Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage
... In this example, the speaker is implicitly trying to use the hearer's mobile phone to make a call. Indirect speech acts are usually used to give a space for the speakers to modify or even retract their statements and for the listeners to interpret the intended messages in a way that suits their understanding (Brown and Levinson, 1987). ...
... The verb complain means to express pain, grief, or discontent and to make a formal charge or accusation (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2024). Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that the speech act of complaining shows a speaker's negative judgment regarding a piece of information, a behavior, or an action performed by the hearer. In the same vein, Olshtain and Weinbach (1993) suggest that, by making complaints, a speaker expresses a sense of discontent and annoyance towards a specific action. ...
... In the same vein, Olshtain and Weinbach (1993) suggest that, by making complaints, a speaker expresses a sense of discontent and annoyance towards a specific action. The speech act of complaining is related to the theory of politeness, especially to the concept of 'face' (Brown & Levinson, 1987). When making complaints, a speaker does not usually care about the complainee's feelings or desires. ...
... Kesantunan merupakan strategi untuk menjaga "muka" lawan tutur (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Dalam iklan, penggunaan imbuhan "-lah" pada "Buanglah" mencerminkan kesantunan positif-mengajak dengan sopan. ...
... Kesantunan berbahasa adalah upaya yang dilakukan penutur untuk menghindari tindak tutur yang mengancam muka (face threatening acts/FTA) lawan tutur. (Stephen Levinson, 1987). Kesantunan berfungsi sebagai strategi untuk menyelamatkan muka kedua belah pihak dalam komunikasi, sehingga interaksi dapat berjalan lancar dan harmonis. ...
... dan Brown &Levinson (1987) Langkah-langkah analisis meliputi: Identifikasi bentuk tindak tutur dalam kalimat iklan, penafsiran makna implikatur berdasarkan konteks dan maksim Grice, analisis unsur deiksis dan strategi kesantunan yang digunakan, interpretasi efek persuasif dari struktur linguistik yang dianalisis Sumber data diperoleh dari dokumentasi iklan visual dan teks yang tersebar di media sosial serta kampanye kebersihan pemerintah. Analisis dilakukan dengan mengkaitkan bentuk linguistik dengan konteks sosial dan tujuan komunikatif iklan. ...
This study aims to analyze the pragmatic aspects and persuasive strategies in a public service advertisement entitled "Throw Trash in Its Place. The Earth is Not Your Trash Can." This study uses a pragmatic approach with a focus on the theory of speech acts, implicature, deixis, and politeness of language to reveal how to convey messages effectively and persuasively in the context of public communication. The advertisement is analyzed as a form of directive communication that aims to encourage changes in people's behavior towards issues of cleanliness and environmental concern. The results of the analysis show that this advertisement utilizes strong but polite directive speech acts, normative implicatures to instill values, the use of personal deixis to build closeness with the audience, and positive and negative politeness strategies to maintain social relations. Thus, advertisements not only function as a medium for conveying information, but also as an instrument for forming collective awareness through a communicative approach that is contextual, efficient, and emotionally and rationally appealing to its audience.
... O nosso objetivo é compreender como se constrói no comentário o discurso de exacerbação e de intolerância e quais os atos ameaçadores da face (FTAs) que predominam. Os comentários serão analisados com base nos estudos da agressividade e violência verbais (Culpeper, 2011; Bousfiled & Locher 2008), em diálogo com estudos pragmáticos (Goffman, 1967;Brown & Levinson, 1987) e com estudos sobre discurso polémico (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2008). Destacar-se-ão os FTAS, nomeadamente os atos de acusação e de difamação e os insultos, ensaiando comprovar que neste palco mediatizado das redes sociais se assiste a uma banalização crescente da violência verbal. ...
... We aim to understand how the discourse of exacerbation and intolerance is constructed in the commentary and which facethreatening acts (FTAs) predominate. The comments will be analysed based on studies of verbal impoliteness and verbal violence (Culpeper, 2011;Bousfiled & Locher 2008), in dialogue with pragmatic studies (Goffman, 1967;Brown & Levinson, 1987) and with studies of polemical discourse (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2008). The FTAS will be highlighted, namely acts of accusation and defamation and insults, trying to prove that in this mediatized space of social networks we are witnessing a growing banalization of verbal violence. ...
... Le commentaire en ligne, fleuron du web social à ses débuts. A imagem dos enunciadores nas mensagens do FB faz transparecer um ethos que adota estratégias de valorização da sua própria face (na terminologia de Brown & Levinson, 1978;1987), que o credibilizem e que o façam ser apreciado (e inclusivamente invejado) pelos demais. ...
Partindo do pressuposto de que o ‘comentário’ é, na sua essência, uma tomada de posição sobre algo anteriormente dito ou escrito, propomonos, neste estudo, observar, numa perspectiva enunciativo-pragmática, as estratégias linguísticodiscursivas que dominam estes espaços considerados espaços de agressividade e violência verbal. Com base numa notícia de um jornal online português sobre uma polémica desencadeada pelo líder do partido populista CHEGA, pretendemos refletir sobre as formas que estão ao serviço da construção das imagens dos enunciadores, convocando as teorias da face e a noção de ethos discursivo. O nosso objetivo é compreender como se constrói no comentário o discurso de exacerbação e de intolerância e quais os atos ameaçadores da face (FTAs) que predominam. Os comentários serão analisados com base nos estudos da agressividade e violência verbais (Culpeper, 2011; Bousfiled & Locher 2008), em diálogo com estudos pragmáticos (Goffman, 1967; Brown & Levinson, 1987) e com estudos sobre discurso polémico (Kerbat-Orecchioni 2008). Destacar-se-ão os FTAS, nomeadamente os atos de acusação e de difamação e os insultos, ensaiando comprovar que neste palco mediatizado das redes sociais se assiste a uma banalização crescente da violência verbal. Palavras-chave: comentário digital; redes sociais; agressividade e violência verbal.
