Volume 19, Issue 2

Politeness is one of the stereotypes associated with the British that seems to be crucial in terms of their self-identification and self-perception. The focus of this study is four frequently-used politeness markers: please, thank you, thanks, and sorry . The paper aims to precisely identify the different senses of these words in the newly released corpus of spoken British English, the Spoken British National Corpus 2014. The findings of this analysis reveal that the markers under investigation are primarily used in their core senses, such as politely requesting something, showing gratitude, or apologising; other identified senses include self-correcting and being confrontational or ironic. The analysis of the authentic data helps us classify senses for each of the target words based on different contextual situations.

In politeness research and other areas, scholars use a range of metaphorical expressions involving the term face, as in “lose face”, “threaten face” and “save face”, drawing upon Goffman’s paper “On face-work” (Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior . New York: Pantheon Books), often through Brown and Levinson’s influential theory of politeness (Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987.  Politeness: Some universals in language usage . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The present paper argues that the interactional processes referred to by such expressions are of at least two kinds, here labeled “Observed-Behavior (OB) face-processes” and “Expressed-Attitude (EA) face-processes”. X’s OB face loss occurs when others negatively evaluate X on the basis of her behavior; X’s EA face loss occurs when others convey to X that they do not have the same values as her (“positive face”) or act in a way that impedes her freedom (“negative face”). Ten differences between OB and EA face-processes are set out. These differences are not acknowledged in the literature, which, as shown in this paper, leads to much ambiguity and confusion.

This article empirically investigates possible politeness effects of different syntactic, morphosyntactic, and lexical mitigating strategies in German requests. In addition to the explicitness of the requestive utterance, internal and external modifiers as well as vocatives are considered. Based on the assumption that the weight of imposition has an influence on linguistic politeness, experimentally elicited production data for two requestive situations with a differing degree of imposition are compared regarding their formal properties. The data come from an online survey in which 578 native speakers of German (from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria) took part. The participants produced 1,006 requests. These were coded for several mitigating strategies and analyzed with a multifactorial analysis in order to identify the devices that are used in the high-imposition context and thus can be interpreted as conveying extra politeness. An important finding is that increased politeness is realized via devices beyond the head act strategy, namely morpho-syntactic and lexical tentativeness markers as well as multiple external modifiers.

The aim of this article is to explore how politeness is conceptualized in modern Russia. The study adopts a bottom-up approach and gathers conceptualizations of different aspects of politeness by lay native Russian speakers. This study uses an open-ended questionnaire to elicit the concepts people generally associate with politeness, descriptive labels for polite people, as well as individual experiences of polite and impolite behavior. The data for the research was gathered through 50 questionnaires composed of five questions. In total, 217 metapragmatic comments and 155 recollections of past experiences were obtained. The results of this study suggest that politeness is understood mostly in terms of expectable social behavior and serves a regulatory function. It indicates that culturally-specific concepts can fit into the framework of personal, relational and social underpinnings of politeness. This vision embraces a holistic view on politeness as a social tool of efficient interaction.

Human beings utilize varied linguistic politeness to facilitate interaction and minimize the potential for conflict. With the advancement of the Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and the introduction of new social networks, studying how politeness operates within human communication opened up new avenues for research, particularly within diverse cultures. For this reason, the current study sought to report on the “whats” and “hows” of politeness strategies identified in Telegram messages delivered by EFL Learners in Iran. Data were analyzed based on Leech’s (Leech, Geoffrey. 2007. Politeness: Is there an East-West divide? Journal of Politeness Research 3(2). 167–206) Grand Strategy of Politeness, considering the purpose of communication, politeness strategies, and context. The corpus for this study encompassed 1,413 text messages sent via Telegram by 9 EFL learners during one year. Findings indicated a number of different politeness strategies in Iranian culture, specifically the modesty constraint – the speaker maximizes dispraise of himself – which can be construed as one of the unique features and influences of Islamic teachings. Moreover, the Leech’s model might appropriately describe politeness principles in Asian contexts, including Iran, and how cultural dynamics manifest themselves in interpreting the concept of politeness.

