L'im/politesse en français: Nouveaux questionnements Chantal Claudel, Shima Moallemi, Kerry Mullan, Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Els Tobback Journal of French Language Studies, 2026 Résumé Cet article d’introduction présente l’ambition et la contribution de ce numéro thématique consacré aux travaux sur l’im/politesse en langue française. L’article contextualise et présente cinq études empiriques qui illustrent la vitalité du champ : l’étude historique des rapports de pouvoir entre maîtres et domestiques par Paternoster, la comparaison des compliments ordinaires et médiatiques de Claudel et Moallemi, l’étude constructionnelle de l’insulte chez Van Olmen et Grass, les stratégies de critique professionnelle de Bersier et al., et enfin la comparaison de l’auto-éloge en français hexagonal et en anglais étasunien par Tobback et Moens. En faisant dialoguer ces travaux, l’introduction démontre que la gestion des faces positive et négative ne dépend pas de simples calculs stratégiques, mais de normes sociales et de genres discursifs spécifiques. Le numéro thématique dans son ensemble souligne la nécessité de prendre en compte la multimodalité, les nouveaux médias et la diversité des variétés du français à travers le monde, positionnant ce numéro thématique comme un jalon essentiel pour les futures recherches dans les domaines de l’analyse du discours et de la pragmatique du français.
“Bravo pour votre incompétence!” Exploring the French-Speaking Customer Service Interactions of Three European Train Operating Companies Online Ursula Lutzky, Nicolas Ruytenbeek Contrastive Pragmatics, 2025 Today, customer service interactions take place in the digital sphere to a considerable extent. In fact, several social networking platforms have been reappropriated to this end, allowing businesses to engage in conversations with their customers. In this study, we investigate the nature of these conversations on Twitter (now X) in three different French-speaking countries. We focus on the national train operating companies in France (SNCF), Belgium (SNCB) and Switzerland (CFF) and study their Twitter interactions with customers in French, using a corpus linguistic methodology. Our study is based on a corpus of more than half a million tweets addressed to and posted by the respective companies between 2018 and 2022. The aim of this contrastive study is to highlight the linguistic features and communicative strategies used by the respective companies and their customers, with a view to uncovering potential features pertaining to the discourse of customer service tweets in French.
Psychophysiological effects of evaluative language use on Twitter complaints and compliments Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Jens Allaert, Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt Internet Pragmatics, 2024 This article explores the role of evaluative language in the identification of emotions in–and psychophysiological responses to–Twitter complaints and compliments by the readers of these messages. Three hypotheses were tested in this research. First, in line with recent experimental work in French, we expected the presence of negative evaluative language in complaints to increase perceived dissatisfaction, impoliteness, and offensiveness by the reader. Second, assuming the negativity bias hypothesis, stronger psychophysiological responses should be found in complaints compared to compliments. Third, readers’ psychophysiological responses should be stronger for complaints and compliments including evaluative language. To test these hypotheses, we used a reading task involving cardiovascular reactivity measurements and a questionnaire. We found that perceived customer dissatisfaction, impoliteness and offensiveness were higher in complaints with vs. without evaluative language. We did not find an effect of the negativity bias on cardiovascular reactivity. Rather, compliments with evaluative language elicited larger cardiac slowing compared to complaints (with or without evaluative language) and compliments without evaluative language. As the stimuli is our study concern a railway company (which is mostly the target of criticism and complaints on Twitter), participants may have reacted more to the sort of feedback they would not expect the company to receive. Future research will be necessary to establish whether our findings still hold in the case of companies that achieve a better balance between negative and positive feedback.
A Case Study of Negated Adjectives in Commuters’ Twitter Complaints Nicolas Ruytenbeek Languages, 2024 In today’s digital society, social networks such as Twitter are a preferred place for expressing one’s emotions, especially when they are negative. Despite a growing interest in the variety of linguistic realizations of commuters’ complaints, little attention has so far been paid to writers’ choices, especially when morphologically or syntactically simpler alternative formulations are available. A typical example is the “inference towards the antonym” triggered by the negation of contrary adjectives, an effect that is stronger for positive compared to negative adjectives. In the context of railway transport, a customer could use the negative statement The train is not clean instead of the corresponding affirmative sentence The train is dirty. It remains unclear, in our current state of knowledge, why online customers would prefer more complex constructions to voice their criticisms. Based on a large corpus of tweets sent to the French and Belgian national railway companies by their customers, I have semi-automatically extracted instances of not (very) + adjective (ADJ). Based on previous observations in the literature, I expected positive adjectives to be more frequently used in these negative environments compared to negative ones. As recent research demonstrates that one’s desire to save the interlocutor’s face is not necessarily the only reason why positive adjectives are used in linguistically negative environments, other motivations will also be considered. More precisely, I suggest that in a context where negativity is prevalent, customers using negated positive adjectives kill two birds with one stone: not only do they signal an issue with a product or a service, pointing to expectations that have not been met by the company, but they also mitigate the impact of their negative comments to the positive face of the service managers with whom they are interacting. By offering a quantitative, corpus-based analysis of negative constructions, complemented by a qualitative linguistic analysis of selected examples, this research sheds new light on users’ lexical choices in online negative customer feedback.
