Politeness and Solidarity

When we speak we have to make

choices of many different kinds: what
to say, when to say it, how to say it.
How we say something is as
important as what we say –
Content and form are inseparable
Some linguistic choices indicate the
social relationship between speaker
and listener.
 Tu & Vous 1
Many languages have a distinction
corresponding to the tu–vous (T/V)
distinction in French, where
grammatically there is a ‘singular
you’ tu (T) and a ‘plural you’ vous
(V) but usage requires that you use
vous with individuals on certain
occasions.
 Tu & Vous 2
The T form is sometimes described
as the ‘familiar’ form and the V
form as the ‘polite’ one.
The T/V distinction began as a
genuine difference between
singular and plural
 Tu & Vous 3
In the 4th century: the use of plural vous
was to address the emperor. There
were two emperors: one in the east
Constantinople and another in the
west Rome, but the Empire was
administratively unified. By addressing
one, you were in fact addressing both
emperors. The choice of vous as a form
of address may have been in response
to this implicit plurality.
 Tu & Vous 4
An emperor is also plural in another
sense; he is the summation of his
people and can speak as their
representative. Royal persons
sometimes say ‘we’ where an
ordinary man would
say ‘I.’
Asymmetrical VS Symmetrical T/V
Usage 1
The consequence of this usage was that by
medieval times the upper classes
apparently began to use V forms with each
other to show mutual respect and
politeness. However, T forms persisted, so
that the upper classes used mutual V,
the lower classes used mutual T, and
the upper classes addressed the lower
classes with T but received V.
 Asymmetrical VS Symmetrical T/V
Usage 2
Asymmetrical T/V usage therefore came
to symbolize a power relationship. It was
extended to such situations as people
to animals, master or mistress to servants,
parents to children, priest to penitent,
officer to soldier, and even God to angels,
with, in each case, the first mentioned
giving T but receiving V.
Asymmetrical VS Symmetrical T/V
Usage 3
Symmetrical V usage became ‘polite’ usage.
This polite usage spread downward in
society, but not all the way down, so that in
certain classes, but never the lowest, it
became expected between husband and
wife, parents and children, and lovers.
Symmetrical T usage was always available to
show intimacy, and its use for that purpose
also spread to situations in which two people
agreed they had strong common interests,
i.e., a feeling of solidarity.
 Asymmetrical VS Symmetrical T/V
Usage 4
The mutual T for solidarity gradually came to replace
the mutual V of politeness, since solidarity is
often more important than politeness in personal
relationships. Moreover, the use of the
asymmetrical T/V to express power decreased and
mutual V was often used in its place, as between
officer and soldier. Today we can still find
asymmetrical T/V uses, but solidarity has tended to
replace power, so that now mutual T is found
quite often in relationships which previously had
asymmetrical usage, e.g., father and son, and
employer and employee.
Asymmetrical VS Symmetrical T/V
Usage 5
 Does English have active T/V
distinction?
English, has no active T/V distinction. The use of T forms
by such groups as Quakers (members of a group of
religious Christian movements which is known as
the Religious Society of Friends in Europe, Australia,
New Zealand and parts of North America) is very
much limited, but these T forms are a solidarity
marker for those who do use them. The T/V use that
remains in English is archaic, found in fixed formulas
such as prayers or in use in plays written during
the era when the T/V distinction was alive or in modern
works that try to recapture aspects of that era.
 Address Terms 1
How do you name or address another? By title
(T), by first name (FN), by last name (LN), by a
nickname, by some combination of these, or
by nothing at all, so deliberately avoiding the
problem? What factors govern the choice you
make? Is the address process asymmetrical;
that is, if I call you Mr Jones, do you call
me John? Or is it symmetrical, so that Mr Jones
leads to Mr Smith and John to Fred?
 Address Terms 2
All kinds of combinations are possible in English:
Dr Smith, John Smith, Smith, John, Johnnie, Doc,
Sir, Mack, and so on. Dr Smith himself might
also expect Doctor from a patient, Dad from his
son, John from his brother, Dear from his wife,
and Sir from a police officer who stops him if he
drives too fast, and he might be rather surprised
if any one of these is substituted for any
other, e.g., ‘Excuse me, dear, can I see your
license?’ from the police officer.
 Address Terms 3
Brown and Ford reported that:
• Asymmetrical use of title, last name and first name
indicated inequality in power
• Mutual title, last name indicated inequality and
unfamiliarity
• Mutual first name indicated equality and familiarity
• Switch from mutual TLN to FN is usually initiated by the
most powerful member in the relationship.
