HI-LING
LINGUISTICS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL
UNIT 2: VIOLATION OF MAXIMS
Lesson 4: Politeness
Definition: Politeness refers to the linguistic expression of respect, kindness and social consideration. It is an important aspect of communication that influences how people interact with each other.
Key Concepts
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Positive Politeness
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Negative Politeness
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Face-Threatening Acts
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Conversational Implicature
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Conventionalisation
UNIT 1: SAVING AND PROTECTING FACE
In our dealings with other people, we are guided by so-called norms. These are generally recognised and accepted standards and rules of conduct in a particular society that regulate life together. These norms serve as guidelines for appropriate behavior and help maintain social order. One important norm is politeness. For example, politeness controls how we address specific people: we address our teachers and superiors with last names, and our parents and classmates with first names. This can be defined by the term 'face'. This refers to certain needs that the individual has towards others in society. Everyone wants to protect their own face, which is reflected in expressions such as save/loose face.
Every person has two faces, one positive and one negative (this does not mean that one is good and one is bad, but emphasizes that the two aspects complement each other). Both need to be "nurtured" through politeness in interaction: The positive face needs recognition from fellow human beings, the negative face wants to preserve its personal (agency) freedom and be safe from constraints by others. Politeness consists of mutually protecting the negative face of others and supporting their positive face in interaction. This works as a tacit mutual contract, in that ideally one treats others as one would like to be treated.
According to the two faces, there are also two kinds of politeness: Positive politeness supports and reinforces the positive face of the counterpart - e.g. one is positively polite when one pays someone a compliment. Negative politeness consists of protecting the freedom of the other person to decide about themselves and their actions. People keep their distance from one another so as not to hurt each other. All speech acts that are indirect (cf. Lesson 3) are part of this form of politeness; they signal to the other person that you respect their room for maneuver. By formulating concerns and criticism indirectly, you are being polite, e.g. as a question and in the subjunctive or as a statement (Could you please help me? is supposed to mean 'Help me!' / The music is really loud is the polite formulation for 'Turn down the music!’).
So much for the theory. Now let's look at another example:
Anna and Beat work together on their presentation about the Second World War. Anna has already prepared a PowerPoint presentation for this and now hands Beat the template. "Thank you Anna, you've done a good job. It saves me a lot of work," says Beat. Anna replies: "No problem. Could you look for pictures on the Internet to go with it by next week?" "Sure, I will!" says Beat, "see you tomorrow then."
In this example, there is both a measure to support the positive face and one to protect the negative one. Beat strengthens Anna's positive face by complimenting her: he says she did a good job that saved him work. The positive face needs recognition, which it receives through a compliment. Anna then chooses the strategy of indirect communication to ask Beat to look up the necessary pictures by asking a question, thus protecting his negative face. She could also have said "You look for more pictures by next week!", but such a request would have threatened Beat's negative face. A request would give the impression of coercion or obligation, whereas a question allows Beat to feel self-determined: he agrees to look for the pictures.
In real life, we do not always adhere to face protecting measures, we are not always polite: sometimes we threaten someone's face. Such actions are referred to as face-threatening acts. Face-threatening acts can be categorised along two parameters: Which face is being threatened and whose face is being threatened:
Before reading on, think about how these linguistic acts are face-threatening.
Criticism is a face-threatening act to the hearer’s positive face because s/he is blamed for having done something wrong or badly. This is a negative evaluation of his / her self-image. Giving someone an order threatens his or her negative face since it restricts the hearers personal freedom. An apology threatens the speaker’s own positive face as he or she admits his / her own shortcomings, which damages the positive self-image. Thanking someone is considered to be a threat to one's own negative face because the speaker expresses thanks because he / she feels obliged to do so. This felt obligation is a restriction of the freedom of action and therefore threatens the negative face. There are more speech acts that can be categorised according to these criteria, such as giving compliments or making a promise.
