The Pragmatics of Indirectness in Professional English: an Overview of Directive Speech Acts
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Professionals rarely issue bare commands. They ask, hint, suggest and hedge, and colleagues still understand what they are being asked to do. This article reviews how directive speech acts, utterances meant to get someone to act, are realised indirectly in professional English. The review draws on foundational theory and on empirical studies of workplace talk, business correspondence, email and English as a business lingua franca. It asks how indirect directives are classified, what motivates their use at work, and how context shapes the choice of form. The review finds that conventional indirectness (Could you send the figures?) is the default polite request in English, while hints are less predictable and not automatically more polite. Choice of form depends on power, social distance, imposition, the right to ask, and the medium. Workplace studies show that directness can index solidarity or efficiency as much as rudeness, and that mitigation devices such as past modals, just and grounders do much of the relational work. Email and lingua franca communication add risk, since a form that suits one setting can read as abrupt or evasive in another. The article closes with implications for teaching professional English and for further research.
Source: HSR (London)
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225601219