“Troubles-talk”

What is it about?

In everyday communication, criticisms are important and commonly face-threatening acts. In this study, we looked at how people actually handle criticism. We ran two experiments in French using a written Discourse Completion Test (DCT), asking participants both to produce criticisms and to respond to them. In each experiment, we manipulated the situation by changing the power relationship (equal vs. hierarchical) and the level of social distance (close vs. distant). We also considered the participants’ age and gender. Our findings show that power and social distance clearly influenced how people phrased their criticisms, although these factors didn’t seem to affect how they responded to criticism. Age and gender also interacted in interesting ways: younger women tended to be less direct than men, while older women were more direct. Again, these effects appeared only in the production of criticism, not in responses. Overall, our results give a fuller picture of the social factors that shape how people formulate and react to criticism. They also help shed light on this important but still understudied speech act.

Featured Image

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash