Brown And Levinson's Overview Of Politeness Theory

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This section will discuss the theoretical bases and evolution of politeness theory. Consecutively, the light will be pivotally casted on Brown & Levinson's politeness view, Leech's maxims and principles of language interaction, Fraser's conversational view, and Lakoof's theory of politeness.

The present bulk will scrutinise each savant's point of view of politeness theory, diacritical features, and how they define politeness? Starting with Brown & Levinson (1978) is not randomly chosen, their contribution of politeness is universally adopted. Al Adaileh (2007) states that Brown & Levinson (1978) postulate "the deepest as well as the most comprehensive account of politeness" (p.

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64).

Culpeper (2012) states that "In the field of politeness, Brown & Levinson's work (1987) is the best known and the most researched. In their work they attempt to relate the following aspects: face, facework and acts that threaten face, sociological variables influencing face threat, and five general ways (or 'superstrategies') of counterbalancing face threat with (at least some) specific linguistic strategies." (p. 399).

Moreover, Brown & Levinson (1999) claim that politeness is a universal behaviour based on linguistic behavioural similarities among cultures (p.

132). They used their Model Person (MP), inspired by Gricean's maxims, in order to fulfil the need of two demands: 1. not to be impeded 2. To be accepted to a certain level (ibid, p. 58).

Many scholars admired the work of Brown & Levinson in politeness theory because it tackles many core issues related to the identification and characterization of facework.

However, the notion of universality that was proposed by Brown & Levinson (e.g. 1987, p. 244) has encountered much censure particularly with their work on Face Act Theory ( Leech, 2007; Eelen, 2001; Watts, 2005b……).

The disagreement arises from the belief that not all cultures share the same linguistic behaviours and attitudinal politeness. Leech (2007) clarifies the universality of politeness in which

" It is premature to talk of universals of politeness, but my position is as follows. Probably the scales of value in [section] 5.5 above are very widespread in human societies, but their interpretation differs from society to society, just as their encoding differs from language to language." (cited in Culpeper, 2012, p. 411).

Culpeper (2012 ) also sum up some crucial and critical criticisms of politeness theory proposed by Brown & Levinson. Here are four major points mentioned literaly:

(1) Ignoring the lay person’s conception of politeness, as revealed through their use of the terms polite and politeness, and instead postulating a facework theory as a theory of politeness;

(2) Claiming to be universal (a particular issue with regard to their conception of “face” applied across diverse cultures);

(3) Basing the politeness model on an inadequate pragmatic model, which is biased towards the speaker and the production of language and which fails to account for key ways in which politeness is understood; and

(4) Failing to articulate an adequate conception of context, despite the key importance of context in judgments of politeness (p 409).

On the other hand, it is very much difficult to doubt Brown & Levinson's comprehensive awareness of culture differences. Brown & Levinson (1987) clearly admit that " any comparative social theory must be at once based on universal principles and yet have culture- internal application" (p. 242).

Adopted from Brown & Levinson (1987, p. 69).

Brown & Levinson (1987, p. 60) delineate a set of strategies in which the degree of face threatening that the speaker or hearer receive determines the degree of payback risk. They assume that if the speaker do not choose the maximum FTA, characterized by ' bald on record' , s/he wants to maintain to some degree the hearer's face. Brown & Levinson chose to vary the scale seriousness of FTA between maximum risk characterised by 1. With no repairing action and minimum risk represented by not doing the FTA.

Furthermore, positive politeness and negative politeness meant to mitigate the scope risk of the act for both speaker's and hearer's self image. Off- record, the fourth strategy, is employed when there is a great expectation of FTA. The last aforementioned strategy allows the hearer to comprehend implied and covered messages emanated by the speaker, in the notion that if the hearer interpret it wrongly, it gives the speaker the opportunity to repudiate it.

Leech's Overview of Interaction

Many researchers admire Grice's conversational principles. Leech was among them in which he was inspired to come up with the maxims and principles of politeness frame work. Obviously, Leech is very interested with indirectness; he argues that politeness behaviour leads people not to abide by the cooperative principles, under the assumption that indirectness violates cooperative principle.

Furthermore, Leech (1983, p. 142) proposes Irony Principle, Indirectness Framework, by which he identifies it as being impoliteness embedded in politeness. بحاجة توضيح( (اكتب عن علاقتة بالسخرية

Leech's principles and maxims, as mentioned previously, are inspired by cooperative principle (CP). As such, Leech (1983, p. 79) demonstrates the importance of combining cooperative principle and politeness principle. This will help hearer to interpret embedded messages. In addition, Leech correlates maxims with three pragmatic scales: 1. The "cost/benefit" scale 2. The "optionality" scale 3. The "indirectness" scale (p. 123).