... The examples in (1) illustrate that the same speech act of requesting help can be performed by a variety of linguistic forms. All those different forms do not change the speech act, but they have an impact on the social meaning of the utterance because they feature different degrees of politeness [2][3][4]. However, while it is clear that using please in (1b) is perceived as being more polite than a bare imperative (1c), it is less obvious where exactly the other forms fall on a hierarchy of politeness. ...
... For instance, you can keep the information asked for constant in the examples in (3), but still observe a significant difference in the linguistic forms you would use to address the question to either a child or an elderly lady, for instance: According to this formula, the weightiness is the sum of the distance (D) between S(peaker) and H(earer), the power (P) that H has over S, and the degree to which the respective face-threatening act is considered an imposition in the respective culture (Rx). According to the politeness theory by Brown & Levinson [2], those three factors determine the level of politeness with which the face-threatening act will be communicated. In our example (3) above, the social distance D(S,H)-given standard assumptions about the difference between asking a child and an elderly lady about their age in Western societies-differs considerably, and that is why a speaker would choose different levels of politeness (i.e., different linguistic forms) for performing the relevant speech act. ...
... [✔a child ✘elderly lady] b. May I ask how old you are? [✔a child ✔elderly lady]The social dimension involved in linguistic forms such as (3) and hence their different degrees of politeness can be further decomposed by adopting a calculation of the weightiness of face-threatening acts proposed by Brown & Levinson in their seminal work on politeness[2]. In particular, the weightiness (W) of a face-threatening act (x) like asking a question such as (3) can be calculated as follows[2, p. 76]: ...
This paper explores the interface between linguistic form and social meaning by focusing on correlations between sentence type and the social distance between interlocutors—a central aspect of the social meaning component of politeness. We present a forced-choice experiment with four different groups of speakers (L1 British English speakers, L1 American English speakers, L2 English/German speakers, and L1 German speakers). In this experiment, we manipulated the linguistic form of asking for help along the syntactic dimension of sentence type (declaratives, interrogatives, or imperatives) and recorded the addressee our participants picked for each form (brother, coworker, or stranger). We broaden the empirical picture by going beyond highly conventionalized forms (e.g., Can you VP?) and therefore also varying the modal auxiliary verbs (e.g., Will you VP?). Based on this comprehensive picture of ways of asking for help, we identify clusters of linguistic forms depending on their felicity in different social scenarios. Our descriptive cluster analysis as well as the statistical comparisons between sentence types indicate that there are systematic correspondences between linguistic form and social meaning across different groups of speakers and languages, and we propose that our empirical data provide a potential starting point for rethinking speech act grammar in terms of ‘social grammar’.
... Using the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and other ELF corpora, we coded instances of misunderstanding or communicative breakdown. Analytical frameworks from speech act theory (Searle, 1969), politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and cross-cultural pragmatics (House, 2003) informed our coding of illocutionary "misfires," inappropriate directness, failed politeness, and turn-taking issues. Findings: Several frequent pragmatic failure types were identified. ...
... • Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987): We analyzed interactions for politeness strategies and face-threatening acts. This theory guided us in identifying when speakers used (or failed to use) politeness markers, indirect language, honorifics, etc., and how hearers reacted. ...
Background: English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English between speakers of different mother tongues as a common means of communication. In ELF interactions, communicative efficiency and pragmatics often take precedence over strict adherence to native-speaker norms. However, using English in intercultural settings poses pragmatic challenges – what might be intended as polite or clear in one culture can be misinterpreted in another. These intercultural pragmatic failures can lead to miscommunication or unintended rudeness. Aim: This study investigates common types of intercultural pragmatic failure (e.g. misinterpretations, perceived impoliteness) among ELF users, using a corpus-based approach. We seek to identify recurrent problem areas in ELF pragmatic usage and understand their causes. Method: We conducted a discourse analysis of a corpus of spoken ELF interactions (e.g. academic discussions, business meetings) involving non-native English speakers from diverse first-language backgrounds. Using the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and other ELF corpora, we coded instances of misunderstanding or communicative breakdown. Analytical frameworks from speech act theory (Searle, 1969), politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and cross-cultural pragmatics (House, 2003) informed our coding of illocutionary “misfires,” inappropriate directness, failed politeness, and turn-taking issues. Findings: Several frequent pragmatic failure types were identified. These include inappropriate speech act realizations (e.g. direct commands intended as suggestions), misused politeness strategies (e.g. missing hedges or honorifics), culturally divergent norms of directness (leading to perceptions of rudeness), and breakdowns in conversation flow (e.g. interruptions or lack of response due to unrecognized cues). Such failures often stem from negative transfer of native-language pragmatic norms or a lack of shared cultural context. Conclusion: The results highlight a need for greater pragmatic awareness in ELF communication. While ELF speakers generally prioritize mutual understanding and often adapt to each other, misunderstandings still occur due to sociocultural differences. Raising ELF users’ awareness of intercultural pragmatic norms – and training them in accommodation strategies – could mitigate miscommunications. This has implications for intercultural communication training and language teaching, suggesting a shift beyond grammatical accuracy toward pragmatics in ELF contexts.
... In order to investigate this topic, scholars integrated theories from the field of politeness studies. The first studies applied theoretical models based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory, thus focusing mainly on face-threatening speech acts (e.g. Jacobsen, 2008;Mason & Stewart, 2001;Pöllabauer, 2007). ...
... The model defines rapport management as 'the management of interpersonal relations: the use of language to promote, maintain or threaten harmonious social relations' (Spencer-Oatey, 2008, p. 3). It partially draws on politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), employing the concept of face, but posits that interpersonal relation management transcends the traditional face-concerns, thus introducing interactional goals (i.e. the goals interlocutors have when interacting with others) and sociality rights and obligations (i.e. rights and obligations that interlocutors have in relation to others, prompting certain behavioral expectations) as two additional components relevant for rapport. ...
