Pragmatic Approaches (Im)politeness

Abstract

This chapter elaborates on how concepts and theories from linguistic pragmatics (notably, speech act theory and conversational implicature) have shaped early politeness theories. It critically examines key politeness notions (e.g. face threatening acts; politeness principles, maxims and implicatures; politeness strategies; indirectness), highlighting how their linguistic pragmatic underpinnings led to specific problems, yet also how developments in pragmatics (e.g. Neo-Gricean pragmatics, Relevance theory) have promoted positive developments in politeness research (e.g. the frame-based approach to politeness; the various proposals for strengthening and extending Grice’s account of implicature in the context of politeness). The chapter concludes by noting how recent pragmatics researchers have taken a renewed interest in (Im)politeness phenomena because of what they can contribute to experimental and formal pragmatics research.