Expressing and Responding to Customer (Dis)satisfaction Online: New Insights From Discourse and Linguistic Approaches Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Sofie Decock International Journal of Business Communication, 2024 In the current era of digitalization, customers are routinely invited to express their (dis)satisfaction with a product or a service and to provide recommendations for other prospective customers by writing reviews on a variety of online social media platforms. Such forms of electronic word-of-mouth have been found to strongly influence other consumers’ purchase decisions. In the case of negative reviews, the negativity expressed in a particular comment can spread to the whole community, which can damage a company’s reputation and profits. In an attempt to take consumer feedback into account, companies engage in “webcare.” This type of online service encounter has been defined by van Noort and Willemsen as “the act of engaging in online interactions with (complaining) consumers, by actively searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g., questions, concerns, and complaints).” Following-up on these developments, scholars have started to research the communicative strategies used by companies to address consumer feedback and those used by (dis)satisfied customers to voice their (dis)satisfaction from the perspective of discourse analysis and linguistic pragmatics, paying attention to their linguistic realizations and their interactional dynamics. The aim of this Special Issue is to further expand our knowledge on the discourse-pragmatic strategies used in the interaction of (dis)satisfied customers and companies online, and on how these different strategies influence other prospective customers’ perceptions, ultimately impacting their purchase decisions. In doing so, it positions itself at the crossroads of linguistics, communication, and business studies.
Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Benjamin Bergen, Sean Trott Journal of French Language Studies, 2023 Some utterances are pragmatically ambiguous. For instance, Tu peux fermer la fenêtre ? (“Can you close the window?”) can be a request for information or an “indirect request” (IR) to close the window. A possible way for speakers to make it clear whether they intend these expressions as a direct or indirect speech act is to use cues such as gestures or prosody. It has been shown for English that participants’ identifications of IRs are predicted by f 0 slope, mean f 0 , and f 0 duration. However, the extent to which these findings extend to other languages remains unknown. In this article, we explore the prosodic features associated with French IRs, a language poorly documented from that perspective. We address two research questions: Are listeners’ pragmatic interpretations of French IR constructions predicted by speaker’s original intent? Do prosodic cues play the same role in French modal interrogatives as in declarative remarks? We find, first, that remarks with more positive f 0 slope are more likely to be interpreted as requests, but modal interrogatives with more positive f 0 slope are more likely to be taken as questions. Second, while longer remarks were more likely to be interpreted as requests, longer modal interrogatives were more likely to be interpreted as questions.
Experiments into the influence of linguistic (in)directness on perceived face-threat in Twitter complaints Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Sofie Decock, Ilse Depraetere Journal of Politeness Research, 2023 To date, there has been little attention for the factors that influence the perception of online complaints. We present two experiments in which we test the impact of the degree of linguistic (in)directness and the formal realization of complaint components on complaint perception. Our experimental stimuli are designed on the basis of French-language authentic Twitter complaints which have been coded in terms of the presence of four constitutive complaint components: the complainable, the negative evaluation of the complainable, the person/company responsible for the complainable, and a wish for compensation. In our experiments, participants are asked to read Twitter complaints, and they are invited to assess them in terms of perceived strength, dissatisfaction, (im)politeness, and offensiveness. Our results indicate that not only the number but also the type of component that is formally realized shape complaint perception. We also find a positive correlation between perceived complaint strength and impoliteness. In addition, different formal realizations of the negative evaluation of the complainable have a different effect on complaint perception; in particular, negative emoji make the complaints softer and more polite. We also discuss methodological issues that have arisen while designing the experiments and that have to do with the operationalization of face-threat.
