Words and Actions

In this first episode of the new series we talk about change management and the role of language in successfully bringing this change about.

In the introduction, we underscore the importance of language in terms of its potential to construct and mold reality (which was also addressed in episodes 1 and 2 of season 1), especially during sensemaking processes of a reality that does not exist yet. In order to make sense, it is established there need to be obvious reasons for the changes that are implemented, but at the same time we observe there are different types of changes, the justification of which is obvious in some cases (think of the COVID-19 measures), but less so in others (think of evolutionary changes, which require a response now, but which will only have a noticeable impact in the long run). Climate change is one example, but reference can also be made to necessary changes fed by technological revolutions (e.g. the implementation of social media in corporate communication), and interestingly, cases where change is fueled by a discrepancy between the corporate values and the actual communicative practices within the company that seem to undermine or at least question their truthfulness.

We have a chat with Katie Best about this phenomenon of 'culture leaks' in a short interview. She's the founder and director of the agency Taylorbest (https://www.taylorbest.com/) and she is also a visiting researcher at King's College London Business School and head tutor on the LSE's MBA essentials programmes. The examples she gives nicely illustrate the contrast between sometimes rather formal style of communication one would, for instance, associate a Westbrooks bookshop with and the fairly direct A4 message by the exasperated employee addressing the customer "Please, please shut the door behind you". These 'leaks' provide an insight into what may actually going on behind the scenes in terms of corporate value, so much so that the company's adherence to these values may be questioned (check our episode on the toxic company culture at Enron, if you haven't done so already).

Reference can also made to the many (more harmless) examples we can see nowadays urging people to follow the health and safety rules, many of which are directive, creative and even humoristic in nature, regardless of company culture ("Don't sit at this table. This chair can't be used. Make sure you keep a gap between yourselves"). And there are plenty of other examples out there where the urgency of the situation justifies the type of language and imagery that is being used, regardless of the official image the company wants to associated with.

These examples also bring us back to the importance of language use in bringing about these changes. Many of these instantiations are short, clear, snappy and directive sentences, which may not only work well when it comes to giving concrete instructions, but also during the important process of sense-giving as well. Erika gives a nice example from the Apollo space programme in flight director Gene Kranz's speech, which came to be known as "The Kranz dictum". On his watch, the United States had lost 3 of its finest members of the astronaut corps, and it had happened during a routine simulation session. This is part of his speech:

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: "Tough" and "Com-

petent." Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do.

We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.

Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found

short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave

this meeting today you will go to your office, and the first thing you will do there is to write

"Tough and Competent" on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when

you enter the room, these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and

Chaffee.

For a complete rendition listen to the interesting podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, episode 4:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2

Tough and competent. Short sentences. Clear language. A message that makes sense of the lives that were lost. Plain and simple, repetitive and effective. And the NASA programme went ahead. As a final note regarding language use, Bernard also introduces a mythbuster that does away existing fixations on the 'right' average sentence length; topped off by Veronika's remark on the dangers of verbosity. For more information on readability and sentence length, see

Smeuninx, Nils. 2018. Dear Stakeholder. Exploring the language of sustainability reporting:a closer look at readability, sentiment and perception. PhD Ghent University.

The sentences below shows how reduced length need not always lead to improved comprehensibility as the telegram style affects rhythm and cohesion. Less is not always more and more is not always less.

Conducting our business in an ethical, transparent and responsible manner, will help us retain our social licence to operate. This requires a particular focus on managing and controlling risk and consequential impacts through understanding risk drivers and how these relate to our business processes.

Our business must be ethical, transparent and responsible. Only then can we keep our social licence to operate. We must manage and control risks and impacts. Understanding risks helps us control them.

