Politeness Research

In this article we present the results of a contrastive analysis about the politeness strategies used in the expression of requests in Castilian Spanish and European Portuguese. By using the DCT methodology, we have designed a questionnaire with petitions of different cost-benefit for the conversational partner and with variations relative to power and the social distance that exists between the participants. Once the data was gathered, we did a triple study about the differences in the expression of rquests: 1) between Spanish and Portuguese, 2) from the rank of imposition of the object and the petition, and 3) according to the social distance and the relative power of the participants. The results show that, although using different linguistic and politeness strategies, the expression of petitions is similar between Spanish and Portuguese speakers, although the latter take the social distance and the relative power of the hearer more into account than the Spanish speakers at the moment of choosing politeness forms.

Learning politeness in English language as a Foreign Language (EFL) is important as it concerns on how language is used in social contexts. In englishforums.com discussions, there are several politeness problems which attract researchers to analyse them. This research aims to investigate the politeness strategies used in englishforums.com discussion. There are two research problems formulated: (1) What types of politeness strategies are used in the englishforums.com discussions? (2) What factors affecting the politeness strategies in the englishforums.com discussions? To interpret the first result, the researchers used the politeness theories according to Brown and Levinson (1987) to analyse the types of politeness strategies used in englishforums.com discussion. To interpret the second result, the researchers used the theory from Spolsky (1998) about the factors affecting the politeness strategies in the englishforums.com discussion. The data of this research are taken from the discussion dialogue in englishforums.com. The first finding shows that the politeness strategies found in the discussion are positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record, and bald-on-record. The second finding shows that the factor affecting politeness strategies was language and style.

The aim of this study is to analyze in detail the realization of requestive speech acts in Italian and in German. In particular, the theoretic frame of the CCSARP (Cross cultural speech acts realization project), which suggested a strict classification of directness across different languages, and adopted in the previous study “A comparison of the realization of requestive speech acts in Italian and in German” is put into question. A new model is then developed, which allows a more reliable analysis of requests in Italian and German. Secondly, the study investigates the role of positive and negative politeness, the thematic structure of discourse and the role given to interruptions in Italian and German. The result is a picture of the conversational behaviour in the two language communities at issue, which enables a more truthful interpretation of the directness of the illocutionary force in requests. At the same time, light is shed on the importance given by respondents to politeness, with respect to efficacy. This dimension is further investigated whereby looking at the supportive moves, which can act in combination or in compensation with the requestive move and which can aim at persuading or convincing the interlocutor. In conclusion, some possible pedagogical implications of the findings are considered.

Modern university students are expected to participate in online discussions as part of their course work as well as write emails to professors requesting meetings and explaining late paper submissions. These online written interactions require students to demonstrate advanced written pragmatic competence in English to effectively manage their relationships and studies at English medium of instruction (EMI) universities. It is therefore important for undergraduate English as second language (L2) learners to understand how politeness is expressed in online communication. However, politeness is a facet of language use which is often difficult to master because it is dependent on the relationship between the interactants and is culturally and contextually bound (Haugh, 2007). This paper discusses politeness theory and research and considers how politeness is expressed and interpreted in computer-mediated communication (CMC) in EMI university contexts.

This paper deals with politeness phenomena which are general to all human societies, but draws many examples from Korea as understood by the writer (who is Australian). The emphasis in this analysis is on the problem of decoding politeness. It is noted that even within a culture, politeness signals can be manipulated, and that interlocutors calibrate their meaning according to knowledge of individual personalities. In Korean society, the requirement for formal politeness signals is very strong, both in body language and in fixed linguistic markers (such as verb endings). However, the pragmatic meaning of these signals is calibrated in ways that are difficult for foreigners to decode. The paper also considers the dilemma of that minority of Koreans who attempt to interact within the linguistic and social codes of English. It is noted that these attempts often go astray, both because the speaker misunderstands English politeness coding conventions and because listeners in English, almost by definition, come from radically different cultural backgrounds to the Korean.

Highlights

• I present an explanation of instantaneous pragmatic linguistic choice behavior.
• I posit “thin slicing” and “emotional response” behavior as mechanisms.
• My conclusion supplements other explanations based on metapragmatics and habitus.
•  I analyze examples of pragmatic choice drawn from Japanese, Persian and Javanese.

Abstract

It is axiomatic in the study of pragmatics that speakers must make choices from a myriad of variants in phonology, morphology and syntax “on the fly” during the course of interaction. However, the specific psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms that both prompt these choices have largely been taken for granted. Theoretical approaches to this problem in the past have focused on linguistic mechanisms such as “metapragmatics” or cultural approaches such as the analysis of “habitus.” While acknowledging the importance of these approaches, in this paper I extend this view by suggesting that these instantaneous choices are largely governed by the same cognitive mechanisms that govern emotional response. Drawing on the work of contemporary neurophysiology, pragmatic philosophy and phenomenology, I draw on examples from Japanese, Persian and Javanese.

Maintaining, affirming, and re-establishing good relationships with others in political discourse by communicating involvement and concern are important for securing cooperation and acquiring power. This paper identifies and analyzes a group of speech acts that are utilized by public actors as solidarity-enhancing devices. On the basis of 605 utterances constructed around the Hebrew speech act verb Le-varech and its English equivalents (congratulate, welcome, praise, thank, greet, bless, and wish), I suggest an initial mapping of past-, present-, and future-oriented actions of solidarity performed in both national and international politics, point to their communicative and political functions on both personal and interactional levels, and conclude by delineating the political processes they initiate, maintain, or transform.

