POLITENESS AND INDIRECTNESS

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POLITENESS AND INDIRECTNESS

• Leyla Marti
• Bogaziçi University

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POLITENESS THEORY

• Brown and Levinsons (1987) Politeness Theory
• Face (Goffman 1955, 1967)
• the public self image or reputation,
  self-esteem of a person
• ...face is something that is emotionally
  invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or
  enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in
  interaction. In general, people cooperate (and
  assume each others cooperation) in maintaining
  face in interaction, such as cooperation being
  based on the mutual vulnerability of face.
• (Brown
  and Levinson, 1987 61)

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Negative face - Positive face

• Brown and Levinson (1987 62)
• Negative face is the want to interact without
  being impeded by others. It represents the desire
  for autonomy.
• Positive face, on the other hand, is related to
  the want to be approved of by other people. It is
  associated with ones desire for approval.

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Face-threatening Acts (FTAs)

• Acts like promises, apologies, expressing thanks,
  even non-verbal acts such as stumbling, falling
  down, are considered to threaten primarily the
  speakers face, whereas warnings, criticisms,
  orders, requests, etc. are viewed to threaten
  primarily the hearers face.

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Face-threatening Acts (FTAs)

• Brown and Levinson argue that, since it is seen
  of mutual interest to save, maintain, or support
  each others face, FTAs are either avoided (if
  possible) or different strategies are employed to
  counteract or soften the FTAs.
• These different strategies are presented in the
  form of five superstrategies for performing FTAs

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Brown and Levinsons Superstrategies

• 1. Bald-on record FTA performed bald-on-record,
  in a direct and concise way without redressive
  action.
• e.g. imperative form without any redress Wash
  your hands
• 2. Positive Politeness FTA performed with
  redressive action. Strategies oriented towards
  positive face of the hearer.
• e.g. strategies seeking common ground or
  co-operation, such as in jokes or offers Wash
  your hands, honey
• 3. Negative Politeness FTA performed with
  redressive action. Strategies oriented towards
  negative face of the hearer.
• e.g. indirect formulation Would you mind
  washing your hands?
• 4. Off-record FTA performed off-record.
  Strategies that might allow the act to have more
  than one interpretation.
• e.g. off-record strategies, which consist of all
  types of hints, metaphors, tautologies, etc.
  Gardening makes your hands dirty.
• 5. Avoidance FTA not performed.
  (Marti, 2000 25)

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Superstrategies

• Briefly summarised, positive politeness does not
  have to be oriented to the imposition, i.e. to
  the FTA, itself. Instead, the main strategy is to
  claim common ground, convey that the speaker and
  hearer are co-operators etc., i.e. attend to the
  hearers face wants. For example, the endearment
  term honey, in the utterance Wash your hands,
  honey, which is an in-group identity marker,
  counter-balances the imperative by claiming
  common ground and expressing affection. Telling
  jokes, promising etc. are other strategies for
  positive facework.
• Negative politeness, on the other hand, focuses
  on minimising the imposition by attempting to
  soften it. This is usually achieved by
  indirectness, hedging, etc. For example, the same
  illocutionary act above could be softened by a
  more indirect formulation such as Would you mind
  washing your hands?
• As Culpeper notes (1994 165) positive facework
  attempts to provide the pill with a sugar
  coating negative facework attempts to soften the
  blow.

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Which superstrategy?

• Exercise1 Identify the superstrategy.
• I wonder if you know whether John went out.
• Watch out!
• A penny saved is a penny earned.
• Lend us two quid then, wouldja mate?
• Id like to borrow a cup of flour if I may.
• Dont you want some dinner now?
• Could you possibly by any chance lend me your car
  for just a few minutes?
• That house needs a touch of paint.
• Passengers will please refrain from flushing
  toilets on the train.
• Accept my thanks
• Help me with the bags will you, love?
• OK.If I tackle those cookies now?
• Can you open the window?
• Give money
• 
  (taken or adapted from Brown and Levinson, 1987
  96-227)

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Which superstrategy?

• Answers to Exercise 1
• I wonder if you know whether John went out.
  (negative politeness)
• Watch out! (bald-on-record)
• A penny saved is a penny earned. (off-record)
• Lend us two quid then, wouldja mate? (positive
  politeness)
• Id like to borrow a cup of flour if I may.
  (negative politeness)
• Dont you want some dinner now? (positive
  politeness)
• Could you possibly by any chance lend me your car
  for just a few minutes? (negative politeness)
• That house needs a touch of paint. (off-record)
• Passengers will please refrain from flushing
  toilets on the train. (negative politeness)
• Accept my thanks (bald-on-record)
• Help me with the bags will you, love? (positive
  politeness)
• OK. If I tackle those cookies now? (positive
  politeness)
• Can you open the window? (negative politeness)
• Give money (bald-on-record)
• 
  (Brown and Levinson,
  1987 96-227)

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Weightiness of a Face Threatening Act (FTA)

• The superstrategies are employed according to
  the degree of face threat that a person might
  encounter or estimate for an act.
• The assessment of the amount of face threat
  depends predominantly on the following variables
  
• relative power of the speaker,
• social distance (between the interlocutors), and
• rank (degree of imposition).