Despite the growing adoption of video remote interpreting (VRI), there is limited research on how its visual affordances might affect interpreters’ embodied communication. This study addresses this gap by exploring interpreters’ use of embodied resources to manage rapport challenge in VRI interactions (Rapport Management Theory, Spencer-Oatey, 2008). It analyzes which embodied resources interpreters employ and how the VRI modality influences their communicative effectiveness. Using a mixed methods approach, the paper analyzes 14 video recordings supplemented with eye-tracking data of simulated VRI interactions, involving professional interpreters and role-players simulating the context of a reception center for asylum seekers. Quantitative results reveal that interpreters use a wide variety of embodied resources when managing rapport challenge. Hand gestures were the most commonly used resources, while facial expressions were less frequent. However, the majority of hand gestures were performed off-screen, losing their communicative effectiveness. Qualitative analysis provides detailed examples of how interpreters employ embodied resources to manage rapport challenge. The study concludes that despite interpreters’ extensive use of embodied resources in VRI, this modality’s visual constraints can significantly impact their communicative effectiveness. It calls for increased awareness for interpreters, emphasizing the need for self-monitoring to ensure the accessibility of their embodied resources in VRI.
... This procedure, part of the study's exploratory phase, aimed to uncover fresh insights into character dynamics and audience perceptions (Abushalla, 2023). After identifying the lesser-known characters, the researchers looked closely at how they used direct and indirect ways of being polite, based on (Brown & Levinson's (1987) ideas. The study followed the qualitative analysis procedures outlined by Miles et al. (2014), which included data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing, ensuring a systematic and rigorous examination of the findings. ...
... Based on the script, Jin, Mei's father, speaks 23 utterances. Table 1 shows the context and the assertive and non-assertive politeness tabulation analyzed with Brown & Levinson (1987). Nonassertive 1 ...
Film also brings many things to learn, including politeness. This qualitative descriptive study investigates the politeness strategies employed by the underrated characters in the film Turning Red, with a particular focus on the character Jin. The objective of the research is to analyze how assertive and non-assertive politeness strategies are used by Jin and to explore their implications for English language teaching and learning. To identify which characters to analyze, the researchers conducted a document analysis of fan comments gathered from online platforms such as Moviepedia and Looper, ensuring that audience perceptions guided the selection of underrated figures. After identifying the characters, the researchers used the official movie script and examined it through Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness framework, following the steps of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing outlined by Miles et al. (2014). The findings reveal that assertive strategies, especially informative acts, were predominant in Jin’s speech, highlighting his role as a calm, supportive problem solver in the film’s family dynamics. Importantly, this study provides meaningful insights for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning, showing how analyzing politeness in authentic media can enhance learners’ pragmatic competence, cultural awareness, and communication skills. By linking media analysis with language education, the study underscores the value of films like Turning Red as resources for developing both linguistic and intercultural competence among EFL learners.
... Instead, there is a small, but growing, body of work on natural language generation architectures that seek to address this challenge (Gupta et al., 2007;Miller et al., 2008;Briggs and Scheutz, 2013). The common approach taken by these architectures is the operationalization of key factors in Brown and Levinson's seminal work on politeness theory, in particular, the degree to which an utterance can be considered a face-threatening act (FTA) (Brown and Levinson, 1987). ...
... Finally, we discuss the justification behind and limitations of this proposed approach. Brown and Levinson (1987) articulated a taxonomy of politeness strategies, distinguishing broadly between the notion of positive and negative politeness (with many distinct strategies for each). These categories of politeness correspond to the concepts of positive and negative face, respectively. ...
... All in all, this body of work has identified several linguistic features that are useful for inferring acceptances and rejections, often building on observations made by conversational analysts (Pomerantz, 1984;Brown and Levinson, 1987). Furthermore, recent work by Bousmalis et al. (2013) suggests that there are specific nonverbal behaviours associated with agreement and disagreement, such as different types of head, lip, and hand movements. ...
... For instance, the presence of "yeah" is a good cue for acceptance, while the presence of "but" is a strong cue for rejection. The bigram "yeah, but" is in turn a good indicator for rejection-the "yeah" in such cases seems to be an attempt at politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987;Bousfield, 2008). Since rejections are dispreferred moves, they are frequently initiated with a hedging such as "well" or with hesitation or stalling (Byron and Heeman, 1997). ...
... Desde un enfoque pragmático, se analizará bajo las perspectivas de las teorías de la relevancia (Sperber y Wilson 1986), de la cortesía verbal (Brown y Levinson 1987), así como desde el metadiscurso (Hyland 2005; Hyland y Jiang 2022). ...
... La teoría de la cortesía verbal implica los conceptos de imagen pública, positiva o negativa, y de los actos del habla susceptibles de amenazarla (face threatening acts) (Brown y Levinson 1987). Así, el empleo de palabras tabú o malsonantes puede constituir un acto de amenaza a la imagen pública positiva del oyente, al poder suponer una falta de respeto del hablante hacia los valores y sentimientos del primero. ...
Sentiment analysis is a topic that has been researched in several fields, however, few studies have been carried out in the oral language of architecture. This article analyzes a corpus of two architecture podcasts in Spanish, with the aim of identifying the relationship between emotion and values in this genre. It is based on the hypothesis that emotion is linked to certain social values. The qualitative and quantitative methodology is based on Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics. After the qualitative analysis, the sentiment analysis tool Lingmotif (Moreno-Ortiz 2021) has been applied. It has provided quantitative data on the presence of emotion, its polarity, its intensity indices, as well as clouds of emotionally charged words linked to social values. This work contributes to the development of sentiment analysis in the field of podcasts and provides reasonable information on the relationship between values and emotion.
... De estas dos posibilidades, la primera es la predominante a lo largo de la entrevista, lo cual responde, una vez más, a la voluntad de los participantes de contribuir a la creación de un texto cohesionado, en la línea de la co-construcción de la conversación. Esta deíxis para el acuerdo es reflejo, a su vez, de los esfuerzos de los entrevistados por alcanzar la resolución de los conflictos dialécticos que los estereotipos sucesivamente plantean y de cómo estos resuelven esta tarea interactiva de la manera menos amenazadora -en términos de la teoría de la cortesía (Brown y Levinson, 1987)-para la imagen del otro. ...