The importance of message clarity provides a nice transition to the interview with our second guest, Dr Paul Lawrence, who is the co-director of the Centre for Coaching in Organisations, or (CCO). On the CCO website, they generously share journal articles and white papers. A really great resource if you're interested in coaching [or] change management, both in practice and teaching. In the interview he explains the notion of dialogue (as opposed to conversation) as it is introduced and used in the Tao of Language, a book he co-authored with six other experts in the field and the single authored book Leading change, based on interviews with 50 leaders around the world. The notion of dialogue very much stresses the importance of listening (he distinguishes between four types) and an agenda-free approach to change communication, rather than a top-down, one way delivery of the message.

Lawrence, Paul. 2014. Leading Change: How Successful Leaders Approach Change Management. Kogan.

Lawrence, Sarah Hill, Andreas Priestland, Cecilia Forrestal, Floris Rommerts, Isla Hyslop, Monica Manning. 2019. The Tao of Dialogue. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.

Lawrence, P. & Moore, A. (2019). Coaching in Three Dimensions: Meeting the Challenges of a Complex World. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.

In the final part of the episode we have a closer look at the use of metaphors in change management language and illustrate their cognitive, affective and narrative function by focussing on one particular metaphor that is often used in change management, i.e. the journey metaphor. We first illustrate the abundant use of nautical expressions in some of languages we speak and then move to examples from political speeches that feature the journey metaphors to depict the Covid-19 pandemic (and there is an example that goes back to Erika's hobbyhorse: space exploration☺), rounding off with examples of narrative metaphors in newspaper articles portraying the arrival of Spanish companies in the UK as a (successful) invasion of the Spanish Armada. The latter examples are based on research by:

Vandenberghe, J. (2017) The evaluative potential of colonial metaphor scenarios in (written) media representations of Spain's economic expansion. Spanish investors as forceful aggressors or audacious pioneers? In: R. Breeze & I. Olza (Eds.), Evaluation in media discourse: European perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Vandenberghe, J., Goethals, P., & Jacobs, G. (2014). 'Economic conquistadors conquer new worlds': Metaphor scenarios in English-language newspaper headlines on Spanish Foreign Direct Investment. In A. Musolff, F. MacArthur & G. Pagani (Eds.), Metaphor and Intercultural Communication (pp. 167-183). London: Bloomsbury.

Roberts, C. (1985). The Interview Game and How It's Played. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.

Lacroux, A., & Martin‐Lacroux, C. (2020). Anonymous résumés: An effective preselection method? International Journal of Selection and Assessment 28(1), 98-111.

We then talked a bit about cross-cultural differences in content, layout and language use in CVs. One study, summarised by Veronika, compares German and Italian CVs:

Moving on to digital footprints and digital shadows, Bernard referred to the relevant work of his colleague Stijn Baert (who also compiled the list of studies on unconscious bias):

To find out more about the consultancy business of our interview guest, Anna Marie Trester, go to https://careerlinguist.com/. Her latest book is

Trester. A. M. (2017). Bringing Linguistics to Work. Lulu Publishing.

During the interview, Anna Marie mentions Erving Goffman (1922-1982), a Canadian sociologist whose work became very influential for conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics.

Finally, for the analysis part of this episode, we did an audit of each other's internet presence. Here are some of our profiles we scrutinise:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-darics-35610448/?originalSubdomain=uk

We then talk a bit about different ways a company or business can advertise positions they hope to fill. The most basic one is perhaps the sign in the window or at a roadside. We also touch on the use of English in job ads in non-English speaking countries and Bernard mentions two studies showing, respectively, that job ads in English make the position seem more challenging, but also that this effect may be waning:

van Meurs, F., Korzilius, H., Planken, B., & Fairley, S. (2007). The effect of English job titles in job advertisements on Dutch respondents. World Englishes, 26(2), 189-205.

Hilberink-Schulpen, B., Nederstigt, U., van Meurs, F., & van Alem, E. (2016). Does the use of a foreign language influence attention and genre-specific viewing patterns for job advertisements? An eye-tracking study. Information Processing & Management, 52(6), 1018-1030.

