“Troubles-talk”

In everyday communication, criticisms are important and commonly occurring face-threatening acts. In this paper, we investigate the way people deal with criticisms by conducting two experiments in French involving the production of, and response to, criticisms using a written Discourse Completion Test. In each experiment, we presented participants with scenarios in which we manipulated power relations (equal vs. hierarchical) and horizontal social distance (close or distant). We also assessed the roles of age and gender of the participants. Results indicate that power and distance significantly impact the formulation of criticisms but not that of responses to criticisms. Similarly, age and gender significantly interacted in the formulation of criticisms, with younger women being less direct, but older women being more direct compared to men. No effect was found on responses to criticisms. Taken together, these findings provide a more comprehensive perspective of the factors affecting the production of, and response to, criticisms from an experimental perspective, thus contributing to our understanding of this pivotal but understudied speech act.