Table of Contents

Table of  Contents  1

1  Introduction  3

2  Pragmatics and Politeness - An Overview  4

2.1  Cross-Cultural Differences  9

2.2  Indirectness  10

2.3  Modality Markers  11

2.4  The Bulge Theory  11

3  The Questionnaire  13

4  Criteria for our Analysis.  15

4.1  Directness Levels.  15

4.2  Modality Markers  17

4.2.1  Upgraders.  18

4.2.2  Downgraders.  19

5  Results and Interpretations  20

5.1.  A General Overview  20

5.1.1  Directness Levels.  20

5.1.2  Upgraders.  22

5.1.3  Downgraders.  23

5.2  Situation 1  25

5.2.1  Directness Levels.  25

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5.2.2  Upgraders.  26

5.2.3  Downgraders.  27

5.3.  Situation 2  28

5.3.1  Directness Levels.  28

5.3.2  Upgraders.  29

5.3.3  Downgraders.  30

5.4.  Situation 3  31

5.4.1  Directness Levels.  31

5.4.2  Upgraders.  32

5.4.3  Downgraders.  33

5.5  The Bulge Theory  34

5.6  The use of please and bitte  35

6  Conclusion  37

7  Bibliography  38

Appendix 40   

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1 Introduction

Linguistic politeness is an important subcategory of pragmatics, as it is essential for the success of communication, which in turn is a central aspect of pragmatics. It is not a fixed and defined category because it differs from one speech community to another and can be realised by different means, such as lexical or phrasal ones. This term paper considers both by analysing the directness and the modality markers used in three situations eliciting complaints. A questionnaire was handed out to members of the following four groups: native speakers of English, young German learners of English, advanced German learners of English, all writing in English, and native speakers of German writing in German.

We analyse the hypothesis of House and Kasper (1981, p. 162) stating that native speakers of German are more direct than native speakers of English. However, it has to be mentioned that their survey was based on spoken language.

A second aspect of our study is the analysis of learner language. We want to examine if L2-learners are more direct and thus less polite than native speakers of the target language. The influence of their competence in the second language and the impact of their mother tongue on second language acquisition are taken into account here.

Wolfson (1989, pp. 129-139) showed that social distance between the interlocutors has influence on politeness regarding invitations and compliments. This term paper examines if this Bulge Theory is also valid for other speech acts such as complaints and requests.

After an overview on linguistic approaches on politeness, the questionnaire and the criteria of our analysis are presented. The next chapter deals with the evaluation and interpretation of the data and focuses on the aspects mentioned above. A short conclusion sums up the main results.

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2 Pragmatics and Politeness - An Overview

Following the accounts by many prominent linguists, anthropologist and philosophers, Porayska-Pomsta (2003, p. 16) interprets language as a form of social activity: Firstly, language does not define ‘things’, but it does determine means in order to make things happen (Malinowski, cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 16). Secondly, the production and reception or rather understanding of a language can be considered as a form of action (Wittgenstein; Austin; Grice; Scarle, cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 16). Thirdly, language can be defined as a form of commonly shared activity between people (Clark; Clark; Gibbs; Suchman; Garfinkel; Heritage; Schegloff; Schegloff, cited in Porayska-Pomsta, p. 17). The basic idea behind these three statements is that people use language in order to achieve various goals, such as receiving services, information, material goods or other things expected or desired by them (Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 17) and to maintain or promote harmonious relations (Thomas 1995, pp. 157-158.). According to Porayska-Pomsta (2003, p. 17), people therefore use language to achieve satisfaction of their individual needs, which often depend on others, whose needs and wants have to be coordinated with one’s individual objectives (Clark, cited in Porayska-Pomsta, p. 17). This coordination is part of a person’s linguistic and social competence (Fraser cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 17). In this context, the ability and necessity of speakers to accommodate other people’s objectives in pursuit of one’s own is the reason for the theoretically infinite linguistic variation of language (Brown & Levinson; Halliday; Pomcrantz; Fox; Fetzer, cited in Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 17). In this context, politeness can be regarded as a source of linguistic variety.

