Modal particles in workplace coaching in German

Abstract Coaching is a fast-growing learning and development format. While its overall effectiveness is empirically established in psychological research, there is little linguistic research on how particular discursive practices are used in coaching interactions to co-construct such effectiveness. This paper focusses on modal particles and investigates their use in workplace coaching in German. Drawing on four coaching processes from the QueSCo corpus, it specifically analyses coaches’ particle use across various sentence types. Results show that coaches construct themselves as neutral process managers by using particular modal particles: in questions, they mainly use the most neutral particles denn and eigentlich , in orders, they mainly use softening particles such as mal , and in declaratives, particles such as ja that mark common ground dominate.