Massaging Talk: When Description Turns Managerial

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 71):

The shared message in (26) contrasts with other messages that are simply asserted, with little indication about whether Kristy’s mother expects it to be shared or not.

(26) Mother: You’ll have a lovely day pet.

Alternatively, at the beginning of the conversation, both Kristy and her mother put forward proposals, but do so in a way that suggests they are not particularly tied to them. In (22), they do this through the relatively suggesting lexicalised phrases What about and how about at the beginning of their proposals. These markers suggest that they are each relatively open to being rejected, which they are.

This nuancing of positions is crucial for texts to unfold smoothly. They allow meanings to be tendered in ways that increase or decrease the risk of conflict, while at the same time massaging the conversation toward support and positive affiliation (Zhang 2020).

ChatGPT Comments:

The passage sets up a contrast between “shared” and “asserted” meanings, but the analytical footing is shaky in at least three respects:

1. Normative presuppositions about interaction

   • The text imports a managerialist lens, treating interaction as something to be “smoothed,” “massaged,” and kept free of conflict. This normativity positions everyday talk as defective unless it aligns with values of “positive affiliation.” Such a stance reduces the descriptive task to policing interpersonal harmony rather than explaining meaning-making.

2. Cognitive leakage

   • Expressions like relatively open to being rejected are treated as indicators of psychological states (openness, attachment, risk), rather than as resources construed and negotiated in the text. This shifts the analysis away from a systemic description of how proposals are realised toward speculation about attitudes and mental dispositions.

3. Category slippage

   • The claim that this “nuancing of positions” is “crucial for texts to unfold smoothly” blurs the line between textual organisation (how meanings are sequenced) and interpersonal negotiation (how meanings are positioned socially). By collapsing the two, the analysis risks reintroducing a functionalist gloss—where smooth unfolding is the standard—rather than carefully tracing the semiotic resources in play.

In short: the excerpt illustrates how a descriptive analysis of proposals and rejections gets reframed through normative (harmony-seeking) and cognitive (openness/attachment) filters. These imports displace systemic description with interpretive judgements about how talk “should” work.

Take the following passage:

This nuancing of positions is crucial for texts to unfold smoothly. They allow meanings to be tendered in ways that increase or decrease the risk of conflict, while at the same time massaging the conversation toward support and positive affiliation (Zhang 2020).

What begins as a descriptive analysis of how proposals and rejections are phrased ends in something quite different. The analyst has quietly shifted registers—from describing meaning-making resources to prescribing how talk ought to go. Conflict is recast as a “risk,” affiliation as the natural telos, and the interaction is reimagined as something to be “smoothed” and “massaged.”

Three consequences follow. First, normative leakage: everyday talk is assessed against the managerial ideal of frictionless collaboration. Second, cognitive leakage: lexical choices such as what about and how about are taken as evidence of speakers’ inner states—openness, attachment, risk-tolerance—rather than as semiotic resources in the exchange. And third, category slippage: the distinction between textual unfolding and interpersonal positioning collapses, as if “smoothness” were itself a textual function rather than an evaluative judgement imposed from outside.

The result is that systemic description—tracing how proposals are made, rejected, and negotiated—is displaced by a kind of interpersonal hygiene. The analyst ceases to describe what is going on, and begins to manage it.