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.