Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Part One
Olomouc 2004
Recenzenti:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the time I have been living with Politeness as a research topic,
many people have become involved with my interest and helped me in different
ways. I owe all of them a great debt of gratitude. First to Doc. PhDr. Dagmar
Knittlov, who supervised the preparation of my Ph.D. thesis, helped me shape
my ideas and had faith in my work when I was losing mine. Thanks belong to
Professor PhDr. Jaroslav Machek, the director of the Ph.D. program in the
Dept. of English and American Studies, who not only provided intellectual
support but who has always been willing to set his own work aside and talk
about ours. Last but not least, my thanks belong to Professor PhDr. Josef
Hladk from Masaryk University Brno, whose critical comments provided
inspiration at a crucial time.
The great contribution of my family was love and care
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations and Symbols ................................................................... 11
Introduction............................................................................................. 13
0.1 Theoretical Framework.................................................................. 13
0.2 Narrowing the Scope....................................................................... 19
0.3 Content and Organisation.............................................................. 23
0.4 Data .................................................................................................. 24
Chapter One: POLITENESS: SETTING THE SCENE ..................... 27
1.1 Perception of Politeness .................................................................. 27
1.1.0 Positive vs. Negative Politeness ............................................ 29
1.1.1 Politeness and Tact ................................................................ 30
1.1.2 Linguistic Politeness ............................................................. 31
1.1.2.1 Routinised Nature of Linguistic Politeness .............. 33
1.1.3 Indirectness and Politeness .................................................... 34
1.1.4 Informality and Politeness ..................................................... 36
1.2 Working Definition of Politeness .................................................. 37
1.3 Rules or Maxims?............................................................................ 38
1.3.1 R. Lakoffs Approach ............................................................ 39
1.3.2 Brown and Levinsons Standpoint......................................... 41
1.3.3 D. Tannens Arguments.......................................................... 43
1.3.4 F. Coulmas Suggestion ......................................................... 43
1.3.5 Concluding Remarks ............................................................. 43
1.4 Cross-cultural Perspective ............................................................. 44
1.4.1 Universality of Politeness ...................................................... 45
1.4.2 Politeness across Cultures...................................................... 47
1.4.2.1 Linguistic Etiquette .................................................. 49
1.5 An Interplay of Strategies .............................................................. 53
1.5.1 Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication ............................... 53
1.5.2 Silence as a Communicative Strategy.................................... 55
Authentic Example
Intuitive Example
Modified Example
Addressee Honorifics
Bound Form
Bystander Honorifics
Caller
Conversational Analysis
Collins Cobuild
Configurations of Free and Bound Forms
Common Name
Distance
Distance Semantics
Dynamic Speech Act Theory
Endearment
Evaluative
Free Form
First Name
Face Threatening Act
Illocutionary Force Indicating Device
London Lund Corpus
Last Name
Location
Moderator
Neutral
No Name
Power
Ranking
Referent Honorifics
Solidarity Semantics
Surname
Speech Act Theory
Second Language Acquisition
Familiar forms of address
Title
Teaching English as a Second or Other Language
Tennessee Williams
Polite forms of address
11
INTRODUCTION
0.1
Theoretical Framework
13
14
15
by the social organisation of private speech; the analysis should also take
into consideration the findings from the theory of communication in general
(cf. e.g. the mechanisms of turn-taking and turn-giving; the role of empathy,
the specificity of focus-group communication, the role of communicative
experience, specificity of monologues as opposed to dialogues or polylogues,
etc.) and the ethnography of communication in particular (as an
interdisciplinary approach to discourse based in anthropology and linguistics
and the shared interest in communication, communicative competence,
cross-cultural diversity and similarity, interest in language use, etc.).
Note. As SCHIFFRIN (1994:138) points out in reference to HYMES (1974),
the approach is rooted in SAPIRs (1933) movement from the study of
sociostructural form and content as product towards their study as process;
cf. also HYMES in a series of papers written in the 1960s and 1970s, most of them
collected in HYMES, 1974; and D. SCHIFFRIN, 1994.
16
17
(2) universality
The second presupposition is linked with the degree of universality (in its
weak rather than strong interpretation). There might be a core of universal
phenomena in this field of investigation, i.e. some politeness strategies might
be expected to occur across languages, but, on the other hand, my working
hypothesis is, that this is the domain where tradition-bound and culture-bound
stereotypes have developed into rituals that might be expected to be primarily
language-specific (I base my hypothesis on the findings from my diploma
thesis in which I attempted at a cross-language analysis of another domain of
communicatively regulative language devices, as represented by the English
discourse markers well, oh, and now and their Czech functional equivalents,
cf. VLKOV, 1990). The most sound support for my approach, however,
has been found in the studies by WIERZBICKA (1985a,b; 1991).
A more objective reason for making me think of a language-specific nature
of the manifestations of politeness is the fact that in tracing politeness, we are
in the domain of communicatively regulative rather than communicatively
constitutive units, and as LEECH (1983) pointed out, communicatively
regulative units are principle controlled rather than rule governed. So, what
I expected to be faced with during my analysis, were different principles
applied or different degrees of relevance put to the same principle in English
and Czech rather than different rules disclosed.
Consequently, these differences will be difficult to grasp since what
seems to be essential in the overt language manifestations of politeness, is
not only a good choice of lexical representation and grammatical structures
(including relevant configurations and a relevant timing, i.e. to say the right
thing in the right time).
For those universalists who are interested in language constructs,
i.e. constructivists, the question of universality would be most probably
formulated in relation to the capability of building a model of politeness with
18
various modules built into it. The question, however, is what sort of modules
would we need and what kind of relations would have to be established
between those modules, and what kind of processing strategies would be
required to approximate the communicative performance of natural language
users. (See an attempt at an application in the discussion section of the
monograph by SIFIANOU, 1992.)
0.2
19
21
22
0.3
23
cultural and linguistic system) has become the basis of our standpoint here.
Our analysis of data-based apologetic patterns should illustrate our approach
and support our notion of speech-act-sets rather than individual speech acts
underlying communicative strategies as manifested in the ways we use
language to make apologies.
Note. The linguistic politeness as manifested by apologies is looked upon as
the manifestation of H(earer)-Support maxim, and LAKOFFs (1973) Rule
of politeness number 3, i.e. Make A(ddressee) feel good, later (1975:65)
reformulated as Camaraderie: show sympathy.
24
I opted for the following sources to verify the theoretical findings and
hypotheses:
(1) computerised material based on the written version of A Corpus of
English Conversation (J. Svartvik and R. Quirk, 1980), often referred
to as London-Lund corpus (LLC). This was my primary source for the
verification of the strategies used in apologies;
(2) a transcribed corpus of the Radio Phone-in Talk Show represented by
Irv Homer Show (broadcast throughout the Middle-Atlantic region in
the USA and hosted by Irv Homer). The corpus has been borrowed with
a kind permission of the author from an unpublished Ph.D. thesis by
M. Ferenk, Preov (1998) to verify the dynamism of the strategies used
in addressing.
(3) an Internet document on the impeachment hearings in connection with
Clinton-Lewinsky case published by Federal News Service, Friday,
Dec. 11, 1998 under the title Dec.11: Debate and Vote on Article I
(Washingtonpost.com Special Report: Clinton Accused). This corpus was
used to verify the stereotypes and routine in an institutionalised way of
addressing (i.e. addressing as an act of politic verbal behaviour rather than
politeness proper).
(4) my own examples extracted from a theatrical play by Edward Albee ( Who
is afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and compared with the Czech translation by
Luba and Rudolf Pellars (see References). This sample was used for the
comparison of culture- and tradition-bound similarities and differences
(though in a relatively marked sample of communication as represented
by an absurd drama).
Examples used to illustrate partial theoretical findings are numbered
consecutively within each chapter together with the information about the
source.
Having taken all the traps of politeness into consideration together with
my limited experience of a researcher, I find it fair to confess that the present
study is just a modest contribution to the field which to me has opened
new and exciting avenues of inquiry into the complex relation between
communicatively constitutive and communicatively regulative language
means and the strategies behind their usage, resulting in a diversity of
language manifestations we use in speaking for others and speaking for
ourselves.
25
Chapter One
POLITENESS SETTING THE SCENE
1.1
Perception of Politeness
I begin this section by presenting some of the concepts and ideas basic to
the notion of politeness.
Modern research on linguistic politeness has been criticised for having
a strong ethnocentric bias (IDE 1989), since it has been mostly carried out
within a Western European/North American cultural framework dating back
to the eighteenth century paradigm (at least with respect to its function
of a mask). As a reaction to the western paradigm, many workshops on
cross-language analysis of politeness phenomena have been initiated by
the Japanese, and a series of studies have been published emphasising the
specificity of politeness phenomena in Asian languages as manifested before
all by the models of honorific systems, seen as a mandatory manifestation of
linguistic etiquette.
A contrastive approach to the two cultural traditions reveals the necessity
to consider linguistic politeness within the framework of socio-cultural needs
of a given community, as e.g. IDE et al. (1990) did in their study on the
concept of politeness in American English and Japanese.
Using native speaker judgements, they tried to demonstrate that the
nominally corresponding terms polite and teineina differ in their conceptual
structure (for the American subjects, the adjectives polite and friendly
correlated highly when applied to certain behaviour, while for Japanese
subjects they seemed to fall into different dimensions).
The first question we have to address is whether politeness can be
identified with socially adequate behaviour or whether it means something
else. Pragmatically, we might be tempted to answer the first part of the
question in the affirmative, but, as WATTS (1989) pointed out, in our
everyday encounters there are many manifestations of socially adequate
behaviour which are just taken for granted as the adequate reactions to the
social norms shared by interlocutors, i.e. what WATTS calls adequate politic
behaviour. Only in those cases in which volition supersedes discernment in
the choice of specific linguistic forms such as honorifics, terms of address,
27
28
29
Though the network of procedures and the consequent discrete steps are
impressive, the application to authentic language data seems to be problematic
(cf. the attempts in SIFIANOU, 1992). Moreover, as WIERZBICKA (1991)
pointed out, B& L model is ethnocentric (Anglo-centric), focusing on values
that need not necessarily be shared by other communities.
1.1.1 Politeness and Tact
Another dilemma to solve was whether to separate politeness and tact
or treat them together. LEECH (1983:104), supplementing GRICEs (1975)
Co-operative Principle by Politeness Principle suggested further subcategorisation into the maxims of Tact, Generosity, Approbation, Modesty,
etc. This was criticised by BROWN & LEVINSON (1987:4) who pointed out
that if we had to posit new maxims every time we wish to explain something,
we might simply end up with an infinite number of maxims, and the theory of
politeness would become vacuous.
ARNDT & JANNEY (1985), on the other hand, make a functional
distinction between social politeness and tact arguing that while social
politeness is a reflection of an arbitrary social norm, tact is a form of a
creative politeness and as such is said to be a highly developed form of
emotive communication sensitive to cultural modifications.
Thus, instead of a possible subcategorization of politeness into social and
personal, the authors opted for a binary opposition of social politeness and
tact, which roughly corresponds to the binary opposition of verbal politic
behaviour and politeness in WATTS (1989). The following Tab. 1 attempts
at illustrating the differences and, at the same time, the potential source of
misunderstanding.
30
31
Justice, however, is to say, that the author also takes into consideration
a more optimistic approach to politeness and refers to The English
Theophrastus: or the manners of the age (1702) in which politeness is linked
up with such notions as appropriate verbal behaviour and minimization of
face threatening. As apparent from the following definition of politeness, it
has always been difficult to separate linguistic from non-linguistic activities:
Politeness may be defined as dextrous management of our Words and Actions
whereby men (sic!) make other people have a better Opinion of us and
themselves. (p. 108)
32
33
35
to infer what we mean. This leaving space technique opens a dimension for
addressees creativeness and is part of politeness strategies by which we can
show deference, respect, etc. but also avoid to be rude.
Consequently, indirectness will be treated here as a welcome contribution
to the language manifestation of the indirect speech acts participating
in the manifestation of politeness but not as a strategy prototypically
representing language manifestation of politeness across cultures. The
values of indirectness will be thought of as culture-specific (i.e. the role
of indirectness in Anglo-Saxon culture, American culture, Czech culture,
etc.). This approach is close to D. TANNENs (1981: 229) suggestion to
speak of modes of indirectness and it is also sensitive to the findings of
ethnographers, i.e. that e.g. indirectness may be related to another cultural
norm, such as dissimilation or pretence in Javanese (GEERTZ 1976,
quoted by WIERZBICKA, 1991: 100).
1.1.4 Informality and Politeness
Similarly to indirectness, informality is not looked upon as a universal
cultural attitude but as a culture-bound phenomenon whose language
manifestation, interpretation and frequency of occurrence are accordingly
culture-specific (if we leave aside the fact that within one culture, there can
also be individual preferences).
WIERZBICKA (1991), when describing the nature of Australian
informality, as the Australian ethos of super-egalitarianism, says that it lies
in the purposeful rejection of any overt show of respect, with implications
of familiarity, friendliness, and equality. Her example with a travel agency
clerk responding in the following way to a call
Example 2: American Express, Cathy speaking. (WIERZBICKA, op.
cit.: 111)
invites in fact anonymous callers to treat her as if they knew her well and that
there is no need to show overt respect towards her (e.g. by calling her Miss,
Mrs or Ms.).
Similarly, a university lecturer in many cultures invites his/her students to
address him/her by first name/s.
The discrete steps of this social gesture are explained by WIERZBICKA
(1991:112) in the following discrete steps
36
is said to account for the way we react to the double bind, I suggest the
following tentative definition (or rather characteristics?) of politeness.
Linguistic politeness is a partly routinized and partly creative language
manifestation of social values, finding its way of reflection at various
levels of language representation (phonic, grammatical, lexical, textual,
etc.) and reflecting interactional strategies by which interactants signal
their interpersonal supportiveness, i.e. their intention to consider each
other and satisfy shared expectations about cultural and situational
assumptions in order to avoid or at least soften face-threatening acts, to
create happy conditions for interaction and to avoid losing ones face.
1.3
Rules of Maxims?
So far we have more or less taken for granted the fact that the socalled communicatively regulative units of language (cf. LEECH, 1983),
including the expressions of politeness, are principle-controlled rather than
rule-governed. This was the standpoint of GRICE (1975) whose ideas i.e. that
communication is governed by norms and principles which have their basis
in human rationality found their continuation in SPERBER and WILSONs
Relevance Theory (1986) and its elaboration in LEECH (1983). It is also
the standpoint of BROWN and LEVINSON (1978), and TANNEN (1986).
Since there is hardly a linguist who does not refer to GRICE in this field of
research, Grices conception of his Co-operative Principle with the maxims
of quality, quantity, relation and manner will be taken for granted here.
As BLACKMORE (1992:26), however, pointed out, Grices main
concern was with the role of these maxims in the explanation of the way
speakers may communicate more than what they actually say.
There seems to be no doubt about the general validity of Grices statements,
the problem, however, seems to be how to find a basis for his maxims. LEECH
(1983;10) is of the opinion that the maxims have their basis in the nature of
society or culture. BLACKMORE (1992:26) is against such conclusions
arguing that then we would have a socio-cultural theory of communication
which will vary from society to society or from culture to culture. GRICE
thought of a possible social account of the maxims but was afraid of the loss
of their universality. (One of the possible answers to his problem seems to be
SPERBER and WILSONs (1986) Theory of Relevance.)
38
39
clarity
focus on
pragmatic rules
interlocutors
politeness
40
While the first rule is associated with formality and distance and is
appropriate to situations in which there is a difference in power and status
between the participants, her second rule is less formal and appropriate to
those situations in which the linguistic manifestation of politeness leaves
the decision-making choice to the addressee (e.g. by employing hedges or
other markers of hesitation). The last rule is appropriate for intimates or close
friends: to be friendly presupposes the usage of those language devices which
will make addressee feel happy.
In R. LAKOFF (1975:65) the rule of politeness is reformulated as
follows
1. Formality: keep aloof.
2. Deference: give options.
3. Camaraderie: show sympathy.
We can only agree with SIFIANOU (1992) that even this modified version
does not reflect the fact that politeness is broader and more complex than the
sum of these rules and cannot be captured in its integrity by any number of
rules of the type proposed by R. LAKOFF.
1.3.2 Brown and Levinsons Standpoint
The conception of BROWN & LEVINSON (B&L) has already been
outlined in section 1.1.0 in connection with positive and negative politeness.
Here, we would like to put the conception into the context of other
approaches and for potential readers convenience will repeat the core of the
theory again.
BROWN & LEVINSON (1978:287), when discussing the pros and cons
of the rule-based analysis proposed by R. LAKOFF, reached a diplomatic
solution: a rule-based analysis works very well for well-bounded ritualized
speech events like greetings but is problematic with less ritualized events. So
the main weakness of Lakoffs approach, as criticized by BROWN (1976:
246) is that by introducing the rules, she rigidifies the domain which is not
liable to rules.
BROWN & LEVINSON (1978) provide a slightly different perspective
on politeness phenomena. As explained in 1.1.0, they assume that all
competent adult members of a society know each other to have face, which
41
they characterise as public self-image that every member wants to claim for
himself (op. cit. p. 66) and politeness is seen as trade in this commodity.
Face consists of the freedom to act unimpeded (negative face) and the
satisfaction of having ones values approved of (positive face), cf. BROWN
& LEVINSON (1978: 67). To engage in normal interactions is to risk
losing face, maintaining face thus requires the co-operation of others. Thus
interlocutors trade in face and pay face whenever they must perform a
face-threatening act to accomplish their goals. On the basis of situation- and
culture-bound calculations, the speaker makes choices: s/he can act baldly
on record by e.g. ignoring apology or mitigation, or (b) s/he should choose
a positive politeness strategy of making addressee feel good, or in a more
extreme, (c) choose negative politeness strategy of hedging, apologizing,
offering options, etc. In case of a greater risk of face loss, Speaker (S)
may decide (d) to perform FTA by implicature (off-record) thus giving the
Addressee (A) the option of not acknowledging the intended FTA. (S) may
even decide (e) to forego the FTA altogether.
The risk factor is determined by a cumulative effect of the following three
universal social variables (B&L, 1978:79):
1. social distance (D) between the participants
2. relative power (P) between them and
3. the absolute ranking (R) of imposition in the particular culture.
There is no doubt that the sensitiveness to such universal social variables
is a necessary prerequisite to adequate translating from one culture to another,
cf. the variable (R) in particular.
Face in fact means social face, which is a dynamic variable (it can
be lost overnight) and, as apparent from the characteristics above, facesaving strategies have both a defensive (my face) and protective (your face)
orientation.
GOFFMAN (1972) characterises the process of face-saving in the
following way: To study face-saving is to study the traffic rules of social
interaction (op. cit.: 323)
As mentioned in the introductory section (cf. the perception of politeness),
while BROWN & LEVINSON (1978:67) claim that face and rational
action devoted to satisfying others face wants are universal properties,
WIERZBICKA (1991) believes that the concepts have been formulated with
regards to particular cultures and to think of the universal nature of these
concepts is near to ethnocentrism. Her claim seems to be supported by the
list of properties B. & L. believe to belong to either positive or negative face
42
43
1.4
Cross-cultural Perspective
44
45
46
intimacy + endearment
Language manifestations of the frame can vary either in the delicacy
of the expressions or in the semantic zones activated, cf. my duck
*moje kachno. As KNITTLOV (1995) pointed out, such findings have far
reaching consequences for translatology.
To conclude this section on universality, we would like to refer to HYMES
(1986:7980) who pointed out that the existence of surface similarities is
worth knowing but one needs to know as well the ways in which such forms
are selected and grouped together with others in cultural practices.
1.4.2 Politeness across Cultures
We will approach the problem from a negative side, asking what happens
if someone violates the communicants expectations. It is a generally
shared knowledge that native speakers are more tolerant to grammatical
mistakes than to culture bumps or clashes. A nice example of such a
clash is described in DOI (1973). The author, a Japanese scholar, describes
his adaptation difficulties he experienced during his stay in the USA. The
example is borrowed from COULMAS (1981:8) and runs as follows:
The please help yourself that Americans use so often had a rather unpleasant
ring in my ears before I became used to English conversation. The meaning, of
course, is simply please take what you want without hesitation, but literally
translated it has somehow a flavour of nobody else will help you, and I could
not see how it came to be an expression of good will.
Doi (1973:13)
47
48
neglected
violated
Cf. also the blend netiquette as a new coinage used to refer to the high-tech
phenomenon of Internet-etiquette or, simply, the interaction on the Net (Eelen,
2001:118).
49
50
KUFNEROV et. al., 1994) and justify the need of a systematic attention
paid to cross-cultural pragmatics (WIERZBICKA, 1991).
When trying to think of the English-Czech interface and its consequences
for comparative studies, contrastive studies, translating, interpreting, etc.,
we hope not to be far from reality to state that in technical terms, English
is more routinised in the manifestation of linguistic politeness, while in
Czech creativeness of various kinds is a welcome change in communicative
stereotypes and is interpreted as such by the addressee. That is to say that we
do not insist on elaborate and conventionalised forms so much as the English
(according to BROWN and LEVINSON,1978) do.
The trouble with such generalisations, however, is that there may always
be exceptions to the general tendency, since there are speakers and speakers.
To think of a possible illustration, we could take the English phrase How
are you?
and think of the possible (context-bound) variation in Czech, such as
Jak se mte? Jakpak se mte? Tak jak se da? Jak se dnes mme? Jak jsme
se dnes vyspali? up to a jocularly formal Jak se rate vynachzet?
The same English phrase can serve as an illustrative example of a part
of a routinised conversation sequence ( an adjacency pair) in which even the
second part, i.e. the answer, is rather fixed, i.e. How are you? Im fine, thank
you. (and you?).
In Czech, the question, besides capable of having a phatic function, can
have (and very often does have) the status of a real information-seeking
question and consequently may be followed by an explanation concerning
the addressees health conditions, family situation, etc.
This is what WIERZBICKA roughly specified as the difference between
I say what I think I should say valid for English, and
I think what I feel as valid for Polish and, to a certain extent, perhaps for
Czech.
Thinking of the strategies applied, Czechs may be said to be more
straightforward (with the preference for speaking to the point principle) and,
consequently, straightforwardness is perceived as a possible manifestation
of politeness in those situations, in which the English try to be polite by
being indirect: either by means of hedging, high frequency of occurrence
of conversational gambits (e.g. well, oh, now) open to context-sensitive
interpretations but also by means of a choice within a scale of indirect
grammatical constructions (e.g. whimperatives, tentative meanings of modals,
e.g. could, might, etc.).
51
52
An Interplay of Strategies
53
55
56
57
Chapter Two
POLITENESS AND SOCIAL DEIXIS
2.0.
Introduction
59
2.1
Linguistic approaches have long recognised that texts are both interactive
and situated within particular social context (cf. SWEETs 1888 findings
quoted by HALLIDAY 1978:1, i.e. that language originates spontaneously
in the individual but like that of poetry and the arts, its development is
social; or SAUSSUREs frequently quoted words that Language is a social
fact (in HALLIDAY, 1978:1), but also BERNSTEIN, 1971, LEECH, 1983,
HALLIDAY & HASSAN, 1985, GEIS, 1995, etc.).
HALLIDAY expresses the conception in the following way:
By their everyday acts of meaning, people act out of the social structure,
affirming their own statuses and roles, and establishing and transmitting
the shared systems of values and knowledge. [HALLIDAY, 1978:2]
His approach to language as social semiotics, with man as social man
born to a particular society, and sensitive in his everyday encounters to the
social matrix seems to support LABOVs (1972:183) doubts about the
adequacy of the term sociolinguistics. To LABOV, sociolinguistics as a
term is misleading, since it implies somehow that there might be linguistics
which does not consider language socially. Thus, for Labov, similarly to
Halliday, the study of linguistics proper is in fact sociolinguistic in nature.
(This finding seems to be in opposition to Chomskyan core linguistics
(CHOMSKY, 1976), where language is looked upon as a product of the mind/
brain, a genetically endowed system; cf. also the discussion concerning the
possibility of locating a grammar gene, in PINKER, 1994.)
HILL et al. (1986) use the Japanese term wakimae, translated (roughly)
as discernment, by which they refer to the almost automatic observation of
socially-agreed rules which apply to both verbal and non-verbal behaviour
into which Japanese children are socialised (WATTS, 1990:11).
Moreover, as IDE (1982) pointed out, in Japanese, status- and socialdistance markers are encoded grammatically.
Having opted for the analysis of a principle-controlled domain of language
manifestation and communicatively-regulative devices participating in
the manifestation of politeness, I will follow HALLIDAYs conception of
language as social semiotic, his hypothesis about three basic determinants
of the text, i.e. field, tenor and mode (HALLIDAY et al. 1964) as well as
his findings about the links existing between those determinants and his
three components of the semantic system of language such that ideational
60
field of discourse
tenor of discourse
mode of discourse
Social Deixis
61
spatial deixis, temporal deixis, and person deixis (which is said to operate on
a three-part division of I-you-third person.) And it is the deictic categories
of speaker, addressee and other/s that in many languages are endowed with
social status marking. That is to say that there exist features which mark social
identity of the interlocutors and the social relationship which holds between
them (cf. e.g. the ty/vy distinction or its modified version Ty/Vy in Czech
and similar manifestations in other languages which will be touched upon
in a separate section). As for the third person (i.e. other/s) it is not a direct
participant in the basic face-to-face communication, and therefore remains
distal. As a distal form of personal deixis, it can be used in reference to a
second person for ironic or humorous purposes, as the following example
from YULE (1998:11) might demonstrate
Would his highness like some coffee?
