Rapport Management Research Articles

Managing Rapport on TripAdvisor: Correlation of Negative Reviews and Response Voices on Online Business Platforms

This study explores the impact of negative reviews and responses on rapport management, synthesizing current research on this topic. Employing formulated research questions and statistical methods like chi-square tests, this study systematically analyzed collected data both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results indicate significant differences in response voices—accommodative, formalistic, and defensive—among various interpersonal relationship management styles when addressing negative reviews. These findings emphasize the complexity of managing interpersonal relationships amidst criticism, offering theoretical insights and practical guidance for improving customer rapport management in industries like hospitality. By examining how different management voices respond to negative reviews, this study contributes a fresh perspective to enhancing customer relationship practices in service sectors.

The interrelationship among trust, cooperativity and reliability: an analysis of doctor-patient interaction

Trust-related issues have attracted much attention from researchers recently. In the studies on trust, little attention has been paid to its interrelations with cooperativity and reliability. This paper sheds light on the relationship among trust, cooperation, and reliability in a medical context. Through a discourse analysis of the conversations between doctors and patients (including the patients’ relatives) in China, this paper finds that: (i) cooperativity will not directly lead to trust in a medical context; (ii) being cooperative or using strategies to disclaim responsibility will lead to high reliability and will indirectly construct trust; (iii) reliability is a premise for trust in the medical context, and it can be repaired through rapport management strategies, such as empathy discourse if that reliability has been broken down. The research findings in this paper possess both theoretical and practical significance because they will refresh our understanding of the interrelationship among trust, cooperation, and reliability and contribute to the maintenance or enhancement of trust relations between doctors and patients.

A Study on Consumers’ Negative Online Reviews and Merchants’ Responses Discourse Strategies Based on Rapport Management Theory

Online shopping is an important consumption channel, and customers can express reviews about products on the platform. Negative reviews can inform merchants about defects of products and services, providing references for other consumers. Negative reviews and responses reflect merchants’ and customers’ adjustments to interpersonal relationships. Based on Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management theory, this paper collects 400 negative consumer reviews and corresponding merchant responses from Tripadvisor. Then the writer conducts data statistics and case analysis on the corpus, aiming to obtain the proportions of strategies for complaints and responses and to analyze rapport management tendencies of communicators. Research shows that consumers mainly adopt rapport-challenge orientation, and the most commonly used complaint strategies are “explicit complaint”, “expression of annoyance or disapproval” and “below the level of reproach”. Most merchants take rapport-enhancement orientation and rapport-maintenance orientation. They frequently employ strategies of “expressing emotion”, “apologizing”, “committing and acting” etc. This paper intends to provide references for establishing harmonious interpersonal relationships and favorable business environment.

‘Where have you been hiding this voice?’

Abstract This study explores compliments given by judges to contestants on the TV talent show Arab Idol. A total of 120 comments from the third season 2014–2015 were analyzed for compliment types, structures, lexicon, and supportive remarks. Spenser-Oatey’s (2000, 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2008) rapport management theory was employed to determine how judges managed rapport with contestants through compliments. The analysis shows that the majority of judges’ compliments on the show were explicit compliments that were based on three syntactic patterns and four types of positive semantic carriers conveying complimenting adjectives, verbs, nouns, and adverbs. A smaller category of implicit compliments involved such strategies as comparison/contrast, rhetorical questions, and praising contestant’s country. Both categories were typically qualified by supportive or weakening elements such as repetition, encouragement, and criticism, resulting in a third category of ‘macro-compliments’. The study shows that rapport management accounts to a large extent for the judges’ complimenting behavior.

