Abstract
Single-moment studies have traditionally been carried out with the aim of investigating the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic skills of non-native speakers compared to those of native speakers of a particular language. The present study aims to investigate the parallel skills in expressing politeness of Maltese bilingual speakers rather than differences between native and non-native speakers in this respect. Since the variety of English spoken in Malta has often been characterised as distinct from British English, we used a small-scale spoken discourse completion task to examine the extent to which British English and Maltese affect the expression of politeness in Maltese English, in the context of requests and apologies. To this end, we compared the responses provided by three distinct groups of participants in terms of the use of particular politeness strategies, as well as the frequency and intonation of politeness markers. The re-sults obtained remain largely inconclusive partly due to certain limitations arising from use of the discourse completion task methodology. They nevertheless do provide preliminary evidence, which is, to our mind, worth exploring further, of a close similarity between Maltese English and Maltese in terms of the into-nation that accompanies markers of politeness.
Highlights
For most people, politeness tends to be equivalent to manners and behaviour, but its conception varies across cultures; what is considered polite in one culture may be perceived as rude in another
While a fair amount of research has focused on how EFL learners use politeness in English when compared to native speakers of English, the way in which politeness is expressed in a bilingual setting has received much more limited attention
Politeness used to be regarded as an area of research that is of interest only to linguists specialising in pragmatics
Summary
Politeness tends to be equivalent to manners and behaviour, but its conception varies across cultures; what is considered polite in one culture may be perceived as rude in another. Vella (2012) provides an overview of research on the characteristics of Maltese English which distinguish it from other varieties at various levels of grammar and meaning, as well as pronunciation In the latter case, there is already a fair amount of research which shows that stress, rhythm and — of particular relevance to this paper — intonation, are especially marked. Martina Cremona et al Russian Journal of Linguistics, 2017, 21 (4), 767—788 cusses, there are various perceptions of politeness, which are normally tied to what is considered to be socially acceptable, a behaviour which reflects one’s educational status, an individual’s generosity and kindness towards others or willingness to put others first (‘self-effacing’), and a reflection of a condescending or artificial behaviour. When it comes to linguistic politeness, he notes that it is a term employed, most of the time, to refer to the use of appropriate titles when addressing someone, as well as to the use of certain politeness markers like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, or to the avoidance of being direct in speech
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