Sassy Sasha?: The intersectionality of (im)politeness and sociolinguistics

This article focuses on intersections of race, gender, class, and (im)politeness within the African American speech community (AASC). Although general linguistic theorizing aims at universalizing (im)politeness, ultimately identifying common components within human (im)politeness systems worldwide, African American perspectives have not been interjected within that broader theorizing. Thus, I examine (im)politeness from the perspective of African Americans with a focus on females’ linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviors. A plethora of work examines, challenges, and refutes stereotypical gender. I explore facets of the stereotypical, particularly as applied to Black females with the aim of broadening understandings of (im)politeness based on cultural variation. Specifically, I examine sassy as a social construct when applied to Black women in U.S. contexts, especially two Black women’s online assessments of sassy performativity by Sasha Obama, as a vehicle for allowing Black women’s voices and experiences to enter into theory-making. The analysis is interpretative and idiographic. The two African American women bloggers’ words and meanings suggest that (im)politeness within the AASC resides in sociolinguistics, not pragmatics. As a result of the analysis, I suggest that (im)politeness theorizing could pay attention to the social embodiedness of human polite and impolite behaviors. This, in part, constitutes the sociolinguistics of (im)politeness.

Duelling contexts: how action misalignment leads to impoliteness in a courtroom

This paper investigates linguistic and non-linguistic markers of negative evaluations of situated behaviours, termed impoliteness (Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. In Drew Paul, Marjorie H. Goodwin, John J. Gumpertz & Deborah Schiffrin (eds.), Studies in interactional linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The paper takes an interactional pragmatic approach to a fixed institutional setting (a courtroom) to investigate how (not why) a series of reprimands and sanctions unfolded. It shows that the key participants, the judge and the defendant, orient to separate interactional cues from their unshared overhearing audiences (their unshared contexts), whilst orienting to each other’s institutional interaction turns (their shared context). This paper suggests that their contexts create competing architectures of intersubjectivity, termed duelling contexts, because the participants are not co-locative (in separate rooms connected through closed circuit TV).

Twitter and the Real Academia Española: perspectives on impoliteness

This study presents first- and second-order approaches to impoliteness as found in the Twitter feed of the Real Academia Española, the official Spanish-language institution of the Hispanic world. We argue that impoliteness must be viewed from the perspective of the individual, reflecting their background experiences and knowledge, while also acknowledging norms of their communities. We collected 56 reactive tweets in threads among different users, generating dialogues of different opinions of (dis)agreement. Fourteen participant-viewers rated each user’s tweet and provided judgments and comments on the impoliteness on a 5-point scale. Our results indicate some commonalities among subgroups in terms of politeness norms (e.g., insults), but also show individual differences in terms of expectations (e.g., not doing one’s job). The results suggest the limitations of previous impoliteness frameworks, which apply mostly to face-to-face interactions. Our research points to a need to develop a framework of impoliteness to account for the complexity of the interactions in social media and consider an analysis at individual and community levels.

Politeness as normative, evaluative and discriminatory: the case of verbal hygiene discourses on correct honorifics use in South Korea

This paper uses the concept of “verbal hygiene” (Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal hygiene. Abingdon, UK: Routledge) to analyze metadiscourses in South Korea regarding a recent innovation in the use of subject honorific markers in the service industry. This innovation, commonly referred to as samwul contay ‘inanimate object respect’ involves using honorifics when the grammatical subject of the sentence is an inanimate object, typically the products or services being offered to the customer. Critical discourse analysis was conducted of materials produced by language authorities and mainstream media, as well as layperson-produced blogs and reader comments. The analysis shows that the materials mobilized discourses of ungrammaticality and immorality to delegitimize samwul contay, and stigmatize the sales personnel who used it. By applying the concept of “verbal hygiene” to politeness-related metadiscourses, the current paper advances the perspective that politeness is occasioned through the recursive evaluation of linguistic behavior. Rather than being idiosyncratic, these evaluations appeal to established language norms and moral orders. The way that verbal hygiene discourses promote the language usage of the powerful while stigmatizing the powerless demonstrates that politeness relies inherently on socio-historically imbedded discriminatory practices of placing value on the language usage of certain groups, while delegitimizing that of others.

Politeness in professional contexts: foreign-language teacher training

This paper examines the professional context of teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), whose first language is not English but who are required to help learners adhere to target-language (TL) politeness norms and practices. Many of these teachers have had little or no contact with TL countries/cultures and have limited professional training in this area. This paper highlights the specific context of 39 Mexican EFL teachers who reflected on their understandings and “teaching” of politeness. I argue that by employing existing resources and knowledge and with further training, bilingual teachers can be helped to take “possession” of politeness rather than having to unquestioningly teach appropriate, socially-accepted, socially-expected usage.

Euphemism in laxative TV commercials: at the crossroads between politeness and persuasion

Despite the stigma attached to human defecation and people’s reluctance to talk about it openly, there are certain communicative situations in which one cannot evade referring to the elimination of body wastes. This is the case of laxative TV commercials, a type of discourse focused on the infrequent or difficult evacuation of the bowels that constitutes a breeding ground for euphemism. In this regard, following a socially-oriented approach to discourse analysis, politeness theory, and cognitive linguistics, the purpose of this paper is to gain an insight into the way euphemism works in a sample of contemporary American TV commercials advertising laxatives. The analysis reveals that euphemism – mostly in the form of metonymy and understatement – and non-euphemistic metaphors and similes serve as face-saving mechanisms for the company’s self-presentational purposes and are ultimately used as part of a sales strategy aiming to attract the interest of viewers.

Teachers and supervisors negotiating face during critical account requests in post observation feedback

This article shows, through the analysis of “real life” institutional interaction, how experienced teachers and supervisors negotiate face when teachers contest or manage supervisors’ critical account requests during post observation feedback meetings. A linguistic micro-analysis of data extracts is supplemented with ethnographic data drawn from participant perspective interviews and researcher knowledge. The analysis shows how participants subtly and skillfully employ facework to manage the potential face-threat engendered by criticism and disagreement. This facework is mostly successful, but in one case the supervisor orients to face-threat and closes down the topic of discussion. This demonstrates that face is consequential to both unfolding talk and the feedback goal of dialogue and development. Feedback participants, both supervisors and teachers, also engage in moves of face support and face maintenance. The analysis shows face to be an emergent, situated relationship, co-constructed by both participants, and also shows that participants are willing to risk face-threat to achieve institutional goals (supervisors) and defend their actions (teachers). This supports the view that face-threat is rational and common and indicates that criticism, account requests, and disagreements are acceptable norms in post observation feedback.

Rejecting consumer complaints in customer encounters on Twitter - the case of English and Polish brand communication

The following study focuses on strategies of denial and evasion of company responsibility used in responding to complaints, negative and critical comments posted by consumers on English and Polish brand profiles on Twitter. The analysis shows that despite the face-threat these acts may pose to the consumer and, consequently, to the company’s image, the companies do not refrain from using strategies denying the complainable and disagreeing with the customer. The study shows that companies resort to a range of sub-strategies of evasion and denial of blame, such as referral to external circumstances and regulations, thanks, blaming a third party, statements of unawareness of the complainable, simple denial of the complainable, expression of personal opinion or criticism of the consumer, among others. The study indicated differences between the English and Polish profiles as to the range and frequency of use of the strategies of rejecting consumers’ complaints. The Polish corpus offers a greater occurrence and a wider range of evasion and denial strategies used in reaction to consumers’ negative or critical opinions and complaints.