Notions Of Politeness Research Articles

The Pragmatic Uses of Auxiliary Verbs Can, Could, Will and Would for Communicative Purpose

The focus of this study is to explore the pragmatic considerations in the study of English as a foreign language in Indonesia. In Indonesia, English is taught in a 'traditional way; i.e. the emphasis is placed on linguistic competence' (Saunders, 1991:84). After years of study, many Indonesian learners still find it difficult to communicate in English. Those who can use the language to communicate with native speakers of English find difficulty in adjusting themselves with the cultures of the English speaking communities, which are not officially learned. Language planners and learners of English in Indonesia do not seem to realise that “human communication is strongly related to cultural backgrounds of the communicator and his audience'” (Sitaram and Cogdell, 1976:1), and that “language is inextricably linked with its culture” (de Young, 1986:21). Brown (1980:129) puts the relationship between culture and language learning more strongly by saying that second language learning is often culture learning. Cultural understanding of the target language should be included in the learning of English in Indonesia. Similarly the culture of Indonesian learners should also be adequately addressed to see how it differs from that of the English speaking communities. There are various definitions of culture. Brown (1980:122) defines culture as “a way of life, the context within which we exist, think, feel and relate to others”. It is the glue that binds a group of people together. Other writers, Harding and Riley (1986:42) argue that “culture, the way of life of the society in which we grow up influences our habits, our customs, the way we dress and eat, our beliefs and values, our ideas and feelings, our notions of politeness and beauty”.

In-directness and Politeness in American English and Saudi Arabic Requests: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

This article examines the notions of (in)directness and politeness in the speech act of requests among Saudi Arabic native speakers as compared to American English native speakers. To elicit data on the requestive strategies that the two groups employed, a randomly chosen group of 30 Saudi and American undergraduate students were given a discourse completion test that consisted of twelve written context-enriched situations. The results revealed that conventional indirectness was the most prevailing strategy employed by the American sample. On the other hand, the Saudi sample varied their request strategies depending on the social variables of power and distance. The results also showed that the level of directness differed cross-culturally. American students used direct requests when addressing their friends on the condition that the request was not weighty; however, directness was the most preferred strategy among Saudi students in intimate situations where directness is interpreted as an expression of affiliation, closeness and group-connectedness rather than impoliteness.

Chinese politeness is not about ‘face’: Evidence from the business world

Through reviewing the historical development of the English term face and the Chinese terms mianzi and lian, and drawing upon examples of the use of the terms mianzi and lian in the business domain in mainland China and explanations of negotiations in which the author has been personally involved, this paper argues that mianzi and lian (and by reference 'face') are not sub-concepts lying essentially at the heart of Chinese politeness, but separate concepts which, while overlapping with politeness in some instances, frequently operate in ways which are entirely removed from any accepted notions of politeness. In this way, this paper claims that concern for mianzi and lian in Chinese business interaction is just as likely to engender acts of impoliteness as it is to link with examples of politeness, and concludes that the sooner we accept the disassociation between Chinese 'face' and politeness, the more we will find ourselves better placed to understand crucial nuances of cross-cultural interaction between Chinese and non-Chinese interactants.

Honorifics, “politeness,” and power in Japanese political debate

This paper analyzes the use of honorific forms in televised Japanese political debates. Data are six taped episodes of the Sunday debate show, Nichiyō Tōron, where representatives of Japan's main political parties discuss current issues. Although in Japanese, honorifics are powerfully linked to notions of linguistic politeness, a detailed analysis of a subset of interactions in these data illustrate how a powerful political performance is achieved using honorific forms to engage opponents in ways very different from the normatively or strategically polite, offering insight into how speakers negotiate “politeness” to interlocutors while simultaneously striving to negate their interlocutor's points. Although debate participants are not necessarily striving to be polite to each other, conditions of public debate require them to seem to be striving toward that end. Public debates are, however, performances to a viewing public and debaters need to win their point and overtly argue against those of their interlocutors. Honorifics are seen in these data to serve as a multiply indexical set of forms, strategically used simultaneously to serve several different ends, rather than a static set of forms linked solely to politeness, as they have generally been treated in politeness theory ( Brown and Levinson, 1978) or the counterpart theory of wakimae ‘social convention’ ( Ide, 2006).