Relevance of Rapport Management in Marital Conflicts: Issues from Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown

The total lockdown in Nigeria during the second quarter of year 2020, which emanated as a strategy to control the pandemic caused by the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) generated diverse cases of marital conflicts that necessitate close examination. In this connection, the aim of this research is to investigate the rapport strategies involved in the marital conflicts depicted in a widely shared video skit on some WhatsApp platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Nigeria, with the objective to project rapport orientations and relational skills for managing marital relationships. The linguistic approach adopted for this research is Spencer-Oatey's (2008 and 2011) [13, 14] Rapport Management, which pertains to the sub-field of Pragmatics. Rapport management perspective is viable for analyzing marital conflicts, particularly being that language is pivotal in both the construction and destruction of social relationships. Rapport management basically includes politeness/impoliteness dimensions, face sensitivities, sociality rights and obligations, as well as interactional goals. The methodology for this research is qualitative and its paradigm is interpretive. The research findings reveal that all levels of language and domains such as speech acts, topic choice, topic organization, turn-taking rights, choice of tone, use of address terms and honorifics, gestures, eye contact, proxemics and other body movements need to be properly managed because they could affect rapport between interlocutors either positively or negatively, such that marital relationships could either be enhanced, maintained or threatened.

Managing rapport through persuasion

This study analyses COVID-19 persuasive communication in the context of Chinese Weibo. Although COVID-19 has been investigated by linguistics scholars, little attention has been paid to how communication can help persuade and comfort people during the pandemic. Considering the exponentially augmented impact of digital platforms and their obvious public utility in the handling of future pandemics, it is worth studying the social media persuasive communication about COVID-19. Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, is an immensely popular platform where celebrity “influencers” shape views of the pandemic. From perspectives of relational acts and rapport management, this analysis of Chinese celebrity Weibo posts identifies persuasion at the lexical, syntactic and discursive levels to elucidate how celebrities reassure the public and manage relationships with their audience during the pandemic. The findings reveal that the celebrities use interactional metadiscourse lexicons, syntactic rhetorical devices and discursive framing strategies to maximise persuasion. This study broadens data sets of COVID-19 communications pertaining to the Chinese social media context, offers novel insights into rationales and frameworks of persuasion, and sheds light on the research of rapport management in celebrity discourse. Ultimately, it suggests that creating positive social media communication is an important goal during the pandemic.

RESPONDING TO REQUESTS IN CAMEROON FRENCH

The focus of this paper is on request responses by Cameroon French speakers. Data were collected from 81 French-speaking Cameroonian university students. The analysis focused on the types of request responses (preferred, dis-preferred or open-ended) and the types and linguistic realizations of the speech acts (head acts and external modifiers) used to respond to requests. Request response strategies were also examined in terms of rapport management. The results showed that the participants mostly used compliance-responses. It was also found that positive responses to requests were mostly realised using combinations of agreements and/or promises to perform the requested act and external modifiers, while negative responses to requests were realized using combinations of refusals and/or reprimands and external modifiers. The few cases of open-ended responses to requests displayed combinations of aspects of compliance and elements non-compliance responses. The analysis also revealed social variation in the use of the three types of request responses. While the study expands the scope of research on the pragmatics of Cameroon French, it calls for further research on request responses.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0753/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

ACHIEVING PROMOTION THROUGH CONSTRUCTING PRAGMATIC IDENTITIES IN ANTHROPOMORPHIC SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING – A CASE STUDY

As a large number of companies adopt anthropomorphic marketing approaches to share information and promote products on social media, this paper examines the role of identities constructed by these companies on such platforms in enhancing their marketing endeavors. Utilizing three e-commerce official accounts on Weibo, a prominent Chinese social media platform, this research delves into the linguistic perspective to uncover how diverse pragmatic identities constructed by these accounts can impact their promotional efforts. A tailored analytical framework, integrating pragmatic identity theory with rapport management theory, is developed to reflect their projected identities and elucidate the strategies employed in their construction across discourse, stylistic, and illocutionary dimensions. Under the content analysis of a self-built mini-corpus, this study shows that their identities, which belong to pragmatic identities, are defined in three dynamic and interactive aspects: good bargain promoter, beautiful life sharer, and e-commercial media introducer. Each identified identity is subsequently exemplified with authentic posts, providing an understanding of their promotional facilitation functions. Finally, the feasibility of constructing various pragmatic identities within social media contexts is discussed.

