Politeness Markers Research Articles

Realizing Politeness via Impoliteness: The Use of “akhs” as a Positive Politeness Marker in Karaki Arabic

This study is aimed at examining the contextually variable meanings of the word akhs in Karaki[i] Arabic. The data of the study, which is based on authentic situations where the researcher was involved, was analyzed within the domain of politeness theory. Besides its main use as a swear word and as an abusive form of language that threatens the negative face of the addressee, akhs was found to be used as a tool to achieve relational work and politeness among associates and relatives. The usage of akhs as a positive signal of politeness was also found to be largely dependent on the dialogue parties' degree of familiarity, common background, and contextual features. Akhs could be used in some contexts as a tool to express camaraderie and as a device to evoke enthusiasm in the addressee, highlighting social solidarity and closeness and maintaining the social ties among friends and relatives. Keywords: Politeness, Familiarity, Relational work, Swear words, Social solidarity.

Gendered Communication in Higher Education: Analyzing Politeness Patterns in a Coeducational Setting

This paper presents a study conducted at the University of Wah, Pakistan, which investigates the use of politeness markers and strategies by male and female students within the coeducation system. Employing qualitative method, the research analyzes recorded discourses of undergraduate students to explore potential gender differences in linguistic politeness. The study's main focus is to determine whether the coeducation environment influences students' linguistic politeness. Utilizing the politeness theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), the research involved 60 participants using a stratified sampling technique. The comparative analysis of three gender groups – males-only discourse, females-only discourse, and mixed gender group discourse - revealed that the mixed gender group demonstrated a higher usage of politeness markers and employed more strategies to save face for their interlocutors. Based on these findings, the study concludes that coeducation positively impacts linguistic politeness among university students

17 Studying the Use of Politeness in Employment Specific Scenarios in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Objective:Employment is crucial in the lives of adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as gainful occupational activity creates opportunities to form meaningful social relationships, participate in community life, and become financially independent. Impairments in pragmatic language skills (i.e., use of language to achieve social goals) negatively impact the ability to make and maintain cooperative work relationships with employers and coworkers, which are critical aspects of employment. A specific pragmatic skill key to workplace communication includes using a suitable degree of politeness, loosely defined as demonstrating the appreciation of the thoughts and feelings of your listener. Politeness can be measured with politeness markers (PMs). Appropriate PM use promotes positive, cooperative relationships. There are two main categories of PMs: positive and negative PMs. Positive PMs express appreciation or praise to the listener. Negative PMs avoid conflict and marks consideration of the thoughts and feelings of the listener. Crucially, negative PMs require more monitoring of social boundaries as they require consideration of the conversational partner’s potential reactions to statements and their emotional states. This makes PMs a novel new approach to evaluating speech in persons with ASD. Because PMs serve a purely social function in language, they include non-tangible words, such as would, could, may, or might. The current study explores the utility of an employment-specific social communication assessment tool, the Voicemail Elicitation Task (VET), in persons with ASD. The VET has proven sensitive to identifying social communication deficits in persons with traumatic brain injury.Participants and Methods:The current cohort comparative study included a sample of young adults with ASD (n=22) and neurotypical controls (NTC; n=10). All participants were given the VET, which utilizes a standardized computerized language sampling procedure that assesses politeness markers (PMs) in work-related role-play scenarios. The outcome measure of the VET is PMs per minute (PMpM) which is obtained by dividing the sum of PMs by the speaking time (in minutes). Higher PMpM indicates higher PM use (more politeness), while lower PMpM indicates lower PM use (less politeness).Results:The preliminary results indicated a significantly lower total PMpM in ASD participants (mean: 13.68 SD: 6.28) compared to NTCs (mean 18.72, SD: 3.65), p = 0.026. Post hoc analysis indicated that the differences in groups were driven by significantly lower negative PMs rates used by the ASD group (mean 9.18, SD: 5.77) compared to NTCs (mean: 16.30, SD: 7.78), p = 0.002, while both groups were similar in their mean level of positive PMs use, p = 0.442.Conclusions:This study represents an important step toward validating the VET for use in ASD, which will improve the capacity of the field to address unemployment in this population. The results of the current study indicate that individuals with ASD show deficits in PM use which could impact their interpersonal relationships within the workplace environment. Designing interventions to target these deficits could help provide better employment outcomes for this population.