The impact of linguistic choices and (para-)linguistic markers on the perception of Twitter complaints by other customers: An experimental approach Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Sofie Decock, Ilse Depraetere Journal of Politeness Research, 2023 This paper addresses how the realizations of different constitutive components of Twitter complaints shape the perception of these complaints by other customers. We present three experiments on French language in which we test how customer complaint perception is impacted by the realization of the complainable (Exp. 1), of the entity responsible for the complainable (Exp. 2), and of the customer’s wish for the complainable to be remedied (Exp. 3). The results of Exp. 1 indicate that the perceived likelihood that the complaint will be responded to by the company is highest when the complainable is realized as a combination of an assertion + question + picture. In Exp. 2, we found that, in comparison with the use of the discourse markerditesto refer to the entity responsible for the complainable, the use of a noun phrase or the absence of this component increases perceived politeness. Finally, our data from Exp. 3 reveal that, compared to the use of an imperative to voice the customer’s wish for the complainable to be remedied, “indirect” request forms, and preparatory interrogatives, in particular, are perceived as more polite, as expressing lower dissatisfaction, and as decreasing the likelihood of a response from the company.
Psychophysiology and (im) politeness N Ruytenbeek Taylor & Francis , 2026 2026
Taleo: Inclusieve gezondheidscommunicatie met focus op zorggebruikers met beperkte gezondheidsvaardigheden (In opdracht van Kom op tegen Kanker) M De Dijn, G Brône, A Cox, E Dancet, M de Lhoneux, F Dobbels, M Irfan, ... 2026
L’im/politesse en français: Nouveaux questionnements RF de Politesse, C Claudel, S Moallemi, K Mullan, N Ruytenbeek, ... Journal of French Language Studies 36, e13 , 2026 2026
Do prosodic cues convey intent directly or through contrastive marking? A study on French indirect requests N Ruytenbeek, S Trott Glossa Psycholinguistics 4 (1), 1-35 , 2025 2025
Acknowledging feedback in French customer interactions online-Types and perceptions N Ruytenbeek, C Vásquez, S Jaworska Routledge , 2025 2025
Framing of customer feedback by French-speaking service managers on Twitter and how it is perceived N Ruytenbeek, C Vásquez, S Jaworska Routledge , 2025 2025
Microaggression: Towards a corpus-based linguistic definition C Vamiller, I Depraetere, N Ruytenbeek 19th International Conference in Pragmatics, Date: 2025/06/22-2025/06/27 … , 2025 2025
Do prosodic cues convey speech acts directly or through contrastive marking? The case of French indirect requests N Ruytenbeek, S Trott 19th International Conference in Pragmatics, Date: 2025/06/22-2025/06/27 … , 2025 2025
A study of linguistic mitigation, writer empathy and recipient personality in requesting and bringing bad news via email N Ruytenbeek, T Holtgraves Journal of Pragmatics 238, 60-73 , 2025 2025 Citations: 3
“Bravo pour votre incompétence!” Exploring the French-Speaking Customer Service Interactions of Three European Train Operating Companies Online U Lutzky, N Ruytenbeek Contrastive Pragmatics 1 (aop), 1-30 , 2024 2024 Citations: 3
Psychophysiological effects of evaluative language use on Twitter complaints and compliments N Ruytenbeek, J Allaert, MA Vanderhasselt Internet Pragmatics 7 (2), 193-218 , 2024 2024 Citations: 7
Indirectness N Ruytenbeek, M Vandenbroucke, J Declercq, B Brisard, S D’hondt John Benjamins 27, 101-127 , 2024 2024 Citations: 3
A Case Study of Negated Adjectives in Commuters’ Twitter Complaints N Ruytenbeek Languages 9 (8), 274 , 2024 2024 Citations: 2
Communiquer en société-le pouvoir des sous-entendus: Une analyse linguistique de l'implicite N Ruytenbeek Centre Culturel Marius Staquet, Location: Mouscron , 2024 2024
Expressing and responding to customer (dis) satisfaction online: New insights from discourse and linguistic approaches N Ruytenbeek, S Decock International Journal of Business Communication 61 (1), 3-17 , 2024 2024 Citations: 11
Directives (with a special emphasis on requests) N Ruytenbeek Handbook of Pragmatics 26, 67-93 , 2023 2023 Citations: 6
Asymmetric inference towards the antonym: An EEG experiment into the polarity of negated adjectives N Ruytenbeek, S Verheyen 10th biennial meeting of Experimental Pragmatics, Date: 2023/09/20-2023/09 … , 2023 2023