In the following pages we present, describe and analyse a communicative event in the form of a videotaped interview between three copresent subjects who possess a common cross-cultural background in Spanish and German language (and culture). The interview, focused on the discussion of certain widely spread stereotypes in and about these two cultures, offers a sample of (semi)spontaneous speech in German. A metapragmatic view of the collected data (Verschueren, 2012) will allow us to characterize, from an integrative –discursive and multimodal– perspective, some of the interactional strategies that surface in the process of negotiating stereotypes and that shape successive acts of agreement and disagreement on two levels: that of the interviewees versus the stereotypes and that of one interviewee versus the other. These two axes of analysis, in which the main discursive and multimodal movements of the interviewees will be described, are the backbone of this paper, which is completed with a review of the concept of cultural stereotype as it is found in studies on interculturality in the Spanish-German context.
... Ingliz va o'zbek tillarida kiyim-kechak leksikasi milliy madaniyat va urf-odatlarni aks ettiradi. Natijalar lingvistik tadqiqotlar, tarjimashunoslik va madaniyatshunoslik sohalariga hissa qo'shib, amaliy foydalanish imkonini beradi [6]. ...
Ushbu maqolada ingliz va o‘zbek tillarida kiyim-kechak atamalarining lingvistik xususiyatlari o‘rganiladi. Ishning asosiy maqsadi – har ikki tilning leksik tizimida kiyim-kechak bilan bog’liq so‘zlarning tuzilishi, semantik jihatlari, etimologiyasi va milliy-madaniy mazmunini tahlil qilishdir. Ushbu ikki tilning lingvistik va madaniy o‘ziga xosliklarini tadqiq qilish orqali tarjima jarayoni, leksikalogiya va madaniyatlararo kommunikatsiya sohasiga amaliy foyda keltirishi mumkin.
... Academic studies emphasize the importance of polite speech in English-speaking cultures. Brown and Levinson (1987) discuss "positive politeness" strategies, which seek to create a sense of inclusiveness and respect in conversation 3 . ...
This article explores the linguistic and cultural expressions of respect in English, Uzbek, and Russian. By analyzing traditional form of respect in various literatures, it highlights how these expressions reflect social values and cultural priorities. Drawing from classic and contemporary works such as “Pride and Prejudice”, “O‘tkan kunlar”, and “War and Peace”, the article delves into the unique ways respect is communicated in each language. This comparative study fosters a deeper understanding of cross-cultural communication.
... Hedging serves to introduce uncertainty or soften assertions, using single words or phrases such as "in my opinion" (Vincze, 2014;Hyland, 1998;Brown and Levinson, 1987). Rubin's framework leverages these concepts by identifying certainty markers and categorizing them as Absolute, High, Moderate, Low, and Uncertain. ...
... Others question their universal applicability, noting real-world deviations (Levinson, 2000), or the dynamic negotiation of meaning that sometimes breaks these maxims to achieve understanding (Clark, 1996). Power dynamics and politeness strategies, which also influence conversations, are insufficiently addressed by Grice's framework (Leech, 1983;Brown and Levinson, 1987). Hovy and Yang (2021) culture and language are fused, thereby making a language analysis without looking at the social and cultural aspects of it limited in its insights. ...
... Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner are central to understanding how speakers use descriptors Hemingway's works requires a pragmatic approach to revealing the underlying emotional truths of the characters. This is consistent with the findings of Brown and Levinson (1987), who argued that politeness strategies in conversation often require reliance on meaning to guide social relationships. ...
This study conducts a pragmatic analysis of the dialogue between characters in Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," utilizing Grice's Cooperative Principle as a theoretical framework. By examining the interactions between Santiago and Manolin, the research highlights how conversational maxims: Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner shape their communication. The analysis reveals that while both characters generally adhere to these principles, occasional deviations occur, reflecting their emotional connections and the complexities of their relationship. This investigation not only enhances understanding of the characters' dynamics but also underscores the broader implications of pragmatic theory in literary dialogue. Ultimately, the findings demonstrate that effective communication transcends mere information exchange, emphasizing the importance of fostering relationships and emotional understanding in human interactions.
... The costly signal, so to say, functions as a means to 'tune' the belief of the other. This kind of equilibrium could be used, for instance, as a model of indirect-'offrecord'-speech, that is, speech acts the intended meaning of which diverges from its literal meaning and that rely on the hearer's interpretation to get the speaker's purpose conveyed (Brown and Levinson 1987). Pinker and coauthors (2007;2008) suggest that the function of indirect speech is to avoid common knowledge of the type of the speaker while transferring the responsibility to accept or not the desired relationship change to the receiver (in our model, to get accepted, hired, etc.), which gives the speaker the chance to achieve the desired relationship change at least sometimes. ...
The theory of costly signaling (Spence in Q J Econ 87:355–374, 1973) is a well-established paradigm in economics and theoretical biology, where it is also known as the Handicap Principle (Zahavi J Theor Biol 53:205–214, 1975). Nevertheless, while costly-signaling games have been extensively studied in classical game theory (focused on Nash equilibrium and its refinements), evolutionary dynamics in costly-signaling games are relatively unexplored. This paper gives a comprehensive account of evolutionary dynamics in two canonical classes of games with two states of nature, two signals, and two possible reactions to signals: a model with differential signaling costs (similar to Spence’s model) and a model with differential benefits from success (similar to Milgrom and Roberts’s in J Polit Econ 94:796–821, 1986, respectively Grafen’s J Theor Biol 144:517–546, 1990, model). We first use index theory to give a necessary condition for the dynamic stability of the equilibria in these games. Then, we study the replicator dynamics and the best-response dynamics. Along the way, we relate our findings to classical equilibrium refinements that test for the plausibility of beliefs off the equilibrium path.
... Класичний (прагматичний) -пов'язаний із роботами П. Грайса [8], теорією ввічливості Р. Лакоффа [9], а також дослідженнями П. Браун і С. Левінсона [5] та Дж. Ліча [11]; ...
