The limits of politeness: therapeutic and courtroom discourse

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach

doi:10.1515/mult.1989.8.2-3.101

Cited by 241 publications

(77 citation statements)

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“…Thus, according to them, whether an utterance can be considered polite or impolite, always depends on the "judgements" by the speaker and hearer "during an ongoing interaction in a particular setting " (2008: 78). Also, while it might be perfectly acceptable and appropriate to use impoliteness in certain contexts (army training [Culpeper 1996], courtroom interaction [Lakoff 1989], "exploitive" chat shows and quiz shows [Culpeper 2005] or in political debates during election periods [Harris 2001;Kienpointner 2003] as cited in Kienpointner [2008: 244]) the same communicative behaviour might be considered gravely impolite and unacceptable in a different context. Compare, for example, the use of expletives by sergeants in military drills against the use of expletives in a pupil-teacher interaction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Im/polite reader responses on British online news sites

Neurauter-Kessels

2011

Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture

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Impolite and aggressive behaviour of anonymous users appears to be an important feature of online newspaper comments. This paper identifies and investigates how impoliteness is utilized strategically by newspaper readers to attack the author of an article. Empirical data is drawn from "Have-your-say" sections of the Guardian Online, Times Online and Telegraph Online. Results illustrate that impolite moves frequently involve face-threats that question the journalists' authority, credibility and trustworthiness. In the main part of the paper a categorization scheme for different types of impolite moves is introduced and a working definition of impoliteness in the context of "Have-your-say" sections presented. After having sketched a number of fundamental methodological and theoretical challenges in impoliteness research, the paper also demonstrates how the communicative setting and medium influence the realization and interpretation of impolite behaviour in those forms of public debates. Given the challenge of identifying and conceptualizing impoliteness in general and more specifically in a computer-mediated environment, netiquette rules prove especially useful for norms of appropriateness. It is also argued that the strength of those face-threats may be boosted by the fact that they are uttered in front of a large audience and more specifically the journalist's readership.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Im/polite reader responses on British online news sites

Neurauter-Kessels

2011

Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture

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“…Early conceptualisations of politeness (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1987;Lakoff 1989;Leech 1983) linked it with issues of relational equilibrium, conflict and aggression, and ways of managing that. For instance, Leech proposed a Politeness Principle whose role was "to maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place " (1983: 82).…”

Section: Face Politeness and Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relating at work: Facets, dialectics and face

Spencer‐Oatey

2013

Journal of Pragmatics

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This article examines 'relating at work'. Recent theorising in pragmatics has drawn attention to the importance of analysing relations, and yet the pragmatic study of relations is now intertwined so closely with the concept of face (e.g. Arundale, 2010a;Holmes et al., 2011; Watts 2005, 2008) that it might seem the two are synonymous. In this paper, I review this research from a multidisciplinary perspective, and then report a study on 'relating at work' in which leaders and interns were interviewed about their experiences of starting work in a culturally unfamiliar setting. I focus on one dialectic, connectedness-separateness, and report the challenges they described in 'making contact'. In the discussion section and on the basis of my findings, I argue the following points: (a) relating at work entails a complex web of interrelated facets and 'smooth relations' is just one of employees' relational concerns; (b) Relational Dialectic Theory offers much potential for interpersonal pragmatics; (c) dialectic tensions can occur at the individual as well as the interpersonal/relational levels and an interactional achievement analytic perspective needs to be complemented by an individual perspective; (d) Relational Dialect Theory and Face Theory are complementary to each other and should not be conflated. KeywordsRelations; Relational dialectics; Relating at work; Contact-Separation; Face. Highlights I review key issues and controversies re pragmatic approaches to 'the relational'.  I analyse metapragmatic emotion comments from workplace project partnerships.  I argue that such comments offer useful insights for evaluating conceptual frameworks.  I claim that discourse data alone is insufficient for studying 'the relational'.  I call for more pragmatics research on 'the relational' to seek applied relevance.

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“…They exchange information (transactional/referential meaning) and they negotiate social relationships (interactional/social meaning) (Brown & Yule 1983;Lakoff 1989;Kasper 1990). Thus, when a lecturer of Computer Science at a Danish university chooses the term regular expressions over the co-existing Danish equivalent regulaere udtryk, they not only inform students of the topic of the class, their choice may also be socially meaningful -it may have indexical value.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical variation at the internationalized university: Are indexicality and authenticity always relevant?

Hultgren¹

2014

Indexing Authenticity

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The limits of politeness: therapeutic and courtroom discourse

Cited by 241 publications

References 0 publications

Im/polite reader responses on British online news sites

Im/polite reader responses on British online news sites

Relating at work: Facets, dialectics and face

Lexical variation at the internationalized university: Are indexicality and authenticity always relevant?

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