ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC POLITENESS IN THE DIALOGUE " Devo comprare una televisione" ( I NEED TO PURCHASE A TELEVISION)

ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC POLITENESS IN THE DIALOGUE "PURCHASE A TELEVISION"

This dialogue between two people represents a service interaction between a shop-assistant and a customer. The dialogue examined begins with "good morning sir, how can I help you" as a form of recognition of the negative face with a formal greeting and the enhancement of the positive face of the customer with "how can I help you?". The customer's reply will be a ratification of the need to give to the shop-assistant a negative face with "good morning" and with a explanation to justify his request in more "mitigated" terms. This represents a form of mitigation in the face of the possibility of losing the negative face of the clerk. His reply will be "well, do you have any brands, any models in mind?" The question is made in order to be able to do his job, that is, this request is to not pay unnecessary costs for his negative face because of an inability to operate his duty.
 The customer replies with "no, to be honest I don't know much of these things" by making a statement in this way there are significant costs for the defence of one's positive face because it signals his incompetence as a typical trait of those who live in adherence to a cultural dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" since they live with little stress, with a tendency towards well-being and tolerance towards different ideas. In fact, the customer indicates a product known through advertising in line with the cultural dimension "weak avoidance of uncertainty" dimension.

In his response, the customer says "I really like it" as a way to enhance one's need for a positive face and to be able to adhere to a "satisfied" dimension because it is easier in this way to remember positive emotions. The salesman confirms the vision of reality with his description of television as a way to offer a positive face and to obtain interactive benefits to be preserved during the service interaction. The client does not fully ratify because he does not understand word in English such as "screen" which represents a threat to him for his positive face and for not having to pay excessive costs for his need for a positive face formulating a request with a mitigating value with "and that would be this ... "with an informal and colloquial style. The clerk's reply is to offer a description to restore an interactional balance with the client and then to try to enhance the need for a positive face by proposing a parallel between television and the quality of the screen in the cinema. The client does not ratify this description because "he does not like cinema" and therefore this represents a strong reply in harmony with the desire to not pay costs to the need to protect his negative face in this case. The clerk mitigates his response by saying that "it was a way of saying" to reduce the costs imposed on the customer's need for a positive face. He then resumed the product description highlighting other elements with the intent to try to enhance the potential customer's need for a positive face with the number of digital channels and the possibility of connecting to the internet. These are elements that can go towards the "satisfied" cultural dimension because the internet and the multiplicity of channels allow you to have a form of control of your life and to experience positive emotions in this way. At the same time, a form of long-term orientation is created because many important facts can be seen on television in the future. The customer's reply will be "Internet! Really! As a form of expression of surprise as a way to positively give oneself a positive need. The customer ratifies by offering more details on the quality of the product as a way to continue to enhance the positive face of the potential customer. In this way, we continue to seek strong adhesion to the "satisfied" cultural dimension by trying to create positive emotions in the client. The client does not fully ratify the description because he encounters lexical expressions that seem a form of threat to his need to protect his negative face in terms of "not understanding words" and to avoid suffering these costs formulates a question with a mitigating value " what are they doing?".

The shop-assistant provides a simple explanation to make understanding easy and to try to restore an interactional balance between the two interlocutors. The customer ratifies with "ah I thought" since he does not intend to pay costs towards his positive face.

The shop-assistant specifies that there is the "possibility of simultaneous viewing of 20 channels" as a way of enhancing the positive face of the customer. The customer does not ratify because this possibility almost represents a threat to the correct use of television programs for the customer in terms of recognizing his need for a positive face when watching a program.

The clerk ratifies the customer's vision by offering an explanation that does not involve any cost to the negative side of the customer. At this point it seems that the client ratifies with "beautiful, I like this" as a way to enhance one's positive face. Given the insistence in the search for enhancement of one's positive face within the situation in question, it could be argued that shopping or shopping is the only way allowed in today's consumer and capitalist world to be able to obtain forms of enhancement and recognition of the all instrumental of one's positive face.

The customer's reply begins with "quanto" as an adverb to indicate the surprise and the strong threat to the loss of one's negative face and to be immediately sent back to a "tied" dimension with a feeling of abandonment because things with this price no longer depend on me. The expression "for God's sake" implies a strong recognition of the salesman's positive face as a way of allowing the salesman to adhere to my cultural dimension of "avoiding uncertainty strongly" because this cost is experienced as a threat to be fought and because my time orientation is "short term" in which there are guidelines to understand what is good or bad in these situations. In fact, the customer immediately points out that he needs something cheaper as a form of explicit request, which implies a loss of positive face and at the same time involves costs in high interactional terms, making the whole weight of face loss suffer only at the customer. However, the explicit mention of one's adhesion to a "constrained" dimension with the request for a cheaper product allows to report the interaction on more adherent assumptions in terms of interaction balance.

In this way, there is a greater adherence by the shop assistant towards the cultural dimension named "restricted", with fewer terms in English, which are a threat to the protection of the negative face of the customer and represent at the same time an obstacle towards the enhancement of the face positive of the clerk as capable of remodelling his messages according to the communicative situation.

The salesman's strategy as a reply will be to completely gloss over the loss of negative face by the customer in order not to charge further costs incurred by the customer independently. In fact, the shop assistant proposes, after a moment of mitigation / pause, another television with the brand name in order to make the customer regain a positive face.

The client ratifies the choice as functional to his situation in which to place the television as a way to regain a positive face after the previous turn of words, much more expensive in terms of loss of negative face. The clerk completes a longer product in order to give a product enhancement, which in turn tries to obtain some form of recognition for its need for a positive face. This explanation contains acronyms that are perceived as a threat to the protection of the customer's negative face.

Therefore the clerk accepts this request by offering an explanation of the acronym offering in that way a reduction in costs for the negative face of the customer. This explanation is not convincing for the client and this element of scepticism transpires with the question in his turn of speech "and what is special about this intelligent system?". So the clerk must reformulate the explanation, paying costs for the protection of his negative face, with more details on the capabilities of this TV in order to restore the defence of his negative face by demonstrating that he knows his work and to give recognition to the need to positive side of the customer who does not intend to pay costs for a description that cannot be understood due to its negative side. The customer's reply implies a loss of negative face on his part and an adherence to a dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" because he admits his lack of knowledge before wanting to make a purchase. This time, in order to avoid further costs to his positive side, he immediately asks for the price with the use of a verbal time to the conditional to remove the possibility of the purchase in order to protect his negative side in advance. The clerk ratified by affirming the price of this other TV in the same turn of speech. However, even in this case the customer's response is very strong because the price again represents a very strong act of threat due to its need for a negative face. In addition, in his turn of speech the clerk is acted as a "young man" to signal the degree of taxation present in this dialogue in his favour by demonstrating "de facto" who controls the event in question with this change in the notion of person as "clerk "implicit in all the interaction with" young man "highlighting the customer's adhesion to a dimension of high social distance where the choices of who manages the event are irrelevant and highlighting an adhesion to a dimension of strong avoidance of 'uncertainty by mentioning that it would need a less intelligent, technological and less expensive television. All these adjectives are threats to the vision mainly of the "constrained" and "strong avoidance of the uncertainty" present in the customer's vision of reality. In essence, the agenda of possible benefits to be obtained by the customer were very far from those assumed by the clerk in this dialogue.