How can ethnography contribute to understanding (im)politeness?
-
Rosina Márquez Reiter
Rosina Márquez Reiter is Professor of Linguistics at the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics, The Open University, UK. Her research interests sit at the interface of pragmatics and sociolinguistics and primarily focus on (inter)action. She is author of
Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay (Benjamins, 2000),Spanish Pragmatics (Palgrave, 2005 with M.E. Placencia) andMediated Business Interactions. Intercultural Communication between Speakers of Spanish (EUP, 2011). She is also editor ofCurrent Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish (Benjamins, 2004, with M.E Placencia),A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora (Routledge, 2015 with L. Martín-Rojo),The Pragmatics of Sensitive Activities in Institutional Discourse (Benjamins, 2018, with M.B. Hansen) andLanguage Practices and Processes among Latin Americans in Europe (Routledge, in progress with A. Patiño-Santos), and Associate Editor forPragmatics (2012-)Spanish in Context (2010-), a journal which she founded.
Abstract
This article presents an invitation to explore the benefits of adopting an ethnographic approach to (im)politeness research rather than an introduction to, or overview of, a well-established method in anthropology. It unfolds in four parts. In the first, I discuss some of the different ways in which (im)politeness scholars have grappled to reconcile lay and analyst understandings of (im)politeness with varying degrees of success. In the second, I offer the background of two examples which were gathered as part of ethnographic fieldwork in a contemporary migratory context. The examples deal with two classic topics in (im)politeness research: greetings and indirectness. The analysis demonstrates how insights from ethnography can enrich (im)politeness analysis by helping us to close the gap between lay and theoretical understandings of the practice. In the final section, I address the importance of delimiting the value of (im)politeness practices in the social reality of the speakers under study and invite colleagues to reflect on the societal impact of the discipline, including the expansion of the discipline beyond its middle-class milieu.
About the author
Rosina Márquez Reiter is Professor of Linguistics at the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics, The Open University, UK. Her research interests sit at the interface of pragmatics and sociolinguistics and primarily focus on (inter)action. She is author of Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay (Benjamins, 2000), Spanish Pragmatics (Palgrave, 2005 with M.E. Placencia) and Mediated Business Interactions. Intercultural Communication between Speakers of Spanish (EUP, 2011). She is also editor of Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish (Benjamins, 2004, with M.E Placencia), A Sociolinguistics of Diaspora (Routledge, 2015 with L. Martín-Rojo), The Pragmatics of Sensitive Activities in Institutional Discourse (Benjamins, 2018, with M.B. Hansen) and Language Practices and Processes among Latin Americans in Europe (Routledge, in progress with A. Patiño-Santos), and Associate Editor for Pragmatics (2012-) and Spanish in Context (2010-), a journal which she founded.
References
Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511618284Suche in Google Scholar
Arundale, Rob. 1999. An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory. Pragmatics. 9. 119-154.10.1075/prag.9.1.07aruSuche in Google Scholar
Atkinson, Robert. 1998. The life story interview. London: Sage.10.4135/9781412986205Suche in Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Translated by: Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2007. Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics 4(1). 1-19.10.1515/IP.2007.001Suche in Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House & Gabriele Kasper. 1989. Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. (Appendix: the CCSARP coding manual.). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Suche in Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1990. You don’t touch lettuce with your fingers: Parental politeness in family discourse. Journal of Pragmatics. 14(2). 259-288.10.1016/0378-2166(90)90083-PSuche in Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813085Suche in Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2012. Precarious life, vulnerability, and the ethics of cohabitation. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 26. 134-15110.5325/jspecphil.26.2.0134Suche in Google Scholar
Cicourel, Aaron. 1980. Three models of discourse analysis. Discourse Processes 3(2): 101-13110.1080/01638538009544482Suche in Google Scholar
Desmond, Matthew. 2014. Relational ethnography. Theory and Society 43(5) 47-579.10.1007/s11186-014-9232-5Suche in Google Scholar
Eelen, Gino. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.10.4324/9781315760179Suche in Google Scholar
Englund, Harri. 2002. Ethnography after globalism: Migration, emplacement in Malawi. American Ethnologist. 29. 261-286.Suche in Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. 1956. Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies. American Journal of Sociology 61(5). 420-424.10.1086/221800Suche in Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.10.4324/9780203788387Suche in Google Scholar
Goldstein, Tara. 1997. Two languages at work. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110815221Suche in Google Scholar
Graham, Sage & Claire Hardaker. 2017. (Im)politeness in digital communication. In Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh & Daniel Kádár (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness. UK: Palgrave.10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7_30Suche in Google Scholar
Gumperz, John. 1983. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511611834Suche in Google Scholar
