Universals In Language Usage Research Articles

Two phenomena behind the terminology of face

Abstract In politeness research and other areas, scholars use a range of metaphorical expressions involving the term face, as in “lose face”, “threaten face” and “save face”, drawing upon Goffman’s paper “On face-work” (Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books), often through Brown and Levinson’s influential theory of politeness (Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The present paper argues that the interactional processes referred to by such expressions are of at least two kinds, here labeled “Observed-Behavior (OB) face-processes” and “Expressed-Attitude (EA) face-processes”. X’s OB face loss occurs when others negatively evaluate X on the basis of her behavior; X’s EA face loss occurs when others convey to X that they do not have the same values as her (“positive face”) or act in a way that impedes her freedom (“negative face”). Ten differences between OB and EA face-processes are set out. These differences are not acknowledged in the literature, which, as shown in this paper, leads to much ambiguity and confusion.

THE PRAGMATICS OF POLITENESS, Author: Geoffrey Leech

The study of “politeness” by sociolinguists is quite new and frequently cites Brown and Levinson’s work from 1978 entitled “Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena”. The article was modified and republished as a book in 1987 with the title Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Ever since, there has been a substantial explosion in the amount of research on “im/ politeness” in linguistics and related fields. Geoffrey Leech can be deemed one of the pioneering authors in the discipline of politeness studies, along with Robin Lakoff (1973), Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1978, 1987), and others. The Pragmatics of Politeness by Geoffrey Leech is a wonderful addition that serves to remind readers of the linguistic roots of this area of study. This book offers an overview of politeness and supports the idea that it is a form of communicative altruism. It describes a variety of English politeness phenomena and provides numerous instances of actual language use from reliable British and American sources to demonstrate its points. The book also presents a thorough examination of politeness in contemporary English, including all significant speech acts that are either positively or negatively linked with politeness, such as requests, apologies, compliments, offers, agreement, and disagreement. Chapters on impoliteness and the related concepts of irony (mock politeness) and banter (mock impoliteness) are also included. Additional chapters explore research techniques and learning English as a second language. The history of politeness in the English language, which spans more than a thousand years, is covered in the final chapter. Therefore, The Pragmatics of Politeness is intended to establish itself as a new benchmark in the study of (im)politeness.

Pessimistic Strategy in Negative Politeness Study in Thor: Ragnarok Movie

Good communication is the basis of a good relationship. In achieving the appropriate goals, responses, and reciprocities of speech, people tend to apply the value of decency. The pessimistic strategy of negative politeness is analyzed in this study. The data used in this study is taken from the Thor: Ragnarok Movie. This study analyzes the type of pessimistic strategy of negative politeness, such as negative, subjunctive, and remote-possibility makers. Besides, this study analyzed the factors that influence the character who used the pessimistic strategy. Factors are relative force, social distance, and level of imposition. The analysis of types and factors is based on the courtesy theory of Brown and Levinson's book "Politeness Some Universals in Language Usage" (1987). The result showed that all of the three types of pessimistic strategy in negative politeness is found in Thor: Ragnarok Movie. The negative was found in the use of tag questions. The subjunctive could be found in the use of the would, should, and the use of the IF clause. The remote-possibility makers was found in the use of word hope, supposed, though, and perhaps. The most type pessimistic strategy found in this data is the use of the subjunctive and the most factor which influences the characters is the size of imposition.

Organizational practices leading to closeting: the interactional construction of ‘closets’

ABSTRACT Goffman’s [1978. The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth] concept of ‘negative face’ recognizes people’s desire to be free from constraint. Freedom in expressing one’s identity, however, often gets threatened when that identity is marginalized. Using Brown and Levinson’s [1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press] framework, this paper examines negative face threats among employees who identify within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer spectrum (LGBTQ+). It asks how negative face threats play a role in ‘closeting’ their sexual and/or gender identity at work. Thematic analysis of data from 35 semi-structured interviews, representing myriad forms of self-identification among the LGBTQ+ community, produced two general themes: direct messages from co-workers prompting closeting, and more general social norms evident in co-worker communication and interactions. This study explores important interactional cues from co-workers that participants see as constraining a non-heterosexual and/or non-cis-gender identity. Implications for theory involving increased focus on negative face and practical applications involving cultivating workplace climate, ally support, and heightened sensitivity beyond the workplace are examined.

