Politeness in sales negotiations: Modifiers in German call-centre discourse

IF 1.4 2区文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION

Language & Communication Pub Date : 2026-05-01 Epub Date: 2026-04-29 DOI:10.1016/j.langcom.2026.03.008

Jutta Stock , Dietrich Klakow , Volha Petukhova

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper examines politeness devices in German call-centre sales talk. We annotated 68 authentic service-to-sales calls with ISO 24617-2 plus a 13-category modifier typology. Sales approaches favour suggestions over direct requests; 802 modifiers occur, mostly internal (58%). A crowd-sourced study (n = 95) rated adapted utterances on politeness, clarity, purchase intent. Results show trade-offs: downtoners raise perceived politeness but reduce clarity/persuasiveness; temporal framing increases purchase intent but lowers politeness; intensifiers and pronoun shifts show no reliable effects. External support moves, often dismissed as verbosity, function as explanations in this domain. We propose a hybrid account: Brown & Levinson's power–distance–imposition remain useful heuristics; ISO-based interactional modelling better explains persuasive success, informing training for agents and conversational AI.

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销售谈判中的礼貌：德语呼叫中心语篇中的修饰语

本文考察了德国呼叫中心销售谈话中的礼貌手段。我们用ISO 24617-2加上13类修饰符类型注释了68个真实的服务到销售电话。销售方法倾向于建议而不是直接要求；出现802个修饰符，主要是内部修饰符（58%）。一项众包研究（n = 95）从礼貌、清晰、购买意图三个方面对改编后的话语进行了评分。结果显示了权衡：降调提高了礼貌感，但降低了清晰度/说服力；时间框架增加了购买意图，但降低了礼貌；强化词和代词的移位没有可靠的效果。外部支持的行动，经常被认为是冗长的，在这个领域中起到了解释的作用。我们提出了一个混合的解释：布朗和莱文森的权力距离强加仍然是有用的启发式；基于iso的交互建模更好地解释了说服的成功，为代理和会话人工智能的培训提供了信息。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Language & Communication Multiple-

CiteScore

3.40

自引率

6.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： This journal is unique in that it provides a forum devoted to the interdisciplinary study of language and communication. The investigation of language and its communicational functions is treated as a concern shared in common by those working in applied linguistics, child development, cultural studies, discourse analysis, intellectual history, legal studies, language evolution, linguistic anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, the politics of language, pragmatics, psychology, rhetoric, semiotics, and sociolinguistics. The journal invites contributions which explore the implications of current research for establishing common theoretical frameworks within which findings from different areas of study may be accommodated and interrelated. By focusing attention on the many ways in which language is integrated with other forms of communicational activity and interactional behaviour, it is intended to encourage approaches to the study of language and communication which are not restricted by existing disciplinary boundaries.