Politeness

Ayu Lestari WP
Putri Lestari
Rolencius
Human is social creature that surely
communicates each other.

To maintain a communication and be success in

our life therefore politeness takes a role.
Definition
• Politeness is behavior that is respectful and considerate
of other people. (Oxford)
• Politeness is having or showing good manners or respect
for other people. (Merriam Webster)
• Politeness in interaction can be defined as the means
employed to show awareness of another person’s face.
(Brown and Levinson)
• Politeness as a type of behaviour that allows the
participants to engage in a social interaction in an
atmosphere of relative harmony. (Geoffrey Leech)
• Politeness is the expression of the speakers intention to
mitigate face threats carried by face threatening acts
towards another. (Mills)
Brown and Levinson
• The basic notion of their model is ‘Face’
• It is as ‘the public self-image that every member
of society wants to claim for himself’.
• In their framework, face consists of two related
aspects:
1. Positive face
2. Negative face
• Negative face: The rights to territories, freedom
of action and freedom from imposition.
• Negative face wanting your actions not to be
constrained or inhibited by others.
• Positive face: The positive consistent self-image
that people have their desire to appreciated and
approved of by at least some other people.
• Brown and Levinson divide politeness into four
strategies:
1. Bald on record
2. Positive politeness
3. Negative politeness
4. Off-record indirect
Bald on record
• The bald on-record strategy does nothing to
minimize threats to the hearer's “face”.
• Example:
▫ “Help!” (In emergency situation)
▫ “Give me those!” (In task oriented)
▫ “Put your jacket away!” (Request)
▫ “Turn you lights on!” (Alerting while driving)
Positive Politeness
• The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize
that your hearer has a face to be respected. It also
confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses
group reciprocity.
• Example:
▫ “You must be hungry, it's a long time since breakfast. How
about some lunch?” (Attend to the hearer)

▫ (Avoid disagreement):
A: What is she, small?
B: Yes, yes, she's small, smallish, um, not really small but
certainly not very big.

▫ “So when are you coming to see us?”(Assume agreement)

▫ “You really should sort of try harder.” (Hedge opinion)

Negative Politeness
• The negative politeness strategy recognizes the
hearer's face but it also admits that you are in some
way imposing on him/her.
• Example:
▫ Be indirect: “I'm looking for a pen.”
▫ Request forgiveness: “You must forgive me but....
Could I borrow your pen?”
▫ Minimize imposition: “I just wanted to ask you if I
could use your pen.”
▫ Pluralize the person responsible: “We forgot to tell you
that you needed to buy your plane ticket by
yesterday.”
Off-record
• Off-record indirect strategies take some of the
pressure off.
• Example: You are trying to avoid the direct FTA of
asking for a beer, you would rather it be offered to
you once your hearer sees that you want one.
• Another example:
▫ Give hints: “It's a bit cold in here.”
▫ Be vague: “Perhaps someone should open the
window.”
▫ Be sarcastic, or joking: “Yeah, it’s really hot here.”
Geoffrey Leech
• Politeness as a type of behavior that allows the
participants to engage in a social interaction in
an atmosphere of relative harmony.
• Face as in “lose face” refers to speaker’s sense of
social identity.
• Face threatening is any speech act may impose
on this sense.
• Speakers have strategies for lessening the threat.
• There two strategies according to Leech:
▫ Positive politeness
Being complimentary and gracious to the addressee.
▫ Negative politeness
Various ways of mitigating an imposition. It can take
the form of:
 Hedging: “Er, could you, er, perhaps, close
the, um.. window?”
 Pessimism: “I don’t suppose you to could close
the window, could you?”
 Indicating deference: “Excuse me Sir, would you mind if
I asked you to close the window?”
 Apologizing: “I’m terribly sorry to disturb you,
but could you close the window?”
 Impersonalizing: “The management requires all
windows to be closed.”
• Leech defines politeness into six maxims:
▫ Maxims of disrection
▫ Maxims of generous
▫ Maxim of acceptance
▫ Maxim of humility
▫ Maxim of suitability
▫ Maxim of sympathy
Maxim of disrection
• Outlining each participants of conversation to minimize
disadvantage or maximize advantage of others.
• Expressed by impositive and commissive utterance.
Impositive utterance is used to express an order, either
directly or indirectly. Commissive utterance is used to express
a promise, an offer, and so on.
• The longer one speaks, the greater the person's desire to be
polite to the other person.
• Example:
(+) I carry a lot of stuff in my bag.
(-) I help to carry it.
In that conversation, character (-) contribute to maximize the
advantage and minimize disadvantage of others by carrying
stuffs in the bag, so character (+) not feel burdened carrying
his things.
Maxim of generous
• Require someone to minimize advantage and
maximize disadvantage of own self.
• Expressed by commissive and impositive utterance.
• This maxim is focusing on other person.
• Example:
(+)My stomach is hurt because I haven’t eaten yet.
(-) Here, I have a bread. Eat this.
In that conversation, character (-) contribute to
minimize advantage of himself and maximize
disadvantage of himself by giving his bread to
character (+) who is sick because of not eating yet.
Maxim of acceptance
• Require each participants of conversation to maximize
disadvantage and minimize advantage of own self.
• Expressed with expressive and assertive utterance. Expressive
utterance is used to reveal speaker’s psychological attitude to
against a situation (examples: gratitude, congratulations,
apologize, respect, condolence, and many more). Assertive
utterance is used to express the truth of the proposition that
being expressed (examples: express opinion, suggestion,
complaint, and many more).
• Example:
(+)Try my cuisine.
(-)Your cuisine is really good.
In that conversation, character (-) contribute to maximize
respect for others by praise the cuisine from character (+) that
tastes good.
Maxim of humility
• Require each participants of conversation to
maximize disrespect and minimize respect of own
self.
• Expressed by expressive and assertive utterance.
• Example:
(+)You are really clever.
(-) Ah, it’s nothing. I’m just an ordinary person.
In that conversation, character (-) contribute to
minimize respect of himself by telling to character
(+) that he felt an ordinary people, not like the
clever people in general.
Maxim of suitability
• Outlining each participants of conversation to maximize
suitability and minimize unsuitability between them.
• It does not mean the speaker must agree what the
interlocutor said or vice versa. If the speaker did not
agree with the interlocutor, the speaker may make
statements containing disagreement or incompatibility
with partial disagreements.
• Example:
(+) The show is great, isn’t?
(-) Yes, I agree with you.
In that conversation, character (-) contribute to
maximize suitability by answering the question from
character (+) that the show is really great.
Maxim of sympathy
• Require each participants of conversation to
maximize sympathy and minimize antipathy to the
interlocutor.
• Sympathy often indicated with smile, nod,
handshake, and so forth.
• Example:
(+) I was lucky to graduate and get my graduation in
February.
(-) Wow, congratulations!
In that conversation character (-) contributes to
maximize his sympathy by saying congratulation to
the achievements that have been achieved by the
character (+).