Volume 17, Issue 2

Recent developments of politeness research mainly consist of the study of politeness within a broader framework of relationship or relating and the re-conceptualization of politeness as an evaluative judgement made by participants on the basis of norms and expectations. This article hopes to contribute to the study of relating by probing into the normative basis of relational work. Addressing the relational aspect of communication, Habermas’ (1979) concept of normative rightness claim highlights the normative commitment of the speaker in doing (more than judging) relational work, which has been obscured by the focus on (hearers’) judgements in current research on relational work. Habermas’ concept brings into focus the fact that participants in interaction can define and redefine their relationship through contesting the other’s normative rightness claim or the normative background thereby evoked. This dynamic process of negotiating relationships through negotiating norms can be further explicated by drawing on Culpeper’s (2008) and Kádár and Haugh’s (2013) differentiations of norms. The article explores the usefulness of such differentiations by analyzing different cases of norm variation which can be seen to underlie relational work dispute.

The present study investigates the nature of email requests to faculty produced by non-native speaker (NNS) teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), the importance attached by these teachers to linguistic forms designed to achieve email politeness and status-congruence, and the extent to which perceptions and evaluations by the NNS teachers and native-speaker (NS) lecturers might differ with regard to these emails. The study found that the non-native speaker teachers (NNSTs) evidenced a developed sense of sociopragmatic knowledge in high imposition L2 requests for action, and employed politeness strategies that were indicative of a concern to maintain social and face relationships in virtual consultations. It is argued that despite their advanced English language proficiency, the teachers’ reliance on directness, excessive formality, and lengthy grounders could still put them out-of-status and render their emails as pragmatically inappropriate. The study further confirmed significant differences in how the two groups perceive appropriateness and politeness in direct and unmodified student email requests to faculty. Overall, while the NSs judged the emails primarily according to their content and, to a lesser extent, according to their form and framing devices, the NNSTs focused almost exclusively on form and framing devices (in/formality, in/directness, nature and extent of mitigation, opening/closing moves, forms of address).

The following study focuses on strategies of denial and evasion of company responsibility used in responding to complaints, negative and critical comments posted by consumers on English and Polish brand profiles on Twitter. The analysis shows that despite the face-threat these acts may pose to the consumer and, consequently, to the company’s image, the companies do not refrain from using strategies denying the complainable and disagreeing with the customer. The study shows that companies resort to a range of sub-strategies of evasion and denial of blame, such as referral to external circumstances and regulations, thanks, blaming a third party, statements of unawareness of the complainable, simple denial of the complainable, expression of personal opinion or criticism of the consumer, among others. The study indicated differences between the English and Polish profiles as to the range and frequency of use of the strategies of rejecting consumers’ complaints. The Polish corpus offers a greater occurrence and a wider range of evasion and denial strategies used in reaction to consumers’ negative or critical opinions and complaints.

This study provides a pragmatic taxonomy of asynchronous computer-mediated expressions of disagreement by Arabic speakers. It draws on a specialized corpus of approximately fifty thousand words in the form of naturally occurring comments/posts compiled over a period of ninety days from 19 Arabic Facebook Pages and Groups in three topic areas: (i) religion, (ii) politics and (iii) society. Following Relational Work (Locher and Watts 2005, 2008), I propose ten discursive strategies as underlying patterns of the pragmatic realization of disagreement among Arabic speakers. These include IRRELEVANCY CLAIM, CONTRADICTION, COUNTERCLAIM, CHALLENGE, EXCLAMATION, VERBAL IRONY, ARGUMENT AVOIDANCE, MILD SCOLDING, SUPPLICATION, and VERBAL ATTACK. With the exclusion of some examples, I argue that most of these strategies are neither polite nor impolite, but rather appropriate (i. e., politic) in the context of disagreement. I also provide evidence that sociocultural and religious norms have impacts on SUPPLICATION and MILD SCOLDING.

The present paper aims to explore the characteristics of the self-denigration phenomenon in present-day Chinese, hence revisiting a key Chinese linguacultural phenomenon from a contemporary angle. We investigate the following understudied phenomenon: Self-denigration has changed together with Chinese interpersonal language use and interactional technologies, and is currently being used in remarkably innovative ways, in particular in the domain of online interactions. While various historical self-denigrating forms have remained in use, significantly more newly invented ones have gained popularity. We argue that the cluster of self-denigrating forms used in present-day Chinese can fulfil a variety of sociopragmatic functions. Some of these functions - such as showing off - paradoxically contradict with the conventional understanding of self-denigration as a ceremonial form of deference behaviour expressing modesty. Our investigation is based on data drawn from computer-mediated communication (CMC), as well as semi-structured interviews.

Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1978, 1987) is often challenged on its claim of the universality of face, in particular, the applicability of negative face to communicators from the sinosphere. This study argues that the notion of negative face is applicable to account for young Chinese people’s communication strategies and behaviors during their intergenerational conflicts. Drawing on discursive psychology and conversation analysis approaches to the dialogic lyrics of Shénqǔ about Kǒngguīzú , this paper explores the dynamic construction process of young Chinese people’s negative face. It reveals that this dynamic construction has been shaped by the cultural values of mixing traditional Confucian values with a new materialistic and individualistic orientation, and that adhering to the traditional cultural norm of harmony is crucial to satisfying negative face wants. This finding suggests that the mixed cultural values should be incorporated into the parametric system of Chinese negative face analysis.