Language Between Bodies: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Linguistic Politeness in American Sign Language

This article proposes an answer to the primary question of how the American Sign Language (ASL) community in the United States conceptualizes (im)politeness and its related notions. It begins with a review of evolving theoretical issues in research on (im)politeness and related methodological problems with studying (im)politeness in natural signed-language interaction. Because human conceptual systems of abstract notions such as (im)politeness employ cognitive metaphorical mappings and because ASL has strong iconic devices at its disposal, this article reports the results of applying the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987, 1993; Wilcox 2000; Taub 2001; see also Steen 2007 and Steen et al. 2010) to an analysis of ethnographically collected linguistic data. Because conceptualizations of (im)politeness are better understood as part of a broader system of conceptual domains, this article provides a survey of metaphorical (as well as metonymical and image schematic) mappings and their respective linguistic expressions, which constitute ASL's (im)politeness-related system of domains. Also included is a discussion of how this methodological and analytical approach may advance theoretical notions of (im)politeness.

The Translation of Sex-Related Language: The Danger(s) of Self-Censorship(s)1

While censorship is an external constraint on what we can publish or (re)write, self-censorship is an individual ethical struggle between self and context. In all historical circumstances, translators tend to produce rewritings which are ‘acceptable’ from both social and personal perspectives. The translation of swearwords and sex-related language is a case in point, which very often depends on historical and political circumstances, and is also an area of personal struggle, of ethical/moral dissent, of religious/ideological controversies. In this paper we analyse the translation of the lexeme fuck into Spanish and Catalan. We have chosen two novels by Helen Fielding—Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999)—and the translations into the languages mentioned. Fielding’s acclaimed first novel has given rise to a distinctive genre of popular fiction (chick lit), which is mainly addressed to young cosmopolitan women and deals unconventionally with love and sex(uality). Historically, sex-related language has been a highly sensitive area; if today, in Western countries at least, we cannot defend any form of public censorship, what we cannot prevent (nor probably should we) is a certain degree of self-censorship, along the lines of an individual ethics and attitude towards religion, sex(uality), notions of (im)politeness or (in)decency, etc. Translating is always a struggle to reach a compromise between one’s ethics and society’s multiple constraints—and nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the rewriting(s) of sex-related language.

The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland & America by Richard B. Sher

229 the salon and the home were also scientific spaces—indeed the only ones available to her as a woman when excluded from the male-dominated science academies. Other examples are Marie Paulze and Laura Bassi. Mary Somerville demonstrates how the acquisition of astronomy and geography in the home was bound up with Enlightenment notions of sociability and politeness. He also briefly takes into account Enlightenment in the Greek-speaking regions of Europe and in Spain and Portugal. This dismisses a predominant idea of an active Western center and a passive Balkan-Greek margin. Mr. Withers’s interpretation of the Enlightenment as a ‘‘cosmopolitan Republic of Letters’’ is particularly rewarding . He proposes the notion of ‘‘book geography’’—a spatial counterpart to book history—as a vehicle through which to explore the translation and reception of Enlightenment knowledge. It was not characterized by transparent mediation of ideas and smooth correspondence between thinkers; ideas were lost in translation or changed in transit, and therefore translation did not necessarily equate to their reception. For example , the Scots philosophers (Hume, Smith, Reid, Ferguson, and Millar) ‘‘left’’ Scotland in German translation and ‘‘arrived’’ transformed in the German cities, because the ‘‘Enlightenment prompted by these men’s books did not arrive at the same time.’’ Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, Mr. Withers notes, did not appear in German until 1790–91. Voltaire’s reception differed widely in central Europe and Ireland . Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Withers convincingly demonstrates that the Enlightenment must be understood in terms of multiplicity and mobility as ideas traveled in time and, significantly, in space: ‘‘Where you were as well as who you were mattered in terms of when and how you got to know of others ’ work.’’ Lise Sorensen University of Edinburgh RICHARD B. SHER. The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain , Ireland & America. Chicago and London: Chicago, 2006. Pp. xxvi ⫹ 815. $40. In his introductory chapter, Mr. Sher rightly points out that ‘‘the book history of the Enlightenment, especially the English-language Enlightenment, remains a story waiting to be told.’’ This important book ‘‘put forth into the world’’ (to paraphrase from Johnson’s Dictionary definition of ‘‘publisher’’) tells a significant part of that story in a comprehensive and definitive way. Seeing the Enlightenment ‘‘as a grand symphony with multiple variations,’’ it explores the ‘‘intricate, complex, expansive , and intimidating’’ nature of eighteenth -century book publishing, ‘‘a negotiated , collaborative, often contested activity that occurred within the economic , technological, legal, and intellectual contexts of the day.’’ Casting eighteenth-century British, Irish, and American publishers of Scottish books as leading agents in this drama, he carries on debates with, among others, Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, Michel Foucault, and Roy Porter. Part I explores the authors of the Scottish Enlightenment. Mr. Sher shows that Scots had become players in the Enlightenment world by the midpoint of the eighteenth century, that eighteenthcentury English men of letters were not always happy about that fact, and that 230 modern historians—such as Porter—are mistaken to fold the Scottish Enlightenment into its English counterpart. Particular attention is given to seminal authors —such as Hume, Hutcheson, and Smollett—but Mr. Sher extends the range to figures who have not always been considered part of the Scottish Enlightenment movement. His core list of 115 authors is reproduced in the form of a table in the book’s Appendix. Another table, ‘‘British, Irish, and American First Editions of Scottish Enlightenment Books, 1746–1800,’’ lists details for their 360 books. Assessing the identity of Scottish Enlightenment authors as a whole (in part by reference to ‘‘paratextual ’’ sources of evidence often overlooked by historians of texts), Mr. Sher argues that the tone of the Scottish Enlightenment was ‘‘stable, scholarly, and sociable.’’ He demonstrates the central importance of the booming book culture of Edinburgh. As he puts it, ‘‘[i]t may not be too much to say that the Scots transformed the ‘business of Enlightenment ’ into the ‘big business of Enlightenment .’’’ Part II connects these Scottish authors to their publishers in the ‘‘LondonEdinburgh Publishing Axis.’’ Significant attention goes to Andrew Millar, about whom Mr. Sher concludes: ‘‘it will never be known how many Scots he inspired to become authors, or...

