Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(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 1990
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(1990): You don't touch lettuce with your fingers. In: Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2), S. 259-288. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(90)90083-P
Abstract: Family discourse is essentially polite, enacting its politeness in domain- and culturally specific ways. This study examines parental speech acts of control and metapragmatic comments, as issued from parents to children around the dinnertable in middle-class Israeli, American and American immigrant families. The prevailing style of parental control is both highly direct and richly mitigated. Three key notions combine to set the tone of family politeness: power, informality and affect. Asymmetrical power relations between parents and children license the high level of directness, and the level of informality expected in the family explains its non-offensiveness. The importance of affect is revealed by the salience of linguistic devices indexing positive affect. Yet in addition to the domain-specificity of the system, culture plays an equally important role. Culturally varied perceptions of children's face needs are reflected in differential styles, with Israeli parents drawing heavily on the emotively colored language of mitigation and nicknaming, and American parents paying homage to the child's independence by adherence to first names and the use of conventional forms. The groups differ further in aspects of pragmatic socialization emphasized, as shown by types of metapragmatic comments used. All parents attend to socializing children towards adherence to Gricean norms of conversation, but while American parents explicitly teach rules of conversational management, Israeli parents worry instead about correct language use. Three general implications are drawn for a general theory of politeness. First, there is a need to incorporate the hitherto neglected dimension of speech-events as a determinant factor in evaluating politeness values. Second, the relative importance granted different strategic dimensions in indexing politeness should be reassessed. For directives, mitigation should be considered on a par with choices on a directness continuum. Third, it is suggested that the scope of pragmatic phenomena studied for politeness move beyond specific speech acts to incorporate wider discourse phenomena, such as discourse management.
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