Exploring Factors Influencing Patients' Embarrassment and Feelings of Imposition in Objective Structured Clinical Examination Interactions.

OBJECTIVE: To identify factors influencing patient responses in potentially sensitive situations that might lead to embarrassment (defined by politeness theory (PT) as positive face-threatening acts [FTAs]) or a sense of imposition (defined by PT as negative FTAs) during Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) and to assess the participant's ability to mitigate such situations. METHODS: Nineteen OSCE video recordings of 10 pharmacy trainees interacting with mock patients were examined using the PT framework. All relevant participants' speech acts were coded and quantified into type of FTAs and the mitigation strategies used. Patient (assessor) responses were classified then quantified into preferred responses (ie, quick response) vs unpreferred (ie, delayed or hesitant responses) using conversation analysis. The chi-square test was used to identify any association between relevant variables according to predefined hypotheses using SPSS version 27. RESULTS: A total of 848 FTAs were analyzed. Participants failed to meet patient face needs in 32.4% of positive FTAs, negative FTAs in 11.5% of negative FTAs, and 44.4% of positive and negative FTAs. Although patients disclosing information about any inappropriate lifestyle behavior (as per OSCE scripts) expressed these via unpreferred mannerisms, participants were less likely to provide patients with reassurance when patient face needs were challenged in this way (68.2% of these unpreferred responses were not given reassuring feedback) than when they were maintained. CONCLUSION: Improving educational programs to include the context of patient face needs and conversational strategies for properly dealing with highly sensitive situations was suggested as a way to equip trainees with the skills to effectively build rapport with patients.

Impact of politeness and performance quality of android robots on future interaction decisions: a conversational design perspective.

Despite robots being applied in various situations of modern society, some people avoid them or do not feel comfortable interacting with them. Designs that allow robots to interact appropriately with people will make a positive impression on them resulting in a better evaluation of robots, which will solve this problem. To establish such a design, this study conducted two scenario-based experiments focusing on the politeness of the robot's conversation and behavior, and examined the impressions caused when the robot succeeds or slightly fails at a task. These two experiments revealed that regardless of whether the partner is a robot or a human, politeness not only affected the impression of interaction but also the expectations for better task results on the next occasion. Although the effect of politeness on preference toward robot agents was smaller than those toward human agents when agents failed a task, people were more likely to interact with polite robots and human agents again because they thought that they would not fail the next time. This study revealed that politeness motivates people to interact with robots repeatedly even if they make minor mistakes, suggesting that the politeness design is important for encouraging human-robot interaction.

Sequential model based on human cognitive processing to robot acceptance.

Robots have tremendous potential, and have recently been introduced not only for simple operations in factories, but also in workplaces where customer service communication is required. However, communication robots have not always been accepted. This study proposes a three-stage (first contact, interaction, and decision) model for robot acceptance based on the human cognitive process flow to design preferred robots and clarifies the elements of the robot and the processes that affect robot acceptance decision-making. Unlike previous robot acceptance models, the current model focuses on a sequential account of how people decide to accept, considering the interaction (or carry-over) effect between impressions established at each stage. According to the model, this study conducted a scenario-based experiment focusing on the impression of the first contact (a robot's appearance) and that formed during the interaction with robot (politeness of its conversation and behavior) on robot acceptance in both successful and slightly failed situations. The better the appearance of the robot and the more polite its behavior, the greater the acceptance rate. Importantly, there was no interaction between these two factors. The results indicating that the impressions of the first contact and interaction are additively processed suggest that we should accumulate findings that improving the appearance of the robot and making its communication behavior more human-like in politeness will lead to a more acceptable robot design.

Should robots be polite? Expectations about politeness in human-robot interaction.

Interaction with artificial social agents is often designed based on models of human interaction and dialogue. While this is certainly useful for basic interaction mechanisms, it has been argued that social communication strategies and social language use, a "particularly human" ability, may not be appropriate and transferable to interaction with artificial conversational agents. In this paper, we present qualitative research exploring whether users expect artificial agents to use politeness-a fundamental mechanism of social communication-in language-based human-robot interaction. Based on semi-structured interviews, we found that humans mostly ascribe a functional, rule-based use of polite language to humanoid robots and do not expect them to apply socially motivated politeness strategies that they expect in human interaction. This study 1) provides insights for interaction design for social robots' politeness use from a user perspective, and 2) contributes to politeness research based on the analysis of our participants' perspectives on politeness.

Celebrating the Power of Community Kindness: A Reflection on World Mental Health Day 2023.

This short communication reflects on this year's mental health day. The theme for this year is 'Mental health is a universal human right'. However, here the focus is on simple instances (politeness, and the culture of apology) to highlight how these could contribute to improved psychological well-being and mental health. It is hoped that by insisting on such deeds we could spread kindness in our community to make it a safer place for living and make life more enjoyable regardless of its all difficulties and limitations.

An Applied Linguistics Study of How Students Prevent Embarrassments and Impositions During Interactive Examination OSCEs.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of politeness strategies used by pharmacy students to avoid embarrassing or imposing on others during objective structured clinical examinations. METHODS: A total of 19 objective structured clinical examinations video recordings of 10 students (participants) interacting with mock patients were examined using the framework of Politeness Theory (PT). All relevant participant acts (speech activities) were coded using PT into (1) type of face threatening acts (ie, potentially sensitive situations-as regarded by PT) and (2) politeness strategies used to mitigate them. Conversation Analysis was then used to examine the effectiveness of conversational strategies by judging the 'patient' responses to these strategies. RESULTS: Most acts had the potential to impact patients' negative face needs (ie, desire to act autonomously, eg, upon the practitioner making a request), positive face needs (ie, desire to be liked, eg, upon the practitioner making a diagnosis), or both. Despite applying a variety of positive politeness strategies (eg, avoiding disagreement, or expressing understanding) to prevent embarrassment to the patient, and negative politeness strategies (eg, being indirect, using hedging, or minimizing the imposition) to avoid directly imposing on them, "dispreferred responses" showed participants mostly focused on avoiding impositions, corresponding to what they have been taught, rather embarrassments. CONCLUSION: Participants were less aware that discussing sensitive topics could cause embarrassment to patients, with the potential to upset them. Developing teaching and evaluation methods to consider patients' face needs could help in assessing and improving pharmacy students' communication skills.

The Effects of Social Status and Imposition on the Comprehension of Refusals in Chinese: An ERP Study.

This study aims to examine how real-time processing of information about the social status of interlocutors (high vs. low) and the imposition of making a refusal by manipulating the indirectness of invitation forms (declining direct invitations vs. declining indirect invitations) affects the interpretation of refusals in Chinese. The event-related potentials results showed that high-status invitees who decline invitations from low-status inviters elicited weaker N400 effects followed by late mitigated negative effects, while high imposition refusals elicited stronger N400 effects followed by increased late negativities. The two factors of social status and imposition functioned independently during the comprehension of refusal utterances. These findings suggest that individuals take the social status of interlocutors and the imposition of making a refusal into consideration as an utterance unfolds, while face-threatening contexts create inferential difficulties for reinterpreting the pragmatic implications of an utterance.

Written Language Politeness (of Short Messages on Social Media) and Emotional Intelligence: A Study in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Introduction: The use of written communication through short messages in social media on smartphone platforms has recently become a habit in social relations and communication. Language politeness and emotional intelligence are required by individuals, groups, communities, or institutions in conveying the contents of the messages, ensuring them to be perceived appropriately by their targets. Methods: Survey research was carried out on 173 respondents with Malay culture background in Indonesia and Malaysia using the Self-Rated Malaysian Emotional Intelligence Scale developed by with a reliability value of 0.922 for Malaysian respondents and 0.803 for Indonesian respondents as well as using a politeness scale developed based on Lakoff's linguistic politeness theory. Results: The findings of the study demonstrated that culture may affect language politeness (F (3.169) = 5.759 and M2 = F (4.168) = 4.300, P<0.05). However, language politeness did not correlate to emotional intelligence, age, gender, and educational background. Consequently, the use of communication in short messages should consider the cultural background of both the sender and receiver. Cultural similarities may facilitate the understanding of the message's content and diminish the occurrence of communication issues or conflicts.

