Politeness
Politeness is the practical application of good manners or etiquette so as not to offend others and to put them at ease. It is a culturally defined phenomenon, and therefore what is considered polite in one culture can sometimes be quite rude or simply eccentric in another cultural context.
While the goal of politeness is to refrain from behaving in an offensive way so as not to offend others, and to make all people feel relaxed and comfortable with one another, these culturally defined standards at times may be broken within the context of personal boundaries – this is known as positive politeness.
Types
Anthropologists
- Negative politeness is the act of making a request less infringing, such as "If you don't mind..." or "If it isn't too much trouble..."; respects a person's right to act freely. This is a variety of deference. There is a greater use of indirect speech acts. It is also considered a part of being assertive.
- Non-assertive politeness is when a person refrains from making a comment or asserting their beliefs during a discussion so as to remain polite to others present. It is also when a person goes along with a decision made by someone else so as not to appear impolite, essentially following general social norms.
- Assertive politeness can be when a person offers their opinion in a positive and constructive way to be assistive and helpful during an interaction, or refrains from purporting to agree with something they do not actually agree with in a way that does not offend others.
- Positive politeness seeks to establish a positive relationship between parties, and it respects a person's need to be liked and understood. This standard of politeness is determined by Grice's maximscan be considered aspects of positive politeness because:
- They show an awareness that the relationship is strong enough to cope with what would normally be considered impolite (in the popular understanding of the term);
- They articulate an awareness of the other person's values, which fulfills the person's desire to be accepted.
- They convey a natural, relaxed, casual setting.
Some cultures, groups, and individuals prefer some ideals of politeness over the other. In this way, politeness is culturally bound, and even within broader cultures, people may disagree.
History
During the
'Politeness' may be defined a dext'rous management of our words and actions, whereby we make other people have better opinion of us and themselves.[2]
Periodicals, such as The Spectator, founded as a daily publication by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in 1711, gave regular advice to its readers on how to be a polite gentleman. Its stated goal was "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality ... to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses." It provided its readers with educated, topical talking points, and advice on how to carry on conversations and social interactions in a polite manner.[3]
The art of polite conversation and debate was particularly cultivated in the
Techniques
This section is in prose. is available. (September 2023) |
There is a variety of techniques one can use to seem polite. Some techniques include expressing uncertainty and ambiguity through hedging and indirectness, polite lying or use of euphemisms (which make use of ambiguity as well as connotation).
Additionally, one can use tag questions to direct statements, such as "You were at the store, weren't you?" There are three types of tags: modal tags, affective tags, and facilitative tags.
Modal tags request information of which the speaker is uncertain: "You haven't been to the store yet, have you?" Affective tags indicate concern for the listener: "You haven't been here long, have you? Facilitative tags invite the addressee to comment on the request being made: "You can do that, can't you?" Finally, softeners reduce the force of what would be a brusque demand: "Hand me that thing, could you?"
Some studies[8] have shown that women are more likely to use politeness formulas than men, though the exact differences are not clear. Most current research has shown that gender differences in politeness use are complex,[9] since there is a clear association between politeness norms and the stereotypical speech of middle class white women, at least in the UK and US. It is therefore unsurprising that women tend to be associated with politeness more and their linguistic behavior judged in relation to these politeness norms.
Linguistic devices
Besides and additionally to the above, many languages have specific means to show politeness, deference, respect, or a recognition of the social status of the speaker and the hearer. There are two main ways in which a given language shows politeness: in its lexicon (for example, employing certain words in formal occasions, and colloquial forms in informal contexts), and in its morphology (for example, using special verb forms for polite discourse). The T–V distinction is a common example in Western languages, while some Asian languages extend this to avoiding pronouns entirely. Some languages have complex politeness systems, such as Korean speech levels and honorific speech in Japanese.
Japanese is perhaps the most widely known example of a language that encodes politeness at its core. Japanese has two main levels of politeness, one for intimate acquaintances, family, and friends, and one for other groups, and verb morphology reflects these levels. Besides that, some verbs have special hyper-polite suppletive forms. This happens also with some nouns and interrogative pronouns. Japanese also employs different personal pronouns for each person according to gender, age, rank, degree of acquaintance, and other cultural factors.
Criticism of Brown & Levinson's typology
Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness has been criticised as not being universally valid, by linguists working with
See also
- Congeniality bias: see Confirmation bias
- Courtesy
- Etiquette
- Formality
- Intercultural competence
- Polite fiction
- Politeness maxims (Geoffrey Leech)
- Politeness theory, which elaborates terms such as "positive politeness" and "negative politeness"
- Register (sociolinguistics)
- Respect
- Valediction, expression used to say farewell (e.g. to end a letter) or the act of saying parting
References
- ISBN 9780521418065.
- JSTOR 2738536.
- ^ "First Edition of The Spectator". Information Britain. 2010-03-01. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
- doi:10.2307/3817904.
- S2CID 145752613.
- ISBN 0-300-10666-1.
- ISBN 0-312-16371-1.
- ^
- Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Woman's Place. New York: Harper & Row.
- Beeching, K. (2002). Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- ^
- Holmes, J. (1995). Women Men and Language. Longman.
- Mills, S. (2003). Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- .
- S2CID 144575072.
Further reading
- Brown, P.; Levinson, S.(1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Holmes, J. (1995). Women Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
- Axia, G. (1999). Elogio della cortesia (in Italian). Bologna: Il Mulino.
- Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Culturally Speaking. Continuum.
- Watts, R.J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Moumni, Hassan (2005). Politeness in Parliamentary Discourse: A Comparative Pragmatic Study of British and Moroccan MPs' Speech Acts at Question Time (Ph.D. thesis). Rabat, Morocco: Mohammed V University.
- Kadar, D.; Haugh, M. (2013). Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
External links
- Politeness, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Amanda Vickery, David Wootton & John Mullan (In Our Time, Sep. 30, 2004)