Politeness processing as situated social cognition: A RT-theoretic account

Abstract

That Relevance Theory (RT) is capable in principle of explaining social or interpersonal dimensions of verbal communication has been adequately documented in the literature (as partly summarized in Wilson and Sperber, 2005). Of all the available attempts at applying the theory in this direction, the most discussed issue is perhaps politeness. Major studies along this line include Escandell-Vidal (1996, 1998), Jary (1998a), Watts (1989, 2003), Christie (2007) and Ruhi (2008). Admittedly, these studies have advanced our understanding of how politeness is processed in the course of communication, but some new issues have arisen, mainly including (i) whether the use of conventional polite forms relative to their default contexts is communicatively relevant or not; (ii) what politeness is taken to be – social adequacy, means of maintaining or improving social relations, or perlocutionary effect; (iii) whether politeness interpretation relies on the recognition of speakers’ intention or not; (iv) how frames, schemata, etc. are activated in the course of politeness interpretation such that the same utterance might be assigned different interpretations, polite, neutral, or impolite; and (v) whether the communication of politeness is an individual-based social act or a joint action. These issues make it necessary to continue the discussion further. Accordingly, my aim in this study is to propose a new account of how RT might be employed to more fully explain the phenomenon of politeness. Drawing on the fundamental assumptions of RT, together with some pertinent insights on situated social cognition (Langlotz, 2010), I explore the cognitive processing of politeness in three major types of case: the situated use of conventional polite forms, contents, and associations. Approaching politeness in relevance-theoretic terms, I will argue that (i) politeness processing is a matter of situated social cognition, involving interaction between assumptions derived from various sources in a dynamic context; (ii) situated social cognition of polite behavior as a joint act which may be conscious to varying degrees is relevance-oriented; and (iii) processing different manifestations of politeness in dynamic contexts is communicatively relevant in that it yields interpersonal cognitive effects as part and parcel of utterance meaning.