POLITENESS AND PERSUASION IN DIGITAL HEALTH: A MULTIMODAL PRAGMATIC STUDY OF MOBILE HEALTH APPLICATIONS

Abstract

This study investigates the role of politeness strategies in mobile health (mHealth) applications, examining how linguistic and multimodal features collaboratively shape user perceptions of empathy, trust, and engagement. Data were analysed comparatively and thematically through Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, supplemented by Locher and Watts’ (2005) and Spencer-Oatley’s (2008) relational work framework, alongside Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal discourse analysis. Messages and design elements from a range of health apps were coded in NVivo, with intercoder reliability established at a Cohen’s Kappa score of 0.82. The analysis revealed three major themes: (1) Empathy as a Core Design Principle, where positive politeness strategies and empathic design reduce anxiety and foster rapport; (2) The Urgency–Politeness Tension, in which bald on-record strategies convey health-critical information effectively but risk user disengagement when overused; and (3) Politeness as a Multimodal Strategy, where visual elements such as colour, icons, emojis, and layout reinforce linguistic politeness, shaping users’ relational experience. Findings indicate that effective mHealth communication is not solely dependent on textual politeness but also on multimodal cues that sustain emotional connection and usability. This study contributes to understanding politeness as a relational and multimodal construct in digital healthcare, offering insights for the design of user-centred and emotionally responsive health applications.