Qualifiers: how to sound more polite in a business meeting

August 1, 2012 About English 9

If you often attend meetings and negotiations as part of your job, you will know how important it is to avoid direct disagreement.

A disagreement can occur if we make a very direct and simple statement to express what we’re thinking. Statements which are too direct can sound confrontational and as a result the person you’re negotiating with may be offended or get upset.

Look at these very direct statements:

  • The price is high.
  • It’s a problem.
  • I’ll be late.
  • There might be delays with the delivery.
  • We have to make changes.
  • It’s difficult to do.

All of the above statements are too direct for a polite negotiation. They may say what you are thinking, but they can sound impolite or aggressive and may lead to a direct disagreement.

Qualifiers will ‘soften’ a direct statement

In order to sound more diplomatic we should soften our direct statements. One way of doing this is by using qualifiers – words which we put before another word to make it sound less direct.

Here are some common ‘softening’ qualifiers in English:

  • a little
  • a bit
  • a little bit
  • slight
  • slightly
  • short
  • small
  • one or two.

Now let’s use these qualifiers in sentences:

  • The price is a little high.
  • It’s a slight problem.
  • I’ll be a little bit late.
  • There might be one or two short delays with the delivery.
  • We have to make one or two small changes.
  • It’s a bit difficult to do.

See how the direct statements are now softer and less direct. We now sound more diplomatic and a direct disagreement is less likely.

This is how qualifiers work. There are, of course, other ways of sounding polite and less direct during a negotiation. I’ll look at these in a future post.

By Stuart Cook
Stuart is an English teacher and runs the Speakspeak website. He currently lives in Prague and has been teaching for over 25 years. ⎜ Get Stuart's e-books

9 Comments

  1. sam - August 2, 2012, 3:10 pm Reply

    dear stuart,
    I really enjoyed it and found it helpful and I was thinking we can have some English practice with it.
    best wishes
    sam asadi

  2. Denis Nyayal - December 14, 2013, 8:39 pm Reply

    Previously i had a problem with my superiors,but when i read these and practised,now am praised.thanks to the developer.

  3. Mohammed - March 31, 2014, 12:20 pm Reply

    Dear Sir,

    It is very useful information and i appreciate your great efforts in bringing the essential phrases to be used in formal communication.

    Thanks.

  4. walaa - June 12, 2014, 1:18 am Reply

    thanks alot

  5. vinod - March 24, 2015, 5:40 pm Reply

    Thanks for nice article

  6. Xia Yu - October 2, 2015, 3:04 am Reply

    That is wonderful. I like it very much. Thanks a lot. Xiayu from China.

  7. Rajesh Kumar A - November 23, 2015, 2:50 pm Reply

    Thanks for your suggestions

    It’s helps alot….

  8. sebnem - March 29, 2020, 12:46 pm Reply

    Thanks a lot. Article is very helpful

  9. Albaraa - April 11, 2020, 2:49 pm Reply

    thanks for your effort about this important info

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