Politeness

1
Politeness

• Lecture 11

2
Politeness

• A central concept in linguistic pragmatics is
  politeness. It has been suggested ( for example,
  R. Lakoff 1972, 1973 Brown and Levinson 1978
  Leech 1980, 1983) that politeness is another
  level to conversational interaction besides the
  rules of the cooperative principle. Robin Lakoff
  (1977b) sees Grices rules as essentially rules
  of clarity, and proposes that there are two prior
  rules of pragmatic competence. These are Make
  yourself clear and Be polite.

3
Politeness

• She takes Grices maxims as an approximation, at
  least, of how you conform to the rule Make
  yourself clear, and proposes her own three rules
  of politeness (Lakoff, 197788)
• 1. Formality dont impose/remain aloof
• 2. Hesitancy give the addressee his
  options
• 3. Equality or camaraderie act as though
  you and the addressee were equal/make him feel
  good.

4
Politeness

• Lakoff (1977b89) elaborates the second rule as
  Permit addressee to decide his own options. It
  is not difficult to see how the operation of this
  rule could lead directly to the troublesome
  inference in Henry likes apples or bananas. If
  we imagine, for example, that Henrys wife knows
  her host is about to serve fruit, she might well
  make this utterance, conveying and intending to
  convey that Henry is fond of both fruits the
  host may select either option without fear of
  making a mistake.

5
Politeness

• In such a case, Henrys wife can felicitously
  give the host the option only if either option
  will be successful, and that can only be true if
  Henry likes both fruits.

6
Politeness

• Leechs view of politeness involves a set of
  politeness maxims analogous to Grices maxims.
  Among these are (Leech, 1983132)
• TACT MAXIM Minimize cost to other. Maximize
  benefit to other.
• GENEROSITY MAXIM Minimize benefit to self.
  Maximize cost to self.
• APPROBATION MAXIM Minimize dispraise of other.
  Maximize praise of other.
• MODESTY MAXIM Minimize praise of self. Maximize
  dispraise of self.

7
Politeness

• These add up to an essential asymmetry in polite
  behavior, in that whatever is a polite belief for
  the speaker tends to be an impolite belief for
  the hearer, and vice versa (Leech, 1983169)
• Frequently cited examples first discussed
  by R. Lakoff (1972) are amenable to this general
  kind of analysis.

8
Politeness

• Lakoff pointed out that a hostess would be seen
  as polite if she said, You must have some of
  this cake, but very impolite if she said, You
  may have some of this cake. On the face of it
  this is strange, since ordinarily you would think
  telling someone what they must do removes all
  other options, imposes on them, and is therefore
  impolite. On the other hand, granting permission,
  if one is in a position to do it, makes it
  possible for the hearer to do what he or she
  wants to do, and would seem polite, or at least
  considerate.

9
Politeness

• The answer hinges on the fact that the hostess is
  responsible for the quality of the cake. Offering
  the cake by placing an obligation on the hearer
  conforms nicely to the modesty maxim. By implying
  that she cannot assume that the guest will want
  the cake is a way in minimizing praise to
  herself. If the hostess had offered the cake by
  saying You may have some of this cake, she
  would have violated modesty by appearing to
  assume that the cake is so good that the guest
  naturally wants a piece of it, and is only
  waiting to get permission.

10
Politeness

• Leechs politeness principle also seems to be
  applicable to the disjunction example in a
  natural way. One way that Henrys wife can
  conform to the maxim of tact, minimizing the cost
  to the host, is by making sure no one has to go
  to any special trouble to supply just the fruit
  Henry likes. Whichever of the two fruits can be
  supplied with minimum difficulty will be
  satisfactory. This can only be really true if
  Henry likes both apples and bananas.

11
Brown and Levinson

• Perhaps the most thorough treatment of the
  concept of politeness is that of Brown and
  Levinson (1978). They have set out to develop an
  explicit model of politeness which will have
  validity across cultures. The general idea is to
  understand various strategies for interactional
  behavior based on the idea that people engage in
  rational behavior to achieve satisfaction of
  certain wants.

12
Brown and Levinson

• The wants related to politeness are the wants of
  face, something that is emotionally invested,
  and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced,
  and must be constantly attended to in
  interaction. The concept is directly related to
  the folk-expression lose face, which is about
  being embarrassed or humiliated. There are two
  kinds of face. One is negative face, or the
  rights to territories, freedom of action and
  freedom from imposition essentially the want
  that your actions be not impeded by others.

13
Brown and Levinson

• The other is positive face, the positive
  consistent self-image that people have and want
  to be appreciated and approved of by at least
  some other people. The rational actions people
  take to preserve both kinds of face for
  themselves and the people they interact with
  essentially add up to politeness.