초등 예비교사들의 영어 화용에 대한 인식

This study investigates the extent of pragmatic awareness in English of primary
 pre-service teachers. It addresses two research questions. First, do Korean learners of
 English exhibit a marked discrepancy between grammatical awareness and pragmatic
 awareness? Second, if they are less aware of pragmatic violations than grammatical
 errors, how does this manifest in their speech act strategies? To answer the first
 question, a written survey on pragmatic awareness was carried out with Korean
 pre-service teachers (N = 28). To address the second question, an acceptability
 judgment task was conducted with another group of Korean pre-service teachers (N
 = 32) and English natives (N = 65). The results showed that Korean pre-service teachers
 were less aware of pragmatic violations than grammatical errors and that their speech
 act strategies deviated from those of English natives. Regarding apology speech acts,
 they tended to use more semantic formulas compared to English natives. Concerning
 request speech acts, they relied on politeness markers rather than the negative politeness
 strategies preferred by the English natives. Finally, the study offers some suggestions
 for enhancing their pragmatic competence.

The gentle craft of saying “No” in Persian and English: A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic slant

Refusals have proven to be problematic since they are the source of so many cross-cultural misunderstandings in that they are face threatening acts, which require that the speaker utilize redress, mitigation or politeness markers. The present study’s goal was to investigate the realization of the speech act of refusal in the Iranians and Americans contexts to identify the similarities and differences. It also explored the effect of social status on the choice of refusal strategies. Two well-known popular family drama film series were selected as the sources of the data. Totally, 455 refusal words, expressions, and utterances were collected from the two series. The collected data was coded using Beebe et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies. Descriptive statistics, Binomial, and Chi-square tests were used to analyze the data. The frequency of the refusal strategies and also the frequency of utilizing these strategies with respect to the interlocutors’ social status were analyzed. The results revealed no statistically significant differences between the two cultures with respect to the prevalence of refusal strategies, shift, and content of semantic formulae used in refusals. However, there were statistically significant differences in the frequency of the two major refusal categories, namely, Direct and Indirect strategies. Furthermore, concerning social status, the differences were statistically significant in the frequency of the refusal strategies utilized by the three social levels as regards the main categories in both cultures. The findings enhance intercultural understanding and provide valuable insights into the realization of refusals in different cultural contexts, the influence of social status, and the implications for intercultural communication. It highlights the significance of pragmatic issues and cultural awareness in promoting effective communication and mutual understanding across cultures, hence, ameliorates mutual cross-cultural communication and warrant teachers and material developers about the significance of pragmatic issues in developing the learners’ communicative competence.

Formulaic Forms of Address as (Im)politeness Markers in Prime Minister’s Questions: Margaret Thatcher Versus Theresa May

Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) is a political discourse genre with a long and distinguished history. Framed by formulaic forms of address, the exchanges follow a set of turn-taking “rules” that has evolved over time. The study presented here examines the (non)use of honorifics and other polite forms intrinsic to PMQs during interactions between two female Prime Ministers and their respective Leaders of the Opposition: Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. From diachronic and gendered perspectives, the study implements a mixed methods framework to address the following research questions: 1) has the use of formal politeness markers decreased over time? 2) Do gender dynamics influence impoliteness strategies in the context of PMQs? 3) In the shift from verbal to written discourse, what diamesic transformations appear in the official parliamentary transcriptions? The self-built corpus includes selected video recordings of PMQs from each of the Prime Ministers’ mandates, and the corresponding official transcripts published online by Hansard. The audiovisual texts were viewed and examined, the speech was manually transcribed, and then compared to Hansard’s version. Initial findings suggest that over time, across genders, and in Hansard’s digital transcripts, the use of politeness forms in PMQ exchanges appears to be diminishing as formulaic expressions are omitted or substituted with pronouns.