To date, certain theories of linguistic politeness have been established. Considering pragmatics, Thomas (1995, p. 158) refers to the conversationalmaxim view (Leech cited in Thomas 1995, p. 158), the conversational-contract view (Fraser cited in Thomas 1995, p. 158), the face-management view (Brown & Levinson cited in Thomas 1995, p. 158) and the pragmatic scales view

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(Spencer-Oatey cited in Thomas 1995, p. 158). The latter will not be presented in this paper.

Due to deviations from and exceptions to Grice’s Cooperative Principle (Thomas 1995, p. 158), Leech (cited in Thomas 1995, p. 158) postulates the conversational-maxim view by introducing the Politeness Principle: Minimise (all things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs and maximise (all things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs. While Grice defines the Cooperative Principle in terms of Conversational Maxims of Relation, Manner, Quality and Quantity, Leech defines his Politeness Principle by means of six (main) Politeness Maxims. The Tact Maxim runs as follows: Minimise the expression of beliefs which imply cost to others; maximise the expression of beliefs which imply benefit to others. Thomas (1995, p. 160) connects this to the size of imposition, which defines the size of the request the speaker is making of the hearer (Thomas 1995, p. 128). Regarding the Tact Maxim, Lakoff’s second rule of politeness comes into play, which advises to moderate the effect of a request by offering options: “Give options!” (Lakoff cited in Thomas 1995, p. 161). The cost/benefit scale is the third aspect of the Tact Maxim: “[I]f something is perceived as being to the hearer’s benefit, X can be expressed politely without employing indirectness”, otherwise greater indirectness may be appropriate (Thomas 1995, p. 161). Further maxims are defined as follows (Leech cited in Thomas 1995, pp. 161-166): Generosity (minimise the benefit to self and maximise the expression of cost to self), Approbation (minimise the expression of beliefs which express dispraise of other and maximise the expression of beliefs which express approval of other), Modesty (minimise the expression of praise of self and maximise the expression of dispraise of self), Agreement (minimise the expression of disagreement between self and other and maximise the expression of agreement between self and other), and Sympathy (minimise antipathy between self and other and maximise sympathy between self and other). This list is problematic as there is no restriction to the number of maxims (Fraser; Brown and Levinson; Spencer-Oatey; Thomas, cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 20). On the other hand, this open approach

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is the most practical one to apply cross-culturally. (Spencer-Oatey cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 20).

Fraser (1990, p. 232) claims that people enter a conversation on the basis of a conversational-contract, namely the understanding they bring to an interaction of some initial rights and obligations. These will define the interactants’ expectations regarding each other during the beginning stages of the interaction. During such an interaction, the conversational contract can be renegotiated - because of contextual changes for example (Fraser 1990, p. 232.). The reasons for the establishment of these rights and obligations vary to a great extent: Some terms are imposed through certain conventions which can only seldom be readjusted, such as using intelligible languages, speaking loudly and seriously, including conditions imposed by institutions of social kind, such as churches or courts (Fraser 1990, p. 232). On the other hand, conversational terms which are in many cases renegotiable are determined by preceding encounters or particulars of the interaction - these are determined for each speech situation and depend on factors, such as the power, status or role of each speaker and/or the perception of the participants (Fraser 1990, p. 232). The main idea behind this approach regarding these rights and obligations is that “politeness is an expected fact of any given interaction between participants” (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 21). The conversational-contract view establishes a convention by stating that polite behaviour is a norm, while impolite behaviour is viewed as a deviation from this norm and therefore a violation of conventional behaviour (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 21). According to Thomas (1995, p. 177), Fraser’s approach is very sketchy compared with Leech’s or Brown and Levinson’s models and it is very unpredictable how it might work in practice. In this regard, Fraser fails to state clearly how readjustments of the conversational terms occur in an actual speech situation and does not provide any satisfactory clues about the connection between the participant’s obligations and rights, and the actual language produced (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 21). Nevertheless, his approach has had influence

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on exchanges in sociolinguistics (Thomas 1995, p. 177; Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 21).