• Address somebody by title is the least intimate form of
address in that titles usually designates ranks or
occupations
• Using another’s first name is a sign of considerable
intimacy
 Address Terms 4
Other options exist too in addressing people: title
alone (T), e.g., Professor or Doctor; last name
alone (LN), e.g., Smith; or multiple naming, e.g.,
variation between Mr. Smith and Fred. We
should note that in such a classification, titles
like Sir or Madam are generalized variants of the
Title category, i.e., generic titles, and forms like
Mack, Buddy, Jack, or Mate are generic first
names (FN), as in ‘What’s up, Mate?’ or ‘Hey,
Mack, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
Is the address process symmetrical or
asymmetrical?
The asymmetric use of names and address terms is
often a clear indicator of a power differential.
Examples:
• Children (John and Sally) and teachers (Miss or Mr. Smith)
• In the past, white people addressing black people (Boy to
address black males) (first names in situations which required
them to use titles)
• People addressing the Queen or the President
• hierarchical organizations (Army, Navy, government ….)
 Address Terms 5
• In each country there are different rules
stating how people should address each
other. In England we can omit the address
term when greeting someone but in France
that avoidance could be impolite.
• As your family relationships change, issues of
naming and addressing may arise; for
example: how do you address your
father/mother in law?
 Address Terms 6
• Finally, an additional peculiarity is that
people sometimes give names to, and
address, non – human as well as humans, for
example: how do you address your pets, if
you have? And how do you address your kids
or kids in general?
 Politeness
‘I’ll have an iced mocha’, my New
York friend, Ellen, said. ‘An iced
mocha’, repeated the server.
‘Do you want whipped cream on
that?’ ‘You have to ask?’ said
Ellen.
Clearly the server at the Michigan
restaurant where this exchange
took place found Ellen’s reply, ‘You
have to ask?’ and her ironic tone of
voice, somewhat hard to interpret.
Do you agree? If you know that
there was a long pause while she
looked at Ellen waiting for her to
say something more.
 Commentary
Outside of New York, Ellen’s answer
didn’t have the meaning of an
enthusiastic ‘yes’ that it was
intended to have. In Michigan, it
seems waiting staff don’t expect
the kind of ironic jokes from
strangers that you might find in
talk between close friends.
 Question
Was it polite for Ellen to say
‘You have to ask?’ like that?
The answer probably depends
on where somebody grew up
and what norms of politeness
s/he acquired there.
 In many places, a reply like this would be
considered terribly rude, and something like
‘Yes, please’ or ‘Yes, thank you’ would be
expected. But by the standards of where
Ellen grew up, she was being polite.
By making a joke – moreover, a joke that
suggests that the answer to her question is
already shared knowledge between the
speaker and the hearer – she was working
to construct the business exchange in more
friendly and intimate terms.
Some languages have different words for the same
thing that have to be chosen depending on what
the politeness and respect relationship is between
the speakers. In Japanese, the form of some verbs,
including the verb ‘to eat’ changes entirely.
Japanese requires speakers to make such decisions
about what verb form to use, and what kind of
suffixes to attach to verbs and nouns in everyday
speech. Showing this kind of attention to each
other and evaluating your relationship with your
interlocutors in a particular place or at a particular
time is, in a very general sense, what it
means to be polite.
 Question……?
Does English have speech levels
or special respectful
vocabulary to the same extent
that Japanese does?
 Answer……
English doesn’t have speech levels or
special respectful vocabulary to the
same extent that Japanese does.
However, it does have some areas
of the vocabulary where euphemisms or
avoidance strategies are used according
to where people are or who they are
talking to.
 What is politeness?
Politeness is socially prescribed, we
adjust to others in social relationships
in ways society deems appropriate
It refers to the actions taken by
competent speakers in a community
in order to attend to possible social or
interpersonal disturbance
 Types of politeness
There are two kinds of politeness:
• POSITIVE: we try to achieve solidarity
and treat others as friends. We do not
impose and never threaten their face.
Example: symmetrical pronominal use
• NEGATIVE: it leads to deference,
indirectness and formality in language
use. Example: Asymmetric T/V use
• Goffman (1955) states that when
communicating “we present a FACE to
others and to others’ faces.”
• In every social interaction we are
obliged to protect both our own face
and the face of others.
• We play out a kind of ritual in which
each party is required to recognize the
identity the other presents or claims.
• There is no faceless communication.
• Brown and Levinson (1987) provide the
definition of FACE
“[it is] the public self-image that every
member wants to claim for himself”
They make a distinction between:
• POSITIVE FACE: it is the desire to gain the
approval of others, the positive consistent
self- image or personality. It looks to
SOLIDARITY
• NEGATIVE FACE: it is the desire to be
unimpeded by others’ actions; a claim for
freedom of action and from imposition.
• Each interaction is a FACE WORK
and the goal is the maintenance of
as much of each individual’s
positive face as possible.
• Pinker (2007) argues that
“politeness theory is a good start,
but not enough [because] it
assumes that the speaker and the
hearer are working in perfect
harmony, each trying to save each
other’s face”