Customers’ complaint letters: politeness or cordiality

Abstract

The research focuses on the analysis of complaint letters from residential property owners to a construction company with the purpose of interpreting the interaction in terms of the use of politeness in potential conflict situations, since the complaint ranges from milder negative feelings such as dissatisfaction to the strongest ones such as hostility. The theoretical framework is based on studies of politeness, especially on the contributions of Goffman (1980) and Brown & Levinson (1987) to the understanding of the face elaboration processes. However, the complaint, inserted in a context whose focus is a material and symbolic good – the home –, and in a dual culture, like the Brazilian, which coexists in an ambivalent and contradictory way with norms and laws (DA MATTA, 1979), re-ignites the “myth of cordiality”, as put by Holland (1995), but still reveals itself as functional and fruitful in the behavior of the Brazilian friendly man, according to Rocha (1998).