“The best known of the recent approaches” (Fraser 1990, p. 228), which had the greatest influence on theories of politeness (Thomas 1995, p.168), was put forward by Brown and Levinson. (1987, pp. 61ff.). Many linguists regard their face-management view as “the most formally tight theory of linguistic politeness available to date […] which is relatively fault-free” (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 19). Brown and Levinson base their approach on Goffman’s concept of “face”, which he defined as something that is “emotionally invested, [and which] can be lost, maintained, enhanced and must be constantly attended to in interaction” (Goffman cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 22) and “is best understood as every individual’s feeling of self-worth or self-image” (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 22). Face can be categorised into two types, i.e. positive and negative face: While positive face is an individual’s need for a positive self-image that is respected, liked, appreciated and approved of by others, while negative face reflects an individual’s desire to retain his or her freedom of imposition and action, and not to be put upon or impeded by others (Brown & Levinson cited in Thomas 1995, p. 169). Grice’s work on Conversational Implicature, in which he presumes that most people are capable of rational reasoning (Grice cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 22), is crucial to Brown and Levinson because it leads them to state that participants of any speech situation are able to reason about each other’s needs and wants in relation to their own situation (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 23). According to Poryaska-Pomsta (2003, p. 23), this ability enables interlocutors to cooperate with each other in order to achieve “whatever communicative and face-oriented goals they happen to have”. As a consequence of the interactants’ capability to reason rationally, it is generally in their interest “to maintain each other’s face” (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 23). By behaving in such a positive way, the interactants maintain cooperation and “thus communication between them” (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 23). Since certain illocutionary acts, namely “face-threatening acts” (FTA), can threaten or damage another person’s face, Brown and Levinson set up five communicative

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strategies, an interactant can employ in order to reduce the damage or threat to his/her or the other person’s face - these five strategies have certain substrategies (Brown & Levinson cited in Porayska-Pomsta 2003, p. 23): Firstly, if the speaker assumes the weightiness of the FTA to be very low, for example in an emergency situation when the propositional content of the utterance is quite important, the FTA is made without any redress, i.e. bald-on-record (Brown & Levinson cited in Thomas 1995, p. 170). Secondly and thirdly, an FTA can be performed with redress - on the one hand, an interactant can employ positive politeness (strategies) in order to appeal to someone’s positive face. For this purpose, Brown and Levinson (cited in Thomas 1995, pp. 171-172) propose 15 (sub-)strategies appealing to the hearer’s desire to be approved of and liked, for example ‘in-group identity markers’ or ‘expression of interest in the hearer’ - a number of these strategies corresponds to Leech’s principles on politeness, for example “seek agreement” or “give sympathy” (Leech cited in Thomas 1995, p. 172). On the other hand, an interactant can employ negative politeness (strategies) in order to appeal to someone’s negative face. In this context, Brown and Levinson name 10 (sub-)strategies which appeal to the hearer’s desire not to be impeded, namely giving them free choice of action, for example “minimise imposition” or “be conventionally indirect” (Brown & Levinson cited in Thomas 1995, pp. 171-172). Fourthly, an FTA can be performed by using off-record politeness - for this purpose, Brown and Levinson (cited in Thomas 1995, pp. 173-174) propose 15 (sub-)strategies, for example “give hints” or “use metaphors”. In case an utterance is so face-threatening that the threat or damage to the other’s face would be too high, an interactant could decide in favour of Brown and Levinson’s last strategy: “do not perform FTA” (Brown & Levinson cited in Thomas 1995, pp. 174-175). The choice for one of these strategies depends on the size of the face-threatening act which can be calculated from the social parameters of distance, power and the size of imposition (Thomas 1995, p. 169). In this context, a function by Brown and Levinson which considers these parameters helps the interactants to determine the weightiness of the face-threatening act (Brown & Levinson cited in Porayska-Pomsta, p. 25). Although the face-management view is regarded as