The effect that wording in job ads can have on who applies, especially from a gender perspective, is detailed in this study, referenced by Erika:

Abraham, Lisa, & Stein, A. (2019). Words matter: Experimental evidence from job applications. Working Paper. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YKifRzy_kWuIIdB3MLS4VHht3okJa8pa/view

Bernard then cites an example showing that even repetitive manual jobs - mushroom picking, in this case - can be advertised to make them sound attractive.

This does not always work though: not even the patriotic colours, the request to do something for your country or the direct gaze at the viewer in the ad below helped to recruit enough British people to pick fruit — in the end, the UK government and National Farmers' Union chartered flights to bring fruit pickers from Romania to the country.

Our final example in the first part of the episode anticipates both the subsequent interview and the analysis: it advertises a placement for graduates and is taken from Ruth Breeze's book Corporate Discourse (Continuum, 2013, p. 61). As Bernard says, it sounds like the kind of job Buzz Lightyear, a character from the film Toy Story, might apply for...

Apart from her book on corporate discourse, our interview guest, Professor Ruth Breeze, has also studied learner autonomy and, more directly related to the topic of this episode, the language and images on recruitment websites:

Breeze, R. (2002). Attitudes towards learner autonomy among Spanish university students. Atlantis, 24(1), 23-36.

Breeze, R. (2019). Recruitment websites and the socialization of new employees: dialogicity and graduation. In Sancho Guinda, C. (ed.) Engagement in Professional Genres. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 197-216.

The text and image we analyse in the final part of the episode can be found here: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/jobs/2018/09/13/being-the-futures-of-ibm/

And that's it — see you for episode 11, which will be on how to reply to an interesting vacancy.

Episode 9 is a co-production by the Words & Actions and en clair podcasts, sponsored by the Aston Institute of Forensic Linguistics. For further info, references and a full transcript please visit our blog https://wordsandactions.blog.

The way we decided to work together is by having the usual parts of a W&A episode ‒ introduction, interview and analysis ‒ bracketed by the en clair host, Claire Hardaker, tell the story of the rise and fall of Enron.

In the introduction part after Claire's first narration, Veronika reads out parts from an email that a former employee wrote to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, a few months before the scandal broke. Here is the full email:

On Behalf Of

[email protected]

Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 5:39 PM

To: Lay, Kenneth

Subject: Jeff's Leaving

Mr. Lay,

I am not writing this in malice but in hopes that it helps get Enron back the way it used to treat their employees and makes it the number one employer of choice again. I hope you can get back the feeling that I had when I first started there and get the stress level down in your organization for the sake of your employees.

I am a former employee who worked at Enron for 10 years – my husband was,at one time, in charge of A/P. My one big disappointment was that I never got to meet you. During that time, I made a lot of friends who I continue to see from time to time. I left last year and have missed the company since I left but would not contemplate coming back unless several people have been replaced. (Joannie Williamson and Sheri Sera know my story.) I "knew" Jeff but I don't think he knew me by name, only by sight, even though I worked in ENA when it only had 400 employees with 3 of us in HR. He was NOT what I would call a people person! Unless you were in an upper level position, he did not take the time to find out your name. (Ron Burnsis still one of my favorite people because of his talent with people – we need more like him in the business world!) As you can see, I am now working for a competitor and since I work in HR, I continually run into former Enron workers who have also left – most of their reasons are the same. It is not that they have lost faith in Enron as a company but because of the way they were treated by their managers. During the last 5 years I was there, I noticed a change in direction in the way employees were treated by upper management – and upper management was getting away with it. Not only were they getting away with it, these people were being rewarded for this behavior. I have heard stories of lower level employees being screamed at and in one instance, one of the VP s who was brought down from Canada was heard in his office screaming and pounding his telephone on his desk. Heaven only knows how he treats his subordinates. Believe me, the way employees are treated at Enron is being talked about on the streets of Houston and on the different college campuses. You might also at some point take the time to find out why so many good people have left the HR community at Enron and it is not because they wanted to. I don't know if you will see this, but I hope so. Good luck on bringing Enron back to way it was – I still own stock!!