The consequences of face-threatening feedback on innovators' psychological safety, affect, and willingness to engage in future innovation projects.

While there is substantial research on how firms successfully end project initiatives deemed unsuitable for them very few studies focus on how leaders and managers communicate termination messages. Drawing from politeness theory and organizational support theory we explore the impact termination messages varying in face sensitivity have on innovators' feelings of psychological safety, affect, and their willingness to continue to innovate We find that face-threatening messages significantly and negatively affect innovators' psychological safety, affect, and willingness to further innovate. The negative effects are amplified when innovators feel high commitment to their projects.

Power and vulnerability: managing sensitive language in organizational communication.

Organizational responsibilities can give people power but also expose them to scrutiny. This tension leads to divergent predictions about the use of potentially sensitive language: power might license it, while exposure might inhibit it. Analysis of peoples' language use in a large corpus of organizational emails using standardized Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) measures shows a systematic difference in the use of words with potentially sensitive (ethnic, religious, or political) connotations. People in positions of relative power are ~3 times less likely to use sensitive words than people more junior to them. The tendency to avoid potentially sensitive language appears to be independent of whether other people are using sensitive language in the same email exchanges, and also independent of whether these words are used in a sensitive context. These results challenge a stereotype about language use and the exercise of power. They suggest that, in at least some circumstances, the exposure and accountability associated with organizational responsibilities are a more significant influence on how people communicate than social power.

Wake up New Zealand! Directives, politeness and stance in Twitter #Covid19NZ posts.

As Covid-19 made its way to the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand in 2020, Kiwis took to Twitter to share their experiences and opinions regarding both the virus and government responses. In this paper, we examine a corpus of 1001 tweets to see just how Twitter users utilize different linguistic and politeness strategies when sharing directives conveying stance toward government Covid-19 measures. While there has been research into the use of directives in spoken and written language, there has been little exploration of how directives are used in the language of Social Media. Often considered difficult to classify even in more traditional language genres, Twitter corpora pose additional challenges. We propose a strategy to identify and classify directives using syntactic and pragmatic features, and use this strategy to identify linguistic patterns of both in relation to stance toward government Covid-19 measures. While we find that the most prototypical directive within our corpus is largely consistent with previous definitions, we also find that tweeters exhibit a striking amount of variation in directive strategy, emphasizing the need for a nuanced approach to directive identification and classification. We further note trends in the directive strategies utilized by tweeters expressing different stances toward government measures.

Strategy of kinship terms as a politeness model in maintaining social interaction: local values towards global harmony.

Current research on kinship terms shows that variants of kinship terms used in the Bugis speech community interactional discourse show the difference in social status between speakers and listeners. However, only few studies have investigated the role of kinship terms, especially in promoting social harmony. This study aims to find the kinship terms of the Bugis speech community that are dominantly used in interaction, to identify the role of the kinship terms in creating unity and showing identity. This study focuses on the speaker's utterances toward the listener based on their power and solidarity. There were 120 native speakers who lived in Barru and Pinrang regencies participated in this study. The participants were classified into three age groups: 11-21, 22-43, and 44-65. The data collection was carried out using the Discourse Completion Tests (DCT). The DCT consists of five contexts that required participants to provide written utterances for two requests, one invitation, one suggestion, and one rebuking. Each of the context described the speaker's statement to older, coeval, and younger listeners with familiar or unfamiliar social distances. Data analysis used the AntConc 3.5.8 program whereas the interpretation used a sociopragmatic approach. The result shows that (1) There are five kinship and two address terms that are often used to extend the social interaction, namely: a) Ndi, b) Daéng, c) Sappo, d) Emma, e) Sillessureng, then the address terms Puang, and Silong. (2) Bugis speech communities achieve harmony and define self-identity through the strategy of choosing and placing the kinshp terms in their utterances. 3) The use of kinship terms based on the power and solidarity of speakers and listeners show the characteristic behaviour of Sipakatau, Siri na Pesse, and collectivity as Bugis identities. In conclusion, these findings help better understand the function and role of kinship terms in promoting social harmony and need significant support in the context of local language teaching and learning.