У статті досліджується категорія ввічливості як комунікативно-прагматичний феномен, з особливим акцентом на її реалізацію в англомовних юридичних текстах. Ввічливість розглядається як складна багатогранна категорія, що охоплює вербальні та невербальні засоби вираження, а також соціокультурні та лінгвістичні аспекти комунікації.У роботі визначаються основні етапи та напрями дослідження категорії ввічливості в лінгвістиці. Класичний етап характеризується аналізом ввічливості як прагматичної категорії мовлення та комунікації, де увага зосереджена на мовних стратегіях, спрямованих на підтримку гармонійних відносин між комунікантами. Дискурсивний етап враховує ментальні, соціо- та лінгвокультурні аспекти ввічливості, підкреслюючи її залежність від контексту та культурних норм. Інтеракційний етап базується на ідеї спільного конструювання та розуміння ввічливості учасниками комунікації, акцентуючи увагу на динаміці взаємодії та спільному створенні значень.Особлива увага приділяється явищу ґеджування (hedging), яке є невід’ємною характеристикою англомовної юридичної комунікації. Ґеджування розглядається як засіб пом’якшення категоричності висловлювань, що дозволяє уникнути прямолінійності та забезпечити більш обережне формулювання думок. У юридичних текстах це проявляється через використання модальних дієслів, умовних конструкцій, вставних слів та фраз, які знижують ступінь категоричності тверджень і забезпечують гнучкість інтерпретації.Аналізуються також вербальні та невербальні засоби актуалізації ввічливості в англомовних юридичних текстах. До вербальних засобів належать формули ввічливості, евфемізми, непрямі мовленнєві акти, використання пасивних конструкцій та номіналізацій. Невербальні засоби включають такі аспекти, як форматування тексту, використання певних шрифтів, розташування інформації на сторінці, що сприяє створенню відповідного тону та настрою спілкування. Різноманітні підходи до трактування категорії ввічливості зумовлені її комплексністю та багатоаспектністю, а також різними теоретичними та методологічними засадами її вивчення. У статті підкреслюється важливість урахування культурних та соціальних норм при аналізі ввічливості, оскільки те, що вважається ввічливим в одній культурі, може сприйматися інакше в іншій.Таким чином, дослідження категорії ввічливості та засобів її актуалізації в англомовних юридичних текстах дозволяє глибше зрозуміти механізми комунікації в юридичному дискурсі, а також виявити специфіку використання мовних засобів для досягнення комунікативних цілей.
Despite their constrained discursive space, defendants in Chinese criminal trials often resist interrogators’ domination in pursuit of favorable judgments. This article delves into defendants’ deployment of discursive resistance strategies and strategic clusters in courtroom interaction and examines the impact of gender, education, and penalty on strategic choices. A corpus of Chinese criminal trial discourse, totaling 15,388 minutes of recordings and 3.3 million transcribed Chinese characters, was constructed for analysis. Quantitative and qualitative analysis demonstrate that defendants’ discursive practice are predominantly characterized by covert resistance strategies, supplemented by overt resistance strategies, and their strategic clusters demonstrate marked preferential patterns, generating synergistic resistance effects that optimize defensive efficacy. Additionally, gender, education and penalty significantly shape strategic choices, with the impact of penalty particularly pronounced. This study elucidates the bidirectional operation of power between dominant and subordinate parties in courtrooms, providing valuable insights particularly for research on conflict-laden institutional interactions.
The lack of pragmatic knowledge of email structure and little awareness of politeness strategies in email conventions that affects one’s presentation of self through language use usually make students perceived negatively when they communicate with their teachers. In this mixed methods study, 96 Grade 7 male students from convenience sampling produced 327 emails after receiving a brief module about pragmatic implications and formal structure in emails and the teacher’s instruction and demonstration in email conventions. The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) and Politeness and Face Theories were applied to examine the structure, language features, and politeness strategies of these emails and to explore how the students’ pragmatic competence and identities were reflected through their communicative language use. Results showed that despite the simplified (a)synchronous sessions and joint construction, there were variations in how students wrote apologies, requests, invitations, and excuse letters. Most emails contained downtowners, and the politeness marker “po” was mostly used to soften impositions while “God bless” was utilized as a salutation. Although pragmalinguistic competence was observed, institutional power, rank, and distance were not much considered, which led to a vague sociopragmatic competence. This implies the need for explicit instructions about email politeness and the integration of pragmatics-based pedagogical interventions in teaching certain written content and formats.
The article explores the cognitive perspectives of adaptable communication within the English linguistic culture by delving into a range of emotions that facilitate effective interaction and connection with others. Analysis of the literary texts from the English novels demonstrates that adaptable communication is created on the basis of the key emotions including empathy, respect, patience, confidence, flexibility, active listening, positivity and the notions navigating and interpreting various shades of ambiguity in the course of communication, which requires a sophisticated understanding of context and intent. It is through this lens that we can appreciate the full spectrum of communicative adaptability, recognizing that the efficacy of communication is intrinsically linked to the cognitive and cultural sophistication of the individuals involved.
This article explores the linguocultural peculiarities of the English and Uzbek languages, focusing on how social values, traditions, and worldviews are encoded in linguistic structures and lexicons. Employing a comparative qualitative methodology, the research analyzes 100 ethnocultural units drawn from educational dictionaries and authentic texts, covering areas such as address forms, politeness strategies, cultural realia, and idiomatic expressions. The findings reveal fundamental differences in communication styles, with Uzbek reflecting collectivist, high-context cultural traits through indirectness, honorifics, and culturally loaded expressions, while English exhibits characteristics of an individualistic, low-context culture with more direct speech and syntactic politeness markers. The lexicographical treatment of cultural terms in bilingual dictionaries was found to be insufficient, often lacking necessary cultural annotations, which may hinder language learners’ cultural understanding.
Data dubbed “peripheral” or previously unaccounted for have inspired new methods, new models and theories of language and new ways of understanding language and communication within pragmatics. The chapters in the volume extend this perspective to include language users and their identities as central, taking into account the ideologies that mediate their perception of language use. Identities and peripheries are approached geographically (Europe, North America, Africa, Asia; dialectal variation), socially (gender, age, social status), medially (traditional, electronic and multimedia), occupationally (trade, congregation) and from the points of view of healthcare and of professional relations. The volume includes the editors’ introductory overview of challenges in the field, and chapters divided into three parts, Building the Peripheral Stage; Identities in Interaction; and Gender, Narratives, and Peripheries. By particularizing a variety of linguistic peripheries, the volume fosters a deeper understanding of human interaction.
