scholarly journals Analysis on the use of politeness strategies in a scene of The Crown

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. e41365
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina Moura Pompeu

This article aims to analyze the positive and negative politeness strategies speakers employ to avoid threatening the addresses’ face in the series The Crown (2017) in season 02, episode 08 entitled Dear Mrs. Kennedy. The analysis is held in light of the Politeness Theory by Brown and Levinson (1987, first published in 1978). It could be observed through a qualitative analysis that when there is a relation of power between the speaker and the hearer, the speaker tends to use bald on record expressions, whereas when the speaker is the subordinate, he/she tends to utter negative strategies and hedges to mitigate the threat to the hearer’s face.

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio

ResumenEn el ámbito de los estudios irlandeses se ha estudiado con profusión el inesperado fracaso del fenómeno teatral encabezado por W.B. Yeats y en el que John Millington Synge se llevó la peor de las partes. La subversión que sus personajes implicaban a todos los niveles explica el rechazo de los mismos por parte del público que acudía en masa al Abbey Theatre solo para silbar y patalear durante alguna de sus representaciones (Kilroy 1971). Un análisis detallado de la forma en la que hace que se expresen apunta en esta dirección. La incorrección verbal es una seña característica del teatro de esta figura clave de la literatura irlandesa. Partiendo de ahí, en el presente trabajo se aplica el principio de cortesía lingüística (Brown y Levinson 1987) a tres de las obras más destacadas de este dramaturgo: In the Shadow of the Glen, The Tinker’s Wedding y The Well of the Saints. Con la intención de refutar los resultados de trabajos anteriores (Hidalgo-Tenorio 1999) y demostrar la validez de este modelo en la investigación de textos de ficción, se comprueba que esas mujeres, que rompen con la norma social y conversacional una y otra vez, en casos muy excepcionales hacen un uso magistral de todas las estrategias posibles de cortesía. Las razones son tan diversas como las que se darían en cualquier transacción conversacional del mundo real. Este artículo se proponer desgranarlas como uno de sus objetivos.Palabras clave: Pragmática, principio de cortesía, género, teatro irlandés, J.M. Synge.English title: “Good Evening to You, Lady of the House”: Considerations on the Politeness Principle in J.M. Synge’s DramaAbstract: In the field of Irish studies, scholars have considered extensively the failure of the theatrical experience led by W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge, who bore the brunt of popular criticism. The subversion embodied in Synge’s characters explains their rejection by the public, who flocked to the Abbey Theatre just to whistle and stamp their feet during some of his performances. One in January 1907 caused a particularly furious reaction from the press and political nationalists (Kilroy 1971). Since verbal impropriety (Bousfield and Locher 2008, Culpeper 2011) is their most outstanding characteristic, the analysis of how this major literary figure makes them express themselves can shed light on a phenomenon of much sociological relevance. Accordingly, here I apply the politeness principle (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987) to four of his most well-known plays: The Well of the Saints, The Tinker’s Wedding, In the Shadow of the Glen and The Playboy of the Western World. Apart from demonstrating the validity of this model in the exploration of fiction, I will show that those women, who regularly break social and conversational norms, make use of all politeness strategies in very exceptional cases. The reasons are as diverse as those articulated in any real-world transaction, and this article aims to disentangle them. Thus, it will be easier to tackle the issue of gender role construction (Holmes 1995, Weatherall 2002, Litoselitti 2006), which is definitely one of the grounds on which Dublin’s dismissal of the Irish Dramatic Movement was based (Hidalgo-Tenorio 1999).Keywords: Pragmatics, politeness theory, gender, Irish Theatre, J.M. Synge.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nobuko Kato