Prophetic educational values in the Indonesian language textbook: pillars of positive politeness and character education.

Strengthening character education and positive politeness is an important pillar in selecting textbooks and teaching materials in global era. This study aimed to identify and describe the prophetic education values in Indonesian language textbooks for the VII grade junior high school in their relation to positive politeness to build students' character. The research question is "how are the values of prophetic education as a pillar of politeness and character education in textbooks?". Descriptive qualitative method was employed as the main approach. Data were collected through documentation using read-marker and noting techniques, and analyzed using heuristic and Grice's means-end politeness methods. Furthermore, the data were analyzed using content and comparative document analysis and sharpened by referential pragmatic politeness analysis. The research findings showed several interrelated prophetic education values in relation with the pillars of positive politeness and character education. These values formed the self-sufficiency of students in the Indonesian language textbook of class VII junior high school. They were manifested in the reality oriented to humanization, liberation, and transcendence. Humanization was realized through social life based on the generosity, honesty, tolerance, and politeness values. Similarly, liberation was realized through the education, health, mutual help, and hard work values. Moreover, transcendent life was actualized according to the consistency (istiqamah) in worshipping Allah (swt), gratitude, and humility (tawadhu') values. This study recommends that prophetic values can be used as a pillar of politeness development and strengthening educational characters in global era.

Game theory analysis of self-awareness and politeness.

This study aims to link two related social psychology concepts, self-awareness and politeness, with human helping behavior and demonstrate it from the perspective of psychological game theory. By establishing a game theory model, and adding politeness and self-awareness as influencing factors, the Bayesian Nash equilibrium clarified people's help-seeking and help-giving behavior. As a result, we explained the relationship between politeness, self-awareness, and the willingness of the help seekers, as well as the helpers, and we can thus understand why some people do not seek help or give help. Specifically, on the one hand, from the perspective of help seekers, we found that people with a high level of self-awareness and politeness tend not to ask others for help. On the other hand, from the perspective of helpers, we found that people with a high level of self-awareness and politeness tend to help others. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of Bayesian Nash equilibrium based on psychological game theory in studying human help-seeking and help-giving behavior.

Politeness in Human-Robot Interaction: A Multi-Experiment Study with Non-Humanoid Robots.

We studied politeness in human-robot interaction based on Lakoff's politeness theory. In a series of eight studies, we manipulated three different levels of politeness of non-humanoid robots and evaluated their effects. A table-setting task was developed for two different types of robots (a robotic manipulator and a mobile robot). The studies included two different populations (old and young adults) and were conducted in two conditions (video and live). Results revealed that polite robot behavior positively affected users' perceptions of the interaction with the robots and that participants were able to differentiate between the designed politeness levels. Participants reported higher levels of enjoyment, satisfaction, and trust when they interacted with the politest behavior of the robot. A smaller number of young adults trusted the politest behavior of the robot compared to old adults. Enjoyment and trust of the interaction with the robot were higher when study participants were subjected to the live condition compared to video and participants were more satisfied when they interacted with a mobile robot compared to a manipulator.

Bilinguals Produce Pitch Range Differently in Their Two Languages to Convey Social Meaning.

We investigated whether expression of social meaning operationalized as individual gender identitity and politeness moderated pitch range in the two languages of female and male Japanese-English sequential bilinguals. The bilinguals were resident in either London (UK) or Tokyo (Japan) and read sentences to imagined addressees who varied in formality and sex. Results indicated significant differences in the pitch range of the two languages of the bilinguals, and this was confirmed for female and male bilinguals in London and Tokyo, with the language differences being more extreme in the London bilinguals than in the Tokyo bilinguals. Interestingly, self-attribution of masculine gender traits patterned with within-language variation in the English pitch level of the female bilinguals, whereas self-attribution of feminine gender traits patterned with within-language variation in the English pitch level of the male bilinguals. In addition, female and male bilinguals significantly varied their pitch range in Japanese, but not in English, as a function of the imagined addressees. Findings confirmed that bilinguals produce pitch range differently in their languages and suggest that expression of social meaning may affect pitch range of the two languages of female and male bilinguals differently.

