Alle Publikationen
- <<
- <
- 1
2017
-
(2017): Children’s early awareness of the effect of interpersonal status on politeness. In: Journal of Politeness Research 13 (1). DOI: 10.1515/pr-2014-0016
Abstract: This study discusses two Mandarin-speaking children's linguistic politeness through longitudinally observing their uses of request forms with regard to different interactional situations where their interpersonal status may vary accordingly. It seems that the children demonstrate a systematic correspondence between request forms and directness to adhere to politeness at an early age. Although they apparently prefer to utilize comparatively more direct request forms most of the time, a closer investigation reveals a division of labor: they appear to use simple imperatives when their interpersonal status is either superior or equal to their parents and use declaratives with the lexeme WANT when their interpersonal status is inferior. It is therefore suggested that politeness may be mutually negotiated between interlocutors and that children should get socialized with politeness through interaction with adults or other children within various social or interpersonal relationships.
Keywords: Direkte oder indirekte Art der Fragestellung/Formulierung etc., Familie/Eltern-Kinder, Grammatische Elemente (Lexeme u.a.), Kommunikations-/Interaktionsprinzipien, Situationsbedingter Kontext, Social Rank, Soziale Hierarchie, Sprachgebrauch, Sprachverstehen, time, Verhalten von Höherstehenden gegenüber Niedrigstehenden, Verhalten von Niedrigstehenden gegenüber Höherstehenden, want 2011
-
(2011): Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness. Nineteenth-century English politeness Negative politeness, conventional indirect requests and the rise of the individual self. In: Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12 (1-2), S. 49-81. DOI: 10.1075/jhp.12.1-2.03cul
Abstract: In this paper we argue that the kind of individualistic ethos Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness model is accused of and in particular its notion of (non-imposition) negative face is not simply a reflection of British culture, but a reflection of British culture at a specific point in time. That point is the nineteenth century. Before then, the notion of an individual self separate from society and with its own hidden desires was not fully established. We argue that sociocultural developments, such as secularisation, the rise of Protestantism, social and geographical mobility, and the rise of individualism, created conditions in which the self became part of a new ideology where it was viewed as a property of the individual, and was associated with positive values such as self-help, self-control and self-respect. We also trace the history of conventional indirect requests, specifically can/could you X structures, the most frequent request structures used in British English today and, moreover, emblematic of British negative politeness. We show how such ability-oriented structures developed in the nineteenth century, and propose a tentative explanation as to why ability in particular was their focus.
-
(2011): Culture-specific concepts of politeness. Indirectness and politeness in English, Hebrew and Korean requests. In: Intercultural Pragmatics 8 (3). DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2011.018
Abstract: Pragmatic clarity and politeness have been the two major factors in pragmatic competence rules since Grice (1975). Clarity and politeness have been claimed as complementary elements (Lakoff 1973) and politeness as the motivation for indirectness in requests (Searle 1975, 1979; Gordon and Lakoff 1975; Lakoff 1973, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1989, 1990; Leech 1983; Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987). However, highly indirect strategies, e. g., hints, may also be perceived as lacking in politeness because of a lack of concern for pragmatic clarity (Blum-Kulka 1987). In order to compare indirectness and politeness scales in Korean, Hebrew, and English and to re-examine the link between indirectness and politeness cross-culturally, this study uses the theoretical and methodological framework of Blum-Kulka (1987) and Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989). The study results show that neither non-conventional indirectness nor some strategies of conventional indirectness imply politeness in Korean and imply, in agreement with Yu (2002), that politeness is differently perceived cross-culturally. In particular, the results of the study show that the conventional indirect strategies such as Strong Hints, Mild Hints, and Suggestory Formulae in the nine request categories are not significantly correlated with politeness in Korean and that Performatives (Austin 1962) and Want Statements are perceived as direct but polite strategies in Korean. These results support that the degree and the concepts of politeness in Korean, Hebrew, and English are significantly different.
2010
-
(2010): Impoliteness in Germany. Intercultural encounters in everyday and institutional talk. In: Intercultural Pragmatics 7 (4), S. 561-595. DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2010.026
Abstract: In this paper, I first look at how the notions of "politeness" and "impoliteness" have been discussed in the literature including my own ideas of relating universal levels of impoliteness to culture and language-specific levels. Given this framework and my earlier postulation of a set of dimensions along which German speakers were found to prefer expressions that are more direct than indirect, more explicit than implicit, and generally more content-oriented than addressee-oriented, I provide several examples of German speakers interacting with members of other cultures in everyday talk and academic advising sessions. In interpreting the results of the analyses of these interactions, I attempt to relate them to the concept of impoliteness, to German speakers' communicative preferences and to the distinction between an emic and an etic perspective.
- <<
- <
- 1