Mario Teguh was one of the motivators in Indonesia whose fans are considered as the most. He was also issued as the most expensive motivator in Indonesia at this time being. As a great motivator, he must have some strategies to be close and give motivation to his audiences. This research was aimed to figure out the strategies he used, focusing on the strategies in handling questions. The data was collected by observation method and documentation technique. The data was analyzed based on the politeness strategy of Brown and Levinson. From the analysis, I found that at least there were ten strategies used by Mario to share the motivation. These made the audiences did not feel to be lectured when he shared it. In fact, they feel like a friend to him. Mario Teguh adalah salah satu motivator di Indonesia yang memiliki fans terbesar. Dia juga adalah seorang motivator dengan bayaran termahal saat ini. Sebagai seorang motivator, dia tentu memiliki beberapa strategi untuk mendekati dan berbagi motivasi dengan pada pendengarnya. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menggambarkan strategi yang digunakan oleh Mario terutama saat dia menjawab pertanyaan dari pendengar. Data dari penelitian ini dikumpulkan dengan metode observasi dan teknik dokumentasi. Data ini dianalisa berdasarkan teori kesopanan oleh Brown dan Levinson. Dari analisa ditemukan bahwa setidaknya ada sepuluh strategi kesopanan yang digunakan oleh Mario dalam berbagi motivasi. Hal ini membuat pendengar tidak merasa diceramahi. Malah, mereka merasa menjadi lebih dekat kepada beliau. Kata Kunci: Motivasi, motivator, kesopanan, strategi kesopanan 2 | P a g e

This article explores evaluative discourse on social networking sites (henceforth SNSs), paying special attention to the important role played by the expression of attitude and positive politeness in the management of interpersonal rapport. The specific contextual features of SNSs seem to trigger the production of attitudinal meanings of affect, judgement and appreciation, which are exploited for the relational work involved in the construction and maintenance of positive face. The corpus for the study consists of a random sample of 100 messages with 248 evaluative utterances exchanged among university students in the United Kingdom and the United States on a particular site, i.e., Facebook, during the two-year period 2010-2012. Analysis of evaluative discourse is approached from the theories of appraisal (Martin and White 2005, Bednarek 2008) and politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987). The methodology for processing the data borrows quantitative techniques from Corpus Linguistics (CL), involving the coding and statistical treatment of the sample with UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell 2011).

“Evaluative discourse and politeness in university students' communication through social networking sites”. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259452931_Evaluative_discourse_and_politeness_in_university_students%27_communication_through_social_networking_sites [accessed Apr 15, 2017].

This article investigates how interpersonal relationships are expressed in medical consultations. In particular, we focus on how modes of address are used in the two national varieties of Swedish: Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish, with the aim to compare the pragmatic routines in the two varieties. Thus the study contributes to the field of variational pragmatics, where national varieties of pluricentric languages are recognised as important research objects. Address practices are analysed in two comparable corpora of video recordings from Sweden and Finland using both a quantitative and a qualitative CA-inspired method. There are several differences between the data sets: the Sweden-Swedish data are characterised by exclusive use of the informal T pronoun (du ‘you’) and an overall higher frequency of direct address compared to the Finland-Swedish data. In some medical consultations in the Finland-Swedish data the formal V pronoun (ni) is used. The qualitative analysis confirms these differences and the tendency is that the Sweden-Swedish medical consultations are more informal than the Finland-Swedish ones, which are characterised by more formality and maintenance of social distance between the interlocutors. The different pragmatic orientations at the micro level of communication can also be related to socio- cultural preferences at the macro level in society -- the development towards greater informality and intimate language is more pronounced in Sweden than in Finland.

In this article, we treat politeness as a feature of interpersonal conduct centred on the concept of face. We review Brown and Levinson's paradigm of politeness and the criticisms levelled against it for not being able to accommodate cultural variability. We also present the relative theory of politeness, an attempt to amend Brown and Levinson's face-management system with regard to universality and a system of culturally neutral semantic terms used in cross-cultural studies of face orientations.

This examination illustrates weaknesses in the traditional research paradigm in cross-cultural studies of linguistic politeness – the use of elicited data, and the model tacitly underlying the construction of elicitation tools. This is done by discussing insights gained in a quantitative cross-linguistic study of situated, naturally occurring requests and proposals, which could not be gained using elicited data. After indicating the scale on which the current elicitation paradigm has been applied in cross-cultural pragmatics, the article summarizes the main critical points highlighted by previous research and introduces new points, such as a social pressure on the respondents to produce the kind of data expected by the researcher, and the researcher's lack of insight into the context models construed by the respondents. Finally, it is discussed how the choice of elicitation tasks is tacitly based on a dyadic model of interaction, in which the addressee is a single person and the speaker acts on his or her own behalf and only represents him- or herself. There follows a discussion of a corpus-based study of requests and proposals that compares data from British, German, and Polish versions of the reality TV show Big Brother. It is shown how quantitative study of natural data not restricted to dyadic interactions demands new categorizations of interaction parameters considered, and provides new insights into language-specific impact of contextual factors upon politeness strategies.