Requesting behavior and personality–An experimental study of French requests N Ruytenbeek 18th International Conference in Pragmatics, Date: 2023/07/09-2023/07/14 … , 2023 2023
Emotional contagion in commuters’ complaints and compliments on Twitter: An experimental approach N Ruytenbeek Language in Webcare: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Radboud Universiteit … , 2023 2023
Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests N Ruytenbeek, B Bergen, S Trott Journal of French Language Studies 33 (1), 103-125 , 2023 2023 Citations: 10
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Selective pragmatic impairment in autism spectrum disorder: Indirect requests versus irony G Deliens, F Papastamou, N Ruytenbeek, P Geelhand, M Kissine Journal of autism and developmental disorders 48 (9), 2938-2952 , 2018 2018 Citations: 176
Linguistic (in) directness in twitter complaints: A contrastive analysis of railway complaint interactions I Depraetere, S Decock, N Ruytenbeek Journal of Pragmatics 171, 215-233 , 2021 2021 Citations: 62
Asymmetric inference towards the antonym: Experiments into the polarity and morphology of negated adjectives N Ruytenbeek, S Verheyen, B Spector Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2 (1), 92 , 2017 2017 Citations: 55
Indirect Speech Acts N Ruytenbeek 2021 Citations: 50
Indirect requests, relevance, and politeness N Ruytenbeek Journal of Pragmatics 142, 78-89 , 2019 2019 Citations: 43
Indirect request processing, sentence types and illocutionary forces N Ruytenbeek, E Ostashchenko, M Kissine Journal of pragmatics 119, 46-62 , 2017 2017 Citations: 43
Exploring the impact of platforms' affordances on the expression of negativity in online hotel reviews N Ruytenbeek, M Verschraegen, S Decock Journal of Pragmatics 186, 289-307 , 2021 2021 Citations: 39
The Comprehension of Indirect Requests: Previous Work and Future Directions N Ruytenbeek In Depraetere, Ilse, Salkie, Raphael (Eds.), Semantics and Pragmatics … , 2017 2017 Citations: 35
Do indirect requests communicate politeness? An experimental study of conventionalized indirect requests in French email communication N Ruytenbeek Journal of Politeness Research 16 (1), 111-142 , 2020 2020 Citations: 25
Experiments into the influence of linguistic (in) directness on perceived face-threat in Twitter complaints N Ruytenbeek, S Decock, I Depraetere Journal of Politeness Research 19 (1), 59-86 , 2023 2023 Citations: 19
Current issues in the ontology and form of directive speech acts N Ruytenbeek International Review of Pragmatics 11 (2), 200-221 , 2019 2019 Citations: 12
Expressing and responding to customer (dis) satisfaction online: New insights from discourse and linguistic approaches N Ruytenbeek, S Decock International Journal of Business Communication 61 (1), 3-17 , 2024 2024 Citations: 11
Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests N Ruytenbeek, B Bergen, S Trott Journal of French Language Studies 33 (1), 103-125 , 2023 2023 Citations: 10
Interpreting standardized indirect requests from a relevance theoretic perspective N Ruytenbeek Online Papers of the Linguistic Society of Belgium 7, 1-15 , 2012 2012 Citations: 8
Psychophysiological effects of evaluative language use on Twitter complaints and compliments N Ruytenbeek, J Allaert, MA Vanderhasselt Internet Pragmatics 7 (2), 193-218 , 2024 2024 Citations: 7
The impact of linguistic choices and (para-) linguistic markers on the perception of Twitter complaints by other customers: an experimental approach N Ruytenbeek, S Decock, I Depraetere Journal of Politeness Research 19 (1), 87-122 , 2023 2023 Citations: 7
Directives (with a special emphasis on requests) N Ruytenbeek Handbook of Pragmatics 26, 67-93 , 2023 2023 Citations: 6
The mechanics of indirectness: A case study of directive speech acts N Ruytenbeek Université libre de Bruxelles , 2017 2017 Citations: 5
The influence of linguistic choices on perceived face-threat in Twitter complaints: An experimental approach N Ruytenbeek, S Decock, I Depraetere Journal Of Politeness Research-Language Behaviour Culture 19 (1), 87-122 , 2023 2023 Citations: 4
Lexical and morpho-syntactic modification of student requests: An empirical contribution to the study of (im) politeness in French e-mail speech acts N Ruytenbeek Lexique, 29-47 , 2019 2019 Citations: 4
