Politeness strategies in service encounters. A cross-linguistic study in Flanders, Wallonia and France.

The aim of the broader project which this IPAC project is part of, is to gain insight into the politeness strategies used in tourist offices in Flanders, Wallonia, the Netherlands and France. This research focuses, more specifically, on the use of 'face enhancing acts' in the opening and closing phases of the conversation (e.g. greetings, thanks, wishes). The analysis of these politeness strategies in the corpus, consisting of about 400 conversations recorded in 13 tourist offices, allows to describe some similarities and differences in conversation styles of Flemish and Walloons with respect to each other and with respect to their neighbours (the Netherlands and France).

Keywords:POLITENESS

Disciplines:Contrastive linguistics, Pragmatics