Online Support Community Building: An Interpersonal Pragmatic Study of Medical Sharing Discourse

The online support community is composed of netizens who have experienced shared stressful events or diseases. Few studies have focused on the mechanism of online community maintenance and construction. New rapport management model, as the frontier theory of interpersonal pragmatics, can avoid the limited coverage of linguistic evidence in sociological or communication approach. Medical sharing discourse is the true-life recording of personal medical experience in online community. As a new type of health discourse, it has become the main source for Chinese people to attain medical information. With complex interactive roles and special interpersonal contexts, it can best reflect interlocutors’ awareness of community building. Based on new rapport management model, this study focuses on the medical sharing discourse in China’s biggest online community Red Booklet. The discourse model and its interpersonal function in community maintenance will be elaborated in detail. Results show that bloggers have specific language selection in five language domains. Bloggers’ proper manipulation of interests, emotion, face, rights and obligations and communicative objectives in interaction contributes to the construction of online community.

Exploring disclaimers on Chinese social networking sites from a metapragmatic perspective

This study explores the employment of disclaimers as metapragmatic devices in online interpersonal interaction on a Chinese social networking site, Weibo. Previous studies discussed meta-negation disclaimers and meta-prohibition disclaimers. This study establishes a new type of disclaimer: meta-condition disclaimers. It examines the forms and functions of the three types of disclaimers. Prior studies explained disclaimers as either prospective moves or retrospective moves. This study further introduces disclaimers as conjunctive moves, which bridge the speaker’s ongoing communicative behaviour. Also, it investigates the communicative purposes of using disclaimers, revealing that disclaimers are mainly employed by Chinese netizens to convey criticism. Furthermore, this research probes into the underlying cultural factors of employing disclaimers. It uncovers certain values ingrained in Chinese culture, such as ren (kindheartedness), yi (righteousness) and li (politeness). The study contributes to a global understanding of disclaimers and could provide some insights into online rapport management.

Exploring Rapport Management among Culturally Diverse Students during Group Work Face-to-face Interactions: A Qualitative Study

Group work skills are commonly viewed as an important generic outcome of university for all students. Often, students working in groups for course assignments engage in potentially face-threatening interactions during discussions. The complication is compounded when students represent culturally diverse backgrounds in such intercultural communication.This study describes the rapport management that takes place during face-to-face group work interactions and examines the complex negotiation of social categories during intercultural group work interactions. This ethnographically informed qualitative study involved participants who were first-year undergraduates taking a course in English for Business. Their group discussions were observed in-situ, interactions were audio-taped and then transcribed for analysis. The study investigates the social intercultural interactions using Rapport Management as a framework to analyse intercultural interactions based on the concepts of face, sociality rights, and interactional goals. The findings confirm that rapport orientation is a key influence in strategy choice driven by the constructed social categories of the participants. Individual social categories are co-constructed and negotiated during the interaction processes. In face-threatening situations, the participants would orient to rapport-neglect and rapport-challenge during an interaction, but they would finally orientate to rapport-maintenance to achieve the successful interactional goals of group work. The study contributes towards the body of knowledge and understanding on rapport management and social categories in group work interactions in the context of a Malaysian university. The findings suggest that education practitioners need to be more interculturally competent in understanding the dynamics of intercultural communication among students during their participation in group work. Keywords: Rapport management, intercultural communication, social categories, group work, interaction.

A Pragmatic Study on Managing Rapport in Responding to Reprimands in Jordanian Arabic

This study aimed to investigate both the strategies Jordanians use to respond to reprimands and the impact of gender on them. Data were collected from 95 Jordanian university students at the Hashemite University using IDCTs, including Emotion Liker-Scales. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted utilizing Spencer-Oatey’s (2008) rapport management approach. Twelve strategies were used for responding to reprimands: illocutionary force indicating device, admission of responsibility, intermediate responsibility, denying responsibility, other responsibility-related examples, managing the problem, expressing reprimands, irony, and sarcasm, swearing, opting out, working out compromises and using violence. The results showed gender differences in the type and frequency of responding to reprimand strategies, reflecting good observance of the socio-contextual variables. The findings of the study revealed that Jordanian native speakers of Arabic took into account a rapport-enhancing perspective, weighing the costs and benefits, and rapport-threatening perspectives, including asserting autonomy and infringing upon principles of association and involvement. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further promising research.

