Lecture 10.

The usage of politeness and communication in the language

Plan
1. Generat aspects of politeness
2. Means of expressing politeness
3. Politeness in the second person deixis
Key words: politeness, expression, deixis, statement, information, context, situation,
communication, positive, negative, addressee, impolite, indicate, structure, speaker,
information, competence, face, behavior, respect.
Generat aspects of politeness
To communicate with other people, we need to have linguistic and
communicative competence. Linguistic competence is concerned with the
knowledge the speaker possesses that enables him or her to understand the sentences
in that language. However, important as it may be, to be successful, the process of
communication requires another competence, viz. communicative competence. The
scholar Hymes according to Lyons speaks of four questions relevant for language
and other forms of communication.
1.whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;
2. whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of
implementation available; 3. whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate
(adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and
evaluated; 4. whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually
performed, and what its doing entails.
Politeness is a considerable social behavior, an effective way to achieve one’s
goals. In communicating with the addressee, the speaker tries to take care of the
addressee’s face, or his/her public self-image. On the other hand, all of us want
others to save our face.
The term face was initiated by Goffman in 1963. It first appeared in his article
called “On Face Work”. The scholar speaks of two types of face: positive and
negative. Positive face is the desire of being seen as belonging to a group, as the
desire of being a well-wisher. Negative face is the desire of respecting the
addressee’s freedom of action, his or her autonomy.
A. I think we should go and see that new play by Smith. It should be interesting to you
since Smith, according to the critics, is an innovator.
B. OK. Let’s go.
Depending on the situation, the speaker may use one or another politeness
strategy. Brown and Levinson present four main types of politeness strategies;
1) bald on record; 2) positive politeness; 3) negative politeness; 4) off-record.
Using a bald on record strategy, the speaker makes no attempt to minimize
the threat to the addressee’s face.
A. Bring me a glass of water
B. OK.
This strategy is most often used by the speakers who closely know each other.
However, there may be a situation when this strategy is used by the speakers who
are not on familiar terms with each other.
The house is on fire! Get out of here! Quick.
 Under the circumstances the addressee will not feel disrespected. In other
words, the addressee will not lose his or her face; his or her face will be saved despite
the absence of mitigating devices (e.g. please, would you, could you, etc) since the
addressee knows that there is no time to stand on ceremony, the time is for action,
not for words.
The second strategy is positive politeness. Using this strategy, the speaker
attempts to minimize the threat to the addressee’s face by sharing his/her interest in
the addressee’s well-being, by acting as if he or she were the addressee’s friend.
A. I think it’s raining outside. You had better take an umbrella.
B. Thanks for reminding.
Positive politeness, then, is the desire of being liked and appreciated, the desire
of showing concern for the addressee. Using a positive politeness strategy, the
speaker resorts to the familiar forms of language, swear words, just to show that the
speaker belongs to the same group. One of the situations of the use of positive
politeness is when the speakers have different social status. The speaker of higher
status will use language which is informal (e.g. Hi: instead of Nice to meet you),
unassuming (e.g. I hire people: rather than I’m Personnel Director) self-mocking
(e.g. I’m always to blame rather than It is my responsibility) or inclusive (e.g. we
instead of I). The aim of this strategy is to reduce social distance.
The third strategy is negative politeness, which means that the speaker will try to
minimize the threat to the addressee’s face. To put it more definitely, the speaker
will do his or her best not to impose his or her will on the addressee; he or she acts
as if the addressee is free to make a decision.
A. Could you lend me 5 pounds?
B. I could if I had. Unfortunately, I haven’t a penny on me.
In English, negative politeness can be realized by the use of the following
devices:
1) Indirect speech acts (e.g. What’s his name ? vs. I’d like to know his name)
2) Inclusive constructions (e.g. Give me a beer. vs. Let’s have a beer)
3) Verbal hedges (e.g. I wonder if you could wash the dishes)
4) Apologetic language (e.g. Sorry to bother you, but what was the address again?)
5) Honorifics (e.g. Dr.); various variants of thanks (e.g. Thank you; Thank you very
much; That’s very kind of you; I’m grateful for the information you’ve given me, etc)
Means of expressing politeness
What speech is polite? For instance, is it polite to use the so-called bald on
record structure such as “Close the window”? Such requests, expressed by
imperatives, are direct and may be treated by the addressee as impolite. But all
depends on the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, the situation,
and, last but least, on the intonation used, loudness, speech rate. As for the
paralinguistic means, they are used in all languages. What is culture-specific is the
actual manifestation of the means. For instance, the Germans are said to speak rather
loudly; the Russians are said to speak rather fast. To foreigners, who use a different
style, the Germans may sound aggressive and, consequently, impolite; Russians may
also sound aggressive and, of course, impolite. The same can be said about the
Americans. Linguistic structures by themselves are neutral with respect to
politeness: their status is determined by the culture the speaker belongs to and how
ne or she uses the structures. So, for instance, the bald on record “Come to the
blackboard” may be pronounced in more than one way: it may consider impolite
and poise. Besides, as already indicated, the status of such structures is determined
by the situation: in case of emergency, “get out of here, quick” will not sound
offensive.
As is pointed by Yule, in lost situations, a face-saving act is more commonly
performed via a negative politeness strategy. What structures are used to realize this
strategy? Most typically, the speaker uses a question containing a modal verb in the
present or past form. Preference is given to past forms. It stands to reason: past forms
are more polite than present forms. Here are some examples expressing indirect
requests:
Can / could you tell me when the last train arrives? // Tell me when the last train
arrives.
May I have another apple? // Give me another apple.