<p>In recent years, the communicative approach has prevailed in second language teaching, such that model dialogues are presented in textbooks for language learners. However, there has been little research on the extent to which such exemplars reflect authentic discourse in Japanese. This thesis, therefore, explores the speech acts of Japanese language native speakers (NSs), non-native speakers who are learning Japanese (NNSs), and discourse model examples presented in Japanese language textbooks (TXs) in order to investigate their similarities and differences, and thereby enhance the contents of textbooks. In particular, this thesis focuses on the discourse structure and expressions. The study takes a quantitative approach to the data analysis, using two different scenarios in settings of apology and requests. NSs pairs and NNSs pairs were requested to perform role-plays of two different scenarios in Japanese. The conversational data of the role-plays were transcribed, and the model exemplars of apology and request presented in the selected Japanese language textbooks were also analysed. The analysis employs the framework of cross-cultural speech act realisation patterns (CCSARP) of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) to categorise utterances based on the intentions of the speakers into two parts, namely: Head Acts (HAs) and Supportive Moves (SMs). Once the data were classified by the CCSARP, individual HAs and SMs were sorted according to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987), which divides politeness strategies into four types: bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record. By adopting both CCSARP and politeness theory, the characteristics of the discourse strategies and expressions of the three groups analysed in this thesis can be grasped. The analysis produces several new findings by identifying various ways in which the model dialogues in Japanese language textbooks fail to reflect the natural discourse of Japanese native speakers. The thesis presents suggestions for improvement for the benefit of textbook authors in future.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 201-203
Author(s):  
Grigore-Dan IORDĂCHESCU

The book titled Intercultural Communicative Competence for Global Citizenship. Identifying cyberpragmatic rules of engagement in telecollaboration brings novel approaches to Computer Mediated Communication, based on practical outcomes from a small-scale online international learning (OIL) project, i.e., CoCo, carried out during the academic year 2015–2016, between UK and France. It provides useful insights into the contribution of OIL projects to the internationalisation of the Higher Education (HE) curriculum as well as to the development of global citizenship competences, with a focus on intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the digital era. The authors structured the book into seven chapters, concentrating on essential pragmatics concepts revisited within the cyberspace and describing the project methodology and findings. Chapter 1, Introduction provides an overview of the topics presented in the volume, with clear definitions and eloquent examples, i.e., Online International Learning (OIL), Intercultural communicative competence (ICC), Telecollaboration, Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC), Threshold concept (TC), Global citizenship, and Cyberpragmatics. Chapter 2, Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Revisited brings forth an account of the historical evolution of the concepts of Communicative Competence (CC) and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), while at the same time examining the impact of the World Wide Web, coupled with the extensive use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) on the re-conceptualisation of ICC and its reassessed characteristics. It emphasises the value of integrating telecollaboration into the Higher Education curriculum with a view to creating global citizenship competences for the digital age in Higher Education. Chapter 3, Cyberpragmatics advances a comprehensive definition of cyberpragmatics seen as a professional as well as an academic genre-specific online ‘savoir-être’. It explores the theoretical foundations of the term, coined by Yus (2011), and brings forth examples of cyberpragmatic findings from similar research. Moreover, it gives an overview of the politeness theory (Brown, & Levinson 1987) and politeness principle (Leech 1983, 2014). The authors explain the blurring line between oral and written language that may occur in the case of online communication and how this affects students. The chapter also provides a clear-cut definition of the threshold concept (TC) pedagogy, upholding that Intercultural Cyberpragmatic Communicative Competence (ICCC) may be subsumed to TC. The authors advocate curricular scaffolding in HE in order to assist students with reflecting on and practising ICCC. Last but not least, the chapter presents the research question that this study aims to address. Chapter 4, The ‘CoCo’ Telecollaborative Project: Internationalisation at Home to Foster Global Citizenship Competences presents the CoCo (Coventry Colmar) telecollaborative course, along with the tasks devised and/or adopted for it, e.g., the Cultura Quizzes. It demonstrates the successful integration of CoCo into the curriculum and assessment of the two participating institutions and how students managed to apply critical digital literacies for global citizenship through active learning. The authors make an overview of research instruments and materials, including the frameworks of analysis and their application. Useful figures and tables illustrating the telecollaborative project structure, the politeness frameworks and strategies applied are also included. The fifth chapter, ‘CoCo’ Research Questions and Answers, delves further into the research questions of this study, at the same time offering a rationale for the analysis decisions taken as part of the asynchronous discussion forums with reference to tasks devised for the CoCo telecollaborative project. It tackles the impact of linguistic politeness theory frameworks on how project participants manage to negotiate politeness online. As for the asynchronous interactions in the CoCo forum, politeness strategies and facework employed by the CoCo interactants are interpreted from a cyberpragmatic standpoint through the application of Brown and Levinson’s and Leech’s politeness frameworks of analysis. Chapter 6, Emerging Online Politeness Patterns, brings forth a thorough account of the results obtained from the analysis of interactants’ exchanges carried out on the asynchronous discussion forums, with respect to the tasks devised for the telecollaborative CoCo project. In particular, three online exchanges were used in order to highlight patterns of linguistic behaviour, i.e., type and frequency of politeness strategies or maxims. The final chapter, Conclusion, presents the summary of findings, limitations and further research suggestions as well as pedagogical implications for teachers and students alike. The politeness frameworks of analysis provided by Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983), applied to cybercommunication are outlined and explained. The results revealed particular problematical areas in the field of cyberpragmatics, underpinning the challenges that students may face in telecollaboration, leading to the conclusion that detailed and structured task scaffolding is necessary in such collaborative activities. All in all, the book is an extremely useful tool for all stakeholders in the tertiary education landscape. It is a must read for language teachers, teacher trainers, trainees and educators from all educational systems across the globe.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 978
Author(s):  
Hassan Soleimani ◽  
Maliheh Nouraei Yeganeh

