Phatic Communicative Strategies of Female Fashion Online Sellers in E-Commerce Live Show

Internet-mediated communication (IMC) is an important means of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, IMC is used in various areas, including e-commerce. Since IMC does not allow physical contact, online sellers develop communicative strategies verbally by performing phatic speech acts to maintain social bonds with their customers and avoid communication problems. The discussion of phatic speech acts as a communicative strategy in live e-commerce programmes within the cyberpragmatic approach is interesting to investigate. The study aimed to describe the types and functions of phatic speech acts performed by online sellers in live e-commerce programmes. Data were collected by observing 10 sessions of the live women's fashion sales programme on the e-commerce platform Shopee. All utterances of online female sellers that contained phatic speech acts were transcribed for textual analysis. The analysis was conducted within the framework of the cyberpragmatic approach introduced by Yus (2011). The types of phatic speech acts used by online saleswomen were categorised as greetings, familiarisers, camaraderie intensifiers, and persuasive force. Each type has a specific function. Greetings are those that introduce and close the show, while familiarisers are a strategy for building intimacy with customers. Camaraderie intensifiers such as compliments, jokes, and small talk are significant to maintaining rapport. Persuasive force functioned to intensify customers' trust in the product. The aim of the study was to formulate a model for effective communication strategies in e-commerce for online sellers.