14
Brown and Levinson

• A strength of the Brown and Levinson approach
  over the rule-oriented presentations of
  politeness by Robin Lakoff and by Leech is that
  Brown and Levinson are attempting to explain
  politeness by deriving it from more fundamental
  notions of what it is to be a human being (being
  rational and having face wants). There are two
  advantages of this over normative or rule-based
  approaches.

15
Brown and Levinson

• First, norms are discoverable and valid within a
  particular culture and therefore not too useful
  in understanding a concept like politeness
  cross-culturally. Second, even to posit universal
  (not culture-particular) rules as arbitrary
  primitives is to invent a problem to be
  explained, rather than to explain it (Brown and
  Levinson, 197891).

16
Brown and Levinson

• In other words, if you start with a set of rules
  like Leechs maxim of politeness, you can
  understand politeness phenomena in terms of these
  rules, but you do not learn very much about why
  there should be such rules in the first place.
  Granted, Brown and Levinson ask us to accept at
  the start that people are rational and have two
  kinds of face wants, but this is a much deeper
  starting point for explanation than starting with
  rules designed specifically for politeness
  itself.

17
Brown and Levinson

• Face wants become a problem if we assume that
  certain kinds of actions are intrinsically
  face-threatening. Such acts may threaten the
  hearers negative face, like a request which, as
  an attempt to get someone else to do something
  that you want done, means that the recipient of
  the request is being impeded in pursuing what he
  or she wants to do. Others threaten hearers
  positive face for instance, a contradiction or
  expression of disagreement, which means the
  speaker thinks there is something wrong with an
  opinion held by the hearer.

18
Brown and Levinson

• Even saying something irreverent or taboo
  threatens the hearers positive face, since it
  reveals that the speaker does not care about the
  hearers face as well as the hearers. The
  speakers negative face is jeopardized when he or
  she makes an offer in somewhat the same way as
  requests threaten the hearers negative face
  since, in carrying out the offer, he or she will
  be pursuing the hearers aims, not the speakers
  own.

19
Brown and Levinson

• Confessions, admissions of guilt, and apologies
  threaten the speakers positive face since they
  mean the speaker has done something the proper
  sort of person would not have done. Such
  nonspeaking acts as tripping or stumbling also
  threaten a persons positive face they reveal a
  certain incompetence in carrying out a basic
  action like walking. None the less there are
  times when actions like this are going to occur
  and at times they may be desirable or necessary.

20
Brown and Levinson

• In these cases, the rational person will look for
  ways of doing the act while minimizing the threat
  to face in one way or another.
• Brown and Levinson (197865) show us five ways a
  person can deal with a face-threatening act
  (FTA). The greater the risk, the more appropriate
  the higher-numbered ways of dealing with it are.

21
Brown and Levinson

• without redressive
  action, baldly
• on record
  
• 
  2 positive politeness
• Do the FTA with
  redressive action
• 4. Off record
  
• 
  3 negative politeness
• 5. Do not do the FTA

22
Brown and Levinson

• But it will not do to minimize the risk too much,
  because that will imply that the act is more face
  threatening than it actually is. For example, if
  there is something that only someone else can do
  for you, and you really need it done, and you
  select 5, Do not do the FTAby refraining from
  asking your best friend to do it for you, you
  will hurt your friends feelings. Your friend
  could easily say, with a pained expression,
  Dont you think I would have done that for you?

23
Brown and Levinson

• The meaning of the last of the five ways of
  dealing with a potential FTA is self-evident you
  simply do not take the action that would threaten
  face. Doing an FTA off the records is
  essentially dropping a hint, or otherwise trying
  to make the FTA salient while still keeping the
  possibility of denying that you ever intended an
  FTA more-or-less open.

24
Brown and Levinson

• For example, if you say Gosh, Im out of money.
  I forgot to go the bank, your companion might
  take it that you want a loan. But if your
  companion responds by saying, Sorry, Id like to
  help you out, but Im a little short of cash
  myself, you could still say, Oh, I didnt mean
  I wanted you to lend me money!

25
Brown and Levinson

• On the record FTAs with negative politeness
  redress are instances in which the FTA is
  undeniably made, but something else is said or
  done to show concern for the other persons
  freedom of action and right not to be imposed
  upon. One of the most straightforward ways of
  doing this is simply to express reluctance to
  impose I hate to impose, but would you do
  something for me?

26
Brown and Levinson

• Brown and Levinson suggest that the use in many
  languages of the plural form of you as a
  deferential form , as we saw in chapter 1, has
  its origins in negative politeness redress. One
  possible explanation, originally Robin Lakoffs
  and recapitulated by Brown and Levinson
  (1978203-4) is that the plural form does not
  literally single out the addressee.

27
Brown and Levinson

• If we assume that what the speaker has to say,
  or even the sheer fact that the hearer is
  obliged to listen, is a potential imposition on
  the hearers freedom, than the use of the plural
  pronoun gives the hearer the option of thanking
  it as being directed to someone else associated
  with him or her, not specifically to that person
  as an individual.

28

• To be continued