(said by a busy wife to her rather lazy husband).
Note. In Czech, when telling anecdotes or jokes about the Jews, there is a nice
configuration of a nominative form of the LN (last name) + 3rd person plural
reference to a single addressee used to achieve a humorous effect and preserve the
air of anecdotes about the Jews, as in
62
used and the objective relationship existing between speaker and addressee
(op. cit.: 252).
Thus, if the T/V distinction is taken as a generic designator for a familiar
(intimate) and formal (non-intimate) pronoun respectively, in the power
semantics, due to the fact that power is a non-reciprocal relationship (i.e.
both participants of communication cannot have power in the same area of
behaviour), the superior says T and receives V.
(In Medieval Europe, as the authors go on explaining, the nobility said T to the
common people while receiving V; between equals, pronominal address was
reciprocal but equals of higher classes exchanged V, equals of lower classes T.
The use of V in the singular always connotated a person of a higher status and
functioned as a mark of elegance.).
63
the greeting can move the address towards one or the other side of the scale
of solidarity/power semantics. This is quite apparent in the following databased sample
Call I/10 (= Show I, call 10), cf.
1M (the number stands for exchange one, two, M = Moderator,
C = Caller)
1M hello Frank
2C good afternoon Irv
3M good afternoon, sir
5M yes sir
Legend: the first offer of solidarity by the M(oderator), (hello + T-exchange
Frank) is only partly reciprocated by the C(aller) in (good afternoon, Irv).
Accordingly, the M, sensitive to the suggestion of a partial distance (hello>
good afternoon), reciprocates by total distance (good afternoon, sir) and
follows the established (negotiated) pattern of addressing, as apparent from
5M (sir). In BROWN & LEVINSONs conception explained in the next
section, such a strategy would be described as a switch from intimate
into non-intimate stuff. The example is at the same time illustrative of the
dynamism of a situation-bound negotiation in addressing. (For details see
Case Study in 2.2.6.2.)
2.2.2 Dominance and Distance
In BROWN & LEVINSONs (1987:45-47) universal symbolism of
exchange, the elaborateness of the ritual depends on the relationship of
dominance and distance (understood as social distance between the
participants in communication): the so-called intimate-stuff responses may
be expected in those forms of addressing in which dominance and social
distance are minimal, while the non-intimate stuff in those cases where the
dominance and social distance are maximal. Practically, however, this cannot
be the case, because dominance is not a symmetric relationship, i.e. a person
with a higher social status can give intimate stuff while the person with
a lower status must respond by giving non-intimate stuff responses.
The balance between the two strategies might be expected to be culturespecific.
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65
66
67
LEVINSON (op. cit. p. 91) adds one more category of honorifics which
he calls absolute socially deictic information (pointing to the relationship
between the speaker and the setting). For the vagueness of its specification,
the category will be just taken into consideration here as a category close in
function to ERVIN-TRIPPs co-occurrence rules discussed in 2.2.1.
Addressee honorifics (AH) are said to convey respect to the addressee
by the choice of specific linguistic forms, without directly referring to the
addressee. In some AH cultures (Japanese) it is, for example, possible to say
a sentence like It is cold. and by the choice of lexical items convey deference
or just the opposite to the addressee. (For details see COULMAS 1981:18.)
This distinction concerns also e.g. the referent-related differentiation
of predicates (op. cit. p.:19, ranging from neutral via exalting to a humble
meaning, as in
iku irassharu mairu go
Referent honorifics convey respect to things or persons actually referred
to. LEVINSON (1983:90) says that the familiar T/V (singular/plural to a
single addressee) distinction is a referent honorific system.
Bystander honorifics include those cases in which a different vocabulary
is used in the presence of certain relatives. Examples are said to be found in
Australian Aboriginal Communities: there is a special avoidance speech
style called mother-in-law language, which is employed by everybody
when the presence of certain relatives requires special verbal and non-verbal
behaviour (DIXON, 1980). This, according to SIFIANOU (1992:57) could
be roughly equated to avoiding certain expressions and/or switching to
more formal language in the presence of certain people in some European
cultures.
While a very elaborate system of honorifics is said to exist in Japanese,
European languages seem to possess a restricted system, in which, e.g. in
referent honorifics (RH) the pronoun alternatives are restricted to the 2nd
person reference, i.e. to the addressee, cf. the folowing illustrative survey,
which is a modification of SIFIANOU (1992:58):
68
69
the possibility mentioned by BROWN & FORD (1961), i.e. the configuration
of multiple naming.
In the following dyads, twenty-eight combinations each marked with a
+ seem to be available:
Tab. 2 English Address in Dyads
A addresses
B using
B addresses
A using
FN
FNS
TFN
TS
FN
FNS
TFN
TS
[BELL, 1976:95]
Note 1. As Ervin-Tripp (1969) has pointed out, there are differences even in the
way particular social groups in the US use forms of address (cf. her example with
the speakers in the West Coast academic community, who use the title Doctor +
LN, while T only (i.e. Doctor) is used by lower-status occupational group. If this
is the case, then we can probably speak of a marker of both social and regional
difference.
Note 2. Wolfson and Manes (1978) report that maam as the form of address in
the South of the US is often used as a substitute for I beg your pardon? when
asking (a woman) to repeat what she has said, or to explain something. Moreover,
Yes, maam is said by the same authors to be often used instead of Youre
welcome as a response to Thank you..
Note 3. There are various elaborate patterns of addressing with strict rules of
how to address superiors ( a situation typical e.g. of military usage). SPOLSKY
(1998:20) reports that in the US Marine Corps, senior officers were addressed in
the third person (cf. his example Would the General like me to bring him a cup of
coffee? ) , and other officers received sir from their inferiors. In battle conditions,
70
however, officers were often addressed by nicknames (e.g. Skipper for Company
commanders and Gunny for sergeant-majors).
71
(2) by explicitly signalling distance (sir) to avoid a FTA (if the Caller opts for
the semantics of distance rather than solidarity).
So the prototypical sequence illustrating the situation described above is
the following:
Moderator: Hello, Richard. [solidarity]
Caller:
Good morning, Irv. [neutral + solidarity]
Moderator: Good morning, sir. [neutral + distance].
In Case Study (see 2.2.6.2) this finding will be taken into consideration
in tracing the language devices participating in the dynamic activation of
a syntagmatic axis of co-occurrence rules and at the same time as an
argument for approaching the politeness of addressing in a complex interplay
with other lingual and non-lingual factors. As apparent from the example
above, one can be polite in the choice of address but impolite in the lack
of awareness to other configurations of lingual and non-lingual devices in
which and through which the linguistic politeness is shaped into its final
communicative effect.
Thus, addresses, together with greetings, being the initial parts of initial
turns, function as important interpretative cues for other process to take
effect.
2.2.5.4 Seeking Co-operation: Vocatives
Vocatives, understood as a linguistic category by which speakers designate
their addressees (cf. DAVIES, 1994:79) are well established even in those
languages where (similarly to English) there is no identifiable case marking.
Since their linguistic status as well as communicative functions have been
listed and discussed in many reference grammar books, we will restrict our
discussion to the socio-linguistic aspects of vocatives and their contribution
to the manifestation of politeness, i.e. the focus is on how speakers by using
vocatives identify themselves to the others to preserve their face but at the
same time avoid face threatening acts (FTA) in relation to their addressees.
As DICKEY (1997), however, pointed out, a distinction has to be made
in addressing between referential meanings and address meanings. The
author illustrates the difference by arguing that Madam in its referential
meaning can be used to designate a brothel-keeper, while it is polite in its
address meaning (op. cit.: 256). Though the formulation of his argument
about politeness is rather vague (i.e. in both the situations the speaker can be
72
polite), the impact of his illustrative example upon the perception of the two
different functions is apparent (i.e. a person can be referred to as Mrs. Brown
but addressed as Joan).
Thus each person can receive in fact a range of addresses according to
the speakers intention and one address can have different social implications
when used by locutors of different social status and in different linguistic
functions (address as a reference, address as an appeal). The meanings of
words used in addressing, however, are primarily social rather than lexical.
More choices are likely to exist in those situations in which the participants
are equals or intimates and in a wide range of cultures spouses and lovers are
very creative in such communicative situations, inventing exclusive names
or nicknames for each other.
Having tried to finalise this section during the Valentine season, I tried to
analyse a sample of valentine messages that appeared on the Internet on the
very day, thinking of the possibility to treat them as prototypical cases of an
emotional signature embedded into the vocative by the sender (e.g. Cherry, you
are my everything, Guiness Bottle. or Spanner, Ill love you forever, yours Nuts.)
Moreover, the signature of the sender, as encoded in the vocatives, together with
the name of the sender in the end of the message, create a solidarity frame based
very often on teasing, exaggerating, etc. In this respect, valentines could probably
be used as an example of how the senders socially identify the addressees as well
as themselves in a less predictable way.
73
74
75
76
T-exchanges, since he, being responsible for the talk show, seems to have
a better power-based claim to say T without reciprocation.
(2) The Corpus also allows us to trace the dynamism of power and solidarity
semantics resulting in context-sensitive variables. Thus, when for
example the initial suggestion of solidarity does not come as graceful, the
syntagmatic chain of co-occurrence rules of address is broken and different
chain is followed, which in the end, due to a creation of likemindedness
between the moderator and the caller, may end up in solidarity semantics
again. The switches are supported by language devices, which in this case
can be interpreted as context-sensitive variables of politeness.
(3) The content of the phone-in talk shows allows us to trace the correlation
between dominance and distance (BROWN & LEVINSON, 1987:4547),
i.e. between intimate stuff and non-intimate stuff strategies and their
language manifestations. It is usually the moderator who uses empathy
towards the caller to minimise the dominance and social distance (cf.
the high frequency of occurrence of supportive vocatives in many of the
calls).
(4) Last but not least, the Corpus allows one to trace the proportion between
bound forms and free forms of addresses.
In the Case study section of this chapter, an attempt will be made to
benefit from all the above mentioned advantages.
Sample Two
The second main source of information comes from an Internet document
on the impeachment hearings in connection with Clinton-Lewinsky
case. It contains transcripts published by Federal News Service, Friday,
December 11, 1998 under the title Dec.11: Debate and Vote on Article I
(Washingtonpost.com Special Report: Clinton Accused).
In contrast to Sample One, this document represents a formal procedure
with relatively fixed and socialised rules of behaviour, with only some space
left for spontaneous language manifestations. Even the forms of address are
ritualised rather than spontaneous or creative. The analysis is expected to
reflect the semantics of power, dominance and distance rather than solidarity
based on like-mindedness. The corpus is expected to support WATTS (1989)
standpoint that addressing can be an act of politic verbal behaviour rather
than politeness proper.
77
Sample Three
For comparison of Czech and English strategies used in addressing, or
rather for tracing the adequacy of the transmission of culture-bound language
manifestations from source to target language, a sample of a literary or
rather dramatic discourse has been analysed and compared with the Czech
translation. The sample referred to as Sample Three, is an analysis of Edward
Albees play Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf , which is looked upon as a
transmission of real world into a projected world, and which draws on given,
existing resources of language, action, gestures, etc. but exploits them
for the purposes of dramatic skills. Albees play is not an overtly cohesive
cause-affect design, it is rather a rhetorical design, manipulating audience
involvement but also being sensitive to the audience which has an impact on
the ways of presentation (explicitness, expressiveness, etc.). The comparison
of English and Czech language manifestations of addressing strategies
is hoped to bring interesting insights into cross-cultural similarities and
differences (in both qualitative and quantitative parameters).
2.2.6.2 Case Study
To support our theorising by authentic language data and to illustrate
the procedures that have lead to the findings, selected samples will now be
treated in detail, supported by tables surveying the findings. Also the problem
of quantification will be touched upon and illustrated.
2.2.6.2.1 Sample One
Basic matrix of information about the type of corpus and its size:
Number of shows: 4, number of calls 39
Distribution of calls per show:
Show I (10 calls) the length ranging from 1.14 to 4.03
Show II (4 calls)
Show III (12 calls)
Show IV (13 calls)
Since most of the calls represent manifestations of solidarity semantics,
the variation within this field will be discussed first.
78
2C
3M
4C
5M
6C
7M
8C
9M
10 C
11
10a
12
10b C
13 M
14 C
15 M
14a C
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16 M
17 C
18 M
19 C
20 M
21 C
22 M
23 M
24 C
25 M
26 C
27 M
28 C
29 M
30 C
31 M
32 C
33 M
between sixty and sixty five,.hh I would get rear ended? side swiped?
And everything else? Im the slowest car on the road that hour?
thats not the point. the point is Phyllis.