Thanks for listening…Pam Allison

We then go on to interview David Wright, a forensic linguist who has worked with the large collection of publicly available emails from inside Enron.

After the interview, we mention Andre Spicer's book to refer to a communication strategy that we saw at work with Enron, but that is also used frequently in politics.

We can certainly detect this kind of communication in the email that Ken Lay sent in reply to the message above. Here is the text of the full email that we analyse:

Dear Pam,

Thank you for your e-mail of August 15th. It is always a pleasure to hear from former employees. Thank you also for calling attention to instances which, on the surface, do not appear to be representative of our expectations of Enron leadership. Part of our continuous improvement involves an on-going review of our management and the diversity of styles therein. True, not everyone is agreeable to Enron's culture or the many different management styles at Enron. We do, however, expect all of our employees – not just management – to adhere to our core values of respect, integrity, communication and excellence. These values become even more significant as we continue to grow and expand our scope of business, and more critical as we become a more culturally diverse workforce. We enjoy our status as one of the best places in America to work according to Fortune and other sources thanks in part to our willingness to examine our organization and make needed change. Our employee surveys, belief in open communication, and exit interview process for employees choosing to leave Enron are examples of our efforts to seek out feedback and scrutinize the way we do business. Your feedback will help play a role in that process.

Sincerely,

Ken Lay

This email features many of the ways in which companies often respond to complaints (even though the first email, by Pam Anderson, was intended as a warning).

In the second part of her narration, Claire mentions the "'this is fine' dog's coffee meme". You may well have seen it on social media, where it is often used to indicate denial in the face of a crisis:

And finally, if you haven't had enough of the Enron scandal yet ‒ and it is a fascinating story! ‒, here is some further reading:

Swartz, M., & Watkins, S. (2004).

Power Failure: The inside story of the collapse of Enron.

New York: Doubleday.

In the first part of the episode, we start by talking about the gendered connotations of leadership and Erika mentions the results she got when searching for images of a "boss".

We also mention the advertising campaign that pen maker BIC (see also episode 5 on customers talking back) ran for International Women's Day 2015 and for whose sexism they later had to apologise. Listeners can find the image on our blog, https://wordsandactions.blog.

We then move on to different leadership styles and how some are perceived as masculine and others as feminine. Good overviews of so-called transactional and relational styles, and their language and communication aspects, are provided in Baxter, J. (2010).

The Language of Female Leadership.

Basingstoke: Palgrave

Holmes, J., & Stubbe, M. (2003).

Power and Politeness in the Workplace.

London: Longman

The same idea is captured by psychologists Alice Eagley and Mary Johannesen-Schmidt, who talk about agentic and communal behaviour:

Eagley, A. H., & Johannesen-Schmidt, M., (2001). The leadership

styles of men and women. Journal

of Social Issues, 57(4), 781- 797.

It is important to stress though that these different leadership styles are culturally connoted as masculine or feminine and are used by good leaders of all genders as the situation demands.

Two examples of leadership communication that we mention are from the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, and the Belgian health minister, Maggie De Block, who both gave very clear directives to the population about what to do and not do during the coronavirus outbreak. A press briefing by Sturgeon can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs2jWH9-Cqs(starts 9 minutes in).

We contrast this leadership style with the early communication of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an example of which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1xduw1mQE.

In this context, we introduce the notion of double-voicing (see glossary), which was formulated for leadership communication by Judith Baxter:

Baxter, J. (2017).

Double-voicing at Work: Power, gender and linguistic expertise.

Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Stressing the importance of context, Veronika then makes reference to Keith Grint's now classical work, in which he distinguishes between commander, manager and leader functions for different kinds of problems: simply put, emergencies such as a train crash require commanders, so-called tame problems, e.g. drafting a railway timetable, call for managers, and wicked problems, such as developing a public transport strategy, need to be addressed by leaders. ("Wicked problems" are also mentioned by the second interview guest, Roshni Moneeram.)

