Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties of New Zealand English

Abstract

Many aspects of New Zealand English (NZE) have been well described, especially the distinctive vocabulary, phonology, and some syntactic differences in relation to other varieties of English. Building on earlier research describing pragmatic features of NZE, and identifying ways in which politeness is expressed in New Zealand (NZ) workplace talk, this paper extends the socio-pragmatic analysis of NZE in several ways. Using the theoretical model that we have developed to analyse workplace interaction, we adopt an emic approach, focussing on intercultural interactions between Māori and Pākehā, and data from both Māori and Pākehā workplaces to throw light on distinctive features of politeness in NZE workplace discourse. With this goal, we examine the important value of egalitarianism in NZ society, and explore its pervasive influence on the ways in which politeness is interactionally achieved in different NZ communities of practice. We then discuss how this relates to the stylistic dimension of formality, exemplifying some distinctively NZ ways in which formality and informality are indexed in workplace interaction. The analysis illustrates how these influences are manifest in a number of specific aspects of workplace interaction, including small talk, humour, meeting protocols, and in the extension of the distinctive pragmatic particle eh to new domains.