The aim of this paper is to describe the meanings of daw and its variants dao and dol in Zamboanga Chabacano, a Spanish-based creole language spoken in and around Zamboanga City. As a result of the contact between Spanish and Filipino languages, Chabacano retains a significant number of particles of Filipino origin, including daw , which is present in the Filipino languages that constitute the main substratum or adstratum of the varieties of Creole, and whose origin has not yet been clarified. However, it does not appear to be a simple transposition of the uses of homonymous particles from Filipino languages to Zamboangueño. Instead, the Zamboanga Chabacano particle has developed its own usage patterns, showing a greater influence from Visayan languages than from Tagalog. The study of the function of daw in the latter, together with the characterisation of the three main meanings of the Zamboanguean particle —evidential and epistemic, comparative modal and politeness with imperative verbs— will allow us to analyse the semantic evolution it has undergone in creole.
There is a continuing debate on whether the internet serves as a public sphere for meaningful political discussion and increases political engagement. Yet, we know little about how internet users in authoritarian regimes perceive and experience online political discussion beyond the dominant frame of censorship and surveillance. Based on the first nationally representative survey on internet use in China, this paper examines how citizens view the space for political discussion online and offline and how three types of concerns—repercussions, social desirability, and privacy—shape these perceptions. Results show that Chinese citizens tend to perceive online discussion as more diverse. Those concerned about political repercussions report higher perceived diversity in online discussions, while social desirability concerns correlate with greater perceived diversity in both online and offline settings. Only those concerned for exposure of personal information perceive online political discussion as more uniform. These findings advance understandings of citizen views on political discussion in authoritarian contexts and contribute to broader debates about the role of the internet in political engagement.
This chapter examines the efficacy of a discursive proposal for teaching refusals through using audiovisual material. Undergraduate EFL learners received a pragmatic treatment on refusals which integrated pre-, while- and post-watching video activities based on TV series excerpts. In particular, the instructional design aimed to achieve the following objectives: (1) exposing learners to diverse refusal sequences, (2) facilitating meaningful practice and collaborative construction of refusals, (3) fostering metapragmatic discussion on forms and norms for refusing, and (4) empowering learners to exercise agency in their communicative choices. The findings revealed significant differences in the use of refusal strategies between the experimental group, which received the treatment, and the control group, thereby highlighting notable advantages for the experimental group. Particularly significant was the observed increase in the production of contextually appropriate refusals by participants, demonstrating a clear adaptation of responses to the social status and interpersonal distance of the requester. Furthermore, participants in the experimental group exhibited heightened and diversified usage of both refusal strategies and their accompanying adjuncts. This led to significant pragmatic enhancements, including the ability to provide contextually relevant justifications, adopt a more empathetic stance, and develop greater proficiency in negotiation and flexibility skills. These findings underscore the efficacy of integrating audiovisual materials within the pedagogical framework of pragmatics, offering valuable insights into enhancing EFL learners’ communicative competence.
In an era characterised by information saturation and the rapid evolution of digital communication platforms, the study of persuasive language is undergoing profound developments. Bringing together cutting-edge research from a team of internationally acclaimed experts, this timely book examines the transformations occurring in the domain of persuasive language in contemporary society. It dissects the intricate web of manipulation, influence and deception, providing in-depth analyses of the potent mechanisms governing communication. Each chapter offers empirical insights from a range of different scholarly perspectives, including corpus linguistics, conversation analysis, forensic linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, phonetics and human-robot interactions. It opens with a comprehensive introductory chapter, making the research accessible to readers without extensive background knowledge. Equipping readers with the tools to critically engage with the multifaceted dynamics of language and persuasion, this is an indispensable resource for anyone striving to fathom the evolving realm of persuasive language.
The scholar’s homepage has become an indispensable genre in scholarly life. Previous studies have explored techniques for extracting specific details from scholars’ homepage biographies, such as their publication history and educational background. However, there is a lack of research investigating the linguistic properties of homepage bios. Register refers to the linguistic variations that configure the contextual factors constraining language use. To examine the register variations in the homepage bios of humanities scholars at ‘Project 985’ Chinese universities and those at QS Top-100 universities from English-speaking countries, Multi-Dimensional Analysis and Wmatrix are used to conduct a corpus-based analysis. The entire corpus consists of two sub-corpora: one for the English homepage bios of humanities scholars at Chinese universities and another for those at universities in English-speaking countries. Each sub-corpus comprises 288 texts. The results show that the former sub-corpus is closer to academic prose, whereas the latter is closer to broadcast discourse. The former exhibits a higher degree of narrativity, is more loosely tied to the situation, and refers less frequently to real-time production constraints, while the latter exhibits a higher level of interaction and personal involvement and tends more to persuade readers. Scholars in Chinese universities tend to emphasize social titles, the role of doctoral supervisors, and academic achievements, while those in English-speaking countries are inclined to highlight personal descriptions and relationships with others in their homepage bios. To some extent, this reflects the differences in working cultures between Chinese universities and those in English-speaking countries.
Iklan produk kecantikan merupakan salah satu contoh nyata penggunaan implikatur dalam menyampaikan pesan. Tujuan penelitian ini berfokus pada analisis penggunaan prinsip-prinsip pragmatik dalam iklan produk kecantikan sebagai strategi persuasi. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif kualitatif . Objek diteliti melalui penelitian kepustakaan, observasi, dan penggunaan dokumen yang berfokus pada analisis pragmatik terhadap video iklan body lation Citra yang menampilkan Maudy Ayunda, dengan menitikberatkan pada elemen verbal dan non-verbal dalam tindak tutur sebagai bentuk komunikasi yang menyampaikan nilai budaya dan pesan merek. Berdasarkan data yang telah dianalisis dapat diketahui terdapat tindak tutur direktif, penggunaan implikatur, penggunaan deiksis serta strategi kesantuan dalam iklan Bodylotion Citra. Melalui konteks situasional dan tujuan komunikasi, iklan ini tidak hanya menyampaikan informasi, tetapi juga membentuk makna yang relevan secara sosial dan budaya bagi target audiensnya.
