Developmental perspectives on politeness:: Sources of children's knowledge

Abstract

The question addressed in this paper is how children come to understand the three dimensions of social distance, power, and degree of imposition that control the use of politeness forms. Parent-child interactions in 110 families drawn from four different sources were analyzed to determine relative frequency of use of standard politeness forms (please, thank, excuse), and to explore the conditions under which such forms are used by parents to children. Although no robust social class differences in frequency of politeness form use were found, mothers used approximately twice as many politeness forms in addressing developmentally delayed (Down Syndrome) children as normally developing children. Requests to children to observe the basic rules of family interaction were relatively direct and unmitigated, sometimes even aggravated. Parents did, however, address children's positive and negative face needs when requesting favors of them, or when requesting or prohibiting activities that fell outside the realm of minimal civilized behavior. Although we found very few instances in which children received direct instruction about how the politeness system works, ample information about the rules governing the use of both positive and negative politeness strategies is available to children from their interactions with their parents.