Volume 6, Issue 2

This paper investigates how bows (formal lowering of the head or upper body) and linguistic features are integrated into conversational organizations of a thanking episode in Japanese. A role-play based on a real life thanking episode is used for the investigation. A set of role-play data involving 20 native speakers of Japanese is transcribed for both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The data shows that bows are systematically embedded into conversational organizations. The beneficiary bows with key speech formulae that acknowledge his/her debt, and the benefactor reciprocates a bow with ie ie (no, no) which plays down his/her credit. In other words, key speech formulae in balancing debt-credit equilibrium are often accompanied by a bow. The results show that bows are essential and highly predictable body movements in thanking episodes in Japanese, and they are significant in balancing debt-credit for face-maintenance.

Whilst computer-mediated communication (CMC) can benefit users by providing quick and easy communication between those separated by time and space, it can also provide varying degrees of anonymity that may encourage a sense of impunity and freedom from being held accountable for inappropriate online behaviour. As such, CMC is a fertile ground for studying impoliteness, whether it occurs in response to perceived threat (flaming), or as an end in its own right (trolling). Currently, first and second-order definitions of terms such as im/politeness (Brown and Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge University Press, 1987; Bousfield, Impoliteness in interaction, John Benjamins, 2008; Culpeper, Reflections on impoliteness, relational work and power, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008; Terkourafi, Towards a unified theory of politeness, impoliteness, and rudeness, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), in-civility (Lakoff, Civility and its discontents: Or, getting in your face, John Benjamins, 2005), rudeness (Beebe, Polite fictions: Instrumental rudeness as pragmatic competence, Georgetown University Press, 1995, Kienpointner, Functions of Language 4: 251–287, 1997, Kienpointner, Journal of Politeness Research 4: 243–265, 2008), and etiquette (Coulmas, Linguistic etiquette in Japanese society, Mouton de Gruyter, 1992), are subject to much discussion and debate, yet the CMC phenomenon of trolling is not adequately captured by any of these terms. Following Bousfield (in press), Culpeper (Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence, Cambridge University Press, 2010) and others, this paper suggests that a definition of trolling should be informed first and foremost by user discussions. Taking examples from a 172-million-word, asynchronous CMC corpus, four interrelated conditions of aggression, deception, disruption, and success are discussed. Finally, a working definition of trolling is presented.

This paper puts forward a model for the study of politeness in second language learning and applies this approach to data collected pertaining to the use of speech styles by advanced learners of Korean from “Western” backgrounds. The learning of politeness in a second language is conceptualized as a process of “re-framing”; in other words, of re-analyzing and enriching existing frames regarding the kind of (linguistic) behavior that normally occurs in given context. This process is complicated by different ideological loadings regarding what it means to “speak politely” in different cultures and also by the instability of “face” in L1-L2 encounters. The data shows that the more egalitarian way that L2 speakers use Korean speech styles does not just result from a lack of knowledge regarding the “frames” in which different styles are usually applied, but also from ideological opposition to using these forms for the overt marking of age-rank relationships. However, rather than being evaluated as “impolite”, the salient modes of honorifics use appearing in L1-L2 encounters were rendered appropriate to some extent by the relationships emerging in such contexts. Ultimately, “face” and “politeness” in interactions involving L2 learners are established through interaction and are intrinsically dynamic and discursive.