Politeness and Language

Abstract

This article assesses the advantages and limitations of three different approaches to the analysis of politeness in language: politeness as social rules, politeness as adherence to an expanded set of Gricean Maxims, and politeness as strategic attention to ‘face.’ It argues that only the last can account for the observable commonalities in polite expressions across diverse languages and cultures, and positions the analysis of politeness as strategic attention to face in the modern context of attention to the evolutionary origins and nature of human cooperation. What Is Politeness? If, as many have claimed, language is the trait that most radically distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species, politeness is the feature of language use that most clearly reveals the nature of human sociality as expressed in speech. Politeness is essentially a matter of taking into account the feelings of others as to how they should be interactionally treated, including behaving in a manner that demonstrates appropriate concern for interactors’ social status and their social relationship. Politeness – in this broad sense of speech oriented to an interactor’s public persona or ‘face ’– is ubiquitous in language use. Since, on the whole, taking account of people’s feelings means saying and doing things in a less straightforward or more elaborate manner than when one is not taking such feelings into consideration, ways of being polite provide probably the most pervasive source of indirectness, reasons for not saying exactly what one means, in how people frame their communicative intentions in formulating their utterances. There are two quite different kinds of feelings to be attended to, and therefore there are two distinct kinds of politeness. One kind arises whenever what is about to be said may be unwelcome, prompting expressions of respect, restraint, avoidance (‘negative politeness’). Another arises from the fact that longterm relationships with people can be important in taking their feelings into account, prompting expressions of social closeness, caring, and approval (‘positive politeness’). There are many folk notions for these kinds of attention to feelings – including courtesy, tact, deference, demeanor, sensibility, poise, discernment, rapport, mannerliness, urbanity, as well as for the contrasting behavior – rudeness, gaucheness, social gaffes, and for their consequences – embarrassment, humiliation. Such terms label culture-specific notions invested with social importance, and attest both to the pervasiveness of notions of politeness and to their cultural framing.