This chapter focuses on sexual-related terms as customarily tabooed concept among the Nzema people of Ghana. Using the frameworks of Politeness and Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy, the chapter describes the convenient means of discussing issues concerning incest, rape, abortion, uncircumcision, and sexual intercourse. The primary data was sourced through participant and non-participant observations and interviews. The study showed that, to achieve politeness, the Nzema metaphorically refer to incest as consuming one's own eggs. They construe a woman who aborts her baby as plant that bears fruits and sheds them. The uncircumcised penis is described as wrapped toffee, and as a hunter's gun in a sack. To ensure politeness, the male youth describe sexual intercourse as watering a crop, and as giving drips to a woman.
This chapter critically examines the limitations of traditional politeness theories in understanding politeness within cross-cultural contexts. It argues that the core theories of politeness fall short in their ability to adequately analyze the effects of culture on communication and the contextual dimensions that shape utterance meanings. Insightful examples, particularly focusing on culturally nuanced expressions in Moroccan Arabic, illustrate the intricate nature of politeness as it unfolds in context. The author contends that traditional theories overlook the dynamic and subjective nature of both culture and context. Consequently, the chapter advocates for a broader pragmatic framework that integrates linguistic, cultural, and cognitive dimensions, thereby offering a more comprehensive approach to understanding politeness in cross-cultural communication.
Politeness methods in media discourse have been studied, but their significance in mediating security reporting, diplomatic background, and government policy critiques—especially in politically constrained environments—has not. Linguistic politeness studies rarely examine how journalists handle face-threatening acts (FTAs) while maintaining institutional legitimacy. This study compares Dawn newspaper's diplomatic, policy, and security coverage of Pakistan's security issues, diplomatic relations, and government policies to see how it uses civility to mitigate FTAs and save face. A qualitative thematic analysis of nine Dawn articles using Brown and Levinson's politeness theory to discover hedging, third-party attribution, and metaphorical abstraction. Dawn actively depersonalises state failure critiques with passive voice and systemic framing and promotes solidarity with inclusive language. Indirect criticism via metaphors and expert testimonials reduces direct FTAs. While maintaining institutional legitimacy, this method may dilute accountability. The findings imply media in limited democracies can balance critique and survival with politeness, providing a paradigm for responsible journalism under authoritarian constraints. Politeness techniques, face-threatening acts (FTAs), face-saving, negative and positive politeness, bald-on-record and bald-off-record, media discourse, Pakistan, Dawn newspaper.
This article explores how culturally shaped “speech culture” influences deliberative communication in multicultural contexts, with a focus on how participants negotiate local norms to foster understanding. Drawing on intercultural communication theory and discourse analysis, the study examines deliberative interactions across diverse cultural settings. Qualitative case analyses – including student forums and parliamentary debates – reveal that deliberation is not a culturally neutral process but one deeply shaped by local communication norms. Participants often reference both universal deliberative principles and culturally specific ways of speaking, using metadiscourse (talk about talk) to bridge differences. Key theoretical frameworks (Speech Codes Theory, Politeness Theory, and Face-Negotiation Theory) illuminate how communicative codes, politeness strategies, and face concerns vary across cultures and affect deliberation. Findings indicate that when individuals are mindful of divergent norms and actively negotiate them, they can integrate local speech practices into deliberative dialogue, enhancing mutual respect and clarity. The article discusses implications for language education – advocating the teaching of intercultural pragmatics – and for practitioners facilitating multicultural dialogue. It concludes that embracing speech culture differences as an asset, rather than a barrier, can lead to more inclusive deliberation and suggests avenues for future research on intercultural deliberative competence.
This chapter explores the development of request strategies among Turkish–Zazaki bilingual preschool children, focusing on how their pragmatic competence is shaped by linguistic input, social roles, and cultural norms. Drawing on naturalistic classroom data, the study examines the types and purposes of requests used across child–child, child–teacher, and teacher–child interactions. Findings reveal a strong preference for direct strategies among peers and more polite, indirect forms in teacher-directed speech, reflecting an emerging awareness of social hierarchy and communicative appropriateness. The chapter also highlights the influence of bilingualism and the marginalised status of Zazaki on children's pragmatic development. By integrating frameworks from speech act theory, politeness research, and interlanguage pragmatics, this chapter offers insights into how young bilingual learners navigate complex social dynamics through language use in early educational settings.
This study analyzes politeness and rudeness strategies in Turkish primary and secondary school textbooks, identifying their use in social settings. Social norms are learned through family and school, with language playing a key role. In Turkish culture, politeness strategies, such as respecting elders, reflect social hierarchy. Understanding these strategies helps individuals grasp cultural codes and communicate effectively. Using Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Theory, 18 textbooks (Life Science 1-3, Social Studies 4-7, and Turkish 1-8) were examined, identifying 730 actions. Positive politeness (355) was most frequent, followed by negative politeness (231), bald-on-record (92), and off-record (52). The limited emphasis on politeness and rudeness strategies in textbooks highlights their role in social integration and interpersonal skills. Expanding real-life examples in textbooks and providing teachers with additional materials can enhance students' understanding of pragmatic language use.
This study explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, error analysis, and pragmatics to enhance pragmatic competence in EFL learners. Pragmatic competence, which involves understanding and using language according to social and cultural norms, remains a challenge, particularly in cross-cultural contexts. AI-powered error analysis tools can help diagnose and address pragmatic errors by providing real-time feedback on aspects like politeness, speech acts, and cultural appropriateness. Recent AI advancements in natural language processing (NLP) enable systems to detect and correct pragmatic missteps, offering learners tailored suggestions. As a result, AI can refine direct requests to more polite forms, helping learners better navigate social interactions. Additionally, AI-driven platforms provide immersive environments for practicing pragmatic skills. Despite challenges in encoding dynamic cultural norms, AI has the potential to transform pragmatic competence teaching, with continued research needed to enhance its effectiveness and address cultural biases.