Pragmatic Functions of Move Structures in Online Chinese Hotel Complaint Responses

The paper employs genre analysis to investigate the pragmatic functions of complaint responses of five-star hotels in China. The study first summarizes the move structures of complaint responses at the macro level and then explores the realization process of the main moves on the communicative purpose. Based on previous studies and data analysis, there are four moves and fourteen sub-moves in complaint responses. Grounding the theoretical framework of rapport management, the study identifies the relation-oriented, task-oriented, and promotion-oriented functions of moves in Chinese hotel complaint responses. Besides, this paper compares the differences between various functions to summarize the response strategies suitable for Chinese hotels. Overall, the present study sets up a more comprehensive move framework of online business complaint responses, which can help to strengthen the interpretation of consumer complaints and provide references for enhancing customer satisfaction and maintaining a harmonious relationship with customers.

The Functions and Characteristics of Emojis and Memes in Intimate Interpersonal Online Communication

Emojis and memes have become prevalent in digital communication, particularly in intimate online chatting. This research analyzes the use of emojis and memes in intimate online chatting through the lens of rapport management theory, with a focus on two questions: 1) What are the characteristics of emojis and memes used in intimate online communication? 2) What are the functions of emojis and memes used in intimate online communication? Using ethnographic methods, data is collected from an online chatting group called “Siblings in law,” which consisted of four members. Our findings revealed three characteristics of emojis and memes used in intimate online chatting: 1) Emojis are used more often than memes, but memes are preferred by online interlocutors. 2) Different individuals have different preferences for emojis and memes, and they use emojis or memes that their friends like to use. 3) The same emoji used in a different context may convey different or even opposite meanings. Additionally, we found that emojis and memes in intimate online communication serve three functions: 1) They protect the face of interlocutors by upgrading praise and downgrading ordering utterances. 2) They help realize the association principle of the rapport management theory. 3) Certain types of emojis and memes assist in achieving the interactional goal of intimate online communication.

Online Corporate Apology Strategies Posted on Twitter in Arabic: A Socio-Pragmatic Study

This study aims to identify the types of moves and politeness strategies used in online corporate apology (OCA) in Arabic, posted on customers’ complaints/negative reviews on Twitter. Additionally, the study compares Arabic with English, Japanese, and Chinese to explore cross-cultural similarities and differences in OCA. Following the growth of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, various studies have focused on identifying the strategies utilized on social media using data from new-age computer-mediated communication. OCA strategies used by companies to restore their image, manage rapport, show accountability, and responsibility have been studied in many languages, but not Arabic. This study collected 271 responses on customer complaints/negative reviews from a company’s account on Twitter and analyzed them using Morrow and Yamanouchi’s (2020) model of rhetorical moves and Spencer-Oatey's (2008) rapport management framework. It revealed 12 OCA moves that were used 1045 times: opening, closing, repair, promising, explanation, expressing reassurance, apology, request, showing appreciation, denying the problem, expressing feelings, and compensation. Closing was the most frequent move, followed by opening and repair. All the previous moves were used in English, Japanese, and Chinese, except promising, expressing reassurance, showing appreciation, expressing feelings, denying problems, and compensation. The findings indicate that the company used 11 moves to enhance rapport and manage customers’ face needs, sociality rights, and interactional goals. Denying the problem was the only move challenging rapport, and was used only 1%. The company seeks to preserve its image to build rapport with customers in OCA.

