Politeness

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Umbrella term for a combination of interpersonal considerations and linguistic choices affecting the form and function of linguistic interactions. Analysts from diverse fields pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and anthropology—argue that the specific ways in which speakers, as interactants, perform speech acts ( speech act classification. speech act theory) such as requests, commands, elicitations and offers, both express and reflect the nature of the relationship between them. Fluent speakers of a language have therefore learned (automatically) to take great care over, for example, how to phrase impositive requests. A central concept of politeness theory is ‘face’, which is taken to be important to individuals in both a positive and negative aspect. One preserves the negative face of an interactant by impeding or interfering with his/her actions and values as little as possible; one attends to the positive face of an interactant by endorsing and supporting the interactant’s presumed positive self-image as much as possible. Acts which involve the speaker in breaking away from either of these face-maintaining tendencies are known as ‘face-threatening acts.’ Ordering someone to do something is prima facie threatening to that person’s negative face; so, where other factors allow it, politeness considerations usually lead us to mitigate and minimize, linguistically, the degree of overt imposition: I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind…?; Phil, I’m afraid I need you to…. Positive face is reflected in numerous ‘other-appreciative’ conversational gambits: I just love that sweater you’re wearing; (It was) good talking to you’, I’m sure you ‘ll do just fine; Have a nice day! One of the most interesting aspects of face and politeness, and their conventional encoding in the patterns of grammar and usage associated with particular kinds of speech acts, is that they differ from culture to culture and from language to language in ways that are difficult to calibrate. This has major consequences for truly felicitous cross-cultural communication. One can be near-native in one’s fluency in a foreign language and yet, if one does not have control of the pragmatics of politeness in the language, sound offensively abrupt in one’s requests or ludicrously flattering in one’s compliments.

Blum-Kulka, S.

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Watts, R.J., S.Ide, and K.Ehlich (eds) 1992. Politeness in language: studies in its history, theory and practice. Berlin and New York.

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