Question

Find and share an article or video that demonstrates the politeness theory?

Answer 1

As per question this article support politeness theory..:-

The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives multiple definitions for the term polite. One definition is: "marked by an appearance of consideration, tact, deference, or courtesy." Although politeness is not a direct synonym for diplomacy and tact, they are certainly related. Therefore, as this is a study on communicating with diplomacy and tact, we will pay significant attention to the idea of politeness and cover various academic approaches to this concept.

We begin our exploration of politeness with a common theory known simply as "politeness theory." It was developed and put forth in the 1970s and 1980s by two researchers at Stanford University. They drew heavily from face theory, advancing face theory in the direction of, and with a focus on, politeness. In this endeavor, they dug deeper into the ideas of face put forth by Goffman in the 1950s and expanded on his theory, specifically with attention to politeness.

Politeness assumes that we all have face, and we all have face wants and needs. Further, there are different types of face threatened in various face-threatening acts, and sometimes the face threats are to the hearer, while other times they are to the speaker. Sociological variables come into play when considering a face-threatening act, which these researchers call weight.

The weight of a face-threatening act is determined by considering the combination of three variables: power, distance, and rank. Power refers to the perceived power dynamic between speaker and hearer. As a speaker, is the targeted hearer a superior, subordinate, or at about your same social level? Distance refers to the amount of social distance between speaker and hearer. As a speaker, is the targeted hearer a close friend or a distant colleague? Rank refers to the cultural ranking of the subject -- the degree of sensitivity of the topic within a particular culture. For example, a woman's age and weight are two very sensitive topics within U.S. culture, as is a person's income, while some other cultures don't consider these sensitive topics, but rather matters of fact to be simply shared.

Politeness theory posits that choices in employing a particular politeness strategy depend upon the social circumstances in which the speech act occurs. That is, to whom are you speaking, what is your social relationship with that person, and what is the topic?

Politeness theory relies, in part, on the idea that there are different kinds of face: positive face and negative face. Positive face reflects an individual's need for his or her wishes and desires to be appreciated in a social context. This is the maintenance of a positive and consistent self-image. Negative face reflects an individual's need for freedom of action, freedom from imposition, and the right to make one's own decisions. Together, these types of face respect the face needs covered previously, which include an individual's face needs for autonomy and competence. This theory relies on the assumption that most speech acts inherently threaten either the speaker or the hearer's face, and that politeness is therefore a necessary component of unoffensive, i.e. non-face threatening, communication and involves the redressing of positive and negative face.

Drawing from these assumptions, researchers have identified three main strategies for performing speech acts: positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record politeness. In positive politeness, the speaker's goal is to address the positive face needs of the hearer, thus enhancing the hearer's positive face. This is also known as positive face redress. Positive politeness strategies highlight friendliness and camaraderie between the speaker and hearer; the speaker's wants are in some way similar to the hearer's wants. There are many ways to accomplish this familiarity and claim common ground. First, the speaker can notice and attend to the hearer's wants, interests, needs, or goods. Second, the speaker can exaggerate his/her interest, approval or sympathy with the hearer. Third, the speaker can demonstrate an intensified interest to the hearer. The speaker can also use in-group markers, which demonstrate that both the speaker and hearer belong to the same social group, such as a work culture or religious affiliation. These can include forms of address, use of in-group language or dialect, use of jargon or slang, and linguistic contractions. An example might be, "Dude, you know…" or, "Brother, I'd like to discuss with you…" The speaker can also seek agreement with the hearer by choosing safe topics and using repetition. On the flip side of that, the speaker can also seek to avoid disagreement with the hearer by employing a token agreement, a pseudo-agreement, a white lie, or hedging an opinion. Further, the speaker can presuppose knowledge of the hearer's wants and attitudes, presuppose the hearer's values are the same as the speaker's values, presuppose familiarity in the speaker-hearer relationship, and presuppose the hearer's knowledge on the topic. Another strategy to invoke familiarity between speaker and hearer is to use humor/joking. In addition to claiming common ground, the speaker can use some tools to convey that the speaker and hearer are cooperators. These include asserting or presupposing the speaker's knowledge of, and concern for, the hearer's wants, offering or promising, being optimistic, including both speaker and hearer in a target activity, giving or asking for reasons, and assuming or asserting reciprocity. Finally, in an effort to establish positive politeness, the speaker can seek to fulfill the hearer's wants in some way. This can be induced through gift-giving, though these gifts can be material objects, as well as sympathy, understanding, or cooperation.