I told you Im a law breaker.
right. But I bet you the people that are passing you, all believe? in
law?and order.
ab-solutely as I do.
bet you
I also believe in self-preservation and I would get killed.
I bet
and I bet you they trumpet.h they trumpet the cause of conservatism.
h and they believe in law and order .h and they want more prisons
built. H and they want them welfare mothers in jail .h and yet they are
doing? more? than fifty?-five? miles? an hour.
+well? I drive a little car. and I panic at the thought of one of this great
big vans.h coming at seventy-five .h coming into me.
what would happen, - if
if I slowed down?
no. what would happen do you think if the police insisted. .h tomorrow
morning when you go on the turnpike or wherever you drive? that
you will do no more than fifty-five miles per hour.
Id be very happy. +I would be happy.
thanks for calling.
ok,
you law breaker you
((laugh))
take care.
Legend
The solidarity frame in this sample seems to have been established
during the first 10 exchanges: first initiated by the moderator M, who, being
responsible for the programme, had the advantage of dominance (see the
term absolute socially deictic information used by Levinson and introduced
here in 2.2.5.2, i.e pointing to the relationship between the speaker and the
setting), cf. FN (first name) address Phyllis used as an initiator in (1M), then
accepted by the caller C rather implicitly but in a supportive way (i.e. there
was no sign on the side of the caller to reject the solidarity offered) and,
finally, explicitly reciprocated in (10C) (e:h Irv). The call is at the same
time an example of (a) how alternation rules, activating the paradigmatic axis
80
(cf. here in 2.2.4) can operate throughout the whole sequence of exchanges,
and (b) how the alternation rules are supported by co-occurrence rules to
amplify solidarity semantics. The collaboration of the two kinds of rules
can be illustrated by the following chain, used by the M(oderator), in which
co-occurrence rule manifestations are in italics. The numbers, following the
items, anaphorically refer to the numbered exchanges in Example I1 (i.e.
C10 stands for the tenth exchange of the caller, etc.).
The Moderators chain of reference to the Caller (+ co-occurrence-rule
support)
Phyllis (1) good girl (3) good girl (5) all right (7) welcome
(9) oh (12) you law breaker you (13) ( preceded by a supportive
laughter) Phyllis (16) I bet you (20) - I bet (20) I bet you (23) you
law breaker you (31) (and after a supportive laughter a friendly
closing) take care.
The Callers chain is the following:
e:h Irv? (accepted solidarity) in 10 C, amplified by dont try to
chase me (which diminishes the distance), and by Im a double law
braker (self face threatening act (FTA)), reinforced in 17 C I told
you Im a law breaker. Once the pattern of social deixis has been
built, the C focusses on the content of the message, the dialogue is very
co-operative, so there is no need for the moderator to use supportive
vocatives, etc. In the closing section, Cs ok (30 C) and her laugh
(32 C) as a non-verbal support, might illustrate a typical combination
of lingual and non-lingual means participating in the manifestation of
the semantics of solidarity in social deixis.
Within the paradigmatic axis of solidarity reference to C, we can see a
dynamic shift from FN (Phyllis) in 1M (which is a typical strategy of the
moderator in most of the analysed calls; the exception being example 5) via
the evaluative good girl (3M), reinforced by the repetition in 5M to the
emotional (teasing), but at the same time context-sensitive you law breaker
you (M13)+ supportive laugh. The repetition of you in the sequence may
give the impression of closeness and likemindedness, amplified by a nonlinguistic support (laughter) accepted by C. The switch from you law breaker
you to Phyllis (M16) can be interpreted as a variation within the established
pattern of alternation rules (explained in 2.2.4) used to avoid the stereotypical
introduction of the same form of address in the successive exchanges.
The following survey might be more explicit.
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82
hello Richard
good afternoon, Mr. Homer
good afternoon, sir
+now my problem is this, Richard.
you just you just you
take care my friend.
Legend
This call is a good example of a face-saving strategy, as applied by
the Moderator, and at the same time, a good example of politeness used as a
diplomatic tool by the M to avoid a face threatening act (FTA) in relation to
the C. The initial offer of a T-exchange (1M hello Richard), while partially
accepted as in the following example 4 (cf. good afternoon, Irv) is explicitly
rejected here, as apparent from a suggestion of a distance in 2C, i.e. a neutral
greeting followed by TLN form of address (good afternoon Mr. Homer)
to which M immediately reacts by a V-exchange in 3M (good afternoon
sir.) The number of exchanges is relatively small (15 altogether), but Cs
responses and reactions are rather long. He is critical and evidently upset,
explaining the problem with the North American Free Trade Agreement
and this is the moment in which the moderator changes the strategy of
distance into the strategy of solidarity based on like-mindedness, and uses
a supportive vocative in 6 M (now my problem is this, Richard), seeking, as
it were, for co-operation. Thus FN Richard occurs on the scene again, and
unlike in other closing sections of the calls based on referential distance, in
which sir is a typical closing reference, here, rather unpredictably, we are
faced with take care my friend, for which an explanation might be in the
reinforcement of the atmosphere of like-mindedness (which again might be
taken as a prototypical strategy applied by the M in the majority of the calls in
Sample One reminding one of Leechs Politeness Principle and his maxim
of Agreement).
As for the greeting + address sequences (cf. also the section 2.2.5.3),
SACKS (1974:257) mentions that in telephone calls hello is the appropriate
utterance of the first speaker (i.e. before the recognition of who is speaking),
then hi is a common response once solidarity has been established. The same
author (op. cit. p. 257) also mentions the fixed order of greetings and greeting
substitutes (e.g. How are you?): greetings precede greeting substitutes (i.e.
Hello, how are you but not *How are you, hello.).
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Example 3
I2
Caller: Emma, female
Focus: inclusive we as a remedial strategy
Following is a skeleton of the exchanges focussed on
1 M hello Emma?
2 C good afternoon ( NN (no-name) strategy of addressing used)
3 M how are you (NN reciprocated to signal accepted distance)
6c
(laughter) I am a libertarian like you do; hh like you are (cf. the
like-mindedness)
9a M because you and I have sex in the automobile
11 C (laugh)
12 C (laughter)
9c M does that make sense Emma
16a M dont you agree?
18 C I absolutely agree.
21 C sure
23 M you feel better (generic you)
29 M God bless them my audience they dont know what we are talking
about.
30 C (laughter)
31 M Emma thank you for calling. theyve no idea what we are talking
about
Legend
Call I2 is illustrative of the semantics of solidarity offered by M, not
reciprocated by C but modified in the final section due to the air of likemindedness into inclusive we unifying the Moderator and the Caller and
contributing to the shift from distance to solidarity (31 M).
The next example from Sample One also supports our preference for
tracing the forms of addresses as an on-line process of negotiation. Similarly
to Ex 2 above, call III3 is partly asymmetrical in the T/V exchanges, but the
reasons, unlike in example 2, are less predictable.
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Example 4
III-3
Focus: content-dependent distance ( deference)
Caller: Peter, male
The skeleton of exchanges:
1 M hallo Peter
2 C Irv
5 C I served in Vietnam
6 M yes sir
8 M you were supposed to die Peter
9 C Irv
14 M sir
Legend
The call can demonstrate, how the content of the message can markedly
influence the form of the address. As apparent from the skeleton, the initial
exchanges are symmetrical up to the moment, when the key message, i.e.
I served in Vietnam is introduced on the scene. After this statement, M
switches to V-exchange (6 M) sir and it is difficult to say whether the
prevailing reason is to express sympathy or deference, but most probably a
mixture of both. In 8M, however, it is apparently sympathy that causes the
change in Ms strategy, cf. the switch to FN Peter. When the topic is over, an
unexpected switch to V-exchange (sir in 14M) for which there is not a single
explanation, closes the call. One of the possible explanations might be that
the feeling of deference prevailed, another suggestion might be that there is
no air of like-mindedness between them but rather a context-bound tension.
The C is not addressed in the closing part of the call, the M just thanks for
calling, to which there is no reaction by the caller at all.
Example 5
I10
Caller: Frank, male from Trenton
Focus: supportive vocatives, No-name strategy to avoid clash in reciprocity
The skeleton of exchanges is the following:
1 M hello Frank
2 C . hh ( )good afternoon Irv
3 M good afternoon sir.
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5 M yes, sir.
86
Example 6
I9
Caller: Frank, male
Focus: Caller as initiator of solidarity, free and bound forms of address,
No-Name (NN) strategy
The skeleton of exchanges
1M
2C
3M
4C
5M
6C
7M
12a C
14 M
(NN)
(NN)
man
(NN)
friend
you (generic)
you (specific)
Frank
Legend
This is one of the rare calls, in which, after the No-Name (NN) strategy
of addressing by the M, the initiative of solidarity offered is taken by the C
87
(2C Irv), to which the M again reacts by the NN strategy ( i.e. not confirming
the solidarity offered). In this asymmetrical relationship, the C takes the
initiative again and applies the Approbation Maxim (the Flattery Maxim)
of maximizing praise of other (Leech, 1983:138) in 4C and 6C (love your
show), together with the entailed praise encoded in 4C (long time listener),
i.e. one has to have a good reason for being a long time listener. The maxim
is reciprocated by Ms expression of thanks followed by a switch from
NN to man, changed after the evaluative reinforcement in 6C (love your
show) into friend. and because the topic is the prostitution thing and
there is no climate of like-mindedness between the C and M, the moderator
uses neither supportive vocatives no other forms of addressing the C (with
the exception of the closing section, in which the FN-strategy might be
interpreted as an application of Sympathy Maxim (minimize antipathy
between self and other).
This call can also illustrate the application of both free and bound forms
in the paradigmatic axis of alternation rules, though, a distinction should be
made between you-generic (12aC, 14C) and you-specific, as well as
between you as a part of a discourse marker (14M you know) or a part of a
set phrase (14M God bless you).
Interesting in this call is also the indirect strategy by which the M
expresses his opinions by means of the generic we. It is, however, difficult,
and rather speculative, to reach a one-sided decision as to which maxim
was prioritized by the moderator: was it the Sympathy Maxim (minimize
antipathy between self and other) or rather a Tact Maxim (minimize cost
to other) or both. Thus, example 6 can also serve as an illustration of the
difficulties one is faced with when trying to apply the maxims outside the
prefabricated examples by which they are usually demonstrated in theoretical
studies.
Concerning politeness, there is an evident shift in the strategies of the
Moderator to cope with the situation in a polite way, using indirect strategies
of No-Name to signal distance, generic (and in this respect moderatorinclusive) we, to avoid direct TFAs (face threatening acts).
Problems with quantification
The next example should demonstrate how a mere quantification of the
occurrences of particular forms of address might lead to simplified if not
misleading results. Projected into politeness, the quantity of the forms of
address per call, does not necessarily contribute to a higher manifestation of
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10 C now let me say [that just one more point Irv and then you can talk.
okay?
[no no no no no no John John John John Im not gonna argue
11 M who has revealed to you. John?
89
M to C
Form of address
C to M
Initial Ms = Cs
FN
1 -
Medial Ms = Cs
(BF+CNe+BF), FN
Final Ms = Cs
(BF+CNe+BF)
1 -
Total
90
Legend
The survey gives evidence of the dominant role of the M in establishing
and maintaining solidarity semantics (cf. 4 forms of address used in the initial
phase of exchanges, supported by 2 addresses in the medial phase and one in
the closing section). Once recognizing that the solidarity semantics has been
accepted by the C, the M also supports the climate of like-mindedness by
extra-lingual devices (supportive laughter, which is reciprocated by the C)
as well as linguistic supporters ( the use of discourse markers (oh in 12M),
back-channel echoes (- e in15M), empathy (bet you(20M), I bet you (22M),
I bet you (23M)).
The C accepts solidarity in the initial phase, manifests the acceptance by
FN strategy of addressing the M and since there is no need to change the
strategy of established solidarity, the C focuses on the topic and there is no
other attempt at addressing the M, only supportive laughter to reinforce the
like-mindedness, or the discourse marker ok in 30C). The choice of forms of
address also shows the activation of the paradigmatic axis of social deixis
on the side of the M: he is creative in using free forms represented by FN,
CN, endearment + CN, combination of bound forms sandwiching the CN
(you law breaker you). As apparent from the survey, there is no occurrence
in Call 1 of a bound form used in isolation for addressing the partner. Those
bound forms that were used in isolation, were used in their referential but not
appelative functions.
The conclusions about the proportion between free forms and bound
forms are rather problematic: as for the forms, it is true that the ratio
between free and bound forms is 8:4, i.e. 67%:33% but one has to take into
consideration the fact that the bound forms occurred only in combination
with the free forms. Even so, the dominant choice of free forms supports
the theoretical findings about free-form-strategy being more polite and
if creatively applied, as in our sample, free forms can contribute to a smooth
run of conversation thus diminishing the FTAs (face threatening acts) in
being less intimite.