TYPES OF POLITENESS IN ENGLISH: LINGUISTIC ASPECTS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

The paper focuses on the research of lexi cal and grammatical means of politeness as one of the universals in language usage, which expresses the concern of the speaker for interlocutors in particular social contexts. It considers four types of politeness as a linguistic phenomenon: showing the value and respect, softening t he communication, assisting in creating the eff ect of a compliment, and deliberating elimination of the importance of a request. In addition, the use of modal verbs and modal expressions are discussed. Furthermore, the paper outlines the concept of linguistic politeness and discusses its interaction with sociocultural variables. Finally, it describes the TALAS (Teaching and Learning Academic Subjects) web-application implemented in virtual English classrooms, which is equipped with tools for working with well-organized interactive assignments and contributes to acquiring knowledge on the linguistic means of expressing politeness. Key words: politeness, linguistic unit, grammatical form, sociocultural variable, virtual environment, web-application.

THE STRATEGIES OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE POLITENESS REFLECTED IN “THE LAST SONG” NOVEL BY NICHOLAS SPARKS

This research discussed the positive and negative politeness strategies in The Last Song novel by Nicholas Sparks (2009). The data were the utterances in The Last Song novel. This research was mainly aimed to find out the strategies of positive and negative politeness. The theory applied in this research was taken from the book entitled “Politeness Some Universals in Language Usage” proposed by Penelope Brown and Stephen C Levinson (1987). This research was the descriptive qualitative research. Method of collecting the data used observational method by using non-participatory technique. In analyzing the data, the researcher used the pragmatic identity method. The research result showed that the characters in The Last Song novel applied all the strategies of positive politeness and negative politeness except the eighth strategy of negative politeness; state the face threatening act because The Last Song novel was the romantic novel and there was no regulation, obligation, social rule from the country.

Exploring Brown and Levinson's Politeness Strategies: An Explanation on the Nature of the Politeness Phenomenon

This study aimed at reviwing brown levinson politeness strategies purposed in their book (1978) entitled "POLITENESS (Some Universals in Language Usage)". Over the past three decades, there has been a significant increase in research on politeness strategies from social and linguistic aspects. This is evident from the many papers that appear on this issue in international journals and monographs. Brown and Levinson (1978) developed a theory to explainphenomena related to the Politeness on verbal communication and non-verbal. This article For methods using a content analysis approach as a qualitative in research. Which has been studied in the book Brown & Levinson This article is interested in focusing on the types of politeness strategies put forward by Brown and Levinson (1978). This present study sees politeness stretegies proposed by brown and levinson still can be used in current situation related politeness both verbal and non verbal communication.

Book Review of Farghal’s Jordan’s Proverbs as a Window into Arab Popular Culture

Farghal’s compilation of Jordanian proverbs does not disappoint, by permitting the reader a window through which to gaze into Jordanian culture. One is introduced to a vivid display of whimsey and wisdom that enteratins and educates. They say that When food is served, talk stops, and, equally, when reading these proverbs it is difficult to put the book down, as it is a feast for the imagination. Perhaps from intellectual curiosity or from a penchant for the morbid, one is immediately drawn to Chapter Seven, “Death and Madness Proverbs.” If your folk go mad, your intellect will not help you could serve well as a mantra for many a faculty member seeking tenure, or equally well in a climate of political uncertainty. Such is the draw of each of these proverbs, that they conger images and usages heretofore unthought of by the reader, sometimes as delightful aphorisms, and sometimes as cautionary precepts..

Management of Interpersonal Conflict in Negotiation with Chinese: A Perceived Face Threat Perspective

Despite increasingly frequent business interactions between China and the West, negotiations with Chinese remain a great challenge to most Westerners. Sino-Western discrepancies in cultural values and social norms lead to massive misunderstandings and inevitable conflicts in business negotiations. Grounded on the Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson in Politeness: some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987), this study aims to better predict Chinese negotiation behaviors from an indigenous perspective by exploring the impact of face on Chinese conflict handling strategies. With a sample of 608 Chinese business representatives, this research demonstrates the significant effect of perceived fellowship-, moral-, competence- and autonomy-face threats on Chinese conflict management styles in business negotiations. It is found that Chinese do not always act as politely and agreeably as expected when bargaining with their business partners, especially in a conflict context. Based on their perceptions of face threats induced by various conflict issues, they may adopt different strategies, ranging from competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating to avoiding, to negotiate with their counterparts. In addition, it is confirmed that both a contextual antecedent (guanxi) and an individual trait (public self-consciousness) will significantly influence Chinese representatives’ face threat perceptions and, subsequently, determine how they will behave in business negotiations.

