POLITENESS

Question 1

Politeness

Answer 1

• managing identities when interacting with individuals
• responsibilities with respect to other peoples physical/talking space + making people feel valued and welcome
• Verbal vs behavioural politeness (non-verbal)
• vary between cultures (different words for the same concept)
• distinction between power, distance and cost of imposition
• distinction between positive and negative politeness strategies

Question 2

Face

Answer 2

• Positive: need to be liked
• Negative: acting freely, not imposed
• Face-Threatening Act (FTA): speech act which could damage positive or negative face of the addressee (embarrassing or ashamed)

Question 3

Politeness theory: power

Answer 3

• vertical relationship (authority/influence)
• institutional, personal, situational
• great power difference -> more polite strategies

Question 4

Politeness theory: distance

Answer 4

• horizontal relationship (social/psychological closeness)
• familiarity, shared experiences, emotional bonds
• high distance = strangers, low distance = family
• Greater distance -> more formal politeness to respect boundaries

Question 5

Politeness theory: costs of imposition

Answer 5

• Scalar measure of how serious a face-threatening act is
• Higher cost og imposition -> greater use of indirect and polite strategies

Question 6

Positive politeness strategies

Answer 6

• positive relationship
• liked and understood
• Mostly direct speech acts
• complements and appreciation

Question 7

Negative politeness strategies

Answer 7

• less intrusive request
• act freely
• apologies/well behaved formulations
• Mostly indirect speech

Question 8

Competence and performance

Answer 8

• Chomsky
• referring to grammar
• competence: what speakers know about their language
  Example: grammatical rules
• performance: what speakers do with their language
  Sociolinguistic communicative competence -> linguistic knowledge beyond the forming of sentences