A little bit more complicated situation in the negotiation of the balance
in solidarity/distance semantics is apparent from the following Call 10, for
which a more delicate subcategorisation within the survey had to be used to
map the situation.
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Initial
(1) Ms = Cs/d
(2) Md > Cn
Medial
Ms > Cn
Final
(1) Ms > Cn
(2) Md >Cn
Form of address
M to C
C to M
Gr+FN
Gr+T, T
Grn+FN
NN
FN,
NN
NN
FN
T
1
2
1
-
NN
NN
1
1
Total
Legend
Call 10 can serve as a prototypical example of the dynamism in the
distribution of the semantics of solidarity and distance, sensitive to context
bound exchanges (see Example 5).
The solidarity semantics offered by the M seems to have been only
partially accepted by the C (cf. the initial exchanges hello Frank good
afternoon, Irv), which is an impulse for the M to switch to distance (good
afternoon, sir). Due to the hot topic on ones own experience with the
prostitutes, and apparent shyness of the C, the M switches in the medial phase
of the call to solidarity semantics again as apparent from the change sir >
Frank (supportive vocative) + a repetition of FN strategy. The air of likemindedness has been established and continues towards the closing section,
in which, rather unexpectedly, there is a switch to distance on the part of the
M (thank you, sir), probably to pay back for the Cs strategy of NN used
throughout the medial and closing sections. From the macro-structure of the
exchanges, the switch to distance in the closing section is quite understandable
the supportive strategy used to minimize Cs shyness is over and the
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Form of address
M to C
C to M
Initial Md < Cs
Gr+NN, CN
Medial Ms = Csn
CNe,
NN
Final
(1) Msn = Csn
(2) Md > Csn
FN
NN
NN
NN
1
-
Total
FN
Legend
This is the only call in Show I, in which the initiative in offering
solidarity is taken by the C (2C Irv), to which the M reacts by NN-strategy
(3M welcome ), thus creating an air of distance. C is supportive in saying
pleasant things about the Show as well as about the M (4C long time listener.
I love your show). Ms reaction remains still rather distant (5M thank you
man). It is only after the reinforcement of the appraisal (6C love your show)
that the M changes his strategy in 7M (thank you friend). This all happens
during the initial phase of the call. Then comes the main body of the
exchanges about the views on prostitution. There is no air of like-mindedness
between C and M, the M, in order to keep the communication on ( and be
polite in this respect) uses a limited number of back-channel devices (9M
yes, 11M no, 13M mhm, 14M hh well?, 16Mwell?). The use of we in
16M (we appreciate that) is far from being supportive, it is used rather as a
camouflage; (cf. politeness manifested through indirectness here) the we
appriciate that does not necessarily mean that the M does appreciate that, but
is less face-threatening.
93
Similar approach has been applied in treating all the Calls in Show I and
the findings are recoverable from the following Table.
Tab. 6 Survey of solidarity/distance semantics in Show I (Calls 110)
Relationship between
M&C
CALLS
6 7 8
4 5
Ms = Cs
Md > Cs
Ms < Cd
Md = Cd
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
Medial Ms = Cs
Md > Cs
Ms < Cd
Md = Cd
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
Final
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
Initial
Ms = Cs
Md > Cs
Ms < Cd
Md = Cd
Static/dynamic
S
D
S S
D S D
10
+
-
+
-
+ (1)
+ (2)
-
+
-
+
-
+
-
+ (2)
+ (1)
-
+
-
+
-
+ (1)
+ (2)
-
+
-
S S
D D
Legend
The statistical finding that 5 out of 10 calls were rather stereotypical in
keeping to the identical pattern of social deixis is rather surprising at first
sight, namely if we take into consideration what we know about the dynamism
of social deixis. A deeper insight into the static manifestations of addressing,
however, reveals that in 3 calls out of 5, the solidarity semantics pattern,
negotiated in the initial phase of the calls is very stable throughout all the
exchanges within the call, thus creating happy situation of communication.
Moreover, the static pattern in Call 7 is due to the fact that this call is in fact
a continuation of Call 5, which is dynamic.
In the dynamic manifestations (referred to in the Table as D), there is
nearly always a phase, in which one of the participants aims at solidarity
94
(the exception being the medial and final phase of Call 3). Thus we will
probably not be far from the theoretical findings by the ethnographers of
communication, when concluding that there is a strong tendency in the
phone-in-calls, as a special kind of ear-to-ear rather than face-to-face
interaction, to negotiate the semantics of solidarity as soon as possible and
create the air of like-mindedness. On the other hand, whenever the context
bound interaction reaches a phase in which there is a potential danger of a
FTA (face threatening act), the politeness finds its manifestation in a sensitive
switch on the imaginary scale from solidarity to distance (or vice versa).
The projection of Sample One into Brown & Levinsons strategies
By way of application, the analysed samples were projected into the
politeness-strategy schema proposed by BROWN & LEVINSON (1978,
1990) with the following results achieved (the underlined choices represent
our path of the strategies prioritised in our corpus-based samples of addressing;
the commentaries in brackets reflect our corpus-limited findings).
Fig. 5 Possible strategies for doing FTAs
1. without the redressive action, baldly (rare)
on record
Do the FTA
2. positive politeness
with redressive action
3. negative politeness
[After Brown & Levinson 1990:69]
95
notice, attend to C
intensify interest in C
seek agreement
joke
give reasons
be direct/conventionally indirect
hedge, question
give deference
apologize
minimize the size of imposition on C
go on-record
97
represents the core of my analysis within this chapter, to which the following
two samples are rather supportive, and in a sense peripheral.
2.2.6.2.2 Sample Two
The corpus referred to here as Sample Two and representing the full
version of the investigation during the Clinton-Lewinskys case, is an
example of setting-, institution-, and community-specific communicative
norms that have to be observed and in which the form of an address
contributes to a ritualised language use (i.e. speech exchanges organised
in ways ordained by convention). We can also characterize the sample as
a set of institutionalised speech events, which require fixed phrasing, and
very often the choice of language other than the one in current use. In this
respect, following WATTS (1989) suggestion, we should not think so much
of politeness proper but rather of a politic verbal behaviour (with some
traces of a creative manifestation of linguistic etiquette). Our expectations
are that the form of address, seen from the macro-context of the whole text
sample, will be rather stereotypical in terms of alternation rules activating
the paradigmatic axis (cf. the language manifestation of the rituals with some
space left for variation, e.g. the stereotype of an indirect 3rd person address
based on the recurrent pattern the gentleman from X, as in the gentleman
from Michigan, the gentleman from Georgia, etc.) while less predictable,
and consequently more interesting from the point of view of politeness
strategies, will be the activation of the syntagmatic axis of co-occurrence
rules, i.e. the way in which the form of address is contextualised to reflect
and echo a special communicative macro-event. In the next section
attention will be paid to both paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes to verify our
hypothesising and check the validity of our presuppositions.
The Macro
The impeachment hearings and the debate, as mentioned before,
represents a ritualised discourse, in which the social distance between the
Chairman and the Members is taken for granted, and as such reflected in
the ritualised language used. So, the polarity is between the Chairman and
the Members. When tracing the strategies in addressing, we can see the
following variations.
98
99
100
101
Pattern One
T + Lo (title + location) as in
The gentleman from Michigan
The gentlelady from
T + Lo + TLN
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Barr.
Pattern Three
Pattern Four
TLN + L
Mr. Barr from Georgia
Pattern Five
TLN + T+ Location
(en extended version of pattern four)
Mr. Coble, the gentleman from North Carolina
Pattern Six
TLN
Ms. Lofgren? (Mr. Canady. Mr. Meeham).
Pattern Seven
T only
The gentleman/the gentlewoman/the gentlelady
Pattern Eight
E + CN (Endearment ) (ironic), as in
Rep. Hyde: Yeah. If my good friend would listen to
when we talk over here If you will listen If you will
listen carefully, you will get your answer. (31)
103
as
104
social deixis and the scale of politeness (perceived from the point of view
of the marco-structure of the play as a configuration of various means
participating in the language projection of politeness phenomena). Also of
interest will be to trace the activation of both paradigmatic and syntagmatic
axes of social deixis as represented by the interplay of addresses with other
context-bound supporters. Our partial aim is to demonstrate how the form
of address is very often expressive of the role and belongs to it.
In Albees view, the problem of modern society is that a great majority
of people would like to live their lives half-dreaming, and the aim of the
playwright is to wake them up. In his play, the stream-of-consciousness way
of communication is not regulated by norms of interaction, conventions,
or politeness (if polite, the characters are only cooly polite in one of
the protagonists words) and the characters feel free to let the stream of
consciousness flow with no social norms of behaviour standing in their light
(the consciousness being lulled as it were by alcohol to forget about empathy,
pretence, face threatening acts, etc.). Rather than a mirror, the play is an
X-ray of the society. The effect of the deixis ad phatasma (HERMAN,
1995:28) is used to locate objects not only to the physical space but in the
mind or imagination of the speaker.
Thus, the dialogic segments, which will be isolated for the purposes of
our analysis, are seen as influenced by the cognitive context constructed by
the total dialogue of the play and what seems to be essential for evaluating
the role of the form and function of addresses in theatrical plays in general, is
the transmission of information based on the intersection of two axes:
(1) character character interaction
(2) stage audience reception
and it is the dramatists skill to manage the two axes adequately (i.e. what can
be redundant to the audience may be crucial to one or the other of dramatic
figures, etc.).
Consequently, the strategies of addressing have to be considered with
both those axes in mind.
Case Study
Before discussing the network of addressing, a note about quantification
seems to be relevant. In Albee, self- and allo-repetitions are the resources
used to contribute to the air of the stream of consciousness: the participants
in the games re-cycle their own or others speeches in the dichotomy of
the roles of hosts-guests, late at night, at a drunken post-party party. From
105
this point of view, quantification of the data seems far from relevant for the
purposes of present analysis. More important is the quality of the information
transmitted through addresses and the Czech translational solutions.
Our approach to translation and translational equivalency is based
on KNITTLOVAs series of studies, and textbooks (see References),
representing a functional and systemic approach to translatology, in which
the process of translating is based on the transfer of both semantic and
pragmatic invariants from source to target language, and in which the
pragmatic aspect reflects sensitiveness of the translator to different extralinguistic situations, different linguistic as well as extra-linguistic experience
of the participants of interaction, different social conventions, non-identical
types of unconventional speech manifestations, style differences, etc. The
problem-solving situations result in information-adding and informationdropping processes, and adequateness (or rather seeming adequateness) is
achieved by a complex and sensitive approach to partial solutions (for details
see KNITTLOV, 1981:5965)
A handful of cross-language remarks might prepare the ground for the
English-Czech data-based comparison to follow.
a) Remarks on cross-language comparison
If language is looked upon as social semiotics in Hallidays (1978) sense
of the word, then we can presuppose the existence of social and culture-bound
differences projected into the compared languages to manifest societal needs
in face-saving strategies. Part of the differences results in the possibilities
open by the language type (i.e. typologically conditioned differences),
others are culture-specific.
As for the language type, the synthetic Czech opens more possibilities
for variation within T- and V-exchanges, thus opening space for a scale of
delicacy due to the existence of different singular and plural verb forms,
which then can be used in combination with FN forms of address.
As a result, addressing a partner in communication by FN (e.g. Pavle)
need not necessarily imply being on first name terms, since there is still an
option in the choice of the verb-form ending, as in
Pavle, mete mi s tm autem pomoct?/ pomete mi s tm autem?
[Paul voc. sg. can you [plural] help me with the car?]
106
107
108
109
110
111
Czech version
a cluck (6)
a simp (14)
SCREW YOU! (19)
PHRASEMAKER (14)
sweetheart (16)
Screw, sweetie (23)
Look, muckmouth (21)
Lover (16)
angel (25)
BULL! (199)
You prick! (59)
You bastard (58)
trumbero! (104)
jelimnek (108) indirect address
Ty p a r ch a n t e j e d e n (111)
F r z i s t o (108)
pusinko (110)
Ale ku, holoubku (114)
ty sprosku (112)
svdnku (109)
andlku (115)
Mezku! (213)
Ty hajzle jeden (135)
ty chlape bdn (134)
112
malink (193)
ty chytrej! (206)
milej zlatej (209)
ty jelimnku ubohej (209)
ty moulo (210)
, brouku (140)
113
prcku (214)
ty sluho (214)
ty mane (233)
mldeneku (216)
hebeku (215)
114
(1) The comparison has amplified the importance to approach the compared
items not only in the micro-context of their occurrences but also from
the perspective of the macro-context of the play as a whole, since the
immediate solutions might be influenced by the overall macro-processes
and the consequent strategies in the choice of a given translational
counterpart. To illustrate the point, one might be surprised e.g. by the
choice of pane kolego in Czech to compensate for the English Sir, as
in
(a) Nick: Sir? (32)
Jak prosm, pane kolego?(119)
but when tracing Nicks replicas to George, we can see that the translators
were systematic in this shift in solidarity semantics and used the same
form of address even in those situations, in which there was a No-Name
strategy in English, as in
(b) Nick: Im sorry if we (32)
Promite, pane kolego, jestli jsme (119)
(2) This brings us to a more general finding about the Czech equivalents
of the English addresses in the play: there is a consistent shift in social
deixis to more explicit, more emotional and very often also more intimate
expressions. This impression is based on the configuration of addresses +
other supportive devices, as in
(c) Look, lady. (194)
Helete, milostiv (210)
(3) Another more general finding concerns the tendency in Czech to avoid
stereotypical ways of addresses by using a variety of forms by which
to refer to a character. The synthetic Czech, with many inflectional and
derivational possibilities, offers flexible modifications of the base-forms
of the naming units, which is apparent from such comparisons as
(d) baby (177) beruko (200)
berunko (201)
or
(e) little boy (163) malinkej (193)
(192) milej zlatej (209)
cf. also the role of diminutives in the Czech version, as apparent from
the illustrative examples above (e.g. angel andlku, girl dvenko, boy
chlapeku, Jesus Jeku, etc.)