Politeness and Its Perception by Armenian Learners of English: From Theory to Action

The study of the mechanisms of politeness in society has been a subject of interest for scholars of linguistics since the 20th century with the development of pragmatics and sociology. The aim of the current article is to introduce the most popular politeness theories as well as investigate how linguistic politeness is understood and used by students of English. We have conducted a social survey with students of English at the Department of European languages and Communication to see how well they perceive linguistic politeness in its two forms – negative and positive – as suggested by Brown and Levinson in their seminal work “Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage”. As a result, we have arrived at some interesting conclusions with regards to the way the students understand the two types of politeness, and at the same time we have offered some ways of improving the “lacuna” in their knowledge in relation to the appropriate use of politeness in interaction.

Emotional and Educational Consequences of (Im)politeness in Teacher–Student Interaction at Higher Education

In this article, I will explore some of the emotional and educational consequences of (im)politeness in teacher–student interaction (T–S interaction, henceforth) at higher education, with reference to their influence in motivation and learning. Politeness theory (Brown and Levinson in Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978, Politeness: some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987) will be extended to include a discursive approach to the management of interpersonal relations (Spencer-Oatey in Culturally speaking: managing rapport through talk across cultures, Continuum, London, 2008), and further developments towards the expression of impoliteness. (Im)politeness and rapport management will be analysed in combination with self-determination (Deci and Ryan in J Res Personal 19:109–134, 1985) and appraisal theories (Martin in Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction of discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000; Martin and White in The language of evaluation. Appraisal in English, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005; Hunston and Thompson in Evaluation in text. Authorial stance and the construction of discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000; Thompson and Alba-Juez in Evaluation in context, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2014) in order to examine the role of motivation and negative evaluative meanings in the construction of impoliteness in interaction. Data have been extracted from a corpus that is being compiled by the author. It contains classroom interaction, email exchanges and higher education students’ reports on their perception of (im)politeness and rapport in their academic lives. The data have been processed and analysed combining corpus linguistics, conversation analysis and systemic functional discourse analysis. Results show that the discourse of teaching typically contains many rapport sensitive discourse acts and that their face-aggravating potential increases when conveying negative evaluative language and when students present a challenging orientation to rapport due to different reasons, being lack of intrinsic motivation an important one. Other aspects which can result in face aggravation such as different expectations regarding sociality rights and obligations will be discussed. As T–S interaction has effects not only on the relations reated among teachers and students but also on the teaching–learning process, it seems essential that the involved parties become aware of the impact of rapport management and of the fact that learning is facilitated by good interpersonal rapport but can be seriously undermined by its absence.

Kan du nå saltet?

This article brings into dialogue Kierkegaard and modern sociolinguistics.A common starting point is provided by focussing on indirect communication. For what occurs between meaning and saying? And to what extent can social relations be influenced by indirect communication? Included is the survey by P. Brown and S.C. Levinson, Politeness. Some universals in language usage (1987) as well as latest studies on impoliteness that consider strategies of confl ict avoiding communication. Kierkegaard also shows that human communication has to include the receiver. Nevertheless, his thoughts on communication are at the same time fundamentally embedded in analyses of human selfconception. Reflections upon these thoughts are then addressed using Kierkegaard’s work, The Sickness Unto Death. In these selected encounters between Kierkegaard and sociolinguistics, ethical challenges of speech acts are approached as topic of a potential dialogue.

Polite incivility in defensive attack: Strategic politeness and impoliteness in cross-examination in the David Irving vs. Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt trial

Kurzon (Journal of Pragmatics 33: 61–85, 2001: 64) argues that the language of the courtroom is inherently polite due to the formal, high stakes context, but does this extend to all the institutional participants throughout trials? The linguistic politeness (and impoliteness) literature gives us a nuanced account of politeness activity (e. g., Culpeper, Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349–367, 1996; Harris, Discourse and Society 12: 451–472: 2001), including “expressive politeness” (Eelen, Pragmatics 9: 163–173, 1999) and “mock politeness” (Kienpointner, Journal of Politeness Research 4: 243–265, 2008: 249). We argue that any analysis of courtroom trial interaction needs to take account of the “multiple goals” (Penman, Facework and politeness: Multiple goals in courtroom discours, Multilingual Matters, 1990; Archer, Verbal aggression and impoliteness: Related or synonymous?, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008) of this “complex genre” (Heffer, The language of jury trial: A corpus-aided analysis of legallay discourse, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and, in doing so, we need to account for the inherently facethreatening nature of cross-examination. Drawing on Brown and Levinson's (Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena, Cambridge University Press, 1978) notion of positive and negative face, we focus on how lawyers and witnesses use “politeness as a strategic act” and how they prioritize the “individual, creative aspects of politeness over the social aspects” (Christie, Journal of Politeness Research 3: 269–294, 2007: 263), to coerce, undermine and challenge. We use a corpus-based approach to investigate the case of the libel trial David Irving vs. Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt (2000). This paper examines direct and indirect impoliteness, arguing that pragmatic im/politeness strategies contribute to the style of the lawyer's defensive attack in cross-examination, one which employs both polite and impolite incivility.