Selling (Through) Politeness

ABSTRACTDrawing on a survey of newspaper advertisements and trade cards from the Midlands and north-west England, this article examines the ways in which eighteenth-century advertisements helped to spread notions of politeness. It argues that advertisements were structured by and drew upon the conventions, norms and language of politeness to sell goods and promote shops. At the same time they helped to reproduce and communicate these ideas to a wider public. This had both material and conceptual dimensions: advertisements sold ‘polite’ goods and a ‘polite’ lifestyle, but they were also representations of politeness, signifying its ideals to a burgeoning middle class.

The co-constitution of politeness implicature in conversation

The notions of politeness and implicature are key concepts in the field of pragmatics, yet while there have been numerous studies on politeness and implicature phenomena in various languages, there has been much less attention paid to the intersection between politeness and implicature. The notion of ‘politeness implicature,’ which refers to instances where by virtue of implying something politeness arises, is thus introduced in order to further our understanding of politeness, implicature, and their intersection. An analysis of the ways in which ‘politeness implicatures’ arise in conversation indicates that they are not simply indirect meanings arising from recognition of speaker intentions by hearers, but rather arise from joint, collaborative interaction between speakers and hearers. It is thus proposed that an account which proceeds from the assumption that emergence or interactional achievement is a key characteristic of communication, namely the Conjoint Co-Constituting Model of Communication [Arundale, Robert, 1999. An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory. Pragmatics 9, 119–154; Arundale, Robert, 2005. Pragmatics, conversational implicature, and conversation. In: Fitch, Kristine, Sanders, Robert (Eds.), Handbook of Language and Social Interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 41–63], is better placed to account for the way in which ‘politeness implicatures’ are anticipated or inferred from the situation as a whole in conversation.

Early modern stereotypes and the rise of English: Jonson, Dryden, Arnold, Eliot

Stereotyping is a mode of stigmatisation and polarisation, and so we tend to think of the stereotype as a deadening force which closes down conversation. But we need to appreciate further the extent to which the transmission of stereotypes can facilitate and shape creative cultural response, even if that response is designed to simplify and satirise in the service of an ideological imperative. The stereotype of the Puritan as ignoramus in Ben Jonson's seventeenth‐century comedies reappears in, and helps to structure, aesthetic discussions over three centuries, beginning with Dryden's post‐Restoration literary criticism. These discussions were central to the generation of a dominant narrative of English literary history, to the development of notions of literary refinement and politeness and to the construction of a literary canon. Incorporated by Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot into their versions of literary history ‐ versions which were themselves a response to what Arnold and Eliot perceived as the cultural crises of their own time ‐ early modern dramatic stereotypes became naturalised in university courses and school textbooks. Ultimately, this essay suggests, the transmission of the early modern stereotype of the Puritan was bound up with the rise of English as an academic discipline.