115
Less general was the tendency in the Czech version to change the direct
address into indirect address-as-reference, as in
(f) There you are, my pet (47)
, tady je to moje zlatko (128) instead of the expected
, tady jsi ty moje zlatko.
(4) Besides the above mentioned large number of diminutives, the increased
emotional colouring of the Czech addresses seems to have been mainly
achieved by the following strategies, i.e.
1) by the addition into the form of address of personal pronouns with
the resulting sequences of bound + free forms, as in
Lunk head (193) ty moulo (210)
Stupid! (188) ty chytrej! (206)
(this is not to say that there were no sequences of bound + free forms
in English, as in You satanic bitch (137), but even here, there was an
additional extension in Czech: ty mrcho jedna belsk, 179).
2) by the violation of a grammatical concord in the N + Adj sequences,
as in
You bastard (58) ty chlape bdn
[you sg. + boy voc. male N] + [Adj. female ending].
(See also the remarks on cross-cultural comparison preceding this
section.)
Our final remark concerns differences in the distribution of the forms
of address in the compared texts. Though basically the distribution in the
translation corresponds to the original text, there are unpredictable shifts in
Czech, as in
George: Martha, I gave you the prize years ago (16)
J jsem ti u ped lty piznal primt, Marto (110)
There were many more interesting translational solutions in the text
that should deserve more attention, but since our goal was mainly illustrative,
we will conclude this section by saying that Sample Three might be used to
illustrate anti-polite rather than polite way of addressing, in which Leechs
Principle of Politeness, namely the maxims of tact and generosity, were
overshadowed by a more dominant Principle of irony.
116
117
Chapter Three
POLITENESS IN APOLOGISING
3.0
Introduction
119
3.1
120
converse with others (xii, 55). Geis presents DSAT as a cognitive approach
to language and social interaction, emphasising participants interactions
and goals. His treatment of utterances thus requires understanding why
the utterance was produced, that is what goal or intended effect(s) of the
speaker was in producing the utterance (op. cit.: 38). The significance of the
successive utterances that comprise a conversation rests on how they alter the
participants belief states (op. cit.: 96).
Note. What seems to link the traditional SAT with Geis DSAT is an intentionalist
view of meaning and action (cf. Searle, 1983). On the other hand, what seems to
make a distinction, is the scope: while the SAT focussed on analysing discrete
sentences, Geis DSAT prefers the concept of interaction structures.
121
constatives
directives
comissives
acknowledgements
Speech acts
Conventional
effectives
verdictives
[After Bach & Harnish, 1981:41]
acknowledgement
and this is most probably the reason why the traditional model has been
extended to take not only speech acts but also speech-act-sets into
consideration. The following approach is based on such findings.
3.1.3 Blum-Kulka et al. and their IFID-theory
In recent years, a number of cross-cultural studies in apologies have
thrown light on different realisations of apology as a speech act in different
languages and an increased attention has been paid to the problem of
pragmatic transfer (GARCIA,1989, SUSZCZYNSKA,1992).
122
The idea of apology as a speech act has been elaborated by BLUMKULKA, HOUSE and KASPER (1989) to provide a model of apology as
a speech act set. In this model, apology consists of a set of strategies or
formulae, most important of them being the illocutionary force indicating
device (IFID), e.g. I apologize (for), Im sorry that, followed by an
apologetic account, different strategies of expressing responsibility,
offers of repair and a promise of forbearance.
The following figure may illustrate the conception in a more transparent
way.
Fig. 2 The model of apology as a Speech act set
IFID
an apologetic
account
expressing
responsibility
offers of
repair
promise of
forbearance
123
124
POLITE REMEDY
>
Oh, Im sorry
>
POLITE STATE
STATE 2
Speaker non-offender
Addressee not offended
Never mind/ Thats all
right
125
(3) the choice out of the variety of language devices used to express various
degrees or rather nuances of regret. [After Suszczynska, 1992]
In the next section, selected conceptions will be discussed in detail to
prepare the ground for the criteria applied in the following corpus-based
analysis.
3.2.1 Strategic approach state of the art
There is a consensus among ethnographers of communication (cf.
SUSZCZYNSKA, 1992 for an overview) that apology is implied by the
politeness theory.
Although BROWN & LEVINSON (1987) list apology mainly as a
politeness strategy redressive for the hearer, it is clear that apology is not
only a strategy used to compensate the offended party but a strategy used to
restore the face of the offender, and to adverse the unwanted consequences
of the offensive act.
The first systematic attempts to define a prototypical apology in terms of
felicity conditions, configurations of communicative strategies, and structural
properties, can be traced in the collection of papers entitled Conversational
Routine (COULMAS, 1981), cf. the papers by FRASER, EDMONDSON, and
COULMAS. While Fraser (On apologizing, op. cit.: 259271) focussed
on the beliefs we usually take to be true about someone who has apologized,
and on the variety of strategies available to perform the act of apologizing,
Edmondson (On Saying Youre sorry, op. cit.: 274288) makes a distinction
between communication rules, conversational strategies and social maxims
and exemplifies the differences, thus preparing a ground for apologies seen
as manifestations of illocutionary act endowed with specific illocutionary
values. He also admits partly routinized and partly conventionalized nature
of language devices used to manifest apologies. Coulmass study (Poison
to Your Soul. Thanks and Apologies Contrastively Viewed, op. cit.: 6991) is
an evaluable source of cross-language comparison, and suggestions of how to
approach speech acts in a more integrated way, cf. his comparison of thanks
and appologies having much in common in the phase of responses, eg. Thank
you so much. Thats all right. (thanks) Excuse me please. Thats all right.
(an apology). Emphasis in on the increased sensitiveness to culture-specific
norms of social behaviour as exemplified in his study by the comparison of
Japanese and Western cultures.
126
127
128
(predictable/unpredictable)
(indebting/non-indebting
responder
129
COULMAS (1981:75) does not insist on the strict application of his threeplace pattern and admits possible permutations. Moreover, what is essential
for my corpus-based analysis, he emphasizes the correlation between the
character of the sequence and the predictability of the intervening event such
that with predictable intervention into the course of events, anticipatory (ex
ante) apologies are preferred thus resulting in sequences
apology
e.g. Sorry
object of regret
Ill be late again
responder
No harm done
(I)
responder
(I)
Since the rest of his paper is devoted to the description of the Japanese
scene, I will conclude this section by repeating his characteristics of apologies
and thanks in the context of politeness: both apologies and thanks are said to
be strategic devices whose most important function is to balance politeness
relations between interlocutors (op. cit.: 81).
3.2.1.3 Apology as a continuum
The importance of corpus-based analysis for the study of apology has
been advocated by BEAN and JOHNSTONE (1994).
Their approach is close to the functional approach as advocated by the
Prague school scholars, since it is dynamic and sensitive to continua. Their
model of the speech act of apologizing ranges apologies along a continuum
from the most situational to the most personal ones, as apparent from the
following survey of their conception borrowed from SUSZCYNSKA (1997:
5)
130
Most situational
Most personal
Unelaborated or attenuated
in form
Corpus-based data
3.3.1 Expectations
The purpose of this section is twofold:
(1) to address the question of how corpus data can contribute to our
understanding of apologies as parts of remedial exchanges, neatly woven
(to use Hallidays term) into naturally occurring conversation; and
(2) to verify the validity of hypotheses discussed in the theoretical studies
focussing on remedial exchanges in general and apologies in particular
and deduce how liable the respective theoretical findings can be for
practical application.
My working hypothesis is that due to the complex interplay of linguistic
and extra-linguistic factors in real life communication, the process of
apologising is not so straightforward and transparent to be forced into
132
133
information about such social factors as age, sex, occupation. Typical of the
texts is their dialogic nature (i.e. spontaneity, simultaneity of speech, false
starts, back-channel reactions, loose co-ordination (cf. URBANOV, 1984:
14), minor sentences, chopped sentences, etc.).
3.3.3 Procedure
First, inspired by the theoretical findings, I formulated questions to be
addressed and parameters to be traced. Their choice has been motivated by
my interest in the validity of those theoretical findings that might be relevant
for the follow-up utilisation of the results in my pedagogical and research
activities and in this respect is far from making use of all the possibilities
offered by the Corpus in this domain.
Some of the questions addressed are procedural, some of them, however,
are more practically oriented. The following 7 points ( or rather investigative
questions) represent the priorities of my focus.
1. What kind of a model to apply?
As mentioned before, Coulmas (1981) thought of a three-place apology
pattern, which can be summarised as object of regret > apology > responder.
Blume-Kulka et al. (1989) proposed a five-place pattern consisting of IFID
> an apology account > expression of responsibility > repair > a promise of
forbearance.
Hypothesis 1
Coulmas suggests a model which is simpler but allows for extension.
Blume-Kulkas set represents a very delicate continuum (in the Hallidayan
sense of the word) and there is less probability that such a set will be
represented in the corpus in its totality, ie. what we can presuppose to
be faced with are empty slots for some parts of Blum-Kulkas schema.
Moreover, if apology is used as eg. a disarming move preceding request (Im
terribly sorry/ but Im afraid youre in my seat.), we can expect modifications
of the above model. Expectations: more diversified sequences will be needed
to describe various communicative strategies associated with apologising.
134
Hypothesis 2
The sets were most probably structured with explicit devices of apology
in mind and consequently, they may not be of any help in treating implicit
(deduced, entailed) apologies (the pragmatically bound estimation of the
ratio of explicit and implicit manifestations of politeness is in favour of the
explicit ones). Since this parameter is closely linked with indirectness, its role
will be addressed in the next section.
2. Is indirectness typical of apologies?
There are many linguists who associate indirectness with politeness (for
a survey see URBANOV, 1998), either as a category superordinate to
politeness or as one of the possible manifestations of politeness.
A tentative hypothesis
If we follow EDMONDSONs (1981:280) suggestion viz. to interpret
apologies as instances of socially-sanctioned H-Supportive Behavior (H =
hearer), then indirectness does not seem to be appropriate with apologies (or
thanks), ie. in those situations in which one wants to restore social harmony.
It might be a good strategy with eg. complains. H-Support Maxim is in fact
a different label used by EDMONDSON for LEECHs Tact Principle (cf.
also the instructions given to children, eg. Say you are sorry.).
3. Is the distinction of situational and personal apologies linguistically
relevant?
Hypothesis 1
Though the distinction is well defined in literature, the recognition of
a classifying criterion i.e. whether minor or major offence has been
performed, is dependent on various supportive features of the communicative
situation, e.g. on the particular relationship holding between the interlocutors,
their perception of offensiveness of their actions in a particular context,
etc. Consequently, when tracing the distinction in the Corpus, one has to be
sensitive to a given context. Even then the findings may result in subjective
conclusions, especially if the analyst is a non-native speaker like myself.
135
Hypothesis 2
The solution might be in accepting the notion of a continuum rather
than dichotomy here and (due to the interplay of other factors of a particular
communicative situation) - in interpreting the analysed example as either
closer to situational or personal end of the continuum.
4. Could interlocutors perspective be relevant as a parameter?
The occurrence of such apologies as Im sorry vs. Please forgive me
leads us to the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1
Language is looked upon as being ego-centric in general (cf. LANGACERs
(1991) space grammar). This might lead us to the conclusion that apologies
are mostly ego-centric in their language manifestations, i.e. speaker-oriented
(following the I-pattern). Our life experience, however, leads us to the
conclusion, that, in more diplomatic encounters, we ask the addressee for
co-operation and make him responsible for releasing the burden of offence.
As a result, both the perspectives, i.e. speaker oriented as well as addresseeoriented, can be used in succession (Im sorry You must forgive me.).