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the best and most influential approach in politeness theory, it “also suffers from certain potential problems” (Poryaska-Pomsta 2003, p. 28): Unlike Brown and Levinson’s proposal that an FTA can only be threatening to the face of either the hearer or the speaker, a speech act, for example an apology, can be a threat to the hearer’s and the speaker’s face simultaneously (Thomas 1995, p. 176). Thomas further proves Brown and Levinson wrong in their claim that negative and positive politeness is mutually exclusive as well as their prediction that the size of the face-threat correlates with the degree of indirectness (1995, p. 176). In addition, the fact that saying nothing at all is a potential threat to one’s face overthrows Brown and Levinson’s fifth politeness strategy (Thomas 1995, p. 176). Poryaska-Pomsta (2003, p. 26) refers to researchers who claim that the calculation of weightiness and the social variables in the associated function are the main problems when it comes to the face-management view.

2.1 Cross-Cultural Differences

When it comes to a cross-cultural analysis of communication, differences in the use and perception of politeness strategies become obvious (House & Kasper 1981). Before accordant differences are taken into account, it has to be stated that the expression ‘cross-cultural’ refers to different cultures such as the English or the German speech community or rather culture. We appreciate Tannen’s view (1989, p. 194) that “no two people have exactly the same communicative background” and that communication is dependent on a certain social background or speech community. However we do not share her opinion that all communication is cross-cultural because using the expression ‘culture’ to describe the social or communicative background of just one person would obliterate the expression. General cultural (communicative) differences may be “when to talk; what to say; pacing and pausing; listenership; intonation and prosody; formulaicity; indirectness; and cohesion and coherence” (Tannen 1989, p. 194). Cross-cultural differences regarding one of these aspects may lead an interactant into an awkward situation (because of being understood as impolite), for example in respect of indirectness which is “culturally relative”:

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Tannen (1989, p. 193) instances “American businessmen [who get] in trouble when they try to skip the small talk and get right down to business with Japanese […] for whom elaborate small talk is big and essential […]”. Considering the use of different indirectness levels, House & Kasper (1981, p. 182) show that there are cross-cultural differences between English and German, for example Germans more often select higher levels of directness. The cross-cultural differences between English and German speakers are also perceptible in the use of modality markers, for example German speakers use upgraders more frequently than English (House & Kasper 1981, p. 182). According to Olshtain and Weinbach (1993, p. 120) who analysed the speech act of complaining of British, American and Israeli speakers, the “learner’s interlanguage [deviates] from native speaker’s norms […] [because] newcomers to the target community attempt to sound less offensive and less facethreatening”.

2.2 Indirectness

Indirectness is risky and costly (Dascal cited in Thomas 1995, p. 120). Risky because the speaker runs the risk to be misunderstood, costly because it takes him longer to produce an utterance while the hearer needs more time to digest it. However, it renders a great service to an interactant because it enables him to lower the size of the imposition (Thomas 1995, p. 130) and therefore to appear more polite (Leech 1983, p. 108). In this context, size of imposition refers to the size of the request (or the complaint), the illocutionary force, one is making, for example asking someone for 1000 Euro would demand a higher level of indirectness than does asking for 1 Cent (Thomas 1995, p. 130). According to Leech (1983, p. 108), the more indirectly an illocution is made, the higher the level of politeness tends to be because the degree of indirectness correlates with the degree of optionality. In addition, “the more indirect an illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be” (Leech 1981, p. 108). Certain other factors influence the use of indirectness, namely the relative obligations and rights between the interactants, the “relative power

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of the speaker over the hearer”, the social distance between them and “the degree to which X is rated an imposition in culture Y” (Thomas 1995, p. 124).

