What are common phrases for expressing complaints in English

Common phrases for expressing complaints in English often involve polite or direct ways to convey dissatisfaction or annoyance. Some typical complaint phrases include:

• “I’m not happy with…”
• “There is a problem with…”
• “I would like to complain about…”
• “This is unacceptable.”
• “I’m really disappointed because…”
• “Could you please explain why…”
• “I’m having an issue with…”
• “This isn’t what I expected.”
• “I’ve been waiting for a long time.”
• “Can you help me resolve this?”

These phrases vary depending on the politeness level, context, and the relationship between the speaker and listener. Polite complaints often use softening language like “could you please” or “I would appreciate it if,” while more direct complaints simply state the problem straightforwardly. ^{2, 6, 7}

Verweise

• Speech Acts : -How Now-native English Speakers’ Responses to Compliments Compare to Native Speakers’ Responses

• A Pragmatic Cross-Cultural Study of Complaints Expressions in Jordan and England

• Emotivity in the Voice: Prosodic, Lexical, and Cultural Appraisal of Complaining Speech

• Assessing Without Words: Verbally Incomplete Utterances in Complaints

• Linguistic Understanding of Complaints and Praises in User Reviews

• Politeness in Interlanguage Pragmatics of Complaints by Indonesian Learners of English.

• Politeness Strategy in Interlanguage Pragmatics of Complaints by International Students

• Emotivity in the Voice: Prosodic, Lexical, and Cultural Appraisal of Complaining Speech

• Idioms of Distress

• Adverbs In Expressions of Disagreement: a Corpus Study

• Modeling the Severity of Complaints in Social Media

• Understanding Meanings in Multilingual Customer Feedback

• Presenting complaint: use of language that disempowers patients

• Dealing with complaints

• Politeness and Speech acts of Refusal and Complaint among Jordanian Undergraduate Students

• Patient complaints in healthcare systems: a systematic review and coding taxonomy

• The Grievance Dictionary: Understanding threatening language use