Grint, K. (2005). Problems, problems, problems: The social construction

of 'leadership'. Human Relations,

58(11),

1467-1494.

When we recorded this episode of the podcast in early April 2020, the importance of communication for leadership was highlighted due to the "lockdown" in reaction to the global coronavirus outbreak. People in leadership positions suddenly found themselves leading teams remotely, and Forbes magazines among others urged them to "promote communication to critical": https://www.forbes.com/sites/nigeldavies/2020/04/07/how-to-be-a-strong-remote-leader-during-lockdown/#4291958f18e2.

More on leading virtual teams can be found in these resources:

Schramm, M. (2018). The virtual coffee break: Virtual leadership

- how to create trust and relations over long distances. In: Kolbaek, D. (ed.) Online Collaboration and Communication in Contemporary Organizations.

Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 256-275 .

Darics, E. (2020). E-leadership or "How to be boss in Instant Messaging?" The role of nonverbal communication. International Journal of Business Communication, 57(1), 3-29.

Towards the end of the first part, we talk about the different functions of humour in the workplace; an important publication on this is Holmes, J., & Marra, M. (2002). Having a laugh at work: How humour contributes to workplace culture.

Journal of Pragmatics,

34(12),1683-1710.

The first, shorter interview in the leadership episode is with Professor Louise Mullany, founder of the agency Linguistic Profiling for Professionals: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/lipp/.

Louise also runs a free online course called "How to read your boss": https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-read-your-boss/2/steps/38185.

She is moreover centrally involved with the Language, Gender and Leadership network, as indeed is our second interview guest, Dr Roshni Moneeram.

Apart from talking about her consultancy work in the corporate sector, especially the functions of humour and politeness (see also episode 4 on talking to customers) in workplace communication, Roshni also mentions a collection of stories (see also episode 7 on storytelling) about women leaders in various African countries. These narratives can be found here, and we can really recommend reading them:

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/lipp/language-gender-and-leadership-network/narratives.aspx.

Another topic addressed in the interview is that of global or world Englishes. There is a branch of sociolinguistics that particularly looks at how English is used in non-native, including post-colonial contexts, and how different varieties of English develop as a result. A recent book on the subject is Nelson,

C. L., Proshina, Z. G., & Davis, D. R. (eds) (2020). The Handbook of World Englishes.

2nd ed. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Since we had two interviews in this episode, and because humour needs a lot of context, we have moved the usual data analysis to the blog post. Please find it at https://wordsandactions.blog along with the full transcript of the episode.

We recorded this episode in September 2019, when Britain was still part of the European Union and the Brexit debate was in full swing. At the beginning of the episode, we talk about a contribution to a debate in the British House of Commons that started with a story. The transcript can be found on our website: wordsandactions.blog. We then discuss how people relate life events, such as a divorce, by telling stories rather than completing questionnaires, as shown in the research by sociologist Catherine Riessman:

Riessman,

C. K. (1990). Divorce

Talk: Women and men make sense of personal relationships.

New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

The classical account of stories as a product is linked with the name of William Labov, while Alexandra Georgakopoulou has more recently refocused narrative research on storytelling as a social process:

Labov,

W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (ed.)

Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts.

Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 12-44.

Georgakopoulou,

A. (2019). Sharing the moment as small stories: the interplay between practices & affordances in the social media-curation of lives. In A. De Fina & S. Perrino (eds)

Storytelling in the Digital World.

Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp.105-127.

Moving on to corporate stories, the history of Ben & Jerry's, as told by themselves, can be found here:

https://www.benjerry.co.uk/about-us.

Erika mentions how Ben & Jerry's , and indeed any corporate story now gets co-written on social media, as detailed in this book:

Page,

R. (2018). Narratives

Online: shared stories in social media.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

An example of brand stories being co-told by consumers is the KitKat chocolate bar, which actually has a hashtag on the product itself.

