Politeness Has Its Limits: Avoiding Negation in Romanian Professional Context
Politeţea are limite: evitarea negaţiei în contextul profesional românesc

Summary/Abstract: To avoid saying ‘no’ in professional context is a communicative strategy which was socially and culturally imposed both in workplace encounters and in written texts. The present paper analyzes examples of written communication in Romanian institutions and commercial organizations from a pragmatic and discursive perspective. Despite the adverse effect that negation has on people’s ability to think positively, saying “no” is a powerful instrument for setting rules in military policies and procedures, though it can be gracefully avoided in less formal texts, such as the e-mails sent as part of the internal communication of many commercial organizations.

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