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Speaking from the Heart: Empathetic Language

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Motivating Language Theory

Abstract

This chapter explores motivating language’s empathetic language dimension. We begin with including a broad scope of empathy—civility, perspective taking, empathy, and compassion—to capture this form of leader talk. This chapter also explains how leaders incorporate diverse and progressive categories of empathy or emotional bonding with followers into their speech through empathetic language. These categories include politeness/cordiality, work empathy, achievement, personal goals, performancepraise, personal experiences, effort, and barriers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M International University, Laredo, TX, USA

    Jacqueline Mayfield & Milton Mayfield

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  1. Jacqueline Mayfield
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  2. Milton Mayfield
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Correspondence to Jacqueline Mayfield .

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Mayfield, J., Mayfield, M. (2018). Speaking from the Heart: Empathetic Language. In: Motivating Language Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66930-4_4

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