Greetings as a Marker of Politeness in Speech for Elementary School Teacher Education Students and the Instilling of Character Values

This study aims to describe the form of greeting as a lingual marker of language politeness in elementary school teacher education study program students and its relationship to character education. The research methodology employed in this study is a qualitative descriptive approach. The dataset utilised in this research comprises WhatsApp conversations exchanged among students pursuing elementary school teacher education at Yogyakarta State University. These messages are analysed to assess the level of language politeness exhibited. The data sources for this research consisted of students enrolled in the Elementary School Teacher Education programme at Yogyakarta State University. The research employed a documentation-based data collection strategy. The aforementioned approach is employed for the purpose of recording WhatsApp chats within the context of elementary school teacher education students at Yogyakarta State University. The method employs a sophisticated approach involving the processes of recording, listening, and note-taking. The data analysis in this research employs the padan method, supplemented by pertinent theories and the agih method. The present study examines the various types of lingual politeness markers employed by students enrolled in the Elementary School Teacher Education programme at Yogyakarta State University. Specifically, the study focuses on three categories of politeness markers: religious greeting politeness markers, tribal politeness markers, and universal greeting politeness markers. This shows that the results of this study can be used as a basis in the preparation and development of teaching materials in character education.

Discourse-pragmatic functions of wellah and wellahi in spoken Kurdish

This study explores the discourse-pragmatic functions of the lexical items wellah and wellahi by twenty-four Iraqi Kurdish-speaking adults (24 first and fourth-year undergraduate students). All the participants studied in the English department at the University of Raparin in Kurdistan. As a qualitative research, Brinton’s (1996) binary classification is adopted as a theoretical framework in defining the functions wellah and wellahi have at the textual and interpersonal levels. Using empirical data, five individual functions related to the use of wellah and wellahi: including three textual functions (elaboration, filler and; topic shift) and two interpersonal ones (response marker [politeness marker] and confirmation marker) are demonstrated. Throughout, the findings link to those identified in previous Arabic studies. The data analysis demonstrates that the use of wellahi in Kurdish is similar to its use in Arabic. In addition, the current study indicates that both wellah and wellahi function as discourse markers interchangeably in most of the cases. The results suggest that principles of grammaticalisation, such as phonetic-reduction and layering, could explain the development of interchangeability of the discourse markers. This study contributes to our understanding of the pragmatics of Kurdish language, the functions of discourse markers, language variation and grammaticalisation

Bien sûr: Overemphasised agreement as a marker of politeness?

La contribution s’interrogera sur le rapport entre le marqueur de discours bien sûr et l’expression de la politesse linguistique à partir du concept goffmanien de « face » et les modèles théoriques développés par Brown / Levinson et Kerbrat-Orecchioni. Après l’analyse morphologique et sémantique de la locution, puis une mise en lumière des liens entre surjeu discursif et politesse marquée, l’étude se concentrera sur les emplois de bien sûr dans un corpus oral récent en langue française (réunions enseignantes). Les occurrences relèvent aussi bien de la position réactive que de l’usage monologique au service de la concession. Partant du « travail de figuration » à l’œuvre dans ces interactions et du rôle que le marqueur joue dans la relation intersubjective (rapprochement vs. éloignement), il s’agira de déterminer dans quelle mesure bien sûr constitue un procédé de « politesse positive » et / ou « politesse négative ».

