Facework in professional interactions

Abstract

This work aims at investigating how facework interferes in the construction of emotional discourse based on the analysis of letters from clients addressed to a health insurance company. We use the concept of emotion as a social construct, a discursive practice built in interaction, and the notion of facework as developed by the politeness theory. As far as methodology is concerned, the qualitative analysis is done by considering face honoring or face threatening emotions. Results indicate that clients use face threatening and face protection discursive strategies in order to achieve goals which are not always covered by the contract.