Discussion
Discuss in groups of two how the theory of positive and negative politeness can be applied to the following situations. Are those people protecting face? Or threatening face? Which face and whose face? How could they do better or worse?
Solution: In the first example, Alex communicates indirectly using the subjunctive II to protect Lisa's negative face. By not directly asking her to cooperate, but indirectly pointing out that he would appreciate help, he expresses negative politeness. Lisa, on the other hand, expresses positive politeness when she compliments Alex on the work he has done. Unlike Alex, she communicates directly. In the second example, the boss is criticizing the employee, which threatens the employee's positive face. This effect is even stronger because he is being criticized in public. The employee then apologizes, which threatens his own positive face as well. In addition, the boss also orders the employee to bring the correct numbers by the next day. This threatens the employee’s negative face since it limits the employee’s personal freedom. The boss therefore threatens both faces of the employee. In order to support the employee’s faces, the boss should refrain from criticizing his employee in public and use more indirect speech acts. For example, he could ask his employee if he thinks he could get the correct numbers by the next day, instead of just ordering him to do so.
UNIT 2: CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE
We have now seen that a popular strategy to protect negative face is to use indirect speech acts. However, in order for the other person to really understand what you actually want to express, they have to infer from the literal utterance (e.g. It's quite loud here) the actually intended meaning (e.g. Turn down the music!). Such an inference is called a conversational implicature.
Conversational implicatures are inferences from utterances that are not part of the meaning of linguistic signs, but arise when signs are used in communication and are based on shared background knowledge of the participants. The background knowledge includes, among other things, the linguistic pre-context of the utterance, the knowledge of how to conduct conversations, the "where, when, how and with whom" of the communication situation and the world knowledge of the participants. To give an example:
Lisa: Do you have a tissue?
Otto: My jacket is over there.
These statements appear incoherent when viewed in isolation and in their literal meaning. But if we go to the conversational level and include the shared knowledge of the participants in the conversation, we recognise two implications. Otto does not conclude from Lisa's question that she wants to know if he has a tissue in the house, but that she is indirectly asking him for one. Lisa infers from Otto's answer that, even if it doesn't seem so at first glance, it has to do with her question and that Otto wants to confirm to her in an economical way that he has a tissue, that it is in the pocket of his jacket and that he allows her to get it from there.
The basis for such conversational implicatures to work is formed by unwritten laws that everyone in the conversation follows. Known as the highest rule, participants in a conversation mutually assume that the other person will behave cooperatively in the conversation and therefore assume that everything the other person says has a meaning for the conversation (cooperation principle). Subordinate to this are further so-called conversational maxims, i.e. guidelines for conversations. You can find out more about the conversational maxims and the cooperation principle in Lesson 2.
Conversational implicatures now function in that, on the basis of the conversational maxims, inferences are offered (implicated) by the speaker and drawn by the listener. Conversational implicatures consist of two steps: (a) in the negative step, it is recognised that the cooperation principle is apparently not being observed, (b) in the positive step, the cooperation principle is then preserved by deducing what is actually meant from what is said. In this case, the conversational maxims do not have to be adhered to; even a deliberate violation fulfills its purpose, because the listener continues to assume a meaning to the utterance - according to the cooperation principle - and searches for the motivation for the violation of maxims. In the example above, where Lisa is indirect, it seems at first as if Otto was not cooperating in the conversation. Therefore, Otto concludes from the question that it cannot be meant literally, that Lisa is not interested in his stockpiling, but must mean something else, which in this case he can infer from his prior knowledge and the conversational situation. He has encountered requests in the form of questions before. Besides, Lisa has just spilled some of her tea. So Otto concludes that she wants a tissue and is using an indirect polite strategy to avoid the impolite direct request "Give me a tissue!
