POLITENESS

Presented by:

Mar’atul Latifah Jauharin Nafi’ 0203521034

Stephanie Priyanto Putri 0203521007
Fety Alawiyah 0203521036
 POLITENESS

Politeness seems to be an important device that serves to avoid

unnecessary conflict between the speaker and the hearer.

•Leech (1980) refers politeness as ‘strategic conflict avoidance’

•Konrad, Sachiko, and Watts (2005) define politeness as ‘one of the
constraints on human interaction, whose purpose is to consider
others’ feelings to establish levels of mutual comfort, and to
promote rapport.
 POLITENESS

In a common sense, being polite means showing good manners

and consideration for other people. For example: opening the door
for a lady and giving your seat to an elderly person in a public
transportation.

Politeness has little to do with good manners such as ‘Please’ and

‘Sorry’. Therefore, being linguistically polite means paying attention
to others’ feeling.
 POLITENESS STRATEGIES AS SOCIOLINGUISTIC
VARIABLES

 Politeness strategies are sociolinguistic variables in which they

are used to negotiate a position for a speaker in relation to
others in the complicated social space.
 We do care about politeness as a communicative phenomenon.
We are interested in meaning, not people.
 Politeness Scales

The degree of politeness of an illocution can be measured by

different scales:
• Cost-benefit scale
Representing the cost or benefit of an act to speaker and hearer. This
indicates cost and/or benefit of proposition to hearer (benefit to hearer =
greater politeness; cost to hearer = less politeness)
• Indirectness scale
Measure the amount of work incurred by the hearer in interpreting the speech
acts produced by the speaker. (higher indirectness = greater politeness)
• Optionality scale
assesses the degree to which the illocutions performed by the speaker allow
the addressee a degree choice. (higher optionality = greater politeness)
 Leech’s Politeness Principle

A very general formulation of Leech’s Politeness Principle is as follows:

 Minimize (all things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs.
 Maximize (all things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs.
Leech’s Politeness Principle is described as a set of
maxims that speakers assume. His major Maxim
are as follows:

 1. Tact (Give a low value to self’s wants)

 2. Generosity (give a high value to other’s wants)
 3. Approbation (give a high value to other’s qualities)
 4. Modesty (give a low value to self’s qualities)
 5. Agreement (give a high value to other’s opinions)
 6. sympathy (give a high value to other’s feeling)
The Tact Maxim
 Minimize the expression of beliefs which imply
cost to the other
Would you mind...
If it's no trouble, ...

 Maximize the expression of beliefs which imply

benefit to the other.
Have a Coke!
Go enjoy your weekend!
The Generosity Maxim

Leech states:
Minimize the expression of benefit to self
Maximize the expression of cost to self.

Examples:
A: I think I'll just take a little piece of this cake.
B: Here, take mine!

You relax and let me do the dishes.

Approbation Maxim

 Minimize the expression of beliefs which

express dispraise of other
 Maximize the expression of beliefs which
express approval of other

e.g. John, I know you're a genius - would you

know how to solve this math problem here?
Modesty Maxim
 Minimize praise of self
 Maximize dispraise of self

How stupid of me!

*How clever of me!
Sympathy Maxim

 Minimize antipathy between self and other

 maximize sympathy between self and other

I’m terribly sorry to hear that your cat died.

*I’m terribly pleased to hear that your cat died.
Agreement Maxim 
 Minimize the expression of disagreement between self and
other
 Maximize the expression of agreement between self and other.

I disagree
Maybe...
Yes, but...
You have a point, but...

Example:
A: I don't want my daughter to do this, I want her to do that.
B: Yes, but ma'am, I thought we resolved this already on your last visit.
The Pollyanna Principle
 Pollyanna is a character from literature who always sees the sunny side
of life.
 We often think of a "Pollyanna" as being too optimistic or too positive.
 This principle says we tend to interpret utterances in their positive light
if 2 or more interpretations are possible.

Examples:

A director has to tell one of his managers that he has not been given the
promotion he had hoped for.
‘You’re too valuable where you are. If we were to offer you the job we
would lose the most valuable marketing manager we ever had.’
 FACE
Face is the public self-image that every person wants to
claim for himself.

Wardaugh (2010) states that when people interact with

others, both speakers and hearers must be aware of the
notion of the face. Thus, they need to cooperate in
maintaining face.
 TWO KINDS OF FACE
There are two kinds of face:

1.Positive Face refers to the desire to be liked, admired,

and approved positively by others in their community.

2.Negative Face refers to the want of every ‘competent

adult member’ to have their own territories, personal
preserves, and rights not to be distracted or impeded by
others.
 FACE THREATENING ACT
 Face Threatening Act (FTA): an illocutionary act which
is able to damage another person’s reputation /
threaten other people’s face.
 There are two types of FTA:
 Act threatening the negative face
 Act threatening the positive face
 Act threatening the negative face of the addressee:
orders, requests, threats, and warnings from the
speaker.
 Act threatening the positive face of the addressee:
offers and promises from the speaker.
 FACE SAVING ACT

 Face Saving Act is when the speaker can say something to lessen
the possible threat.
 In contrast to face threatening act that mostly uses direct
speech, face saving act usually prefers indirect speech act in the
form of a question.
 FTA and FSA

Situation: Young neighbor is playing loud music late at night.

Meanwhile, older neighbors are disturbed to sleep.

A: I am going to tell him to stop that awful noise right now!