Politeness (review)

Reviewed by: Politeness by Richard J. Watts Maria Sifianou Politeness. By Richard J. Watts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv, 304. ISBN 0521794064. $27.99. Richard Watts starts his preface by stating that ‘writing an introduction to politeness is like being in mortal combat with a many-headed hydra. You’ve barely severed one head when a few more grow in its place’ (xi). The same applies to reviewing this book, which is authored by one of the most prolific writers, editors, and reviewers in the area of politeness. Research on politeness has had an incredible expansion, especially since Brown and Levinson’s (1978) monograph, and continues burgeoning at a fast pace (see e.g. Holmes & Stubbe 2003, Mills 2003, Caffi 2007, Hickey & Stewart 2005, not to mention a number of related recent articles and even the new Journal of Politeness Research). This proliferation indicates, on the one hand, the researchers’ enthusiasm for the issue and, on the other, their apparent conviction that there is still something missing from this extensive body of literature. For W, an important missing aspect is an account of the social, historical, and political conditions that shape the formation and use of language (Eelen 2001:257). In Ch. 1, W sets the scene and argues that participants in interactions are constantly involved in a discursive struggle over the value of the term politeness. This struggle should be ‘the central focus of a theory of politeness’ rather than social scientists’ theoretical construct (9). He thus endorses an earlier distinction between first- and second-order politeness (Watts et al. 1992:3) and argues that ‘investigating first-order politeness is the only valid means of developing a social theory of politeness’ (9). Noting the difficulty of distinguishing between the two, he adopts his earlier notion of ‘politic behaviour’ (Watts 1989). This is behavior that, although sometimes in excess of what is needed (like politeness), is not salient (unlike politeness), being entailed by the institutionalized discursive format of the specific interaction (19). He then explores the terms polite and politeness to show that not only is the lay understanding of these terms culturally varied but also their meanings are constantly renegotiated in social interactions throughout history. For W (20), all social interactions are enactments and reproductions of previous similar ones but are also open to discursive negotiation, which may provoke the reconstruction of the institutionalized format. [End Page 665] In Ch. 2, W reprises the distinction between lay notions of politeness and theoretical constructs of it, highlighting the unjustified omission of impoliteness from most accounts. He defines ‘politic behaviour’ as ‘mutually shared forms of consideration for others’, ‘polite behaviour’ as ‘an observable “addition”’ to the first, and ‘impoliteness’ as ‘an observable violation of politic behaviour’ (30; see Xie et al. 2005 for an appraisal of these concepts). He then probes the evolution of the lay concept of politeness from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century and traces the semantic transformation and the ideological underpinnings of the concepts used and the etymological connections of related terms. He shows the cultural and historical relativity of the conceptualization of politeness as mutual consideration for others and concludes with an interesting account of the links between the ideology of politeness in eighteenth-century Britain and the development of Standard English. Ch. 3 reviews the best-known approaches to linguistic politeness and deals with criticisms expressed. W refutes the tendency of all these approaches to objectify the concept of politeness since doing so ignores the discursive nature of the concept along with the individual involved in interactions. He rightly notes that definitions of politeness are rare and prescriptive, constituting attempts at defining first- rather than second-order politeness. Ch. 4 focuses on major criticisms of Brown and Levinson’s theory. The author argues that the strategies represented in this theory constitute facework rather than politeness (Bargiela-Chiappini 2003) and that their manifestations are not inherently polite but may acquire a politeness index in situated discourse. His main argument is that politeness phenomena should be embedded in a social theory which is largely missing from previous models (Robin Lakoff, Geoffrey Leech). Brown and Levinson are also criticized, despite having placed their model within the...

