A Study of Politeness Strategies in Corporate Statements in Crisis Public Relations

This paper probes into the corporate statements in crisis public relations from the angle of politeness strategies, which serves as a joint study of crisis management and politeness theory. The focus of the paper is to research on the category of politeness strategies used in corporate statements in crisis public statements and shed some light on how to write a concise and polite statements after crisis. In the study, corporate statements in crisis public relations are analyzed by using Brown and Levinson's classification of positive and negative politeness strategies. The results indicate that positive strategies are more often used in corporate statements than negative ones. Besides, some politeness strategies such as exaggerate, make offer or promise, apologies, etc. are quite indispensable in statements issued to cope with crisis, since these strategies endow the statement with its basic functions.