Hypothesis 2
Since the majority of the strategies suggested by FRASER (see 3.2.1.1) is
ego-centric, i.e. speaker-oriented, high frequency of occurrence of speakeroriented language manifestations can be expected (e.g. Im sorry. vs. Excuse
me).
Hypothesis 3
If hypothesis 2 proves to be the case, then we can presuppose a variety
of language expressions with partly routinized/stereotyped manifestations as
well as some space left for speakers creativity. To what degree, however,
creativity is wanted or unwanted, has something to do with culture-bound
values as well as individuals preferences. Definitely, the one to judge such
values should not primarily be the non-native speaker.
136
137
138
(2a) There are contextualized situations in the corpus for which some
of the labels suggested by Coulmas or Fraser have to be modified.
This concerns first of all the label offence used to characterize the
role of event. There are examples in the corpus, in which the event
e.g. represents a temporary loss of memory for which the speaker
apologises. In such cases it would be better to think of a failure
event rather than offence (the term failure event is borrowed from
Suszczynska, 1992).
(2b) Due to the context-bound examples in the LLC, I had to extend the
scope of the notion of event to refer to both real and ficticious events
(in which the speakers apologized for what might have been interpreted
as intervention into the course of addressees events).
The following example will illustrate the situations described in (2a-b)
Example 1
S 1.14 (recorded in 1976) the transcript is simplified for the purposes
of the parameters traced, the symbols, however, remain authentic (cf. LLC:
2125 for explanation).
(A is a male academic aged 60, b is a male businessman, aged 52. A is trying to
entertain b by telling stories.)
A 573
b
A
b
A
b
A
b
A
b
139
A
b
A
C
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//well [ ] . so I feel quite SORRY for her// and I can see myself
doing the same THING at // {REALLY} *SOME
times
B. Responses to the questions addressed A commentary on a given
question is far from being a relevant answer: it is rather a sketchy
suggestion of one of the possible ways of how to respond.
1 What kind of a model to apply?
As mentioned before (cf. A(1), the choreography of apologising is not
that regular and linear as proposed by COULMAS or BLUM-KULKA.
Following are the four modifications of the Apology Speech Act Set
which deserve notification and revision of the pattern
APOLOGY
EVENT
JUSTIFICATION
Excuse me/ for calling you by name, Mr Hoover,/but I cant help knowing
who you are with your pictures in all your ads and everything. (A, Breakfast
of Champions )
Vonnegut Jr., Kurt 1974
COMPLAIN
APOLOGY
FORGIVENESS
Youre standing on my foot./Oh, Im sorry./ Thats all right. (A, borrowed
from Fraser)
(EVENT)
APOLOGY
Sorry,
APOLOGY as REQUEST
Sorry (= what did you say?) (A)
Here the intonation (with final rise) compensates for the request.
APOLOGY
Im sorry
EVENT
about the mess
DISARMER
how stupid of me
(LLC, p. 281)
or (EVENT-gesture)
APOLOGETIC ACCOUNT
(and he tried to wave me in) I said no Im not coming
APOLOGY
Im sorry
(LLC, p. 360).
141
142
B
c remarks
d *[h:m]
B
c
B
A, b, c
A
B
A
d
c
d
B
c
Legend
As apparent from the overall climate of the content of S.2.10 above,
no act of apology happens to be performed though the remedial act, i.e. to
balance the offensive situation, does happen. The question remains why B,
as an apparent offender, intentionally avoids making an apology. One of
the possible interpretations might be her dominant role (cf. the discussion on
social deixis in Chapter Two) in the communicative situation, another might
be that she went too far in missing many chances to apologise to which
other participants reacted by jokingly mocking remarks and it would be
too costly to her face to apologise after the mocking strategy used by other
participants (in order to finally perform a successful reproach). What made
things difficult was her diplomatic way of avoiding apology, first by reevaluating the implicature i.e. that every untidy place can be called a pigsty
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144
145
Example 6
SCUSE ME PLEASE! / That ole hen, Fussy has just got back in my
kitchen!
Apology (event= I have to leave) apologetic account (TW, 51)
a subordinate social role, asking for an excuse is predictable as an
institutinalised form of behaviour.
Example 7
Excuse me, I want to get out and I cant get over your legs (TW, 55)
an institutionalised way of how to apologise for interfering into ones
convenience.
Example 8
Mr. Vacarro! excuse me, but I just wouldnt dream! of eating a nut that
a man had cracked in his mouth. (TW, 58)
apology for an intention of the other party to make Baby Doll violate
social etiquette.
The following Ex. 9 does not belong to the supportive (TW) text
and its introduction here should contrast the private apologies with an
institutionalised setting in which the apology was made.
Example 9
Sample S.3.1a (recorded 1976)
(a = male academic, age c.40; A = female prospective undergraduate, age c.
20; B = male academic, age c. 40).
The institutionalised setting here is represented by an admission interview,
during which As essay is discussed and A is asked to read a fragment of it.
a 251
[m] your essay. If I may just cut **across for one moment,**
[m] - - - wed
A
**THANK YOU.//YES**
a
like you to re-read this little passage *beginning* the last paragraph
as an example + <<thats the one>> +
A
(laughs) ** YES// I SEE**
B
+ over to PAGE+ you SEE. to the **//end of ,,syll syll
SYLL>>**
a
where you talk about *connections in that paragraph - *
146
A
B
A
Legend
As apparent from the sample, the person referred to as A is in an
unpriviliged position, apparently afraid of the criticism of the essay, which
she wants to diminish by taking the initiative of the accuser herself (cf.
terrible, yeah), immediately followed by an apology, consisting of IFID +
accounts, by which she wants to contribute to the remedial act of soothing
her problems. Thus, we can qualify her apology as an act of self-protecting
behaviour.
5. Are apologies one-directional acts redressive for the hearer?
The Corpus-based samples (cf. also the LLC illustrative samples for
evidence) support the relevance of approaching apologies as two-directional
speech-act-sets, i.e. in one direction they are redressive for the hearer (cf.
also the status of apologies as instances of socially sanctioned H(earer)Supportive Behavior in EDMONDSON, 1981:280); in other direction,
they restore the face of the offender. Both the directions, however, seem to
stream to the unifying goal, i.e. to adverse the unwanted consequences of the
offensive act.
6. Is there any creativeness in apologies?
We can only agree with COULMAS (1981) that part of apologetic
manifestations is based on routines of various kinds. Yet the analysis of
Corpus samples gives evidence of some space left for creativity, which seems
to be of two basic kinds, i.e.
1. creativity in configurations within the speech-act-set
2. and creativity in the choice of language devices used to manifest them.
While the first type of creativity has been discussed in connection with
the Question 1, we will pay attention now to the second type of creativeness
147
148
149
150
Chapter Four
POLITENESS IN SECOND LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION AN OUTLINE
4.1
151
However, even the students at lower levels should be taught that there are
many things affecting how we choose the words we use, for example:
a) Setting
Where are we when we use language? What situation are we in?
b) Participants
Who is taking part in the language exchange?
c) Purpose
What is the purpose of the speaker or writer? or put in other words,
What is his/her communicative intention?.
d) Channel
Is it a written or spoken communication? If spoken:
Is it a face-to-face interaction? Does it take place over the telephone?
e) Topic
What is the message about? And, consequently, what are the utterances,
phrases and words about?
Methodologists say that native speakers have communicative
competence that is a subconscious knowledge of language use. Part of the
communicative competence is represented by socio-cultural knowledge and
experience (including linguistic etiquette). In SLA, however, only part of the
competence can but need not necessarily be shared, and hence should be
taught together with grammatical competence and lexical knowledge.
Taking all these things into consideration one would expect that coursebooks, especially those written by native speakers, will reflect all the findings
and will help students to gain the ability to use language appropriately.
In fact, when skimming through the textbooks, it is sometimes difficult
to find anything that could be tailored to the needs of a cultural awareness
teaching. What we are rather faced with instead are texts and the follow-up
tasks which could be labelled cultural awareness-free.
It goes beyond the scope of this section to give detailed analyses of all
the possible course-books used in our republic at present. What we would
like to do is exemplify by randomly selected data that not all the authors of
teaching materials are sensitive to making politeness an inseparable part of
their books and that even if they give teachers notes providing quite detailed
152
guidance on how to present the material, teachers are not advised to explain
that some structures commonly used in one society can be strange or even
rude in another because of different strategies that underlie the consequent
overt language manifestations.
Having discussed the problem with native speakers I came to the
conclusion that native speakers are less tolerant to those structures that would
be accepted not only as impolite but even rude, and interpreted as a Face
Threatening Act, than to grammatical mistakes. This is what differentiates
native speakers from non-native speakers or competent language users from
incompetent ones. That is why I feel that the dimension of linguistic etiquette
should become an integral part of any field of linguistic treatment since every
field is sensitive to its manifestation and course-books should teach not
only about language but also how to use it in a communicatively appropriate
way in order to create a happy situation of communication.
Now some examples will be introduced to illustrate the situation.
1) At the very beginning of Project English 1(Teachers Book) by Tom
Hutchinson, which is still in use at our schools, teachers, in order to
use only English in the classroom, are advised to incorporate into their
language of instructions classroom commands of the type Stand up.
Sit down. Come here. There is, however, no mention of the possibility
to use those commands in a more polite, e.g. with please, as well as of
the fact that pupils are expected to use the magic word when talking
to someone older, superior, etc. Issuing commands in general and using
imperatives in particular is taught in the same way. On the other hand,
with no methodological reasoning behind, pupils are exposed to please
when pronouns this and that or time is introduced (p. 36 and 39)
Can I have this/that book, please?
Whats the time, please?
In the new version of this course-book, cf. Project 1 published in 2003,
the situation unfortunately remains the same. Pupils learn classroom
instructions, such as Give me your pen. Close your book. ( p.11 in the
Students Book) and though they are faced with please several times (cf.
a dialogue taking place in a restaurant) , the only cultural background note
in the Teachers Book (p.70) concerns the explanation of the notion of fast
food restaurants:
153
Waitress:
Mickey:
Waitress:
Mickey:
Yes, please?
Can I have a hot dog and an orange juice, please?
Small or large?
Large, please.
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Teachers using the textbook are advised to explain the meaning of any
words that students do not know. They are, quite surprisingly, not advised to
explain that such a reaction (cf. Girl in turn 3 above) would be perceived not
only as impolite but as rather rude by native speakers.
I could go on with the series of missed opportunities but instead, I
would also like to say that not all the textbooks can be characterised as
lacking responsibility for the linguistic etiquette. It is, however, a pity
that there are so big differences between the course-books and only some
students then have the advantage of learning strategies and skills typical of
interactions in current conversation.
We decided to choose one example connected with the previous chapter on
apologising (cf.Chapter Three). The example is taken from the course-book
Streetwise Intermediate (Teachers Book, p. 72). Students are supposed to
listen to four different conversations and their first task is to identify who
the people are, where they are, and what the problem is. Then they listen to
the cassette again and write down the expressions the speakers use to make
complaints and to apologise. They also try to remember which of the speakers
sounded aggressive and why and the last task is to say how the aggressive
speakers could sound more polite. Teachers are also suggested to:
* Make sure students understand that unless you are complaining to family
or close friends, it is usually more polite and effective to introduce a
complaint indirectly.
* Before students do the practice exercise, teachers should elicit any more
expression they could use to make polite complaints, e.g. Ive got a bit of
a problem, you seeI hope you dont mind but; or apologize, e.g. Its
my fault, How stupid of me, etc..
In the same course-book students are for example taught to express
disagreement. They are given the following list of expressions:
Rubbish!
I dont think thats really true.
Nonsense!
It s not true!
Im not sure that I agree with that.
You must be joking.
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With the task to order the expressions from the least polite to the most
polite. Teachers are asked to impress on students that it is usually important
to be polite even when we disagree with people.
I think that exercises of this type are very useful and can help students
to realize that there are different ways of expressing the same depending on
various communicative situations and this also might be the way of raising
their sensitivity to the politeness phenomena in a target culture but also in a
cross-cultural perspective.
As shown in the previous examples, it is not always easy to find activities
which would be tailored to suit the truly communicative course label.
Fortunately, teachers who want to include politeness into their syllabus do
not have to rely on the rather pedagogic texts of the course-books only.
As a starting point for language teachers who want to teach their students
when to speak, when not, what to talk about with whom, when, where
and in what manner HYMES (1972:277), I would suggest as a theoretical
basis the two following studies: Pragmatics in Language teaching and
Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching which were among the first
books devoted to the problems of educational implications of pragmatics and
sociolinguistic research (see References).
In their search for supplementary practical materials teachers can either
use traditional printed materials or with new technologies, the Internet can
serve as a good source. From the first group of materials, I would like to
name Intercultural Activities by Simon Gill and Michaela akov (2002),
namely the unit based on Politeness and Social Behaviour. Generally
speaking, all the activities in the book are designed to develop a sharing of
knowledge and mutual understanding of each others cultures by giving equal
emphasis to learners understanding of other cultures and ability do describe
their own. (op. cit.: p. 2).
