POLITENESS PHENOMENON

Yevheniia Kornielaieva

doi:10.23856/3212

Yevheniia Kornielaieva Odessa National Maritime University http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9516-1963

Keywords: face; face-threatening act; negative politeness; politeness; positive politeness; speech etiquette; strategy

Abstract

The present article deals with the problem of human interaction which serves the subject of such sciences as linguistics, pragmatics as well as psychology, sociology, anthropology, so on. Human interaction is also studied within Politeness Theory once developed by P. Brown and St. Levinson. Politeness Theory has become quite influential as it is aimed at redressing of offences to a person’s self-image, or face, by face-threatening acts. According to P. Brown and St. Levinson, politeness is a universal concept. It is the powerful means that helps the speaker to express his intentions and mitigate face threats carried by his face-threatening acts to the listener. Therefore, politeness makes it possible for the speaker to save his own face and the face of his partner of communication. In other words, politeness ensures the rights of communicants not to be interfered with and to be approved of. These rights make up positive and negative face of a communicant. Positive face implies the interactant’s desire to be appreciated and to be approved of while negative face presents the want to be unimpeded by others. These two related aspects determine the strategies of positive and negative politeness that are aimed at reinforcing the positive image of a communicant and at preserving their independence. On the whole, politeness provide mutual comfort and harmonious flow of human interaction. The same idea is supported by G. Leech, G. Kasper, B. Fraser, P. Grice who develops Cooperative Principle of polite communication. Being a universal concept politeness is realised through a set of strategies. The author of the article calls such point of view on politeness “western-oriented”. As for Russian and Ukrainian linguists, they see politeness as speech etiquette which is released in speech formulae. Choosing this or that speech etiquette formula, communicants establish, support and terminate the contact in accordance with socially accepted rules of conversation, thus, making their interaction pleasant and friendly. Politeness is not regarded as a set of strategies, but only as politeness formulae.

References

Abramovych, S. D. (2004). Speech communication, in: Chikarkova, M. Ju. Chernіvcі: Zelena Bukovina. [in Ukrainian].
Bacevych, F. S. (2004). Fundamentals of communicative linguistics. Kyiv: Academy. [in Ukrainian].
Blum-Kulka, S. (1989). Cross-cultural and situational variation in requesting behavior, in: House, J. Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Ablex: Norwood, NJ. [in English].
Brown, P. (1987). Politeness: Universals in Language Usage, in: Levinson, S. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [in English].
Formanovskaja, N. I. (2005). Communication culture and speech etiquette. Moscow: IKAR. [in Russian].
Formanovskaja, N. I. (2007). Speech Interaction: communication and pragmatics. Moscow: IKAR. [in Russian].
Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on Politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 14, 219-236. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. [in English].
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in Public. New York: Harper and Row. [in English].
Goffman, E. (1972). On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Harmondsworth: Penguin. [in English].
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. Syntacs and semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts, 41-58. NY: Academic Press. [in English].
Haugh, M. (2004). Revisiting the conceptualization of politeness in English and Japanese. Multilingua, Vol. 23, 85-109. [in English].
Hill, B. (1986). Universals of linguistic politeness: quantitative evidence from Japanese and American English, in: Ide, S. Journal of pragmatics, Vol. 10, 347-371. [in English].
Karasik, V. I. (1991). The language of the social status. Moscow: Institude of Linguistics, Academy of Sciences of SSSR, Volgogradskij pedagogical institute. [in Russian].
Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. [in English].
Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness, or, minding your p’s and q’s. Chicago. [in English].
Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Women’s Place. NY: Harper & Row. [in English].
Larina, T. V. (2009). Politeness category and style of communication. Comparison of English and Russian linguocultural traditions. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kul’tury. [in Russian].
Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. USA: Oxford University Press. [in English].
Marquez-Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [in English].
Meier, A. (1995). Defining politeness: Universality in appropriateness. Language Sciences, Vol. 17 (4), 345-356. UK: Oxford. [in English].
Mills, S. (2003). Gender and politeness. UK: Cambridge University Press. [in English].
Ratmajr, R. (2003). Apology Pragmatics: Comparative Research on the Basis of the Russian Language and Russian Culture. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoy kul’tury. [in Russian].
Selіvanova, O. O. (2011). Fundamentals of linguistic communication theory. Cherkassi: Chabanenko Publishing House. [in Ukrainian].
Sifianou, M. (1992). Politeness phenomena in England and Greece. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [in English].
Usami, M. (2006). Discourse politeness theory and cross-cultural pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. [in English].
Watts, R. et al. (1992). Politeness in Language. Studies in its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. [in English].
Zemskaja, A. V. (1994). Politeness category in context of speech acts. Language logic analysis. Language of speech acts. 191-136. Moscow: Science. [in Russian].