Would you mind opening the window? // Open the window.

To use a speech act term, these indirect requests are indirect speech acts whose
motivation is politeness or tact.
To attenuate (or weaken) the utterance, i.e. to sound polite, the speaker may resort
to use of mitigating devices (diminutives, honorifics, euphemisms and hedges)
Sit down, please. // Sit down.
Can you give me a little more water? // Give me a little more water.
The nurse was a cheerful plump woman // The nurse was a cheerful fat woman
He died yesterday vs. he passed away yesterday.
Politeness in the second person deixis
Politeness distinctions in personal pronouns of the second person are a
common phenomenon in European languages. Nevertheless, these distinctions have
received attention in linguistic typology only sporadically.
Personal pronouns belong to the deictic expressions of a language. Speakers
use personal pronouns in order to direct the attention of the addressee to one or more
human individuals who may be present or absent in the actual speech situation.
Usually, this act of reference is an integral part of a speech act, or more generally of
a communicative exchange.
The distinctive features of personal pronouns may be summarized as follows:
1. Personal pronouns are inherently referential expressions. They do not occur with
modifying and determining elements that are otherwise necessary to form referential
noun phrases. Adjectives, attributive demonstratives, and articles are dependent
elements in a noun phrase with a lexical noun as head and fulfill certain functions
there.
2. The referent of a personal pronoun can be identified only with respect to the actual
speech event, i.e. according to the speech act roles he or she performs during the
speech event. Personal pronouns were classified as “indexical symbols” in semiotics
exactly because of this trait. They have a specific semantic content, the speech act
roles and at the same time they are pointers.
Deictic expressions are in addition, characterized by the encoding of a “deictic
relation” between the origo and the intended referent. This deictic relation is
semantically characterized in demonstrative pronouns. Categories such as proximal
versus distal, or visible versus non-visible indicate the type of relation between the
origo and the intended referent. The specific deictic relation between the origo and
the referent in personal pronouns of the first and second person coincides with the
characterization of the referent itself. The addressee is the hearer of the utterance in
relation to the speaker, who is the indexical ground for the second person singular
reference.
Personal pronouns of the first and second person singular refer to the
respective speech act participating individuals by characterizing the intended
referent according to his or her performance of a certain speech act role. Who is
meant can be determined only with regard to the origo, the actual speaker. Pronouns
such as I and You encode not only the speech act role of the intended referent, but
also the relation of the intended referent to the origo, the speaker of the actual speech
act.
3. There are two basic speech act roles, speaker and hearer, which are opposed to a
negatively defined non-person category. The identification of the referent of first or
second person pronouns in general does not pose a problem for the addressee.
4. Personal pronouns are shifters; they have a systematically changing reference
depending on the change of speech act roles during a conversation.
The fact that so many languages conventionalize the polite use of the second
person plural pronoun for the reference to a single addressee does not mean that the
pragmatic rules underlying the usage of second person plural pronouns are the same
in all languages. Politeness rules may differ considerably across languages. The sets
of people who are considered to deserve polite address by means of a second person
plural pronoun may vary significantly from language to language. In addition to, the
polite form and the corresponding familiar form may be used either asymmetrically
or symmetrically. In the former case, one of the interlocutors has to give the polite
form whereas the other uses the familiar form in return. In the latter case, both use
the same level of politeness. And thirdly, these underlying pragmatic rules of the use
of polite forms may change over time within a single language. Ex. the usage of the
second person plural polite pronoun “you” in the early period of Modern English
was generalized to such a degree that the original second person singular pronoun
“thou” became obsolete. Finally the familiar / polite distinction disappeared in the
English pronoun system leaving the former second plural polite pronoun as the sole
pronoun for second person reference in the system.