Volume 13, Issue 1

There has been a great deal of research on impoliteness focusing on one particular language or cross-cultural differences between languages (e.g. Bousfield 2008; Bousfield and Locher 2008; Culpeper 2005, 2009; Haugh 2007, 2011; Kienpointner 1997). However, much less attention has been paid to impoliteness in intercultural communication in which all or some speakers communicate in a language other than their native tongue. On the basis of research on L1s and cross-cultural analysis of impoliteness, most of the researchers (e.g. Culpeper 2005, 2009, Haugh 2011; Watts 2003) in the field seem to agree that no act is inherently impolite, and that such an interpretation depends on the context or speech situation that affects interpretation (see Culpeper 2009). The paper will examine this context-dependency in intercultural communication where interlocutors cannot always rely on much existing common ground, shared knowledge and conventionalized context but need to co-construct most of those in the communicative process. It will be argued that limited shared knowledge and common ground may restrict the interpretation process to the propositional content of utterances, which may result in an increase in the actual situational context-creating power of utterances. Recent research (e.g. Abel 2003; Bortfeld 2002, 2003; Cieślicka 2004, 2006; House 2002, 2003; Kecskes 2007) demonstrated that in intercultural communication the most salient interpretation for non-native speakers is usually the propositional meaning of an utterance. So interpretation generally depends on what the utterance says rather than on what it actually communicates. As a consequence of their taking propositional meaning for the actual meaning of an utterance, interlocutors are sometimes unaware of impoliteness conveyed implicitly or through paralinguistic means.

Accreditation is a quality assurance mechanism which evaluates either the capability of an institution to offer an academic program or the quality of an academic program before its launch. Accredited institutions and programs are allowed to enroll students, both fee-paying and non-fee-paying. The outcome of an accreditation exercise will therefore have significant implications for an institution’s reputation and finance. Institutions are normally informed of the outcome through an accreditation report, a genre whose discourse is intrinsically interesting and important, and thus deserves fuller research attention, for two reasons: (1) the genre contains evaluations and comments which can be negative and face-threatening, and (2) the accreditation team, as we can safely assume, will do facework subsequent to the performance of face threats through the negative evaluations and comments. The present study seeks to gain a better understanding of the lexicogrammar of this genre in general, and the lexicogrammar used to textualize facework in particular by analyzing the discourse of 30 accreditation reports in an Australian context. This paper argues that the evaluative language used in this genre can serve to perform facework for both the institution being accredited and the accreditation team itself, and have important implications for both the workplace and classroom.

This study examines sociocultural, pragmatic, and gender differences between native speakers of Australian English (AE) and Bahasa Indonesia (BI) in expressing the speech act of apology. Based on an oral discourse completion task (DCT) using data from 24 native speakers of both languages, the study focuses on the variations in the use of apology strategies in three situations of moderate severity. The findings show that the two groups use a variety of strategies in expressing apologies. The majority of BI speakers tend to use requests for forgiveness with relatively strong hearer-oriented strategies. AE apologies, on the other hand, seem to be dominated by the frequent use of expressions of regret, with speaker-oriented strategies. Another noticeable speech phenomenon lies in the differences in showing directness and politeness: BI speakers are likely to be more elaborate and less straightforward in their expressions than AE speakers. It is also evident that Indonesian apologetic acts tend to be somewhat formulaic and less varied compared with those in Australian expressions. Finally, the findings show quite pronounced gender differences both within and between the two languages in terms of the strategy use and expressions.

This study discusses two Mandarin-speaking children’s linguistic politeness through longitudinally observing their uses of request forms with regard to different interactional situations where their interpersonal status may vary accordingly. It seems that the children demonstrate a systematic correspondence between request forms and directness to adhere to politeness at an early age. Although they apparently prefer to utilize comparatively more direct request forms most of the time, a closer investigation reveals a division of labor: they appear to use simple imperatives when their interpersonal status is either superior or equal to their parents and use declaratives with the lexeme WANT when their interpersonal status is inferior. It is therefore suggested that politeness may be mutually negotiated between interlocutors and that children should get socialized with politeness through interaction with adults or other children within various social or interpersonal relationships.

This study analyses reply articles published in academic journals in the field of applied linguistics as an instance of academic conflict with regard to the realization of impoliteness. The study further explores the judgment resources of Appraisal Theory leading to impoliteness in this genre. Taking the theoretical model of impoliteness (Bousfield 2008a), both on-record and off-record impolite behaviors were coded in a corpus of 58 reply articles published in academic journals. Then, drawing on Appraisal Theory and the subcategories of judgment resources (Martin and Rose 2003), which include capacity , veracity , propriety , normality and tenacity , the coded impolite behaviors were analyzed. The results of the analysis pointed to a high frequency of on-record impoliteness to which comments on the commentators’ capacity contributed most. The findings of the current study expand the currently available literature on (im)politeness and Appraisal Theory and moreover, make academic courses instructors, novice and professional members of the applied linguistics discourse community cognizant of the potential (im)polite implications of their contributions to the discourse community in order to have pragmatically appropriate choices (Ishiara 2006).