Please and no, thank you: politeness norms alter compliance more when refusing than when making or acquiescing to a request.

Research indicates that using polite words does not enhance compliance. However, this work focuses on requests, not responses, which also are compliance-relevant behaviors that might depend on politeness. In 12 experiments (4 preregistered), we examined the role of politeness in compliance by manipulating the politeness of people's requests and responses. Polite requests increased compliance relative to what people wanted to do, d = .95. Adding a polite word to a request, however, did not significantly increase compliance, d = .11. In terms of responses, polite acceptances did not increase compliance, d = .08, but polite declines mattered. Respondents were sooner to decline a request if they could reply with "No, thank you" rather than a less polite "No," d = -.34. These data indicate that politeness norms shape compliance, but the key norm might not be whether people comply with polite others, but rather whether people can politely decline the request.

Evidence of joint commitment in great apes' natural joint actions.

Human joint action seems special, as it is grounded in joint commitment-a sense of mutual obligation participants feel towards each other. Comparative research with humans and non-human great apes has typically investigated joint commitment by experimentally interrupting joint actions to study subjects' resumption strategies. However, such experimental interruptions are human-induced, and thus the question remains of how great apes naturally handle interruptions. Here, we focus on naturally occurring interruptions of joint actions, grooming and play, in bonobos and chimpanzees. Similar to humans, both species frequently resumed interrupted joint actions (and the previous behaviours, like grooming the same body part region or playing the same play type) with their previous partners and at the previous location. Yet, the probability of resumption attempts was unaffected by social bonds or rank. Our data suggest that great apes experience something akin to joint commitment, for which we discuss possible evolutionary origins.

Rethinking the frequency code: a meta-analytic review of the role of acoustic body size in communicative phenomena.

The widely cited frequency code hypothesis attempts to explain a diverse range of communicative phenomena through the acoustic projection of body size. The set of phenomena includes size sound symbolism (using /i/ to signal smallness in words such as teeny), intonational phonology (using rising contours to signal questions) and the indexing of social relations via vocal modulation, such as lowering one's voice pitch to signal dominance. Among other things, the frequency code is commonly interpreted to suggest that polite speech should be universally signalled via high pitch owing to the association of high pitch with small size and submissiveness. We present a cross-cultural meta-analysis of polite speech of 101 speakers from seven different languages. While we find evidence for cross-cultural variation, voice pitch is on average lower when speakers speak politely, contrary to what the frequency code predicts. We interpret our findings in the light of the fact that pitch has a multiplicity of possible communicative meanings. Cultural and contextual variation determines which specific meanings become manifest in a specific interactional context. We use the evidence from our meta-analysis to propose an updated view of the frequency code hypothesis that is based on the existence of many-to-many mappings between speech acoustics and communicative interpretations. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part I)'.

Face Management and Negative Strengthening: The Role of Power Relations, Social Distance, and Gender.

Negated gradable adjectives often convey an interpretation that is stronger than their literal meaning, which is referred to as 'negative strengthening.' For example, a sentence like 'John is not kind' may give rise to the inference that John is rather mean. Crucially, negation is more likely to be pragmatically strengthened in the case of positive adjectives ('not kind' to mean rather mean) than negative adjectives ('not mean' to mean rather kind). A classical explanation of this polarity asymmetry is based on politeness, specifically on the potential face threat of bare negative adjectives (Horn, 1989; Brown and Levinson, 1987). This paper presents the results of two experiments investigating the role of face management in negative strengthening. We show that negative strengthening of positive and negative adjectives interacts differently with the social variables of power, social distance, and gender.