The present paper investigates pragmatic competence by considering some corpora of 2013 Iran presidential debates.The Fararu news source was used for sampling third debate. The present study examined two aspects of pragmatic competence for analyzing the materials. First, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory was used to examine the positive and/or negative politeness of each candidate’s speech. Then, the study used the Pearson chi-square formula to examine the frequency of politeness strategies used by candidates. Second, Arundale’s (2010) face theory was used to analyze criticism responses exchanges between the candidates. The researchers assumed that, following the theories, pragmatic competence might have a great effect on election’s outcomes and mitigate the threat to candidates’ face. The findings showed a statistically significant difference between the frequencies of politeness strategies used by Iran’s 2013 presidential candidates. Moreover, there was one by one relation between the mitigating of face threatening acts and face constituting strategies used by candidaes. We hope the findings could add to the body of knowledge in both pragmatics and presidential election context.


Author(s):  
Maria Gustini

This article examines Contrastive Analysis of Refusal in Indonesian language and Japanese language. Up to now, there have been no contrastive researchs which compare refusal speech acts within Indonesian language and Japanese language, focused on working situations. This article reports on a study to investigate differences and similarities in the politeness strategies of refusals between Japanese language (JS) and Indonesian language (IS). This study employed politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). Therefore the participants of this research were Indonesian and Japanese who currently work in company, school, etc. This research used descriptive method and collecting data using DCT (Discourse Completion Test) in Indonesian and Japanese. Therefore, the research subjects were those who already worked with the age-range from 22 to 50 years. 40 native speakers of Indonesian (IS) and 40 native speakers of Japanese (JS) participated in this study. All participants were asked to fill out a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which written in the form role-play questionaire, consisting of 3 situations. DCT situations were categorized based on power and familiarity/social distance between speaker and hearer. Results are as follows: (1) JS and IS using apology, reason, fuka, and requeirment in refusal act. (2) IS explain reason clearly in refusal act. Other hand JS using aimai reason. (3) JS used expressions of apology appropriately according to their power (hierarchical position), while IS made appropriate use of these expressions according to relative social distance. (4) IS tend to using requeirement in each refusal act.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 994-1013
Author(s):  
Gayane Rubenovna Vlasyan ◽  
Irina Vladimirovna Kozhukhova

Invitation is a speech act which is perceived differently across cultures. Understanding the pragmatics of invitation requires knowledge of the notion of politeness and politeness strategies which comprise culture specific elements. Politeness is realized in various discourses, social contexts and speech acts. The purpose of the study is to identify politeness strategies in Russian invitation in formal and informal contexts in three age groups and see how they correspond to the understanding of politeness in Russian communicative culture. The empirical data for the study were obtained through discourse completion tests with 101 participants (issuers of the invitation) of different age and social status as well as through ethnographic observation. The research is based on Discourse Analysis and Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson 1987; Larina2009, 2015; Locher 2006, 2013; Leech 2014; Mills 2003, 2017; Sifianou 1992; Terkourafi &Kadar 2017; Watts 2003, among others). We used discourse analysis to analyze the impact of the social and cultural context on the performance of invitation, the descriptive method which was used to analyze the pragmatic functions of invitation, as well as contextual interpretation of this speech act and the method of quantitative data processing. The study revealed some differences between a formal and informal invitation concerning politeness strategies and linguistic means of its expression. It also showed that in Russian culture issuing an invitation is not perceived as a face threatening speech act; in the analysed social contexts the preference is given to direct invitation, and the inviter’s imposition, as a rule, is perceived positively. The results contribute to a better understanding of Russian politeness and communicative style and can be implemented in intercultural pragmatics, intercultural communication and SL teaching.


