SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY LANGUAGE

Lecturer: Jauhari Shofi

Courses: Impression Mangement and Person Perception 2

Created by :

1. Hilda Rizki Elzahra

2. Azam Mustaqim

3. Yusril Asyhar Mahendra

Class : A

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING
ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS INSTITUE OF THE STATE OF PEKALONGAN
2019
 PREFACE

Praise be to Allah Almighty for the blessing of his grace, and that we were given the
opportunity to be able to compile a working paper entitled “Impression Management and
Person Perception”.
This paper is structured so that the reader can find out what is phonetic in Introduction
Education Linguistic.
We are aware that this paper is still lacking. Therefore, we ask for an assessment and
input and criticsm abd suggestion from reader for the upcoming paper.

Pekalongan, 17 April 2019

 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Politeness and Impressions

Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory suggests that a person’s amount and type of
politeness results from an assessment of various dimensions of the interpersonal context. Greater
politeness (e.g., negative or off-record) will be used, for example, if one’s interlocutor is relatively
high in status. And, there is a fair amount of evidence that these variables do impact the production of
politeness (see chap. 2). Importantly, the relationship between politeness and social variables should
be reciprocal. That is, if a speaker’s politeness level is a function of her perception of the social
situation, then observers (including her interlocutors) can determine her view of that interpersonal
situation, or how she views herself in relation to her interlocutors. In this way, one’s politeness level
is informative about one’s (presumed) status and relationship with the other. A person who uses a
high level of politeness, or who is very deferential and obsequious, should tend to be perceived by
others as being relatively low in status. And there is some limited empirical support for this notion.
Holtgraves and Yang (1990; Experiment 3) asked U.S. and South Korean participants to read
vignettes describing interactions between two people. These vignettes were deliberately kept brief and
no information about the interactants’ status or relationship was provided. Following each vignette
was a list of 10 different ways in which one of the interactants could make a request of the other
interactant. The requests varied in terms of their politeness; one was bald-onrecord (the imperative),
two exemplified positive politeness strategies, two were off-record, and five were negative politeness
strategies. Hence, the politeness of the requests varied on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness
continuum. In addition, the five negatively polite forms were ordered in terms of their facethreat
implications (Clark & Schunk, 1980).

For each request, participants were asked to indicate their perceptions of the speaker’s power
relative to the other person and the closeness of the relationship between the speaker and the other
person. The results for perceptions of the former were quite clear. Perceptions of the speaker’s power
varied perfectly and inversely with the politeness of the request; perceptions of speaker power were
highest for the bald-on-record requests and lowest for the off-record request, and the negatively and
positively polite forms fell between the two extremes. This ordering occurred for both the U.S. and
South Korean participants. More impressively, perceptions of power varied perfectly and inversely
with the politeness of the five negatively polite forms, and this ordering held for both the U.S. and
South Korean participants. So, the “I want you to x” form resulted in perceptions of higher speaker
power than the “I’d like you to x” form, which in turn resulted in perceptions of higher speaker power
than the “Would you x?” form. These forms involve rather subtle changes in wording, and so they
provide relatively strong support for the idea that assumed power is implicated or recoverable from a
speaker’s politeness. Perceptions of relationship closeness also varied as a function of request
politeness, and the effect was similar for U.S. and South Korean participants. The direction of the
results, however, was generally the opposite of that predicted by politeness theory. Although there
were some exceptions, greater request politeness was associated with perceptions of greater (rather
than lesser) relationship closeness. One likely explanation for this finding is that participants equated
closeness with liking (or relationship affect). Hence, the use of greater politeness was presumed to
indicate greater liking, and because liking and closeness tend to be equated; greater politeness resulted
in perceptions of greater closeness. An important issue in this process arises from the fact that
politeness is determined by at least three social variables: power, relationship distance, and degree of
imposition (see chap. 2). Given the existence of multiple determinants of politeness, it is not clear on
which dimension(s) a speaker will be perceived as a function of politeness. If a speaker uses a very
polite form, for example, will others infer relatively low status, that the act is very threatening, or that
the relationship is a distant one? Sometimes information exists regarding one or two of the dimensions
such that inferences will be most likely on the unspecified dimension. For example, a boss (high
power) making a request to an employee (high distance) with a relatively polite form may implicate,
through a high level of politeness, a view that the request is somewhat imposing. But the existence of
multiple determinants allows people to strategically vary their politeness as a means of negotiating
and/or altering the interpersonal context; it is, in effect, an important component of impression
management. So, a higher power person (e.g., a boss) who moves from negative politeness to positive
politeness may be attempting to negotiate a closer relationship. Or, a person in an established
relationship may begin to use less politeness as a means of negotiating higher power in the
relationship. Or the use of relatively impolite forms in an relationship for which power and distance
are established might serve to convey the view that the act (e.g., a request) is not very imposing. And
so on. In this way the interpersonal underpinnings of politeness can take on a gamelike quality. If
one’s bid for higher status (via decreased politeness) is not challenged, the bid has, in effect, been
accepted, and the speaker is now defined as the one with higher power in the relationship. The
existence of multiple politeness determinants can also result in interpersonal misperceptions or
misunderstandings. A speaker may assume his politeness level reflects one dimension (e.g.,
closeness), but his interlocutor may assume it reflects a different dimension (e.g., status). So, John
might assume he has a relatively close relationship with Mark and accordingly feel free to use
positively polite forms (e.g., “How”bout getting me a beer”). But positive politeness represents a
relatively low level of politeness, and thus can implicate high speaker power; Mark might view John
as making a claim for higher status in their relationship. Misunderstandings such as this appear to be
relatively more likely when people come to an interaction with differing assumptions regarding
language use, a possibility that is especially pronounced in interethnic communication. For example,
Scollon and Scollon (1981) examined misunderstandings between native Athabaskans and English-
speaking North Americans. At a very general level, Athabaskans tend to assume greater distance
between unacquainted others than do English-speaking North Americans. As a result, Athabaskans
tend to prefer the use of negatively polite strategies in such interactions. In contrast, English-speaking
North Americans assume a relatively high degree of familiarity and hence prefer positively polite
strategies. Now, positively polite strategies are less polite than negatively polite strategies and hence
can implicate either low distance or high speaker power. English-speaking North Americans may
assume their politeness implicates closeness; Athabaskans may assume it represents a power grab.

Or consider another example. As will be described in more detail, African Americans may
tend to perceive (truthful) bragging less negatively than do European Americans, and this may reflect
the former’s tendency to prefer positively polite strategies in certain contexts (Holtgraves & Dulin,
1994). So, African Americans may assume bragging reflects solidarity; but their EuropeanAmerican
interlocutors may not view it so positively. Again, multiple politeness deter minants can result in
interethnic misunderstandings.