Moving on to the interview, our guest for this episode is Professor David Boje from New Mexico State University:

https://business.nmsu.edu/directory/management/boje-david/,

https://davidboje.com/

At the beginning of the interview, David Boje mentions how his approach to stories was fundamentally changed when he met Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees, an artist, scholar and coach who espouses the concept of people as 'living stories' connected to nature. You can find out more about her work and philosophy here: https://ktwotrees.com/

David then talks about the 1981 play Tamara

by John Krizanc,which is based on an actual meeting between the 1920s painters Tamara de Lempicka and Gabriele d'Annunzio at his villa near Lake Garda in Italy. The play allows the audience to follow the actors into rooms of their choice, so every audience member witnesses a different storyline. He uses the set-up of the play as an analogy for multinational companies that have different 'living stories' in multiple locations. David's previous work on the Disney corporation is of particular interest here:

Boje,

D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis of Disney as "Tamara-Land".

Academy of Management Journal,

38(4),997-1035.

We then move on to David's more recent work, specifically his book on stories around the climate emergency:

Boje, D. M. (2019).

Storytelling in the Global Age: there is no Planet B.

London: World Scientific.

Staying with the topic of climate emergency, we analyse the opening of a TED talk that climate activist Greta Thunberg gave in November 2018. On our website you can find the transcript and analytical points.

Please visit our website at wordsandactions.blog where you can find more data analysis, glossary and the complete transcript.

In the first part of this episode, we introduce different types of crisis as well as communication strategies to deal with them. Two central readings here are:

Benoit, W. L. (1997). Image repair discourse and crisis communication. Public Relations Review, 23(2), 177-187.

Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2012). The Handbook of Crisis Communication. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

This link provides some examples of how broad crisis comms strategies are put into practice in specific messages: http://lirias.kuleuven.be/cv?Username=U0090854

Bernard mentions one communication strategy to head off a crisis, 'stealing thunder'. It is for instance discussed in this article:

Claeys, A-S., Cauberghe, V., Leysen, J. (2013). Implications of stealing thunder for the impact of expressing emotions in organizational crisis communication. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41(3), 293-308.

As part of our discussion, Erika cites a study showing that even unnecessary apologies can make others more likely to respond to a request:

Brooks, A.W., Dai, H., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2014). I'm sorry about the rain! Superfluous apologies demonstrate empathic concern and increase trust. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 5(4), 467-474.

Our interview guest for this episode is Matteo Fuoli, whose publications include:

Fuoli, M., & Hart, C. (2018). Trust-building strategies in corporate discourse: An experimental study. Discourse & Society, 29(5), 514-552.

Fuoli, M., & Paradis, C. (2014). A model of trust-repair discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 74, 52-69

Fuoli, M., van de Weijer, J., & Paradis, C. (2017). Denial outperforms apology in repairing organizational trust despite strong evidence of guilt. Public Relations Review, 43(4), 645-660.

Matteo in turn makes reference to this study on regaining trust:

Kim, P. H., Ferrin, D. L., Cooper, C. D., & Dirks, K. T. (2004). Removing the shadow of suspicion: the effects of apology versus denial for repairing competence- versus integrity-based trust violations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(1), 104–118.

The model of trust that he mentions is explained in

Colquitt, J. A., & Salam, S. C. (2009). Foster trust through ability, benevolence, and integrity. In Locke, E. (ed.) Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley, pp. 389-404.

In the course of the interview, Matteo provides some detail of his research in:

Fuoli, M. (2012). Assessing social responsibility: A quantitative analysis of Appraisal in BP's and IKEA's social reports. Discourse & Communication, 6(1), 55-81.

Fuoli, M. (2015). Trust dynamics in multimodal corporate discourse: the role of metaphor. Paper presented at 13th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC-13), Newcastle/UK.

