A new critique of the binary first- and second-order distinction in politeness research

Abstract

In this paper, we revisit the renowned binary distinction between the first- and second-order perspectives on politeness through an approach that combines speech acts with interaction. We challenge the long-held assumption that speech acts are ‘artificial’, providing a mere ‘second-order’ perspective on politeness. As an alternative, we propose an approach through which one can study speech act realisation and pragmatic phenomena such as politeness in interaction. We present a case study, in which we analyse an interaction featuring a clash between an animal rights protester and the organisers of a children's party where animals are on display. We explore how politeness and related pragmatic phenomena such as moral order can be captured through the lens of speech acts embedded in interactional moves. This analysis is followed by a contrastive discourse analytic study, which again represents an ‘in-between’ of first- and second-order analyses. We conclude that the binary first- and second-order distinction in politeness research is not only problematic because it is too simplistic to capture the whole cluster of perspectives relevant for politeness, but also because it leads to an overly simplified methodological divide.