Hedged Performatives in Spoken American English: A Discourse-oriented Analysis

This paper provides a corpus-based analysis of so-called “hedged performatives,” which, although frequently referred to in the literature, have never been the subject of an in-depth functional study. Using data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the focus is on I must/ have to say, I must/ have to admit, and I must/ have to confess, as the hedged performatives which are among the most frequent and score highest in terms of collocational strength. The qualitative analysis identifies two main functions, viz., downtoner and emphasizer. They are shown to derive from the interplay of three co(n)textual parameters: (i) “semantic valency” of the host clause (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral semantic content), (ii) “thematic orientation” of the host clause (i.e., toward the speaker, the addressee, or a third person/the situation), and (iii) conversational “alignment” of the speaker with the interlocutor (i.e., agreement or disagreement). It is further shown that hedged performatives play an important role in rapport management, serving (mainly positive face) politeness strategies, which are captured in terms of face-preservation, face-damage, and face-boost.

A Pragmatic Study of Identity Construction by Teasing from the Perspective of Rapport Management Theory

A Pragmatic Study of Identity Construction by Teasing from the Perspective of Rapport Management Theory

“Shut up! Don’t say that! You’ve got to say ḤASHĀKEM!” The pragmatics of Ḥashāk and its variants in colloquial Algerian Arabic

Abstract In this paper, the pragmatic functions served by ḥāshāk and its variants in colloquial Algerian Arabic (CAA) are unravelled. Literally, ḥāshāk means “You’re exalted/exempt from X/I distance you from X,” where X is a bad thing or socially/religiously unacceptable act. Its variants include ḥāsha, ḥāshākem, ḥāshāh/ḥāshāha/ḥāshāhem, maḥashākesh, and the verb ḥāsha/ḥāshi. As far as the author is aware, this is the first study on the pragmatics of ḥāshāk and its variants in colloquial (Algerian) Arabic. Two complementary data sets were collected and analyzed: an online survey administered to native speakers (N= 263) and a corpus of naturally occurring examples gained using an ethnographic method (N= 172). The findings indicated that the core semantic import (exaltative/excepting/exempting meaning) is retained in CAA and further extended to perform other pragmatic functions: apologetic, appreciative, requestive, concessive, critical, defensive, and sarcastic. These intertwined functions are expected in an array of highly conventionalized contexts. These findings were discussed from an eclectic perspective (e.g., pragmatic reversal, pragmatic markers, politeness theory, and rapport management).

Rapport building in B2B sales interactions: the process and explananda

Despite the expansion of digital transformation, interpersonal interactions remain the foundation for successful business-to-business (B2B) sales meetings in complex exchanges. This study focuses on rapport building and examines it as an explicitly and implicitly manifested ongoing process covering the entire duration of a B2B sales meeting. Based on empirical findings from a qualitative study of Japanese business professionals, the study develops a process conceptualization of rapport building. It draws on the rapport management model from sociolinguistics, showing how rapport building is based on meeting individuals’ fundamental needs for appreciation, approval, fair consideration, and social inclusion, besides fulfilling business-related rapport needs. Based on the data, we identified three phases in rapport building (establishing, developing, and leveraging) and various overt and covert rapport-building activities the salesperson can adopt to create and nurture rapport with a customer by relying on verbal, nonverbal, and intuitive cues. Our findings indicate that only the final phase, leveraging rapport, offers an optimal setting for discussions on future business opportunities. The study challenges the stereotypical notion of rapport as mere small talk at the beginning of a sales meeting and provides valuable managerial implications related to successful rapport building.

Making up or taunting?

Abstract Online consumer reviews (OCRs) are characteristic of, and play a vital role in, the sharing economy, the new business model for (in particular younger) generations of consumers. Even so, discussions of the pragmatic strategies that sharing businesses employ in response to negative OCRs are still a scarcity in academic literature. The present article makes an original contribution to rapport management studies by examining both the negative and positive rapport management strategies (RMS; Spencer-Oatey 2008) in the responses of British and Chinese Airbnb hosts to 200 negative OCRs in English and 200 negative OCRs in Chinese; among the 400 responses by Airbnb hosts replying to their angry guests’ negative OCRs, there were just 10 negative and 10 positive RMSs. The study also examines similarities and differences between English and Chinese responses to negative OCRs.