Alle Publikationen
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2014
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(2014): Politeness processing as situated social cognition. A RT-theoretic account. In: Journal of Pragmatics 71, S. 117-131. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.010
Abstract: That Relevance Theory (RT) is capable in principle of explaining social or interpersonal dimensions of verbal communication has been adequately documented in the literature (as partly summarized in Wilson and Sperber, 2005). Of all the available attempts at applying the theory in this direction, the most discussed issue is perhaps politeness. Major studies along this line include Escandell-Vidal (1996, 1998), Jary (1998a), Watts (1989, 2003), Christie (2007) and Ruhi (2008). Admittedly, these studies have advanced our understanding of how politeness is processed in the course of communication, but some new issues have arisen, mainly including (i) whether the use of conventional polite forms relative to their default contexts is communicatively relevant or not; (ii) what politeness is taken to be social adequacy, means of maintaining or improving social relations, or perlocutionary effect; (iii) whether politeness interpretation relies on the recognition of speakers' intention or not; (iv) how frames, schemata, etc. are activated in the course of politeness interpretation such that the same utterance might be assigned different interpretations, polite, neutral, or impolite; and (v) whether the communication of politeness is an individual-based social act or a joint action. These issues make it necessary to continue the discussion further. Accordingly, my aim in this study is to propose a new account of how RT might be employed to more fully explain the phenomenon of politeness. Drawing on the fundamental assumptions of RT, together with some pertinent insights on situated social cognition (Langlotz, 2010), I explore the cognitive processing of politeness in three major types of case: the situated use of conventional polite forms, contents, and associations. Approaching politeness in relevance-theoretic terms, I will argue that (i) politeness processing is a matter of situated social cognition, involving interaction between assumptions derived from various sources in a dynamic context; (ii) situated social cognition of polite behavior as a joint act which may be conscious to varying degrees is relevance-oriented; and (iii) processing different manifestations of politeness in dynamic contexts is communicatively relevant in that it yields interpersonal cognitive effects as part and parcel of utterance meaning. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2008
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(2008): Intentionality, communicative intentions and the implication of politeness. In: Intercultural Pragmatics 5 (3), S. 287-314. DOI: 10.1515/IPRG.2008.014
Abstract: Working within the relevance-theoretic paradigm (Sperber & Wilson 1995 [1986]), complemented with the cognitive linguistic approach (Johnson 1987; Lakoff & Johnson 1980), the paper proposes that politeness is an optional metarepresentation of an "interpersonal attitude" (Haugh 2007: 91) that concerns the domain of intentionality. The paper first addresses the issue of "noticed" vs. "unnoticed" politeness with respect to utterance processing and argues that "unnoticed" (conventional) politeness can exist in interaction on the level of "background consciousness" (O'Driscoll 1996: 1) and that processing of non-conventional utterances need not go through full-fledged inferential processing to achieve polite interpretations. Politeness is described as an implication that may result via the integration of the metarepresentation of (communicative) intentions and evaluative meta-representations of the interlocutors' social acts.
2007
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(2007): Relevance theory and politeness. In: Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture 3 (2), S. 269-294. DOI: 10.1515/PR.2007.012
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to open up for debate the question of whether Sperber and Wilson's (1995 [1986]) relevance theory can usefully inform politeness research. It is therefore designed to indicate some of the methodological implications for the study of politeness that would arise from an adoption of a relevance-theoretical framework. I begin by outlining some arguments posited by politeness theorists who have applied relevance theory and then provide a brief account of some of the key differences between the Gricean framework that informs Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]) theory of politeness and the account of utterance interpretation offered by relevance theory. I conclude by suggesting some of the differences in focus that would result from the analysis of politeness from a relevance-theoretical perspective.
1987
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(1987): The dark side of politeness: a pragmatic analysis of non-cooperative communication. Canterbury: Canterbury UP
Abstract: I examine the Brown and Levinson (1978) model of politeness. On the assumption that a model of face attention must involve impolite as well as polite interactive behaviour, I construct an analogous model to deal with what I term Face Attack Acts. I show that an extension of a politeness model in this way reveals serious flaws in some hypotheses central to Brown and Levinson's work. I apply the principles of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) to the extended model, and show how the theory can offer an explanatory account of face attention, on a continuum from polite to impolite. Relevance Theory makes predictions about the interpretation of utterances in context, which explain how the face-oriented aspect of interaction is recovered by hearers. I show that Relevance Theory provides a motivated way of linking utterances with facts about power asymmetries and group-membership which are seen to be recoverable by the interpretive process. I apply the resulting face-attention model of utterance interpretation to examples of the use of language to encode power and communicate assumptions about social behaviour and status. In terms of previous accounts of utterance interpretation, particularly Grice's Cooperative Principle and maxims, the account of face attention which incorporates Relevance Theory has greater explanatory power. In practical terms, this application of Relevance Theory is shown to be illuminating in raising the assumptions underlying non-cooperative communication to a conscious level, at which their validity can be sustained.
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