Linguistic strategies for professional politeness among aspiring managers: An analysis of organizational psycholinguistics

In order to effectively communicate in a professional setting, it is essential for managers to have a mastery of the language specific to their field. One tool that can be used for professional communication is verbal politeness, which involves using appropriate words and phrases to show respect for the listener and soften unfavourable information. These linguistic units promote a culture of professionalism and ethical business relationships and are a key indicator of a manager's speech competence. A psycholinguistic study examined the usage of polite language by aspiring managers. The participants were 218 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the Management program across various universities in Ukraine's oblasts. The organizational psycholinguistics research aimed to assess the extent to which aspiring managers incorporate professional language units such as polite words and phrases in their speech. We analyzed the references of 1,308 respondents to determine how politeness language units corresponded to the structural parts of the document. By studying 928 selected language units of politeness, we could assess the level of politeness markers. This indicator reflects future managers' skill level in applying synonymous ranges of politeness. The analysis found that respondents used various linguistic units to soften the impact of unfavourable information when conveying it to others. These units formed synonymous ranges based on context and semantic content. Only half of the students showed a wide range of knowledge and skills in appropriately using polite language. Thus, aspiring managers need to improve their knowledge and practical skills in using a variety of linguistic units of politeness in business documents. Therefore, we recommend implementing programs to improve communication levels for those pursuing higher education in management. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Speech Representations of Unity in Early 20th Century Russian Parliamentary Discourse: A Study of Lexemes ‘Edinstvo’ [Unity] and ‘Edinenie’ [Unification

The article analyzes the functioning of the lexemes ‘edinstvo’ [unity] and ‘edinenie’ [unification] in the oral public speeches of the deputies of the prerevolutionary State Duma. The aim of the article is to systematize speech representations of the idea of unity on the example of the lexemes ‘edinstvo’ [unity] and ‘edinenie’ [unification] in the Russian parliamentary discourse of the early 20th century in a rhetorical-pragmatic aspect. The category of persuasive complex was used as an instrument for analyzing the persuasiveness of parliamentary discourse. It was established that the analyzed lexemes were actively used in the Russian parliamentary discourse of the early 20th century to express the semantics of integrativeness. Integrativeness, expressed by the analyzed lexemes, relates to many diverse topics, from family and court to opinions, principles, and views. Functional differences between the use of the lexemes ‘edinstvo’ [unity] and ‘edinenie’ [unification] were identified and analyzed. The persuasiveness of ‘edinstvo’ [unity] and ‘edinenie’ [unification] in the rhetorical practice of the prerevolutionary State Duma is associated with achieving a high degree of pathos in speeches through the use of these lexemes in their literal sense, developing epithets with them, and incorporating them into metaphors. It is proven that the use of the lexemes ‘edinstvo’ [unity] and ‘edinenie’ [unification] in a specific context was a political marker, as there is a certain specialization of word usage in speeches by representatives of different political forces.

Native observers’ evaluations of ritual frame indicating expressions in Chinese

Abstract Ritual frame indicating expressions (henceforth RFIEs) is a concept that re-conceptualizes expressions that are conventionally understood as politeness markers and provides insight into the interface between expressions and politeness. This study supplements previous studies on RFIEs, which are mostly conducted from an analyst perspective, by analyzing native observers’ evaluations of a participant’s use of Chinese RFIEs in the speech act of request. It is found that the use of RFIEs was evaluated as either excessively limao (Chinese politeness1) or limao. The underlying reason for the former evaluation is that the expressions were interpreted as deference markers, and the underlying reason for the latter evaluation is that the expressions were interpreted as civility markers. This study demonstrates that, at least in the speech act of request, RFIEs may indicate different ritual frames for different native observers, which calls for the incorporation of the (meta)participant’s perspective in the study of RFIEs. It also supplements the current view on the usage of conventional politeness-related expressions in Chinese.

When the Norwegian ‘politeness marker’ vennligst becomes impolite

Abstract This corpus-based study contributes to the ongoing discussion on conventional politeness markers, such as please, by being the first to examine how the corresponding Norwegian lexical item vennligst ‘please’ is used. The study investigates the use of vennligst in data from two Norwegian corpora in standard situations, where the relationship between the interlocutors is clear, and non-standard situations, where the relationship between the interlocutors is less clear. The results show that although Norwegian dictionaries describe the pragmatic function of vennligst as being that of a polite request, most instances were found in standard situations where vennligst indicates a ritual frame that goes unmarked. The results also show that in non-standard situations, vennligst is not only used as a politeness device but more often strengthens the requestive force into a command. Therefore, we caution against using vennligst in non-standard situations due to the likelihood of being interpreted as impolite. Depending on the situation type, the various interpretations may explain why some Norwegians interpret vennligst as polite, whereas others deem it impolite. By illustrating how vennligst may be interpreted differently, we hope to draw attention to the situational influences on such markers and the dangers of relying on their conventional meanings.