B: Perhaps you could just ask him if he is going to stop soon because
it is getting a bit late and people need to get to sleep.
 POLITENESS STRATEGIES

Brown and Levinson (1987), there are four strategies for doing FTA:

1. Bald-on Record

2. Positive Politeness

3. Negative Politeness

4. Off-Record
 BALD-ON RECORD STRATEGY
 Bald on-record is a direct way of saying things which does not lead the
hearers to misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
 The utterances in this strategy are spoken in a direct, clear, and
unambiguous way. You will likely shock the person to whom you are
speaking to, embarrass them, or make them feel a bit uncomfortable.
However, this type of strategy is commonly found with people who know
each other very well, such as close friends and family.
Example:
- An emergency: Help!
- Task oriented: Give me that!
- Request: Put your coat away.
- Alerting: Turn you headlights on!
 POSITIVE POLITENESS STRATEGIES
 Positive Politeness is a strategy which is oriented by a speaker towards
the positive face or positive self-image of hearers that the speaker claims
for himself. It usually leads to friendship.
 Holtgraves (2002) emphasizes that this strategy uses various in-group
markers such as familiar address terms (honey, buddy, mate).
Example:
- Attend to the hearer:
“You must be hungry, it’s a long time since breakfast. How about some
lunch?”
- Avoid disagreement:
A: “What is she, small?”
B: “Yes, yes, she’s small, smallish, um, not really small but certainly not very
big.”
 SIGNS OF POSITIVE POLITENESS
STRATEGIES:
1. Notice, attend to H (his interest, wants, needs, and goods).
2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)
3. Seek agreement (safe topics, repetition)
4. Joke
5. Offer, promise
6. Include both S and H in the activity.
7. Give (or ask for) reasons.
8. Assume or assert reciprocity.
9. Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding,
cooperation).
 NEGATIVE POLITENESS STRATEGIES
 Negative Politeness is an action addressed to hearer’s negative face: his
want to have his freedom of action unhindered and his action unimpeded.
In this strategy, hedges and pessimism in utterances occur.
 Negative politeness puts distance between speakers and hearers to show
respect behavior. For some cases, it leads to apologizing, indirectness, and
also formality.
Example:
- Be indirect:
“I’m looking for a comb.”
- Forgiveness:
“You must forgive me but…….”
- Minimize imposition:
“I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?”
 SIGNS OF NEGATIVE POLITENESS
STRATEGIES:

1. Be indirect: e.g. by using indirect speech acts.

2. Question, hedge: e.g. by asking questions such as ‘Could you do
this for me?’
3. Be pessimistic about things: e.g. by saying ‘This probably won’t
be necessary but … ‘
4. Minimize imposition on the other person: e.g. by saying ‘I just
wanted to ask if you could …’
5. Give deference: e.g. by the use of certain address forms.
 OFF-RECORD STRATEGIES
 Off-Record (indirect) is a communicative act which is done in
such way that it is not possible to attribute one clear
communicative intention to the act. It allows the hearers to
interpret the meaning of utterances by themselves. Thus, ambiguity
might exist here.
Example:
- Give hints:
“It’s cold in here”
- Be vague:
“Perhaps someone should have been more responsible.”
POSSIBLE STRATEGIES TO DO FTA
 POLITENESS STRATEGIES

 When a speaker is faced with an FTA, s/he can choose

between five strategies depending on the estimated risk
of the face loss.
 Speakers estimate the risk of face loss based on the
relative power relationship and social distance between
the speaker and hearers and the size of imposition.
 SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS

According to Brown and Levinson (1987), “The

seriousness of an FTA which may affect choice of
politeness strategies involves the sociological
factors. They are social distance, relative power,
and the absolute ranking of impositions”.
 SOCIAL DISTANCE

Distance is a symmetric social dimension of similarity or

difference within which speakers and hearers stand for the
purpose of an act.
 RELATIVE POWER

Power is an asymmetric social dimension of relative power.

It is another factor affecting someone to speak politely.

There are two sources of power:

Material control : over economic distribution
and physical force
Metaphysical control : over the actions of others
 RANKING OF IMPOSITION

In ranking of impositions, there are two ranks:

Rank order of impositions requiring services (including
the provision of time)
Rank order of impositions requiring goods (including
non-material goods like information)
Pre Sequence

 Yule (1996: 67-69) suggests that pre-sequences can be

understood as a means of avoiding FTAs by providing
the hearer with an opportunity to stop the speaker from
proceeding with her/his FTA.
 Yule provides three examples of pre-sequences in
support of his interpretation.
 It should be noted that very often these pre-sequences
are treated by the hearer as straightforward requests,
invitations, announcements.
Pre-requests
one way of avoiding risk is to provide an opportunity for the other
to halt potentially risky action.

Example 1
A: are you busy (= pre-request)
B: not really (= go ahead)
A: check over this report (= request)
B: okay (= accept)

Example 2
A: are you busy (= pre-request)
B: oh sorry (= stop)
Pre-invitations
is a pre-sequence that often checks the availability of an invitee

Example 1
A: what are you doing this Friday (= pre-invitation)
B: hmm nothing so far (= go ahead)
A: come over for dinner (= invitation)
B: oh I’d like that (= accept)

Example 2
A: are you doing anything later (= pre-invitation)
B: oh yeah. busy busybusy (= stop)
A: oh okay
Pre-announcements
is a presequence that the recipient does not know the thing to be told or
announced

Example

Child: mom guess what happened (= pre-announcement)

Mother: (silence)
Child: mom you know what (= pre-announcement)
Mother: not right now Jack I’m busy (= stop)

(Yule, 1996: 67-68)

THANK YOU!