This corpus-based study contributes to the ongoing discussion on conventional politeness markers, such as please , by being the first to examine how the corresponding Norwegian lexical item vennligst ‘please’ is used. The study investigates the use of vennligst in data from two Norwegian corpora in standard situations, where the relationship between the interlocutors is clear, and non-standard situations, where the relationship between the interlocutors is less clear. The results show that although Norwegian dictionaries describe the pragmatic function of vennligst as being that of a polite request, most instances were found in standard situations where vennligst indicates a ritual frame that goes unmarked. The results also show that in non-standard situations, vennligst is not only used as a politeness device but more often strengthens the requestive force into a command. Therefore, we caution against using vennligst in non-standard situations due to the likelihood of being interpreted as impolite. Depending on the situation type, the various interpretations may explain why some Norwegians interpret vennligst as polite, whereas others deem it impolite. By illustrating how vennligst may be interpreted differently, we hope to draw attention to the situational influences on such markers and the dangers of relying on their conventional meanings.

Ritual frame indicating expressions (henceforth RFIEs) is a concept that re-conceptualizes expressions that are conventionally understood as politeness markers and provides insight into the interface between expressions and politeness. This study supplements previous studies on RFIEs, which are mostly conducted from an analyst perspective, by analyzing native observers’ evaluations of a participant’s use of Chinese RFIEs in the speech act of request. It is found that the use of RFIEs was evaluated as either excessively limao (Chinese politeness1) or limao . The underlying reason for the former evaluation is that the expressions were interpreted as deference markers, and the underlying reason for the latter evaluation is that the expressions were interpreted as civility markers. This study demonstrates that, at least in the speech act of request, RFIEs may indicate different ritual frames for different native observers, which calls for the incorporation of the (meta)participant’s perspective in the study of RFIEs. It also supplements the current view on the usage of conventional politeness-related expressions in Chinese.

As a vital means of communication in social life, people’s talk is likely to be influenced by the media, specifically film talk. The study aimed at understanding how impoliteness is presented in TV series and movies. We investigated, quantitatively and qualitatively, 928 min of interactions from selected comedy and crime genres (popular among a group of English as a Foreign Language [EFL] learners). The collected corpus was analyzed using (revised) taxonomies of impoliteness strategies and defensive strategies. The findings revealed that although both cinematic genres abound with incivility, the type of prevalent impoliteness strategies differ between genres. Moreover, the viewers of the English TV series and movies are exposed to impoliteness presented in film discourse, specifically, taboo words. Considering the overall adequacy of the adopted analysis models and the noticeable impact film talk might have on individuals and society, we draw on our findings and the literature to conclude with explanations (e.g., disaffiliative humor and cognitive safety) and implications for similar sociopragmatic studies and applied linguistics domains (particularly language learning and teaching).

This paper analyses a 265,147-word corpus of multilingual Facebook comments discussing political news in Congo-Brazzaville, collected between 2015 and 2016. The commenters use French, Lingala, Kituba, as well as ethnic languages such as Laary, to provide evaluations of the news and engage in impolite exchanges with each other. It is now widely evidenced that digital discourse is increasingly attracting (im)politeness research, going from Western-centric grounds into exploring other societies and cultures such as Asia and Africa. Despite this, (im)politeness research in multilingual contexts – such as Congo-Brazzaville – remains neglected. The paper aims to redress this imbalance by analysing impoliteness in Facebook interactions among Congolese users. Thus, the paper provides insights into how the notion of impoliteness plays out in a context that is polarized politically and sociolinguistically. The findings suggest that what triggers impoliteness is not just the desire to either claim own grounds, or the fact that the target of the impolite comment is a user with an opposing view, but also the desire to control what others should and should not say (or do). Furthermore, the interpretation of impoliteness in this context lies in the users’ abilities to understand the role of language alternation as it is framed in the comments.