The paper is an attempt at demonstrating and describing relationships between two characters of a dramatic text, Jessie and Mama from Marsha Norman’s play ‘night, Mother. This can only be done based on textual cues, that is, such uses of the language by the characters that allows the reader to infer relations between them. Pragmatic frameworks of face and (im)politeness as well as complementary discourse-analytic framework of turn-taking are used to show how, in light of the broad, dynamic context of interaction, the two women ‘do friendship’ and how they ‘do conflict’.
Intonation and pragmatic strategies play a crucial role in effective communication, particularly in high-imposition speech acts like requests and refusals. However, second-language (L2) speakers often struggle to align their intonational patterns and pragmatic choices with native-speaker (L1) norms. This study aims to investigate the interplay between intonational variation and verbal and sociopragmatic strategies used by L1 and L2 speakers in high-imposition requests and refusals. Using a mixed-methods approach, role-play data were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for intonational variations using Brazil’s (Brazil, D. (1997). The communicative value of intonation in english. Cambridge University Press.) framework. A comparative analysis of speech patterns was conducted with PRAAT software, focusing on waveform representations, spectrograms, pitch contours, and formant distributions. Intonational variation and verbal strategies were interpreted qualitatively, while sociopragmatic strategies were analyzed quantitatively. The sociopragmatic results were coded using Beebe et al.’s (Beebe, L. M., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. C. Scarcella, E. S. Andersen, & S. D. Krashen (Eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second Language (pp. 55–73). Newbury House.) taxonomy for refusals and Blum-Kulka et al.’s (Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Ablex.) classifications for requests, with Chi-Square tests applied in SPSS to examine patterns. The findings reveal that L1 speakers employ more nuanced intonation patterns and indirect strategies, while L2 speakers rely more on direct refusals and requests with limited intonational variation, affecting perceived politeness. Additionally, L1 speakers use more politeness markers such as hedging, apologies, and gratitude. These results underscore the importance of explicit instruction in L2 pragmatics and intonation training to enhance communicative competence in intercultural settings.
This paper is a critique of what has become a widespread view of non-at-issue (NAI) contents. On this view, NAI contents are particularly well suited as instruments of manipulation since they are especially difficult to challenge and have a direct effect on the common ground. I argue by contrast, first, that challenging NAI contents is not significantly harder than challenging asserted contents. And second, I show that asserted and NAI contents have much the same effect on the common ground.
Public apologies seek moral reconciliation with the victim and the broader audience. When published online, they also become the focus of impoliteness metadiscourse, particularly on Twitter/X. Drawing on the pragmatic approaches to apologies as moral acts and on impoliteness theory, we aim to analyze how users reacted to a public apology, issued by Formula One driver Nelson Piquet after he deployed the term “neguinho/nigger” to refer to Lewis Hamilton. Given the controversy about the term, we examined if users classified it as a racist slur or as a neutral form of address, as Piquet framed it. Our data comes from 469 tweets, published as replies to the apology. The findings show that 84.5% of the users classified the term as a racist insult and judged the apology as insincere. Processes of online public shaming were also identified in the posts, aiming at exposing Piquet for his misconduct.
Impoliteness in Online Comments Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Pragmatic Analysis This study aims to analyze linguistic impoliteness in online comments concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a pragmatic perspective, starting from Culpeper’s recent model (2011, 2016). This research includes both a brief quantitative analysis to identify the general trends of online commentators in the use of impolite formulae, and a qualitative analysis to describe in detail the impolite formulae and the linguistic means used in them. This contribution begins with an introduction in which the purpose, importance and research questions are discussed. Then, in an introductory paragraph, the concept of impoliteness, definitions as well as the models of impoliteness elaborated by Culpeper (2006, 2011, 2016) are briefly reviewed. For the analysis of the data, after extracting the data, they were classified, according to the recent model of impoliteness proposed by Culpeper (2011, 2016), into two main groups: conventionalized impoliteness formulae and implicational impoliteness; they were then analysed from a formally highlighting the mechanisms used in certain situations to intensify the offence. The results revealed that almost all Culpeper’s forms of impoliteness were used with the prevalence of the conventionalized formulas of impoliteness, which highlights that commentators tend to use the explicit forms to damage the addressees’ face. In addition, data analysis shows that there are characteristics that distinguish Italian impoliteness discourse such as the use of colloquialisms, proverbs and idioms, swear words and vulgar language, religious expressions and historical references.
This article explores the pragmatic functions of emoji in online awareness campaigns within the framework of digital communication, a key element of contemporary capitalism. Emojis, often perceived as decorative symbols, serve crucial communicative roles, such as expressing emotions, enhancing text, and shaping meaning through context. Drawing from Austin’s Speech Act Theory and Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory, the study analyzes five English-language awareness campaigns produced between 2014 and 2024. These campaigns use emojis strategically to reinforce messages and engage audiences across social media platforms. The article aims to contextualize emoji in digital discourse, outline their communicative potential in hybrid messages (text, audio, image), and show how they function pragmatically within structured speech acts. The research contributes to the broader field of linguistic studies by highlighting emoji as significant tools in virtual communication, particularly in digital campaigns that seek to raise awareness on social issues and foster public engagement
This study explores the Semantics dimensions of language employed by spa trainers in their professional interactions with clients. Using a qualitative approach, the research focuses on two key aspects of Semantics: sense, which examines the intrinsic meaning of linguistic expressions, and reference, which investigates the relationship between these expressions and their real-world referents. The objective is to uncover how spa trainers utilize these dimensions to enhance communication effectiveness, foster client trust, and create a welcoming environment. The data were collected through audio recordings of client-trainer interactions, field observations, and semi-structured interviews with spa trainers. The findings reveal that spa trainers strategically use descriptive and sensory language, metaphors, and a professional tone to evoke vivid mental imagery and establish emotional connections with clients, aligning with the dimension of sense. Similarly, the trainers employ clear and specific references, deictic expressions, and contextual adaptations to connect abstract linguistic expressions to tangible realities, ensuring that clients understand the services offered. The study highlights the interplay between sense and reference in professional communication, demonstrating how their balanced use contributes to client satisfaction and service quality.
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