Pragmatic modifiers in teachers’ polite requests in EFL classroom interaction in Manggarai, Indonesia

This research mainly explores pragmatic modifiers in shaping teachers’ polite requests in English Foreign Language classroom interaction (henceforth: EFL). The research was designed qualitatively, employing non-participant observation and field-note methods. Audio-video recording and note-taking were used to obtain the data on the male and female teachers’ utterances during classroom interaction. The key apparatuses are a smartphone Vivo of Y21 and a digital voice recorder of 32 GB to capture natural-occurring data. The data were analysed through three interactive procedures of qualitative data analysis; data condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. The data interpretation was primarily drawn on the pragmatic theory of politeness, FTAs, and pragmatic modifiers. Part of the data was analysed from language and gender perspectives. The findings yielded that the male and female teachers applied internal and external pragmatic modifiers to enact polite requests in classroom interaction settings. The internal pragmatic modifiers cover downtoner, politeness marker, appreciative opening, and hedged performative opening. The external pragmatic modifiers include vocative, disarmer, and propitiator. There is a slight difference between male and female teachers in realising those types of pragmatic modifiers. It was partly related to the features of women’s language. However, such empirical evidence could not be directly generated for language and gender. The findings have implications for further investigations to probe the issue in depth.

Die formale und funktionale Entwicklung vonbitte

AbstractThe markerbitteplays a crucial role in Contemporary German, especially in lay linguistic discourse on politeness (= first order politeness). This is in contrast to a research gap regarding the evolution and use of this element. Based on corpus data, the present study aims to trace the formal and functional development ofbitte‘please’. The analysis is based on a randomized sample of verbalbitten‘to ask for’, nominalBitte‘request’ and syntactically reducedbitte‘please’ extracted from fictional texts of the DTA and the DWDS core corpora covering a time span from the 17th to the 21st century. Contrary to previously proposed scenarios, the data suggest that syntactically reducedbittedeveloped in the late 18th century from an external modifier that primarily preceded imperative requests. As an internal modifier, the marker has been successively integrated syntactically and graphemically since the 19th century. From a pragmatic perspective,bittehas evolved from a deference marker. In Contemporary German, it can be described as a directive marker rather than a context-independent politeness marker.

A Pragmatic Analysis of Cultural Influence on Politeness Markers in the Yoruba Context

Culture plays a significant role in language use. It is a parameter for measuring communicative competence of a language user. Thus, the use of language is the function of the culture that owns the language. This study is predicated on Grice’s (1975) conversational implicature theory. Data was got from recorded conversations in different natural settings in Ondo West Local Government Area of Ondo State, Nigeria. The focus of the study is on politeness markers in “leader-follower”, “husband-wife”, “father-son”, “buyer-seller”, “friend-friend” and “elder brother-younger brother” conversations. Ten tape recordings were made out of which, seven were used for analysis. The pragmatic analysis of cultural influence on politeness has revealed the influence of culture on politeness markers in the Yoruba context. The study has also revealed the persuasive approach employed by the interlocutors to maintain and sustain conversation. It has been discovered that culture has conditioned the husband to assert while the wife is culture-bound to obey the assertion of her husband. This paper, therefore, recommends that language users should be exposed to the culture of the language being used as it will broaden their knowledge on how to sustain and maintain face saving act in a conversation. The knowledge of culture will definitely enhance the communicative competence of language users.

