposition, and is carried out with different linguistic strategies. The findings point to a pattern: to accomplish Consequence, Negotiation and Routine Requests, the greater the imposition, the less direct the strategy becomes, which is consistent with Brown and Levinson’s prediction. Nevertheless, Regulation Requests are not in line with their claim. As such, Hypothesis I is partly confirmed: there is a relation between imposition and the choice of requestive strategies, but the findings do not support the claim that the greater the imposition, the more indirect the strategy becomes.

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findings of Corpus I are exhibited in Figure 7.3.1, which is expressed in percentage.

The black curve in Figure 7.3.1 represents requests performed by BI. It reaches its peak at IMPERATIVES, and slopes downward along the directness and indirectness continuum till INTERMEDIARY, at which it rises a bit, and finally drops to the bottom at Point-to. The behaviour of the white curve representing requests performed by SI is roughly opposite to the black curve. Its highest point is at INTERMEDIARY and the second peak is at IMPERATIVES. The two curves have a reversal pattern, which may partially be the consequence of power differential between BI and SI. In Corpus I, SI wants to form a strategic business alliance and sell raw materials to BI in a market where supply exceeds demand. As the achievement of the goal could bring huge profits to SI, and the authority to allow the opportunity is mainly controlled by BI, there is a large power differential between BI and SI, which is reflected by the wide discrepancy of directness between the two interactants. The pattern supports Brown and Levinson’s claim that the more powerful the speaker, the more direct the speaker is (1987:77).

Figure 7.3.1. Power Differential in Corpus I (%)

-10 0 10 20 30 40 50

P e rf Im p R e su lt W a n t A fte r C a n In te r P o in t

B I S I

Cultural difference might also be at work in the formation of the reversal directness pattern. Brown’s culture of origin is low-contexed. People in low-context cultures are generally committed to their jobs and accustomed to short-term relationships, which always requires thorough information for interactants. Hence, meaning must be explicitly spelt out, which justifies the use of directness. In addition, American

171 Chapter 7. Directness and Indirectness of Business Requests

culture is solidarity oriented, which makes directness less face-threatening. In contrast, Li’s culture of origin is high-contexted, although he is an American immigrant. In high-contexted cultures such as China and Japan, people are closely involved with each other with resultant extensive information networks; thus, meaning can be encoded in the context, and explicit information may be viewed as unnecessary. As such, high degrees of indirectness can be exploited to convey messages. Further, Li’s culture of origin is long-term relationship oriented, in which indirectness may help maintain social harmony(Fukushima, 2000).

The impact of power on the choice of the level of directness of requests can be seen in Table 7.3.1, in which the strategies with the highest frequencies are highlighted in grey. In Consequence Requests, BI’s preference appears in the more direct WANT, while SI’s is in the least direct Point-to. In Negotiation Requests, BI’s highest frequency – 40% – appears in INTERMEDIARY, while SI’s total frequency in INTERMEDIARY and POINT-TO is 40%. In Regulation Requests, BI’s strongest tendency appears in RESULT, while SI’s is in CAN. In Routine Requests, BI uses IMPERATIVES most frequently, while SI employs INTERMEDIARY most frequently. The statistics suggest that when imposition remains the same, BI is more direct than SI in the accomplishment of almost every type of business requests.

Requests ^{Crps Perf Imp Result Want After Can Inter Point}

SI 0 0 0 0 7.7 23.1 23.1 46.2

Consequence

BI 0 0 0 100 0 0 0 0

Negotiating SI 0 0 0 10.0 16.7 33.3 30.0 10.0

BI 0 0 20.0 20.0 20.0 0 40.0 0

Regulation SI 0 0 0 0 0 100 0 0

BI 20.0 0 80.0 0 0 0 0 0

Routine SI 0 5.5 0 11.1 22.2 0 61.1 0

BI 0 89.0 0 0 0 0 11.0 0

Table 7.3.1. Distribution of strategies of requests in corpus I (in %)

172 Chapter 7. Directness and Indirectness of Business Requests

The impact of power can be further evidenced by the fact that the same activity with the same degree of imposition may be realized with different levels of directness by buyers and sellers. S ASKS H TO READ X, for instance, can be represented variously.

PLEASE FIND ATTACHED X and ATTACHED IS X are the most common forms.

There are 26 of the former and 23 of the latter. The former is direct, whereas the latter is ambiguous not only in its illocutionary force but also in the propositional content.

IMPERATIVES are applied by both buyers and sellers, although the ratio between them is 4.3:1. INTERMEDIARY requests are used exclusively by the sellers. All the facts indicate the influence of power differentials between buyers and sellers. Further, buyers are bombarded with sales emails and other documents from the sellers every day. Reading the documents definitely increases their workload. While this strategy creates more space for the buyer to misunderstand, it also indicates the seller’s willingness to mitigate imposition. This could appease the addressee, thereby getting the message across to the extremely busy buyers.

Further evidence to support the hypothesis that the choice of directness and indirectness is influenced by power differential is the different treatment of Consequence Requests by buyers and sellers. Table 7.3.2 displays the distribution of the strategies used to accomplish Consequence Requests. It shows that the buyers tend to use more direct strategies (33.3%) to ask the sellers to carry out important actions, whereas the sellers typically use the least direct strategies (63.7%) to ask the buyers to do important things. Power differentials certainly play a crucial part here, since buyers have the reward power, i.e., the choice of suppliers.

Direct Conventional indirect Unconventional indirect

BI & BII 33.3% 33.3% 33.3%

SI & SII 3.0% 33.3% 63.7%

Table 7.3.2. Distribution of strategies of Consequence Requests

The following are three pairs of utterances taken from the data. In each pair, S stands for the seller, and B for the buyer.

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[22] S. Look forward to meeting with you and Bob to discuss the details.

B. We now should plan on a logical time and place to meet for more detailed discussions.

[23] S. Would you please let me know the specific product names and quantity?

B. Please advise us your lowest best price.

[24] S. But, the first step may center on FDA compliance.

B. The product must be licensed by FDA.

[22] contains two utterances asking E to hold a meeting. The seller uses an INTERMEDIARY request, while the buyer uses a RESULT request. [23S] uses AFTER to ask for information, whereas [23B] uses IMPERATIVES to do the same thing. [24S] uses CAN to get E to comply with FDA regulations, while [24B] uses RESULT. It is evident that the buyers are more direct than the sellers, which displays the expected influence of power differential on the choice of requestive strategies. All the findings indicate a positive correlation between the addressee’s power over the addresser and indirectness. The findings confirm Hypothesis II: in international business emails, power affects the choice of the level of directness of requests. The more powerful participants use more direct strategies, and the less powerful less direct strategies.