Volume 7, Issue 2

Increasing attention to the distinction between first- and second-order im/politeness has led to considerable soul-searching among theorists regarding which of the two should form the basis of a theory of im/politeness. In this article, I take an alternative path: I build on norms of Politeness1, as attested in influential texts laying out Politeness1 norms in different parts of the world from antiquity to this day, to extract from them the core elements of a theory of Politeness2. By affording us with some glimpses into the diachronic intertwining of Politeness1 and Politeness2, this analysis helps explain why it has been so difficult to keep these two notions apart in previous research. At the same time, it suggests some possible ways forward. Specifically, this survey reveals two overarching themes regarding the role of politeness (and, by implication, impoliteness) in these cultures. The first concerns the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms, while the second concerns the relationship of Politeness1 norms with an underlying morality. I propose that these two elements should be placed at the heart of an empirically grounded theory of Politeness2.

Impolite and aggressive behaviour of anonymous users appears to be an important feature of online newspaper comments. This paper identifies and investigates how impoliteness is utilized strategically by newspaper readers to attack the author of an article. Empirical data is drawn from “Have-your-say” sections of the Guardian Online, Times Online and Telegraph Online. Results illustrate that impolite moves frequently involve facethreats that question the journalists' authority, credibility and trustworthiness. In the main part of the paper a categorization scheme for different types of impolite moves is introduced and a working definition of impoliteness in the context of “Have-your-say” sections presented. After having sketched a number of fundamental methodological and theoretical challenges in impoliteness research, the paper also demonstrates how the communicative setting and medium influence the realization and interpretation of impolite behaviour in those forms of public debates. Given the challenge of identifying and conceptualizing impoliteness in general and more specifically in a computer-mediated environment, netiquette rules prove especially useful for norms of appropriateness. It is also argued that the strength of those face-threats may be boosted by the fact that they are uttered in front of a large audience and more specifically the journalist's readership.

This exploratory study looks into the stereotype that Americans are insincere or superficial when engaging in social interaction. There appears to be something peculiar about the style of interaction in the United States that causes an unfavorable impression among some foreigners. After a brief discussion of this cross-cultural perspective, this study considers the folk perceptions of American informants to investigate how they perceive their own style of politeness in the context of a service encounter. One important conclusion is that routine attempts to be polite simultaneously entail both sincerity and insincerity, and there are two distinct perspectives that help explain how common acts of courtesy can be interpreted differently. The first perspective is the more traditional view of sincerity, where an individual judges speakers to be sincere when it appears that they are expressing their true beliefs or feelings. The second view is oriented more toward interactional aspects of communication, where an interlocutor evaluates a speaker as sincere if s/he appears to be concerned with issues related to rapport, such as making the listener feel comfortable and the interaction run smoothly.

This study aims to demonstrate and analyze the behaviours of two Jordanian persons employing different positive politeness strategies in a face-threatening situation. The discussion explicitly centres on the fact that the directionality of politeness could be realized and encoded in the individuals' linguistic choices. The present paper primarily addresses the strategy of displacing the main topic of discussion on the part of Jordanian interlocutors exhibiting a positive politeness direction, in an apology-calling situation, as a way to protect the speaker's face. The discussion is based on the analysis of an exchange between two acquaintances of mine. The main point raised is that though the two neighbours are displaying politeness behaviours that may appear to be in tension – with one considering his addressee's as well as his own face (neighbour 1) and the other being primarily concerned with his own face (neighbour 2) through his disinclination to get involved in a lengthy conversation and through the displacement of the main topic of discussion – the two neighbours' behaviours are nevertheless orienting to an over-arching relational goal of maintaining the relationship. This is also to suggest that intracultural differences should be addressed before moving on to discuss cross-cultural differences.

Although the language of business communication has become a popular topic of scholarly investigation in recent years, studies on historical business interaction appear sparsely in the literature. The current paper addresses a number of aspects of business language in the Spanish of Colonial Louisiana, specifically the extent to which the variable of power in professional interactions affected the form of directive speech acts issued, as well as the relationship between indirectness and politeness in this genre of communication. The study presents data from a corpus of 100 letters written between government officials in late 18 th century Louisiana. The results of the study indicate that, although superiors most commonly utilize direct request formulations and inferiors tend to revert to nonconventionally indirect strategies, these generalizations do not account for a significant portion of the speech act behavior of these speakers. I argue that the notion of tentativeness is crucial to an understanding of the linguistic behavior exhibited in the corpus documents. Additionally, I posit that subordinates in Colonial Louisiana made extensive use of a conventionally direct request strategy which was employed in a formulaic manner in business communication.