The video by pharmaceutical company Novartis that Matteo talks about is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzXFugXU33M

In the final part of the episode, we analyse a letter featuring an apology, written in 1928 by artist Thelma Wood to her former lover, the writer Djuna Barnes:

Djuna beautiful - I know I had lost you - I realized every misdeed committed in eight years would come back - that every one in Paris would be against me … The knowing you saw us, I had said such terrible things I hated myself - something I did not care about - It seemed a shame for foolishness to spoil us - I wanted no acknowledged disloyalty and after you came back from N.Y. I loved you so terribly - and my one idea was to wipe out the fact I'd been stupid … As for the rest of our eight years you seemed to have had a pretty rotten time - with my brutishness and I'm sorry - sorry

The letter is quoted in

Weiss, A. (1995). Paris was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank. San Francisco: Harper.

Happy Valentine's Day to all listeners and readers!

In the first part of the episode, we introduce the topic of customers talking back, starting with the Stop Funding Hate campaign, which lobbies companies not to place advertisements in divisive British newspapers. Information about the campaign is available on their website https://stopfundinghate.info/ .

We also mention the example of fake reviews of gendered Bic pens on Amazon as a form of customers engaging in social critique through humour. You can find a selection of those fake reviews here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/12-hilarious-reviews-of-a-pen-just-for-women)

Another (inadvertently) humorous example of customers talking to companies is a Twitter exchange between a customer of Domino's Pizza and the company. We then go on to discuss electronic word of mouth (or eWOM for short), with Bernard and Erika referring to a number of relevant studies:

Babić Rosario, A., Sotgiu, F., de Valck, K., & Bijmolt, T. H. A. (2016). The effect of electronic word of mouth on sales: A meta-analytic review of platform, product, and metric factors. Journal of Marketing Research, 53(3), 297-318.

Kim, K., Yoon, S., & Choi, Y. K. (2019). The effects of eWOM volume and valence on product sales – an empirical examination of the movie industry. International Journal of Advertising, 38(3), 471-488.

Luca, M., & Zervas, G. (2016). Fake it till you make it: Reputation, competition, and Yelp review fraud. Management Science, 62(12), 3412-3427.

The proportion of fake reviews on Trip Advisor was reported in The Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hotel-and-caf-cheats-are-caught-trying-to-buy-tripadvisor-stars-027fbcwc8 (paywall).

The study about how confident people are about being able to spot fake reviews is summarised here, along with a test to find out how good you are at detecting reviews that are not genuine: https://theconversation.com/how-to-spot-a-fake-review-youre-probably-worse-at-it-than-you-realise-121043

Two pieces of software to help distinguish real from fake reviews are Fakespot.com and Reviewmeta.com. Moving to the credibility of authentic reviews, Bernard mentions the following studies on how so-called netspeak as well as attractive user images affect the credibility of online reviews:

Ozanne, M., Liu, S. Q., & Mattila, A. S. (2019). Are attractive reviewers more persuasive? Examining the role of physical attractiveness in online reviews. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 36(6), 728-739.

Our interview for this episode is with Camilla Vasquez. Some of her publications are:

Bridges, J., & Vásquez, C. (2018). If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make them meaningless? Current Issues in Tourism, 21(18), 2057-2075.

Vásquez, C. (2014). The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews. London: Bloomsbury.

Vásquez, C. (2019). Language, Creativity and Humour Online. New York: Routledge.

In the final part of the episode, we analyse a Twitter thread that starts with one customer asking a company this mock question on Twitter: "Hi Skyscanner! Just wondering what you'd recommend I do during the 47 year layover your website has suggested?"

For further information, references and transcript visit our blog on:

https://wordsandactions.blog

In this episode we bring in the know-how of a politeness expert, we get practical insights from a seasoned consultant and we get an interesting visit from a kangaroo on a unicycle. Each in their own way, these guests show the importance of different aspects of language in sustaining healthy customer relationships, ranging from language choice, over politeness issues to bonding through creativity, all the while underscoring the importance of context, as also shown in our analysis of a B2B example.