The relevance of prosody and context to the interplay between intensity and politeness. An exploratory study on Italian
-
Barbara Gili Fivela
and
Carla Bazzanella
Abstract
The linguistic feature of intensity, lying “at the heart of social and emotional expression” (Labov 1984: 43), is significantly intertwined with politeness. In relation with intensity (that is, both upgrading and downgrading), the role of context and prosody in modifying and expressing politeness is discussed here in a pragmatic perspective. The complex interplay between intensity, politeness and prosody is explored with reference to several examples related to Italian, showing both the crucial role of prosody in conveying politeness and intensity and the relevance of global and local context parameters. In the paper, prosody acts as a pivot, with regard to which we discuss the status of the other components. In particular, it is shown to play an important role in constructing politeness and its variations of intensity under the influence of contextual parameter. Prosody may perform a primary distinctive function, or may jointly with other convergent or divergent cues express the meaning and politeness intended by the speaker.
However, the overall effect of a speech act in terms of politeness is shown to be due to the variegated intertwinement between context, intensity and prosody, which is at play with or without other linguistic forms of politeness and accounts for the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between politeness and single utterance features.
©2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction
- On the importance of the prosodic component in the expression of linguistic im/politeness
- Evidentials, politeness and prosody in Spanish: A corpus analysis
- Prosody, polyphony and politeness. A polyphonic approach to prosodic configurations common to French and Spanish
- The relevance of prosody and context to the interplay between intensity and politeness. An exploratory study on Italian
- The intonation of mitigating politeness in Catalan
- Book Reviews
- Book review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction
- On the importance of the prosodic component in the expression of linguistic im/politeness
- Evidentials, politeness and prosody in Spanish: A corpus analysis
- Prosody, polyphony and politeness. A polyphonic approach to prosodic configurations common to French and Spanish
- The relevance of prosody and context to the interplay between intensity and politeness. An exploratory study on Italian
- The intonation of mitigating politeness in Catalan
- Book Reviews
- Book review
