Contextual factors and language: an analysis of order placements from a Japanese crowdsourcing website

Business documents, like other communications, are created in specific social context to achieve various specific social goals. This study examines relationship between the linguistic characteristics of order placements on Japanese dedicated crowdsourcing website and their context of situation, focusing on the power relations between the orderer and the subcontractor. As for the relationship between the orderer and the subcontractor, qualitative analysis of data shows that it is the orderer who is overwhelmingly powerful in this relationship. This imbalance seems to be reflected in the linguistic characteristics of order placements, such as choices made in the system of grammar, and in the quality of information in the sense of Grice’s maxims of conversation.