Multilingual cyberpragmatics in instructional settings. Exploring gender and age effects in Catalan, Spanish and English email requests

ABSTRACT The present study focuses on email communication in the multilingual university setting. Previous studies dealing with similar settings point to the lack of politeness markers in students’ email messages [Bjorge, A. (2007). Power distance in English lingua franca email communication. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 60–80], requests tend to be more direct and they may not match with the degree of imposition or social distance involved. Students’ lack of netiquette and the lack of physical presence on the Internet may influence their pragmatic behaviour. In addition to that, other studies [Barón, J., & Ortega, M. (2018). Investigating age differences in e-mail pragmatic performance. System, 78, 148–178] point to age effects and further confirm the preference for direct pragmatic forms. Nevertheless, very few studies have adopted a multilingual perspective. For this reason, we have examined 250 email requests to faculty. Openings and requests produced in Catalan, Spanish or English were analysed. Our main goal was to confirm whether students’ requests would devoid politeness markers and whether openings would show a lack of netiquette. We were also interested in identifying age and gender effects and in finding out if the pragmatic forms chosen would be in line with the politeness orientation of the language involved. Results are in line with previous studies but they also contradict them adding interesting information on the way multilingualism is displayed in email interaction.

“Can I have a cup of tea please?” Politeness markers in the Spoken BNC2014

Abstract Politeness is one of the stereotypes associated with the British that seems to be crucial in terms of their self-identification and self-perception. The focus of this study is four frequently-used politeness markers: please, thank you, thanks, and sorry. The paper aims to precisely identify the different senses of these words in the newly released corpus of spoken British English, the Spoken British National Corpus 2014. The findings of this analysis reveal that the markers under investigation are primarily used in their core senses, such as politely requesting something, showing gratitude, or apologising; other identified senses include self-correcting and being confrontational or ironic. The analysis of the authentic data helps us classify senses for each of the target words based on different contextual situations.

Address forms and politeness markers in Spanish students' emails to faculty

In the present era of global online communication, email exchanges are one the most common means of interaction between students and professors (Tseng, 2015). However, emails may convey an impolite tone if students do not take status or power imbalance into account to show politeness (Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011). The present study explored the informal second person pronoun of address (tú) and the formal one (usted) in first and follow-up requestive emails sent by Spanish students. In addition, some structural elements to show politeness in the emails were also examined. Although students had time to edit and correct their emails, our results indicate that in half of first-contact emails tú is employed, a percentage that increases in the follow-up email, therefore ignoring the degree of politeness expected in student-professor email communication. On the other hand, verbal and structural markers of politeness were broadly employed to indicate deference, especially in the first email.

EVALUATIVE (DE)INTENSIFIERS IN THE SERVICE OF POLITE ACADEMIC EXPERT COMMUNICATION: LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SPECIFICS

The article actualises the connection between the category of politeness and the category of expert evaluation seen as a special discursive evaluation variety in the scientific and expert socio-communicative practice. (De)intensifiers of evaluation — lexical and grammatical means used for strengthening or softening of categorical character of evaluative statements in the academic reviews — are considered as elements of politeness strategies, aimed at maintaining of the reviewer’s and author’s image. The necessity of polite scientific expert communication is explained by the parameters of socio-communicative situation, in which academic journal reviews are embedded, first of all, by the fact that the new scientific knowledge presented in reviews has not yet been verified and is therefore particularly vulnerable to criticism. Due to image risks, reviewers are expected to perform cooperative communicative behavior in order to mitigate the effects of criticism. The study of evaluation (de)intensifiers as politeness markers is embedded in the modern discourse-linguistic and socio-communicative research paradigm. The research relevance is also explained by the insufficient comparative study of (de)intensification in the evaluative language. The qualitative-quantitative content analysis of 50 German- and Russian-language academic reviews in linguistics allows to highlight the means of (de)intensification of expert evaluation and to present them as center-periphery models (depending on the frequency of lexical and grammatical units in the data). In addition, the inclusion of these means into certain strategies of positive and negative politeness is considered. The hypothesis of linguistic and cultural specificity in the use of contextual (de)intensifiers of evaluation is confirmed.