Managing adversarial questioning in broadcast interviews

This paper considers the notion of impoliteness through a detailed analysis of questioning and answering in confrontational television interviews. The paper first discusses the notions of politeness and impoliteness in discourse on the basis of previous research, paying particular attention to work generated by Brown and Levinson’s model (e. g., Culpeper 1996; Harris 2001) and recent critiques and alternatives to the dominant ‘paradigm’ (e. g., Arundale 1999; Eelen 2001; Watts 2003). The second part of the paper offers a close analysis of some resources through which participants manage adversarial questioning in television interviews. The analysis focuses on (i) the micro-level practices through which interviewers build question turns so that they impose particular agendas, carry damaging implications, or serve as vehicles of accusation and (ii) practices of answering through which interviewees address the implications of questions and resist the IR’s attempts to control the topical agenda of the interview. The analysis calls into question the usefulness of the notion of impoliteness for the analysis of confrontational discourse. The paper argues that if politeness research seeks to describe how utterances and interpretations are generated in interaction, empirical investigations in this field should be based on premises that are consistent with work in conversation analysis.

POLITENESS AND WHIGGISM, 1688–1732

This article re-examines the role of civility and politeness in the writings of whig authors from 1688 to 1732. It argues that politeness was not an exclusively whig concept. Nor was there any unanimity amongst the whigs about its meaning. Politeness was a hotly debated topic in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but differences in its interpretations did not follow party lines. The notions of politeness formulated by whig authors after 1688 differed from each other as much as they differed from those framed by non-whigs. The article also reconsiders the account that the whig theorists used their analysis of politeness to defend the commercial values of post-1688 England and Britain. Again, there was no agreement on this amongst the whigs. Some of them explicitly denied the putative link between commerce and politeness, some of them were not interested in it, and even those who argued for it still interpreted politeness in its traditional courtly terms rather than in post-courtly urban terms.

Greek Cultural Characteristics and Academic Writing

Cross-cultural research has shown that cultural values are discernible in the rhetoric of academic authors. Cultural characteristics—such as uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism/collectivism (Hofstede 1980)—define relations of power and solidarity among individuals, their notions of politeness and appropriate social behavior, as well as their persuasive styles, affecting the ways authors express their claims and build up their arguments in academic texts. These factors (together with audience and purpose of genre and degree of an author's socialization in the academic community) affect the writing style of Greek authors as it is revealed by the analysis of Research Articles (RAs) and samples of students' writing (assignments, dissertations and theses) in the fields of Electronic, Electrical, and Chemical engineering. The analysis shows that the rhetorical behavior of Greek expert engineers and student engineers has both similarities and differences. Common points include the projection of an authoritative expert persona in their writing, the expression of great certainty and conviction in their claims, and references to the body of shared knowledge. These are shown to be the result of the high uncertainty avoidance, high power distance, collective values, and solidarity orientation that characterize Greek society. The differences are attributed to the conventions of the genre in which the authors are writing and their degree of enculturation in the academic community.

Geographia's pen: writing, geography and the arts of commerce, 1660–1760

This paper contributes to the understanding of geography and geographical knowledge in 18th-century Britain by exploring its affiliations with the craft of ‘penmanship’. The connections between geography and writing are demonstrated by exploring the words and images used by the engraver George Bickham in a series of works which were both geographical descriptions and manuals (or copy-books) which instructed their readers in particular forms of script. To understand these affiliations, the works of Bickham and other writing masters such as John Ayres, Charles Snell and Joseph Champion are explored in detail. This demonstrates the implication of the teaching of writing in the world of commerce in terms of the practice of the writing masters themselves, the audience for their work and the legitimation that they sought. The anxieties that writing for money raised—over honour, credit and gender—are shown to have been negotiated through notions of politeness which reconciled commerce and virtue through the ideals and norms of polite conversation, bodily deportment and improvement. These are argued to have shaped both the image of Geographia used by Bickham and his political deployment of geographical knowledge in the 1740s. More broadly, the paper argues for attention to the techniques and technologies of writing in the making of geographical knowledge.

