Politeness strategies
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 391.
Definition of politeness. Positive and negative politeness
Later Goffman's version of face was taken into consideration by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson. First they give the deffinition of politeness. So, politeness is the expression of the speaker's intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts toward another.
Then they say that politeness consists of attempting to save face for another. They begin with the idea of ‘model persons', rational agents who think strategically and are conscious of their language choices, where these rational agents have both positive and negative face. So, positive face is the desire to be liked and appreciated. Here, positive politeness is designed to meet the face needs by performing an action like complimenting or showing concern for another person. Negative face is the desire to be autonomous and not to infringe on the other person. That's why negative politeness is designed to protect the other person when negative face needs are threatened. Thus there are different strategies to handle face threatening acts and these strategies are put into a hierarchy of effectiveness.
Brown and Levinson outline four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record or indirect strategy.
First, bald on record strategies (ïðÿìàÿ ñòðàòåãèÿ) do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer's face. With the bald on record strategies there is a direct possibility that the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy. For example, a bald on record strategy might be to tell your sister to “do the dishes. It's your turn.”
The second strategy is positive politeness and this strategy attempts to minimize the threat to the hearer's positive face. Quite often hedging and attempts to avoid conflict are used. For example, a positive politeness strategy might be the request “It would be great if you could do the dishes for me.”
The third strategy is negative politeness which presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the listener. Here negative face is the desire to remain autonomous. Thus, a request without consideration of the listener's negative face might be uncomfortable: “I need $5” is awkward if five dollars is outside the listener's financial capabilities. But if the speaker, knowing that the listener wants to maintain their autonomy, adds an out for the listener like “I know you've been strapped for cash, but could I borrow $5?”, the listener is more likely to give them that money because the request showed a respect for their ability to maintain autonomy.
The final is the indirect strategy. This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, it's getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so.
Absolute and relative politeness
We should also differentiate between absoluteand relativepoliteness; in the absolute sense, Lend me your car is less polite than I hope you don't mind my
asking, but I wonder if it might be at all possible for you to lend me your car.
However, in some situations, the former request could be over polite (among family members) and the latter one impolite (as an ironic remark).
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