The impact of politeness and relationship on perceived quality of advice about a problem

Abstract

Advice is a common but potentially problematic way to respond to someone who is distressed. Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) suggests advice threatens a hearer's face and predicts that the speaker-hearer relationship and the use of politeness strategies can mitigate face threat and enhance the effectiveness of advice messages. Students (N = 384) read 1 of 16 hypothetical situations that varied in speaker power and closeness of the speaker-hearer relationship. Students then read 1 of 48 advice messages representing different politeness strategies and rated the message for regard shown for face and for effectiveness. Perceived regard for face predicted evaluations of message effectiveness. However, neither speaker-hearer relationship nor politeness strategies was consistently associated with perceived threat to face or perceived advice effectiveness. We suggest revisions to politeness theory and additional factors that may affect judgments of face sensitivity and advice effectiveness.

Emotional Support and Physiological Stress Recovery: The Role of Support Matching, Adequacy, and Invisibility

“…Four 7-point semantic differential scales were used to measure perceptions of the partner's supportiveness (as used in previous research, see Goldsmith & MacGeorge, 2000). The questions asked participants to rate their partner's behavior during the conversation on the following scales: appropriateinappropriate, effective-ineffective, sensitive-insensitive, and helpful-unhelpful.…”

Health Internet sites: a linguistic perspective on health advice columns

“…Halliday 1978). The face-threatening character of giving and seeking advice has been confirmed especially for an Anglo-western context (Goldsmith and MacGeorge 2000). In order to counter the asymmetry between the interactants, it is likely that advice-givers employ linguistic mitigation of advice by means of indirectness, using lexical hedges or embedding the advice in further text (cf.…”

Advice-Giving and the Management of Uncertainty for Cancer Survivors

“…Advice giving is a common form of social support that frequently is viewed negatively by the recipient (Dunkel-Schetter, Blasband, Feinstein, & Herbert, 1992). Several studies have examined advice giving as a form of supportive communication (Goldsmith, 2000, Goldsmith & Fitch, 1997Goldsmith & MacGeorge, 2000;Goldsmith, McDermott, & Alexander, 2000;MacGeorge, Feng, Butler, & Budarz, 2004;MacGeorge, Lichtman, & Pressey, 2002). Previous research indicates that several factors may influence the way advice is received, including facework, advice content, and target receptiveness (MacGeorge et al, 2004).…”

“…The majority of advice research has focused on examining how facework influences perceived advice effectiveness (Goldsmith, 2000;Goldsmith & MacGeorge, 2000;MacGeorge et al, 2002). Many of the advice studies have also utilized samples of undergraduate students and examined general advice giving (Goldsmith, 2000;Goldsmith & MacGeorge, 2000;MacGeorge et al, 2002;MacGeorge et al, 2004).…”