2.3 Modality Markers

Besides politeness strategies on the syntactical level, one can express politeness by employing lexical devices, namely by using modality markers (House & Kasper 1981, p. 166). By employing different kinds and numbers of these markers, one can achieve different levels of politeness “on one and the same directness level” (House & Kasper 1981, p. 166). According to their function, modality markers can be categorised into two main groups: Downgraders - eleven different types - are markers “which play down the impact X’s utterance is likely to have on Y”, for example politeness markers, such as please/bitte (House & Kasper 1981, p. 166). Upgraders - six different types - “are modality markers which increase the force of the impact an utterance is likely to have on the addressee”, for example overstaters, such as absolutely, purely or terribly (House & Kasper 1981, p. 169).

2.4 The Bulge Theory

Social distance is a factor which has an important influence on the degree of politeness or comfort in verbal interactions (Boxer 1993, p. 103). The idea of social distance “is a measure of the degree of friendship/intimacy (or absence thereof) between interlocutors” (Boxer 1992, p. 103). In this context, Nessa Wolfson (cited in Boxer 1992, p. 104) studied the speech acts of invitations and compliments and states that these are social strategies applied in order to open a conversation, establish points of commonality, affirm or reaffirm solidarity, and deepen friendships (Boxer 1992, p. 104). On the basis of her findings, Wolfson published a theory which is termed The Bulge. It says that the two extremes of social distance, namely strangers (minimum) and intimates (maximum), show the similar behaviour, while “relationships which are more toward the center show marked difference [The Bulge]” (Wolfson 1988, p. 32): Friends used

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significantly more invitations and compliments than intimates or strangers (Boxer 1993, p. 104). At the two maximums of the social distance scale, people have “relative certainty of their relationships” and therefore they do not need to perform so many speech acts which establish solidarity, such as compliments (Boxer 1993, p. 104). Boxer (1993, pp. 123-124) shows that there are exceptions to Wolfson’s approach when it comes to indirect complaints: In this case The Bulge is warped because one tends “to behave differently with intimates” than one does with strangers, friends and acquaintances. One does seek agreement more frequently with the latter than with intimates (Boxer 1993, p. 124).

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3 The Questionnaire

Our study is based on written data only, obtained with the help of a questionnaire. For the research on the thesis, we created four different groups, consisting of 20 participants each: Native Speakers of English (NSE), Advanced Learners of English (ALE), Young Learners of English (YLE), who all answered in English, and Native Speakers of German (NSG), who responded in German and thus function as a comparison group when analysing the influence of the mother tongue on second language acquisition and cross-cultural differences. It has to be mentioned that pupils at the age of 15 and 16 make up a big part of the NSE. The ALE are students at universities and their age ranges from 21 to 27. The YLE are 13 or 14 years old and attend a Gymnasium. The NSG, in contrast, are very heterogeneous. Their age ranges from 12 to 50 years. Furthermore, it is important to add that the questionnaire was handed out or send via email so that the participants had sufficient time to fill it out. Only the YLE got it from their teacher and wrote their answers in class. The questionnaire consists of four open and a closed task (cf. Appendix I). The first three of them (labelled situation 1, 2 and 3) are complaints, which are defined by House and Kasper as following: “A complaint can be characterized as being ‘post-event,’ i.e., the ‘complainable’ has already happened, and this event is at cost to the speaker or ‘anti-X’.” (House & Kasper 1981, p. 159) These are every-day situations in which the participants’ actions would normally be verbal, not written. Therefore, we instructed them to fill out these three scenarios in direct speech.

We constructed the questionnaire with regard to Wolfson’s Bulge Theory (1988, 1989). Therefore, the social distance between these scenarios varies: It is great in situation 1, whereas the interlocutors/persons in situation 2 are very close to one another. Situation 3 is based on a social distance between the former two scenarios.

The fourth and the fifth task on the questionnaire were designed to analyse avoiding-strategies. The participants were asked to apologize to their

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