An important property of conversational implicatures is that they can be reconstructed as inferential processes - as just shown in the example. Furthermore, they can be deleted, i.e.: Since they are pragmatic (= context-dependent) meanings that arise through the context and are not part of the semantics of linguistic signs themselves, they can be levelled out by changing the context: Do you have a tissue? I'm not asking because I want one, but because I want to know if you are a person that plans ahead. The fact that these are contextual inferences is also shown by the fact that if the context is changed, other implications are also conceivable, e.g. from Otto's statement that Lisa should use his (old) jacket instead of a tissue.
Activity
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Mission
The meaning that is developed with conversational implicatures is initially based entirely on the situational context, it does not reside in the linguistic sign itself. If the same conversational implicature is used frequently and by many language users, then it can happen that the meaning is transferred from the conversational context to a linguistic sign from the utterance, i.e. it is firmly incorporated into the meaning of the sign (= semantics): The conversational implicature is conventionalised and thus the step is taken from a pragmatic to a semantic meaning. The new meaning is no longer dependent on a particular situational context in which it is uttered, but belongs to the semantics of the speech sign.
If we look at the conjunction while, this step has already taken place: The original meaning referred to by the conversational implicature was that two events happen at the same time (While he cooks the eggs, she puts on the milk). In certain contexts, starting from this simultaneity, it was conversationally implicated that the subordinate clauses connected by while have an adversative (= contrasting) relationship: While he is already cooking the eggs, she is still lying lazily in bed. In the meantime, this conversational implicature has been conventionalised, i.e. it has entered the sign meaning of while as 'contrasting' in addition to 'temporal' and has thus become independent of the pragmatic context. This can be seen from the fact that contexts are now possible in which temporal overlap - which was the basis for the conversational implicature - no longer exists: While my great-grandmother had a big nose, I have big feet.
If you still have time:
Conventionalisation of conversational implicatures
Work alone: Compare the example sentences with the conjunctions seit (German) and since (English) below. What is the original meaning of seit and since? What other meaning can be expressed by them? In which of the two languages is this a purely pragmatic meaning (conversational implicature), in which has this implicature been conventionalised (i.e. part of the sign meaning)? Explain your decision with the help of examples 1) and 2).
Note: a * before a sentence means that the sentence is grammatically incorrect and cannot be said that way.
1a) Seit wir uns kennengelernt haben, trägst Du immer nur dieselbe Jacke.
1b) Seit ich mit dem Rauchen aufgehört habe, fühle ich mich besser.
1c) *Seit ich morgen eine Klausur schreibe, kann ich nicht mit ins Kino kommen.
2a) It hasn’t stopped raining since we have been waiting.
2b) Since I will not be home, Lisa will answer the phone.
Now discuss with the person next to you.
Exercise
Solution In German, seit can only be used to indicate a point in time. This conjunction expresses that an event A is the case seit (in time) an event B has taken place. In English, on the other hand, it is also possible to use the conjunction since with a causal meaning. If one wants to translate such sentences into German, one would do so with weil, e.g. Weil ich nicht zu Hause sein werde, wird Lisa ans Telefon gehen. The comparison between 1c) and 2b) thus shows that the conjunction since has been conventionalised in English and can now also be used for causative meanings, quite independently of whether or not it is about a point in time at all. In German, on the other hand, seit is not (yet) fully conventionalised. In 1b) it can be seen that a causal reading is possible (Weil/Seit ich mit dem Rauchen aufgehört habe, fühle ich mich besser), but only if a point in time is also given (Ich fühle mich besser seit dem Zeitpunkt, an dem ich aufgehört habe zu rauchen). If the sentence does not contain a temporal meaning, seit cannot be used, as 1c) shows.
Final thought for this lesson
Have you ever found that your attempts to be polite have failed? Or that there was a misunderstanding because your counterpart did not decode your polite statement correctly? How could you avoid such situations in the future?
Damaris Nübling (2010). Historische Sprachwissenschaft des Deutschen. Eine Einführung in die Prinzipien des Sprachwandels. Tübingen: Narr.