The Polite Press Release - Politeness in English/Japanese press releases following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident
This essay attempts to distinguish differences in politeness in Japanese and English press releases, with a specific focus on TEPCO and BP in the aftermath of their respective environmental disasters. Through the use of discourse analysis, PR theory and the Brown and Levinson politeness model I find that the Japanese press releases favour negative politeness, whereas the English favour positive po