Gender, politeness and institutional power roles: Humour as a tactic to gain compliance in workplace business meetings

This paper examines the complex relationship between gender, politeness and institutional power roles by focusing on how meeting chairs utilise the linguistic practice of humour in their attempts to gain the compliance of subordinates in managerial business meetings. Following recent work in language and gender studies, Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness model is rejected in favour of a communities of practice approach to conceptualising notions of linguistic politeness (Mills 2002). Data are analysed from six managerial business meetings taken from two ethnographic case studies of businesses based in the UK Following Holmes (2000: 175), the notion of 'repressive humour' as a strategy of linguistic politeness is adopted, whereby those who are enacting power disguise the oppressive intent of their message by minimising the status differences between themselves and their subordinates, a strategy that has resulted from the 'conversationalisation' of public discourse (Fairclough 1992). There is clear evidence of the female chairs using the tactic of repressive humour as a mitigation strategy to attempt to gain the compliance of their subordinates, and this disproves the dominant stereotype that women lack a sense of humour in workplace interaction (cf. Holmes et al. 2001). However, there is no evidence of the male chairs adopting this strategy. Whilst this finding indicates evidence of gender patterning, this is not to suggest that the female chairs are being more linguistically polite than their male counterparts, as would be predicted by previous language and gender studies (Holmes 1995). In all of their attempts to gain compliance, whilst male chairs do not use repressive humour, they do use a variety of mitigation strategies to ensure that their attempts to gain compliance are not issued in a bald, unmitigated manner. The study demonstrates the need for more small-scale, context-specific investigations of gender, politeness and power to take place, as well as h

Revisiting the conceptualisation of politeness in English and Japanese

The issue of what in fact constitutes politeness remains a source of considerable debate amongst researchers. There is mounting evidence that although there may be common underlying elements, politeness is conceptualised differently across cultures. A comparison of the notions of politeness in English and teinei, reigi tadashii and keii hyoogen in Japanese indicates that these respective terms encompass somewhat different conceptual ranges. Politeness in English refers to showing consideration for others and demonstrating a polished self-presentation. In Japanese, on the other hand, it encompasses showing respect (with a strong nuance of vertical respect involved) and consideration towards the position and quality of character of others, and modesty about oneself While politeness in both English and Japanese involves showing one thinks well of others (other-oriented politeness) and showing one does not think too highly of oneself (self-oriented politeness), differences in the underlying conceptualisation of politeness give rise to different ways of expressing politeness. It is thus difficult to maintain the assumption that politeness can be defined in the same way across different cultures, although this does not necessarily preclude the identification of common elements of politeness across cultures. © Walter de Gruyter.

Brunei Culture, English Language: Textual Reflections of an Asian Culture Located in the English-Language Output of Bruneians

This paper uses an insider-outsider approach to identify and analyse some syntactic, lexical and discoursal features of English texts produced by Bruneians, in order to investigate how Bruneian users of English seek to maintain their own cultural identity when communicating through this “global” language. Sections of the paper discuss anaphoric and exophoric reference, tense choice and avoidance, collocations and style-shifts, and how texts, specifically letters to newspaper editors, are structured in terms of their informational content. The theoretical underpinning for this paper includes notions of politeness and face, the ownership of English, and approaches to the discourses of English as an international language and the “worldliness of English” adopted by Pennycook (1994). The validity of the notion of discourse transfer is critically examined in the conclusion.

Politeness and indirectness revisited

This article describes a study undertaken to investigate whether the notions of politeness and indirectness are considered related in requests formulated by native and non-native speakers. The request data were collected from two groups of speakers, namely: 100 Luganda and 100 Luganda English university students. For data collection, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) questionnaire was designed to elicit from the respondents a speech act response in the form of a request. Using the nine point directness and politeness scales adopted from Blum-Kulka's 1987 study, respondents were asked to rate the responses from the DCTs in terms of directness and politeness. Results indicated that indirectness does not necessarily communicate politeness in Luganda. These findings are in line with Blum-Kulka's (1987) claim that in contrast to the contemporary theories of politeness, indirectness as perceived by Hebrew speakers does not indicate politeness.

Negation in Spanish and English suggestions and requests: Mitigating effects?

Negation in speech acts has been identified in past studies as an element that can be used to mitigate the effect of an utterance. The objective of this study is to examine the use of negation in requests and suggestions, principally using data from Spanish and English. It is shown that negation does not always serve to communicate politeness or mitigation in all speech acts, and in fact, may have the opposite effect. The notions of positive and negative politeness posited by Brown and Levinson (1987) do account for many uses of negation in suggestions, and in fact, shed light on the nature of interrogative suggestions in general. They do not apply as easily to requests, however, in that they do not account for differences in force created by the negative in both languages. The data are also examined in terms of what they reveal about the mitigation of suggestions and requests through implicature.