Author(s):  
Mostafa Sadeghi Kahmini

Politeness is a universal phenomenon that is present in every human interaction. Many theorists have attempted to theorize politeness the most important of whom are Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson. The application of their theory has been extended to include literary works which are conversational in nature like drama or works whose building blocks consist of dialogues. This study tries to apply Politeness Theory to Milton's Paradise Lost in order to solve the age-old dispute over Milton's God to whom contradictory characteristics of democracy and tyranny are ascribed. It will be shown that in the conversation that takes place between God and residents of Heaven, God is more careful about politeness strategies despite his supremacy and it seems to be at odds with tyrannical features attributed to him.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Kalyanamalini SAHOO

This study discusses how various politeness strategies are implemented linguistically and how linguistic usage is related to social and contextual factors in the Indic language Odia. The study extends the validity of politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978) with reference to Odia speech-patterns and shows that Odia usage of politeness would be more differentiated according to the social relationship and gender than the content of the message.  In Brown and Levinson’s model, individual speech acts are considered to be inherently polite or impolite.  However, in Odia, it is found that communities of practice, rather than individuals, determine whether speech acts are considered polite or impolite. Thus, politeness should be considered as a set of strategies or practices set by particular groups or communities of practice as a socially constructed norm for themselves.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elita Modesta Br. Sembiring ◽  
Srisofian Sianturi ◽  
Faido Marudut Pardamean Simanjuntak ◽  
Sri Ninta Tarigan

Teacher-student politeness has been well-explored over the years, but mostly in direct or face-to-face communication. This study aims to fill the gap of politeness between students and educators in online learning, specifically in the sessions of one of the staple and most used educational platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic, namely Google Classroom. This study applies qualitative research method by describing the phenomenon of the language. This study observed the interaction of 36 English Literature Department students during their Google Classroom sessions from April to July 2021. The researchers analysed the students’ interaction with their lecturer according to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory.  Five politeness strategies were identified, namely the positive politeness strategies (i.e., greeting, gratitude and address term), negative politeness (i.e., apology) and vernacular language. The gratitude and address term expression conveyed by “Thank you, Mam” is dominantly used by students to minimize threat when giving comments for every instruction created by lecturer. Results of this study showed that the students use politeness strategies to ensure the effectiveness of online learning, yet they also limit their text-based interaction with the short expressions of politeness such as “Hi, mam” or “Yes, mam”. This finding contributes to shedding light on the aspect of politeness in online interaction in Google Classroom and directs future studies to explore politeness in other contexts.


TELAGA BAHASA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Andi Indah Yulianti ◽  
Dwiani Septiana ◽  
Hasina Fajrin R.

As a business that is engaged in providing services, in its competition, Gojek and Grab cannot be separated from the use of polite language to attract customers. This study aims to determine the form of politeness in the Gojek and Grab commercials. At the same time, the purpose of this study is to describe the form of politeness of the language contained in the Gojek and Grab commercials and find out which of the two big companies are more polite by using the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson, and Leech. This research uses the listening method, and the primary data is taken from Gojek and Grab's latest ad titled GoFood Versi Anak Baru (GojekIndonesia, 2019) and GrabFood Punya 3 Kode yang Bikin Kamu Bahagia. Based on both commercials' analysis, it can be concluded that Grab ads are more polite than Gojek ads. Grab ads are made with utterances that fulfill the politeness maxim and use a positive politeness strategy. Conversely, Gojek Ads use speech that contradicts politeness strategy; that is, speech does not conform to negative politeness strategies by minimizing coercion. In the use of language, the Grab app commercial is polite compared to the Gojek app commercial. However, if it is seen from the possibility of their product promotion's success, Gojek might be superior by showing impoliteness to do polite things.


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