Invitations and politeness in Greek: The age variable

This paper investigates invitations and invitation refusals in Greek and their relationship to politeness within Brown and Levinson's (Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge University Press, 1987) framework. On the basis of data drawn from role plays corroborated with informants' verbal reports, it is argued that age is a determining factor for both the format of the speech event of inviting/refusing and the politeness strategies preferred for its realization. It is shown that the younger age group conceptualize invitations as face-enhancing acts for the addressee, thus, they insist more and prefer positive politeness strategies. By contrast, the older age group conceptualize invitations as addressee face-threatening acts, so they hardly ever insist and appear to favour negative politeness strategies. This latter observation seems to challenge earlier findings regarding the positive politeness orientation of Greek society. However, a closer look at the data reveals that the negative politeness strategies employed are intermingled with positive politeness ones or they function as such in the specific context. These findings bring to the fore a number of issues relating to Brown and Levinson's theory, including the difficulty of drawing a clear-cut distinction between positive and negative politeness strategies and the caution that should be exercised when attributing type of politeness to decontextualized utterances. The findings are further used to offer suggestions for foreign language teaching.

Universal politeness theory: application to the use of Japanese honorifics

Abstract One major objection to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory [Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 56–311; Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987] raised by Matsumoto [J. Pragmatics 12 (1988) 403; Multilingua 8 (1989) 207; Japanese/Korean Linguistics, vol. 2, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, pp. 55–67] and Ide [Multilingua 8 (1989) 223] is based on data involving Japanese honorifics. The issue is why honorifics, the use of which Brown and Levinson classifies as a negative politeness strategy (‘Give deference’), should occur in non-FTA utterances. Having shown that Brown and Levinson’s theory does not explain Japanese honorifics satisfactorily, Ide goes so far as to propose an account based on the concept of discernment. The purpose of this article is two-fold: (1) to show that by taking into consideration a salient feature of the Japanese society, namely, its vertical and hierarchical structure, it is possible to propose an account that is consistent with Brown and Levinson’s theory; and (2) to argue against the discernment theory which seems to have gained some recognition. A series of arguments will be advanced to show that an account based on the politeness theory is superior to the discernment account.

Accessing politeness axes: forms of address and terms of reference in early English correspondence

There are certain areas of study where present-day pragmatics can learn from history. This article focuses on the socio-pragmatic aspects of forms of address and terms of reference in late 16th-century English correspondence. The aim of the study is to explore the extent to which the use of forms of address and reference, and the factors which influence their choice, can be seen to have any general trends. A further goal is to relate these trends in historical data to such contemporary views as Brown and Levinson’s [Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987] politeness theory, Comrie’s [Linguistic politeness axes: speaker‐addressee, speaker‐referent, speaker‐bystander. Pragmatics Microfiche 1.7: A3, Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge, 1976] politeness axes, and Bell’s [Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13, 145‐204] audience design. The material itself, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), gives a unique opportunity to explore the influence of factors like relative power and social distance on the use of forms of address and reference in the highly stratified society of the Renaissance period. The study shows that referential terms are often derived from the range of direct address formulae. In direct address, when the social status of either the addressee or the referent is very high, it seems to override the influence of social distance. In reference, the reasons for the choice of an appropriate term are more complex, and the parameters set for, e.g., positive and negative politeness can no longer be seen as equally valid. # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Explaining cross-cultural pragmatic findings: moving from politeness maxims to sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs)

