College #2 - Experimental research on (im)politeness

Question 1

Pragmatics

Answer 1

How and when to use what language. Depends on context:

• Situation of utterance; when, where, who
• Question under discussion; why
• Paralinguistic dimension; how

How a sentence is conceived depends on the context.
It is cold&raquo_space; statement/complain.

Question 2

Speech act theory (Austin 1962, Searle 1969)

Answer 2

A utterance (uiting) is a social action. There are different categories of utterances:

• Expressives (swearing)
• Assertives (explanation, claim)
• Directives (Request, command)
• Commissives (Promise, threat)
• Declaration (naming etc.)

Question 3

Gricean framework

Answer 3

A theory on how communicational implicatures are formed. What a person says is closely related to the conventional meaning of the words. The hearer has to grasp what is said and needs to know these conventional meaning for successful communication. It is a cooperation between speaker and hearer.

Depends on conversational maxims&raquo_space; Quality, quantity, relation and manner.

When the maxims are violated&raquo_space; communication implicatures.

Question 4

Face-threatening acts (FTAs)

Answer 4

An act (linguistic or non-linguistic) that threatens someone’s positive or negative face. It may be bald or mitigated/polite (verzacht).

• Positive face = Positive face is threatened when the speaker or hearer does not care about their interactor’s feelings, wants, or does not want what the other wants.
• Negative face = Negative face is threatened when an individual does not avoid or intend to avoid the obstruction of their interlocutor’s freedom of action.

Question 5

Face-threat calculation

Answer 5

When asking someone to do something you often make a face-threat calculation. This is done by determining the power of the relationship, the distance and the degree of imposition.

Question 6

Politeness strategy

Answer 6

Face-threat compensation.
Ex. Open the door! / Could you please open the door for me?

Limitations/criticisms

• It is speaker based.
• There are more variables involved in face-threat.
• Politeness is not always intended and result of calculation. It can also be a characteristic/behavior.

Question 7

Relation politeness and indirectness

Answer 7

The higher the chance of face-threat, the more polite people will be. The more polite, the indirecter people will be.

+ face threat = + polite
+ polite = + indirect (graded notion of indirectness)

However, there is no empirical evidence for this.

Politiness is also more used if addressee has a higher status.