Examples of positive politeness include compliments, and might also include statements such as, "I really like the way you've done this," or, "It took me forever to figure this out, but what I eventually came to was…" or,"You know it's always important to me to do the best job I can, and I know the same is true for you. That's why I think we should pay attention to this piece a little," or, "I really like the way you approach this here. I think this other part might be a little stronger with a similar approach." In many of these cases, the speaker is bringing their own perspectives into the equation within his or her suggestions to the hearer; in this way, the speaker is emphasizing similarity and familiarity with the hearer and the content under discussion.

Where positive politeness enhances the hearer's positive and consistent self-image through recognizing the hearer's need for his or her wishes and desires to be appreciated socially, negative politeness addresses the hearer's need for freedom of action and freedom from imposition in making his or her own decisions. This is also known as negative face redress. The first approach to negative politeness is to be direct by being conventionally indirect. A second approach is to not assume or presume. These strategies include questions and hedges. (A hedge is a "softening" of a statement by employing less-than-certain phrasing such as perhaps, might, can,or could.) Third, negative politeness can be employed by not coercing the hearer. This can be accomplished by being pessimistic ("I'm sure you won't want to do this…"), minimizing the imposition ("It's a small thing I need…"), or giving deference ("you know much more about this than I do…"). The speaker can also communicate his/her desire to not impinge on the hearer. This can be accomplished through apologizing strategies that include admitting the impingement ("I know this is a big deal…"), indicating reluctance ("I hate to ask this…"), giving overwhelming reasons for having to ask, or begging forgiveness. Further efforts to not impinge on the hearer include impersonalizing the speaker and hearer. This strategies include using passive and circumstantial voices ("It's generally done this way…"), replacing "I" and "you" with indefinites ("people tend to…"), pluralizing "I" and "you" ("We don't always know what we're up against…"), and avoiding use of "I" and "you" all together. Therefore, negative politeness comments might include, "some people might approach the situation in this way," or "I think I might do it differently, but of course whatever you think is best," or "I don't know a lot about this but it seems that this approach might be reasonable and the situation" or "I know you know a lot more about this than I do, but it seems to me…" In these examples, the speaker is recognizing and addressing the hearer's right to make his or her own decisions freely, thus attending to the hearer's negative face needs.

Off-record politeness is a politeness strategy that relies upon implication. This strategy is very indirect, and involves the breaking of conversational norms to imply a particular recommended course of action. Here, the speaker is relying upon the hearer's ability to decipher and interpret the speaker's intended meaning, although it is indirectly suggested. Off-record politeness is accomplished in a couple of ways with several strategies for each. First, the speaker can invite conversational implicatures. Strategies here are to give hints, give clues of association, presuppose, understate, overstate, use tautologies, use contradictions, be ironic, use metaphors, and use rhetorical questions. Secondly, the speaker can be intentionally vague or ambiguous, also over-generalizing, displacing the hearer, and being incomplete by using ellipsis. Examples might include the following exchanges:

A) "What do you think about these pants?"

B) "I think you have a lot a very nice clothes in your closet, especially pants."

A) "Do you think we should leave at 7 or 7:30?"

Want to learn more? Take an online course in Communication with Diplomacy and Tact.

B) "I think your sister is a stickler for punctuality."

A) "I think I'd like to watch the football game."

B) "Yes, a little violent aggression is a good way to spend a Monday night."

In each of these scenarios, speaker B is offering a suggestion to speaker A. Speaker B's intended meaning may or may not be clear to you as you read through this, but hopefully, given the context and their relationship, speaker A will understand the implications offered by speaker B. The risk in off-record politeness, of course, is that the implications are so vague they are not understood as intended. Such is the nature of off-record politeness.

The ideas presented in this article reflect those put forth by Brown and Levinson in their attention-grabbing work of the 1970s and 1980s, which served as the source for a great deal of additional research. As is often the case with new research in an area, some researchers have criticized Brown and Levinson's theory for various reasons. Some say it is overly pessimistic, in that it reduces all interactions to potential face threats and requires constant monitoring of these potential face threats, which could easily rob social interactions of all elements of pleasure. Others say it is individualistic, presenting the speaker as a rational agent, unconstrained by social considerations. Perhaps one of the greatest shortcomings to Brown and Levinson's work has been identified as the essential decision-tree, which speakers have to work through to locate the utterance appropriate to the particular situation in which s/he finds her/himself. This method also excludes the possibility of invoking two or more strategies at the same time. The theory put forth by Brown and Levinson, and the subject of this article, is the most foundational work in politeness, and therefore garners its section. It is not the only view of politeness available in the research literature, however.

Much research has been conducted on this topic, perhaps especially in the wake of Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory. Though we all feel we have a sense for what politeness is, it's very difficult to pin it down when someone asks you to define it. One thing that researchers agree upon is that politeness is something that is learned or acquired. We are not born into it, but rather socialized into it. Further, because we are socialized into it, it naturally follows that different cultures have different ideas of what it is, and how it should be appropriately employed.