Abstract This paper focuses on how culture can be treated as an explanatory variable in cross-cultural pragmatic studies. It starts with a review of pragmatic maxims [Grice, H. Paul, 1989. Logic and Conversation. William James Lectures, 1967. (Reprinted in Grice, H.P. (Ed.), Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 22–40); Leech, Geoffrey N., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman; Journal of Pragmatics 14 (1990)237], discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the concept. It then presents the findings from a British-Chinese replication of Kim's [Human Communication Research 21(1996)128] cross-cultural study of conversational constraints, and argues that the notion of maxims should be reconceptualised as sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs). The notion of SIPs is defined and explained, referring to the sociopragmatic-pragmalinguistic distinction [Leech, Geoffrey N., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman; Applied Linguistics 4(1983)91] and other cross-cultural pragmatic approaches [House, Julianne, 2000. Understanding misunderstanding: a pragmatic-discourse approach to analyzing mismanaged rapport in talk across cultures. In: Spencer-Oatey, H. (Ed.), Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. Continuum, London; 145–164; Journal of Pragmatics 9 (1985)145]. SIPs are also discussed in relation to Brown and Levinson's [Brown, Penelope, Levinson, Stephen C., 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. CUP, Cambridge (Originally published ad ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomenon’ In: Goody, E. (1987), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. CUP, New York.)] perspectives on the impact of culture on language use. The paper ends with a call for more research to establish on an empirical basis the types of interactional principles that exist, and their interrelationships.

Conversational dynamics of humour: the telephone game in Greek

Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate humorous exchanges in Greek telephone conversation openings in the light of Raskin’s (Raskin, Victor, 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. D. Reidel, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster) and Attardo’s (Attardo, Salvatore, 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin; Attardo, Salvatore, 2001. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin) semantico-pragmatic theories of humour and the principles of conversation analysis regarding telephone interaction [Sacks, Harvey, 1995. In: Jefferson, G. (Ed.), Lectures on Conversation, Vols I and II. Blackwell, Oxford (1963, 1970, 1972) (reprint) and Schegloff, Emanuel A., 1972. Sequencing in conversational openings. In: Gumperz, J.J. and Hymes, D. (Eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, pp. 346–380 (1968) (reprint)]. The material analysed (268 humorous exchanges between young adults) shows that such interactions are understood as a game, with interlocutors negotiating and co-constructing tacit rules involving a deliberate attack on social and linguistic conventions while at the same time creating a new code pertaining to in-group members only. The exchanges examined involve wordplay, insincere enquiries, complaints and reprimands. Wordplay in natural conversation has been attributed both an aggressive and a disruptive function (Norrick, Neal R., 1993. Conversational Joking. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis). Our data point to degrees of disruption, in that despite the playfulness of the exchanges, the canonical pattern including preemptive moves is preserved in most cases. Aggression, on the other hand, is also shown to be scalar and to serve primarily bonding purposes. In the light of the findings we propose a bridge between the GTVH, CA and politeness theory (Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson, 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge), with accompanying modifications considered necessary to account for this type of data and possibly for dialogic material of other types.

Managing rapport in talk: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the motivational concerns underlying the management of relations

This paper focuses on the motivational concerns that underlie the management of relations. In linguistics, the management of relations has been discussed extensively within politeness theory, and so the paper starts by identifying four key issues of controversy in politeness theory: (a) should ‘polite’ language use be explained in terms of face (e.g. Brown, Penelope, Levinson, Stephen C., 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage, CUP, Cambridge. [Originally published as Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomenon. In: Goody, Esther, (Ed.), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. CUP, New York, 1978), conversational maxims (e.g. Leech, Geoffrey N., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Longman, London), and/or conversational rights (e.g. Fraser, Bruce, 1990. Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2), 219–236); (b) why are speech acts such as orders interpersonally sensitive — is it because they are a threat to our autonomy (Brown and Levinson, 1987 [1978]), or because of cost–benefit concerns (Leech, 1983); (c) is Brown and Levinson's concept of negative face too individually focused, and should a social identity component be included (Matsumoto, Yoshiko, 1988. Reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 12, 403–426); and (d) is face just a personal/individual concern or can it be a group concern (Gao, Ge, 1996. Self and other: a Chinese perspective on interpersonal relationships. In: Gudykunst, W.B., Ting-Toomey, S., Nishida, T. (Eds.), Communication in Personal Relationships Across Cultures, Sage, London. pp. 81–101.)? The paper then uses reports of authentic rapport sensitive incidents to throw light on these controversial issues and to find out the relational management concerns that people perceive in their everyday lives. It maintains that such data is important to politeness theory, because linguistic politeness needs to be studied within the situated social psychological context in which it occurs. The paper ends by presenting and arguing for a conceptual framework that draws a fundamental distinction between face and sociality rights, and that incorporates an independent/interdependent perspective, thus providing a more comprehensive framework for analysing the management of relations than is currently available.

Invitation or Sexual Harassment?

Invitation or Sexual Harassment?