Hammersley, Martyn & Paul Atkinson. 1995. Ethnography: Principles in practice. London and New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315146027Suche in Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2015. Im/politeness implicatures. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110240078Suche in Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael & Jonathan Culpeper. 2018. Integrative pragmatics and (im)politeness theory. In Cornelia Ilie & Neil R. Norrick (eds.) Pragmatics and its Interfaces. 213-239 Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/pbns.294.10hauSuche in Google Scholar
Hutchby, Ian & Robin Wooffitt. 1998. Conversation analysis. Principles, practices, and applications. Cambridge: Polity Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Jansen, Stef & Staffan Löfving. (eds.) 2009. Struggles for home: Violence, hope and the movement of people. New York and Oxford: Berghahn BooksSuche in Google Scholar
Kádár, Daniel & Michael Haugh. 2013. Understanding politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139382717.006Suche in Google Scholar
Le Page, Robert & Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.10.4324/9781315835976Suche in Google Scholar
Lipski, John. 1994. Latin American Spanish. New York: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.10.2307/3031829Suche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2002. A contrastive study of conventional indirectness in Spanish: evidence from peninsular and Uruguayan Spanish. Pragmatics. 12. 135-51.10.1075/prag.12.2.02marSuche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2006. Interactional closeness in service calls to Montevidean carer service company. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 39: 7-39.10.1207/s15327973rlsi3901_2Suche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2009. How to get rid of a telemarketing agent: Face-work strategies in a Spanish intercultural service call. In Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini & Michael Haugh (eds.). Face, Communication and Social Interaction. 55-77. London: Equinox.Suche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2011. Mediated business interactions: Intercultural communication between speakers Spanish. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637201.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2018. Interviews as sites of ideological work, Spanish in Context. 15. 54-76.10.1075/sic.00003.marSuche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina & Michael Haugh. 2019. Denunciation, blame and the moral turn in public life. Discourse, Context & Media. 28. 35-43.Suche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina & Dániel Kádár. In press. Sociality and moral conflicts: migrant stories of relational vulnerability. Pragmatics and Society.Suche in Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina & Adriana Patiño-Santos. 2017. The discursive construction of moral agents among Spanish-speaking Latin American retailers in Elephant & Castle, Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies, 194. Tilburg University: Netherlands.Suche in Google Scholar
McIlwaine, Cathy & Diego Bunge. 2016. Towards Visibility: the Latin American Community in London. London: Trust for London.Suche in Google Scholar
Méndez Vallejo, Catalina. 2014. The M word: Face and politeness in Colombian Spanish. Dialectología. 12. 89-108.Suche in Google Scholar
Office for National Statistics. UK Census 2011. Available at: www.ons.gov.uk, Accessed on 21/3/208Suche in Google Scholar
Patiño-Santos, Adriana & Rosina Márquez Reiter. 2019. Banal interculturalism: Latin Americans in Elephant and Castle, London. Language and Intercultural Communication. 19(3). 227-241.10.1080/14708477.2018.1508292Suche in Google Scholar
Placencia, María Elena & Carmen García. 2007. (eds.). Politeness in the Spanish-speaking world. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.Suche in Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. Arts of the contact zone. Profession. 33-40.Suche in Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 2007. Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 11-5. 584-607.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00341.xSuche in Google Scholar
Sbisà, Marina. 2009. Uptake and conventionality in illocution. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 5(1). 33-5210.2478/v10016-009-0003-0Suche in Google Scholar
Searle, John. 1969. Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173438Suche in Google Scholar
Spradley, James. 1980. Participant observation. Wadsworth: Cengage.Suche in Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 1986. That’s not what I meant!: How conversational style makes or breaks your relations with others. New York: Ballantine.Suche in Google Scholar
Thomas, Jenny. 1995. Meaning in interaction. London: Longman.10.4324/9781315842011Suche in Google Scholar
Vološinov, Valentin. 1929/1973. Marxism and the philosophy of language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka & Irwin R. Titunik, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Watts, Richard. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511615184Suche in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Alternative Approaches to Politeness and Impoliteness: An Introduction
- Sacred civility? An alternative conceptual architecture informed by cultural sociology
- How can ethnography contribute to understanding (im)politeness?
- Talking to God: conceptualizing an alternative politeness approach for the human/divine relationship
- ‘Politeness Markers’ Revisited - A Contrastive Pragmatic Perspective
- Taking offence at the (un)said: Towards a more radical contextualist approach
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Alternative Approaches to Politeness and Impoliteness: An Introduction
- Sacred civility? An alternative conceptual architecture informed by cultural sociology
- How can ethnography contribute to understanding (im)politeness?
- Talking to God: conceptualizing an alternative politeness approach for the human/divine relationship
- ‘Politeness Markers’ Revisited - A Contrastive Pragmatic Perspective
- Taking offence at the (un)said: Towards a more radical contextualist approach