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Weightiness of a Face Threatening Act (FTA)

• Wx D(S,H) P(H,S) Rx
• According to Brown and Levinson, by adding these
  values, we should be able to calculate the weight
  of an FTA.
• However, research shows that matters are more
  complicated (see, e.g., Craig et al., 1986
  Holtgraves and Yang, 1990, 1992 Wood and Kroger,
  1991 Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris, 1996 Yeung,
  1997).

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INDIRECTNESS

• The first superstrategy (bald-on-record) is
  ranked as the most direct strategy.
  Bald-on-record covers strategies usually using
  the imperative form without any redress, and is
  employed when face threat is minimal.
• The last strategy (avoidance), at the other end
  of the continuum, is considered as the most
  indirect superstrategy and is employed when there
  is maximum face-threat.

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Leechs Scales

• Leech (1983) proposed scales of politeness (e.g.
  cost-benefit scale) in order to determine
  politeness. One of them is the indirectness
  scale. Leech (1983 108) claims that, when
  propositional content is kept constant, the use
  of more and more indirect illocutions will
  generally result in more politeness.
• One reason for this is, according to him, the
  increase of optionality given to the hearer. The
  other reason is the more indirect an illocution
  is, the more diminished and tentative its force
  tends to be (Leech, 1983 108). The indirectness
  scale is illustrated below

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Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) scale

• According to Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984),
  three major levels of directness for requests can
  be identified that seem to apply on theoretical
  grounds cross-linguistically
• impositives,
• conventionally indirect requests
• nonconventionally indirect requests
• A finer scale of nine directness categories
  based on the three major levels was used in the
  CCSARP. The starting point for the development of
  the

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Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) scale

• 1. Clean up the kitchen.
• 2. Im asking you to move your car.
• 3. I would like to ask you to move your car.
• 4. Youll have to move your car.
• 5. I would like you to clean the kitchen.
• 6. How about cleaning up?
• 7. Could you clean up the mess in the kitchen?
• 8. Youve left the kitchen in a right mess.
• 9. We dont want any crowding (as a request to
  move the car).

• 1. Mood derivable
• 2. Explicit performative
• 3. Hedged performative
• 4. Locution derivable
• 5. Want statement
• 6. Suggestory formula
• 7. Preparatory
• 8. Strong hint
• 9. Mild hint

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More than off-record

• Opting out
• Situaton Lift
• I would not ask for such a thing. I would
  wait even if the bus is in 2 hours. The offer has
  to come from the other side. If I want to go to a
  concert I would take care of everything
  beforehand. (Marti, 2006 1856)
• Alternative responses
• Situation Guest
• Im sorry, Im invited at 7.30 for dinner,
  come, lets go together. (Marti, 2006 1858)

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Complex Illocutionary Acts

• Multivalent illocutionary act
• Situation Guest
• I would phone the people who have invited me
  and say the following loud enough so that the
  guestwould hear it and decide to leave
• Hello, this is Çilem, a guest has (just)
  arrived, I might be a bit late. (Marti, 2006
  1861)
• Multivalence is defined by Thomas as a single
  utterance performing two different illocutionary
  acts either for different receivers within the
  same discourse role ... or different receivers
  within different discourse roles (1985 17).
• In other words, the host by (potentially)
  informing the person on the phone about the
  situation is indirectly requesting the guest to
  leave. This particular example makes it clear
  that the directness of a request is also affected
  by how the request orients to the participants.

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Complex Illocutionary Acts

• Bivalent/Plurivalent Act
• Other forms of ambivalence are bivalence and
  plurivalence, where in a single utterance the
  speaker encodes two (bivalent) or more
  (plurivalent) unrelated forces.
• Bivalent Act
• For instance, backhanded compliments are
  bivalent acts
• You look really good in those jeans now
  youve lost all that weight (Thomas, 1996 13).
• two distinct illocutionary forces are present a
  compliment and an insult.

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Complex Illocutionary Acts

• The major difference of multivalent acts
  compared with bivalent or plurivalent acts is
  that the forces encoded in an utterance are
  intended for different receivers rather than just
  one receiver.
• A multivalent act is referred to as the
  linguistic equivalent of killing two birds with
  one stone (Leech and Thomas, 1990 196).
• Exercise 2
• Jennifer is talking to a friend on the
  phone. There are people around her making noise.
  Jennifer loudly says
• S Sorry theres a lot of noise at this end
  (adapted from Thomas, 1996 21).

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• Answer to Exercise 2
• By uttering the above sentence, Jennifer is
  apologising to addressee 1 (friend on the phone),
  and at the same time reprimanding addressee(s) 2
  (people in the room).

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REFERENCES

• Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca and Harris, Sandra
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• Blum-Kulka, Shoshana and Olshtain, Elite (1984).
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• Goffman, Ervin (1955). On face-work an analysis
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• Holtgraves, Thomas and Yang, Joong-Nam (1990).
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