As for the Internet, we entered the phrase teaching linguistic politeness
in Google and obtained 8.510 links. It goes beyond the scope of this chapter
to comment on all the links but what we think might interest teachers are the
practical ones. To name just some, on the web pages of U.S. Department of
State http://exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/pragmatics.htm it is
possible to find a collection of 30 lessons that can help English learners use
socially appropriate language in a variety of informal and formal situations
called Teaching Pragmatics. There are several areas like conversational
management, conversational openings and closings, requests, etc. with
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Since the suggestions for ELT and SLA are scattered throughout the whole
study (due to our aim to increase sensitiveness to the possible applicability
of both the theoretical and data-based practical findings), only a brief survey
will echo our previous attempts.
I definitely agree with Ardith J. Meier, who, in the article entitled
Teaching the Universals of Politeness published in ELT Journal in 1997
criticises Brown and Levinson for their desire to perceive politeness as
a static category, as well as for giving language devices the same value
across languages, and last but not least for their claim for a straightforward
relationship between indirectness and politeness, if not identification of
indirectness and politeness. Their rules of politeness should not form a
relevant basis for teaching politeness phenomena in foreign and second
language teaching. Rather, according to Meier, we should perceive politeness
as a dynamic category and the most useful approach to politeness is via
appropriateness. So instead of introducing normative lists of lexical items
and sets of frozen phrases, cultural awareness and sensitivity to particular
communicative situations need to be the focus. Learners do not have to
internalise a particular culture but the goal, as stated in the article, should be
to get the student to begin looking for the reasons behind human behavior.
From the point of view of textbook authors, I would prioritise the
application of the following findings:
1. Politeness is a scalar notion, it comes in degrees appropriate to a given
communicative situation. Consequently, the binary treatment and
classification of politeness devices into polite and impolite is inappropriate
and correspond neither to current communicative situations nor to their
language manifestation, i.e. authentic, language-in-action data.
2. Devices of linguistic politeness should be relevantly described and not
only authoritatively (and in a simplified way) prescribed. (With the
existence of language corpora accessible, cf. e.g. the British National
157
Corpus, the task is far from being an idle wish). The empirical analyses,
however, have to be theoretically informed (G. Eelen, 2001:254).
3. The norms of politeness in a target language (similarly to the norms in
a source language) have to be seen as overt language manifestations of
culture-bound choices and preferences that are very often far from being
intercultural in their communicative impact on the respective language
users. Consequently, any automatic transfer of the politeness strategies
from one language community to another, may result in unwanted
culture bumps.
It would be ideal if there were enough teaching (instructive) notes in
each of the course-books in different situations helping teachers and students
to understand not only what the communication is about but how people
communicate just the way they do and why. But the reality is different and we
can only agree with Soledad Moreno Pichastor who in the article Politeness
and Textbooks: how to approach the teaching of communicative competence
in a second language (2004) concludes by saying that
there is still a long way before pragmatics can be taught in an organised
and principled way so that the learner is presented with a coherent
functional syllabus instead of finding bits of politeness strategies scattered
along the textbook units without any clear organising principle.
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
For the reasons specified in Chapter One, the present study is interdisciplinary
in approach, with the focus on sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of
language, as projected into the language manifestation of politeness strategies,
underlying language manifestations of what is often referred to as linguistic
etiquette. For such a vast area of research and a multifaceted nature of
politeness, it was necessary to narrow the scope to a defined set of strategies
and their language manifestations. As a result, attention has been primarily
paid to addressing and forms of address (Chapter Two) and apologising and
forms of apologies (Chapter Three).
The preference for the two strategies, explained in the introductory
chapter, was rather pragmatic in nature: the forms of address have been chosen
because I wanted to begin with tracing those strategies of politeness by which
the participants of communication exchange interpretative cues to their
respective manifestations of social deixis (cf. the semantics of power/distance
or solidarity/camaraderie). The analysis of the selected samples of three
different discourse types, i.e. phone-in-talk show, impeachment hearings, and
dramatic discourse, enabled me to trace addresses from ad hoc negotiations to
standardized routines.
The most essential finding from tracing politeness in the forms of address
is a need of a multifaceted (as opposed to a one-directional) and dynamic
approach to the politeness encoded in them, since, for example, within a single
phone-in call, the form of address can undergo unpredictable changes due to
the change in likemindedness, deference, etc. The corpus-bound examples
give sufficient evidence of such shifts in social deixis and the consequent
changes in politeness manifestation.
As for apologies, the main reason for their inclusion was my intention to
trace how politeness is manifested when a social man fails to fulfil social or
personal expectations associated with the multiple social roles he is in and
in order not to lose his face and at the same time not to threaten the face
of the other, feels the need to make a hearer-redressive act (cf. the status of
apologies as instances of socially sanctioned H(earer)-Supportive Behavior
in Edmondson, 1981), and at the same time a self-defensive remedial act of
apologizing, or rather, initiates a speech-act-set of apologising performed in
collaboration with the responsive-contribution of the hearer (addressee).
159
160
To me, the present study represents a phase of a long-term-researchproject on linguistic politeness (in which attention will be paid in the future
to politeness in compliments, disagreements and partly to requests (since the
literature on requests is more representative than the studies on any other
politeness manifestation). The focus in this phase was on communicative
strategies, with linguistic means understood as their consequences (occurring
in various configurations due to the activation of a paradigmatic axis of
alternation rules of choice, i.e. whether Sir, Professor, Mr. Brown or Paul and
a syntagmatic axis of co-occurrence: e.g. if Professor, then whimperative rather
than imperative, good morning rather than Hi, etc.). In the future, attention will
be paid to a detailed analysis of linguistic politeness proper.
In an on-line process of negotiation, discrete manifestations of politeness
have been looked upon as particular points on an imaginary scale of politeness
(rather than approached as realisations of binary opposition of polite and
impolite language devices). Other scales that have been taken into consideration
were the scale of indirectness (inspired by URBANOVs 1998 findings about
the role of indirectness in politeness) and the scale of ritualisation ranging from
ceremonial idioms to a creative ad hoc usage.
In sociological dimension, following HALLIDAYs (1978) conception
of language as social semiotics, the scale from power to solidarity has been
widely applied in the treatment of the forms of address and their contextsensitive nature (BROWN & GILMAN, 1960).
The restrictions in this study do not concern only the limitations within
the content of the notion of politeness. The dept for the future is in the
present restriction of my approach to the analysis of segmental units,
though, as explicitly stated in the present study, the crucial contribution of
suprasegmental units to the interpretation of politeness encoded and politeness
decoded is beyond any doubt. To treat both would be ideal but too demanding
in the phase of my preliminary mapping of the field, in which segmental units
offered a more reliable matrix to grasp and analyse, and in Prof. Macheks
view (PhD. seminar discussion), the interpretation of written texts is filtered
through the suprasegmental units anyway.
The aim here was twofold: first to approach politeness as a cultureand tradition-bound domain of communicative strategies, trace various
approaches by which it has been treated so far (speech act theory,
ethnography of communication, conversational analysis, cross-cultural
pragmatics, etc.) and find a theoretical framework within which to discuss
selected language data. Second, to project the strategies of addressing and
apologising into corpus-bound samples of language use and outline my future
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162
163
Resum
Prce nazvan Zdvoilost jako komunikativn strategie a jazykov manifestace si klade za cl zmapovat oblast zdvoilosti, kter byla v tradinch
modelech jazykov analzy buto pehlena nebo vnmna jako samozejm soust kadodenn komunikace.
Jak u sm nzev napovd, zdvoilost je chpna jednak jako s komunikativnch strategi (uplatovanch ped, v prbhu a po skonen komunikace), jednak jako jazykov manifestace, na jejm ztvrnn se podlej
ve sloit souhe prostedky rznch rovin jazyka. K dosaen relevantnch
zvr byly brny v vahu dva pedpoklady:
1) Jev, jakm je zdvoilost, vyaduje interdisciplinrn pstup. Nen mon jej zkoumat izolovan, ale je nutn pistupovat k nmu z nkolika
hledisek a vyuvat poznatk dalch obor, kter se zabvaj rznmi
aspekty fungovn jazyka, tzn. zahrnout perspektivu psychologickou, sociolingvistickou, teorii komunikace obecn i poznatky z etnografie komunikace. Vzhledem k tomu, e neoddlitelnou soust celistvho popisu
jazykovch jev je i znalost tradice, ritul, a funknch stereotyp, povaujeme za nutnou soust interdisciplinrnho pstupu i pragmatiku,
a to jak pragmatiku vnj (extern), tj. nae obecn vdomosti o svt,
tak pragmatiku vnitn (intern), nkdy tak oznaovanou jako pragmalingvistika, tj. nae zkuenosti s konkrtnmi jazykovmi manifestacemi
a jejich funkc v dan jazykov komunit.
2) Druh pedpoklad je spojen se stupnm univerzlnosti danho jevu.
Meme pedpokldat, e nkter zdvoilostn strategie existuj v rznch jazycch. Na druh stran vak nae pracovn hypotza pedpokld
existenci jev jazykov specifickch, danch jazykovou etiketou, vzniklou v uritm kulturnm kontextu.
V vodu prce je zeno pole psobnosti vzkum se omezuje pouze na
komunikaci verbln (s odvodnnm vylouenm suprasegmentlnch jev,
kter jsou v tto fzi vzkumu brny v vahu spe implicitn), konkrtn na
jazykov ztvrnn tch komunikativnch strategi, kter jsou spjaty s oslovovnm a omlouvnm se.
165
166
167
tvrzen Richarda Wattse, e oslovovn me bt povaovno za akt taktickho verblnho chovn spe ne za projev jazykov zdvoilosti.
c) Pro srovnn anglitiny a etiny v dan oblasti byla vybrna divadeln
hra Edwarda Albeeho Kdopak by se Kafky bl. Tento materil slouil
k oven hypotzy o jistm stupni monotnnosti pi signalizaci zdvoilosti v anglickm oslovovn a naopak vt npaditosti v etin.
Porovnn anglickho a eskho textu nejen potvrdilo pravdivost dan
hypotzy, ale poukzalo i na typologicky podmnn monosti kreativnho pstupu k oslovovn.
Zkoumnm vech uvedench materil jsem doli k nsledujcm zvrm:
Pomr mezi dynamickm, kontextov-citlivm zpsobem oslovovn
a statickm, jednotnm zpsobem oslovovn je zhruba 88 %:12 %. Tyto
vsledky podporuj uitenost hypotzy o tom, e oslovovn je manifestac
dynamick aktivace jak paradigmatick osy (tj. monosti vbru rznch lexiklnch jednotek, nap. pane profesore, Tome atd.), tak osy syntagmatick
(tj. aktivace vztah mezi jednotkami, nap. vbr osloven pane profesore implikuje vbr spisovnch gramatickch struktur, pelivou vslovnost atd.).
Oslovovn je jevem citlivm ke zmnm faktor ovlivujcch komunikativn situaci.
Tet kapitola Zdvoilost a omluvy uvd jazykovou zdvoilost do
souvislosti s teori eovch akt a teori konverzan analzy. eov akty
mohou bt chpny jako nemnn abstraktn kategorie, my se vak piklnme k pojet Coulmase, kter chpe eov akty jako definovan v uritm
spoleensko-kulturnm a jazykovm systmu. V tomto rmci jsou potom
zkoumny omluvy.
Materilem, s nm pracujeme v tto kapitole, je psan verze potaovho korpusu oznaovanho jako London-Lund korpus.
Zpsob zpracovn je nsledujc: vzhledem k tomu, e existuje velk
mnostv literatury o omluvch, uvdme jen strun nstin zkladnch mylenek. Pot jsou stanoveny hypotzy jednak na zklad literatury, jednak zaloen na vlastn intuici. V rmci jednotlivch hypotz analyzujeme pklady
vybran z korpusu a komentujeme vsledky. Zjitn jsou doplnna pklady
a tabulkami.
168
169
170
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Chapter One
Tab. 1 Subcategorization of Politeness
Fig. 1 Rules of Pragmatic Competence
Chapter Two
Tab. 1
Forms of address
Tab. 2
Tab. 3
Tab. 4
Tab. 5
Tab. 6
Fig. 1
Call 9
Survey of solidarity/distance semantics in Show 1 (Calls 110)
Components of the semantic system and determinants of the text
activating them
Illustrative survey of pronominal honorifics
Paradigmatic axis of alternation rules in I1
Moderators reference to Caller
Possible strategies for doing FTAs
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Chapter Three
Fig. 1 Speech Acts Bach and Harnishs approach
Fig. 2 The model of apology as a Speech act set
Fig. 3 Goffmans remedial work
Fig. 4 A three-place apology pattern (Coulmas)
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