An Analysis Of Politeness Strategies In Personal Selling Conversations

In recent years, many researchers have conducted researches in sales talk, but theempirical study which is based on real sales talk materials, especially the personalselling conversation is comparatively rare, or none has been found to some degree. AsChinese people‘s living standard is becoming better and better, products which areregarded as non-necessities in previous years come into the scope of people‘s dailylife. And there emerges a new trend of selling activity--personal selling.This paper aims to analyze and discuss the politeness strategies used in personalselling conversations based on forty first-hand recording materials by means of usingBrown and Levinson‘s face theory which classifies the politeness strategies intopositive politeness, negative politeness, bald on record and off record. The researchquestions put forward in this paper are:1.What kinds of face threatening acts can existin personal selling conversations?2. What politeness strategies will be used toalleviate the FTAs by salespersons or customers?The study illustrates different category of face threatening acts that threaten eitherpositive face or negative face of the hearer, also analyzes the proportion of differentface threatening acts as well as the variables that decides the weightiness of facethreatening acts. When the face threatening acts occur, the salespeople and thecustomers adopt different methods to save face for each other and the politenessstrategies used by the salespeople and the customers in personal selling conversationsare mainly on-record strategies with redressive action by the salespeople and bald onrecord strategy without any redressive action by the customers.There are six chapters in this paper. Chapter one first introduces the backgroundand significance of the study. Secondly, the paper reviews the previous studies onpersonal selling, and politeness which offers the theoretical background of the study.Thirdly, the paper discusses the research questions, data collection and transcriptionand subjects. Fourthly, detailed analysis of the face threatening acts in personal sellingconversations is done. Then, the paper discusses and analyzes the politeness strategiesused in personal selling conversations, and finally, a conclusion is drawn andlimitations of the study are stated.With the development of the society and the market, salespeople are required to become more competent than ever before, and this study can provide more will-besalespeople and more college graduates with helpful information in sales field.