Sample analysis

 “Dear __________

Thank you for contacting us about your Nestle Aero Chocolate Mousse. I am sorry to heat it was mouldy. I would not be happy if this happened to me. Please accept my apologies.

I’m sorry to say that, as it’s not one of our own-label products, I can’t deal with it myself. However, I’ve told the supplier and asked them to investigate for you. ”

Looking at my data, you can see the sender of the letter has used negative politeness to lessen the impact of the upcoming statement. “I’m sorry to hear that” disempowers the sender which is a necessary action as they are about to tell the receiver they cannot help, so by disempowering themselves it creates a smaller power gap which makes their statement seem less of a face threatening act compared to if they bluntly stated ‘I cannot help.’. Another example of how the sender disempowers themselves is by their use of contractions. By shortening ‘I am’ to ‘I’m’, it lowers the formality of the letter which suggests a more person tone. In addition, the use of the verb ‘hear’ connotes a more personal level of acknowledging this issue, as it suggest the sender cares rather than just reading it which would require the verb ‘see’.  The fact the letter also contains a typo (“heat” when meaning “hear”) suggests proper measures of checking were not enforced. From this we can infer that the sender was not taking this completely formally and that they were trying to make it more of a personal apologetic letter. This lessons the power gap between the sender and receiver. This supports my hypothesis based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory as the sender has considered the degrees of imposition before using the necessary politeness theories to address them.

 

Data analysis

I feel like my data is representative of my data pool as I collected it over a 12 month period which enabled me to collect a wide range of letters. However there was a slight limitation as I had to eliminate certain letters from the data pool. This was due to confidentiality reasons, so I had to remove them so that my investigation remained ethical. In spite of this, I so still feel like I was able to collect enough data to analyse. There are several examples of things I will be able to quantify from my data. For example, I could observe the frequency of when imperatives are used to assert power of a command to the reader. Furthermore, I could also look at the number of times deontic modal verbs are used to imply an obligation to do what the letter is requesting. One aspect of my data that I had not originally considered that could lead to me slightly changing the focus of my investigation is to make sure I consider certain variables that will lead to different amount of power techniques/strategies used between individual letters. These variables are the ones suggested by Brown and Levinson, how social distance, power distance and the degree of imposition has an effect on the appropriate use of linguistic strategies used to assert power. This could have an effect on my investigation as the letters I collected over a 12 month period are from different senders, or if they are from the same one they are addressed to different individuals and therefore the weight of face threats may have beeen compensated to adjust for this. The theory I have researched so far is concordant with what I predicted I would be able quantify from my data.

Hypothesis ideas

Following Fairclough’s (2001) idea on power, members of authority will display both power in the discourse through language structure and also have power behind the discourse due to instrumental power.

Based on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, formal letters will contain frequent examples of where the writer uses face threatening acts through either positive or negative politeness in order to gain their request/wish.

Methodology

The sources used in my language investigation were collected from my household and although some of them are addressed to myself, some are also addressed to family members who are residents at the same address. This raises an ethical issue of confidentiality which I addressed by gaining informed consent from the person the letter belonged to. I constructed a letter that explained how I would be using the letter to see how power was being asserted with the language construction.  Furthermore, I explained how their identity would be kept private and confidential as I would be blacking out any personal details that could lead to their identity or personal information being revealed. To some extent I could not completely ensure confidentiality as my investigation is based on letters coming to my household which creates a direct link to some of the letters being about my family members who live in the house. However, so that this wasn’t an issue I explicitly explained in my letter that it would be made clear that the letters would be referred to as coming from my house but that the use would only be “for academic purposes”.  To ensure my findings would be reliable, I collected all of my letters over a 12 month period. This would widen my data pool and ensure the letters I was collecting were a true representation of letters coming into my household. This also improves the reliability of my data as it shows it is constant over time and not just a snap shot which makes it valid.