Discourse politeness question

William Salmon william.salmon at YALE.EDU
Wed Mar 19 15:10:14 UTC 2008


> My question: Why does the addition of two words that denote greater
> urgency actually mitigate the patronizing effect of the plainer
> utterance?
>
> (1)
> Hi Peter,
> I'd like to have your thoughts on this.
> Best,
> Ron
>
> (2)
> Hi Peter,
> I'd like very much to have your thoughts on this.
> Best,
> Ron

Do you get the same mitigating effect if 'very much' is located
elsewhere in the sentence:

I'd like to have your thoughts on this very much.
I'd very much like to have your thoughts on this.

I'm not sure I get the same effect in these two, at least not to the
extent that I do in your (2) above.

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