Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Proseminar: ‘Meaning in Interaction’
Sommersemester 2004, 5. Semester

Politeness in our everyday conversations

by

Thomas Daßler

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Face 3

2.1 Face threatening acts and politeness strategies
2.2 Examples

3. Summary 10

4. Bibliography 11

1. Introduction

In our everyday life language is essential. Not only when people need to pass on information, we use it, also we cannot be without it when we relax or spend time with friends. But why do we meet different styles of communication? Why are conversations so diverse? And why can the same words have different meanings in different contexts? Initially we need to have a closer look at the communication partners, the so called speaker and hearer, and also check the context of the communication situation. At first I will examine the term pragmatics, after studying linguists like Yule, Brown, Levinson, Goffman and Leech. To understand language, it is important to take a closer look at the aspect, which is called pragmatics. (cf. LEECH 1995, 1) “Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.” (YULE 1996, 3) It is concerned with the study of meaning of the words uttered by the speaker, than “what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves”. (ibid.) For Leech it is essential to understand that pragmatics studies meaning in relation to speech situations and not only the meaning of specific words. (cf. LEECH 1995, 6) Sometimes it is more communicated than what actually was said by the speaker and sometimes the hearer understands it wrong. That is a problem from speaker’s point of view, because he always wants to achieve a goal when saying something. Also there is a problem for the hearer; he in an automatic manner interprets the speakers saying. (ibid., 36) “Pragmatics involves PROBLEM-SOLVING both from s’s and from h’s point of view.” (ibid.) It tries to help distinguish between the said and the unsaid. (cf. YULE 1996, 3) There are conversations between two individuals, which do not make sense for a third listener. If the third person wants to understand it too, it is necessary to know what the speaker has in mind. This is most of the time not possible. That is why pragmatics deals with background knowledge and expectations – what is unsaid. (cf. ibid., 84) “In other words, more was being communicated than was being said.” (ibid., 5) Yule speaks about a simple principle. He states: “the more two speakers have in common, the less language they’ll need to use to identify familiar things.” (ibid., 8) That’s why he points to pragmatics as “the communicative use of language”. (ibid., 10) In addition the above mentioned terms ‘speaker’ and ‘hearer’ are going to be clarified. In the remaining sections, I am going to focus on the term ‘closeness’ in more detail through an analysis of social relationship and everyday social interactions. In the main part I will illustrate the idea of polite social behaviour, the so called politeness, with examples taken from the attached conversations. To understand this, it is essential to also have a closer look at the functions and strategies of politeness and how it can be accomplished to fulfil other’s wants? In this analysis we find the terms ‘positive politeness’ and ‘negative politeness’. I am going to investigate what they mean and how they are used in social conversations. With this step, risks of threatening the conversation partner’s face become obvious. Ways of how to take away the strength of such threads will be discussed. Also I have included examples taken from conversations, where they meet the theoretical part of the discussion. Hopefully, this will help to understand the theory. In the summary chapter I am going to have a look back to what we have learned about communication. In addition I will raise the question: ‘Can too much politeness be offensive?’.

2. Face

2.1 Face threatening acts and politeness strategies

As we know from the section about pragmatics, words are not just words. Their meaning is associated to the background of the conversation partners. “[…] a great deal of what we communicate is determined by our social relationships. A linguistic interaction is necessarily a social interaction.” (ibid., 59) Every conversation depends on the connection between the speaker and the hearer. Yule calls this their social distance or closeness and points to the social status of the participants, such as age or power. (cf. ibid.) For example, there is a distance between teacher and student or rich and poor. People act and communicate different if they seem to be part of other classes, age or education. (cf. ibid.) But we find also other factors, which influence a conversation. If two people start getting to know each other, there social relationship is in “the process of being worked out”. (ibid.)

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