Politeness in sales negotiations: Modifiers in German call-centre discourse
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines politeness devices in German call-centre sales talk. We annotated 68 authentic service-to-sales calls with ISO 24617-2 plus a 13-category modifier typology. Sales approaches favour suggestions over direct requests; 802 modifiers occur, mostly internal (58%). A crowd-sourced study (n = 95) rated adapted utterances on politeness, clarity, purchase intent. Results show trade-offs: downtoners raise perceived politeness but reduce clarity/persuasiveness; temporal framing increases purchase intent but lowers politeness; intensifiers and pronoun shifts show no reliable effects. External support moves, often dismissed as verbosity, function as explanations in this domain. We propose a hybrid account: Brown & Levinson's power–distance–imposition remain useful heuristics; ISO-based interactional modelling better explains persuasive success, informing training for agents and conversational AI.
Source: Language & Communication
Authors: Jutta Stock, Dietrich Klakow, Volha Petukhova
Institution: Saarland University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,030
OpenAlex ID: W7160136320