More importantly, applying politeness principle & cooperative principle, according to Leech, leads to victimization of one another. In other words, speakers incline to fulfil the politeness principle on behalf of cooperative principle in order to satisfy the social needs and scale:

" it could be argued, however, that the PP has a higher regulation role than this: to maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place" (Leech, 1983, p. 82).

Leech advocates the language effective usage which he refers as "rhetorical". Leech (1983, p. 15) also evolves two types of rhetoric: interpersonal & textual which are governed by both politeness principle and cooperative principle. (شرح اكثر

Leech (1983) identifies two types of politeness: 1. Absolute Politeness 2. Relative Politeness(p. 83-84). Leech explains that relative politeness is strict to different contextual situational variables; it subsequently means that each culture apply the appropriate politeness and cooperative principles. Absolute politeness is illustrated as negative and positive politeness utterance combined with a punch of scales. That is to say, Leech endeavours to reduce impoliteness act in negative politeness and consecutively raise the politeness act in positive politeness.

Many scholars find Leech' s theory problematic. Fraser (1990) opposes Leech' s theory in the sense that the act is not only restricted to either polite or impolite. Fraser suggests that there are cultural and situational factors should be considered. ( see Dillons et al (1985), lavandera ( 1988), Turner (1996)).

Fraser' Overview of Politeness Theory

Goffman's View of Face-work. (random)

The face work of Goffman (1967, p. 15-20) embraces two processes: the first is " the avoidance process" which mainly depicts the idea of not being engaged with social norms in order for your face not to be threaten. Whilst, the second process is " the correction process" which is primarily tackle the issue of person's engagement in social interaction, which offers more riskiness and vulnerability to emanate or receive face- threatening.

As such ,Goffman (1967) claimed that in order for people to maintain self face- image, they need to understand that this process, Goffman called " corrective interchange" (p. 20), goes through stages: the first is the offender's admission of accountability for the offence. The second phase is starting to redress other's face that has offensively damaged. Thirdly, this phase is concerning the capability of the offended to accept or even refuse. Finally, just in case the offensive act has been forgiven, the offender has to show some gratefulness and appreciation.

Furthermore, Goffman (1967, p. 12-14) represents face- saving act as a cultural specific rules. That means each culture or society is restricted to " traffic rules"( explain). In addition, two types of perspectives, that a person may have, have been distinguished by Goffman: the first type is " a defensive orientation" (p. )which points out that a person is by default interested in saving his own face. The second type is " a protective orientation"(p. ) which is mainly concern with saving other's face. In relation to this, Goffman (1967, p.15) identifies three types of offence: First one is the offence that seems to be un intentionally occur. Secondly, the volition to cause the offence intended by the offender. Thirdly, the offence that is not previously planned.

It can not go without saying that Goffman theory of face is characterized by rituals. This means that people within a society are compelled by ritual and moral rules which heavily depends on the social interaction.

According to Gofman (1967) people who are encountered with social events will obtain " ritual equilibrium." This needs a sacrifice in which the person is going to interact in a different behavioural line that s/he is not familiarize with. However, there are instances that people seem to be "in wrong face" (p. 8). This occur in case that the person is following his/her own adopted line which s/he is familiar with.

Modern Overview of Politeness Theory

Lakoff's Overview of Politeness Theory

Lakoff's contribution to the field of pragmatics is significantly important, she is considered to be among the pioneers who establishes the modern politeness theory (Eelen, 2001, p. 2).

Like many other scholars, Lakoff's theory rises from Grice's cooperative principle. Furthermore, Grice's principles (1989) are argued to being strict and straightway(…) to maintain " the effective exchange of information" (p. 28). That is to say, pragmatic scholars are very much likely to violate Grice's principle in the way that the utterance may imply different meanings ( Al Adaileh, 2007, p.63). For this reason, Lakoff (1973) states that pragmatic helps detecting those anticipated meaning.

accordingly, two pragmatic rules have been emerged by Lakoff (1973) stemed from Grice's principle; which are: be clear and be polite. Wherefore, Lakoff (1973) claimed that the first pragmatic competence rule, be clear, aggregates all Grice's

principle. Whereas, the second pragmatic rule is broken up into three sub-rules: 1. Don’t impose 2. Give options 3. Make a feel good- be friendly (p.297). The aforementioned sub- rules were amended to I. Formality: Keep aloof. 2. Deference: give options. 3. Camaraderie: show sympathy (Lakoff, 1975, p. 65). The previous sub-rules are meant not to impose or intrude the hearer's privacy which apparently leads to save the addressee negative face.

On the other hand, cultural variance may blockade the assumption that Lakoff's politeness rules are applicable in any social interaction (Eelen, 2001, p.13). In addition, Sifianou (1992, p. 24) signalises the imperfection of Lakoff's term usage "e.g. sympathy/ aloof" as being universal. This was evidently stated by Tannen (1986, p. 37) that American people look friendly without being conservatives " aloof"