TOPIC 6

POLITENESS IN SOCIAL INTERACTION AND INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS

Arnis Silvia

POLITENESS VS INDIRECT SPEECH ACT

A security officer is yelling at someone who he thought was parking at the wrong parking lot. Security : Hey! You are parking at the different lot. Students parking is there. Its lecturers parking lot. Whats your name? Rika : My name is Miss Rika Rahman. I am a new lecturer here

Security : Oh, I do apologize Miss. I thought you were a student. Please let me help you parking your car. (illustration made by writer)

A. Face and Politeness In social interaction, one needs a recognition from the other parties. In Goffmans (1955, 1967) term, people need to present a face to the others and to others faces. They always want to protect both their own face and the faces of others because each time they interact with others, they play out a kind of mini-drama, a kind of ritual in which each party is required to recognize the identity that the other claims for himself or herself. Brown and Levinson1 (1987) coin face as the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself. Further, they classify face into positive face and negative face. Positive face refers to the desire to gain the approval of others or the positive consistent self-image or personality . . . claimed by interactants2. Whereas, negative face deals with the desire to be unimpeded by others in ones actions, the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction . . . freedom of action and freedom from imposition. Positive face looks for solidarity; negative face, however, is more problematic for it requires interactants to recognize each others negative face, i.e., the need to act without giving offense (Wardhaugh3, 2006). Being polite therefore consists of attempting to save face for another. Later, Brown characterized positive face by desires to be liked, admired, ratified, and related to positively, noting that one would threaten positive face by ignoring someone. At the same time, she characterized negative face by the desire not to be imposed upon, noting that negative face could be impinged upon by imposing on someone. Positive Face refers to

Brown, P & Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 61 2 Ibid. 3 Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 277

one's self-esteem, while negative face refers to one's freedom to act. The two aspects of face are the basic wants in any social interaction, and so during any social interaction, cooperation is needed amongst the participants to maintain each other's faces. Everytime people are involved in social interaction, they must be aware of both kind of face and therefore they have two kinds of politeness namely: positive politeness and negative politeness4.
Positive politeness includes offering friendship, using compliments, and

informal language use: treating others as friends and allies, not imposing on them, and never threaten their face. . \ Negative politeness deals with deference, apologizing, indirectness, and formality in language use: adopting a variety of strategies so as to avoid any threats to the face others. (Wardhaugh, 2006) These are some examples of positive and negative politeness adapted from Brown and Levinson5s work. Positive Politeness Attend to hearers interests, needs and wants Ex: You look thirsty. Can I get you something to drink?

Use solidarity in-group identity markers Ex: Heh, bro, can you lend me your CD?

Be optimistic Ex: Ill just drop by your house this afternoon, if you dont mind.

Include both speaker and hearer in activity Ex: If we do this together, I do believe that we can achieve higher score than other

students. Offer/ promise Ex: If you do the laundry, Ill cook the lunch.

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Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 277 Brown, P & Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Exaggerate interest in hearer and his interests Ex: Thats a nice bag you have; Prada?

Avoid Disagreement Ex: Yes, its rather salty; but still eatable.

Joke Ex: Wow, thats a whopper!

Negative Politeness Be indirect Ex: Would you know where IR Juanda Street is?

Use hedges or questions Ex: I think, he might have taken it, maybe. Could you please pass the salt?

Be pessimistic Ex: You couldnt manage to pick me up this afternoon, could you?

Minimize the imposition Ex: Its not too much that I am going to borrow, just a couple of pennies.

Use obviating structures, like nominalizations, passives, or statements of general rules Ex: I hope my husbands joke will not be taken seriously.

Visitors sign the ledger. Ex: Cheating will not be tolerated.

Apologize Ex: Excuse me for a second, I do apologize to interupt your work, but can you tell

me what time it is? Use plural pronouns Ex: We regret to inform you.

B. Politeness and Culture To some Western countries, politeness strategy might be seen as universal, stereotyped or similar. However, that doesnt work for some culture, lets say Javanese as the vivid example. In Javanese culture, Geertz6 (1960) says it is nearly impossible to say anything without indicating the social relationships between the speaker and the listener in terms of status and familiarity. Before one Javanese speaks to another, he or she must decide on an appropriate speech style: high, middle, or low. Unlike common English words which has no certain level of politeness, Javanese vocabularies do. To illustrate this, Wardhaugh gives some examples of that graded vocabularies.

(taken from Wardhaugh7, 2006) Geertz also illustrates the sentence are you going to eat the rice and cassave right now? into different level of Javanese language. Are You going to eat dahar neda neda dahar neda mangan rice sekul sekul sekul sega sega sega and kaliyan lan lan lan lan lan cassava kasp kasp kasp kasp kasp kasp now ? samenika? samenika? sakniki? saiki? saiki? saiki?

3aMenapa pandjenengan bade 3 Menapa 2 Napa 1b Apa 1a Apa 1 Apa

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pandjenengan bade pandjenengan adjeng pandjenengan arep sampeyan Kowe arep arep

Geertz, C. 1960. The Religion of Java. Glencoe: The Free Press, p.248 Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 279

The use of politeness in the form of word/ sentence level is defined not only by qualitative characteristics of the speakers age, sex, kinship relation, occupation, wealth, education, religious commitment, family background but also more general factors: for instance, the social setting (one would be likely to use a higher level to the same individual at a wedding than in the street); the content of the conversation (in general, one uses lower levels when speaking of commercial matters, higher ones if speaking of religious or aesthetic matters); the history of social interaction between the speakers (one will tend to speak rather high, if one speaks at all, with someone with whom one has quarreled); the presence of a third person (one tends to speak higher to the same individual if others are listening). As the sentence levelling happens to Javanese language, it does happen as well to other cultures, for instance Japan, France, Chinese, and others. C. Politeness and Indirect Speech Act Politeness strategies are used to formulate messages in order to save the hearers face when face-threatening acts (an act that inherently damages the face of the addressee or the speaker by acting in opposition to the wants and desires of the other) are inevitable or desired. Brown and Levinson outline four main types of politeness strategies: bald on-record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record (indirect). To make these four types of strategies clearer, these are some illustrations: You see a cup of pens on your teacher's desk, and you wanted to use one, would you: A. say, "Ooh, I want to use one of those!" B. say, "So, is it O.K. if I use one of those pens?" C. say, "I'm sorry to bother you but, I just wanted to ask you if I could use one of those pens?" D. Indirectly say, "Hmm, I sure could use a blue pen right now."

A. bald on-record strategy B. positive politeness C. negative politeness D. off-record / indirect

The last type of politeness strategy, off-record, includes the indirect speech acts. It uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to be imposing. In fact, most politeness is indirect. (1) Wow, its getting cold in here

This sentence is insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so. If the listener answers Ill go close the window then he is responding to this potentially threatening act by giving a gift to the speaker. By this mean, speaker avoids the potential threat of ordering the listener and the listener gets credit for being generous or cooperative. (2) Would you mind carry some of my stuffs?

This indirect speech acts refers to a mild request to the listener to help the speaker carrying his stuffs. This is more polite than the sentence Can you carry some of my stuffs? or Carry some of my stuffs! which indicates so vividly a kind of order. Here, the sample (2) is avoiding the listeners possible interpretation of being ordered. If the listener wills to help the speaker, it would be a cooperative. However, if the listener doesnt want to, at least he doesnt feel that he is being ordered. (3) I would appreciate it if you could make less noise. Compare sentence (3) with Shut up! or Dont be noisy, please. This politeness strategy is actually expecting the listener to shut up without imposing the listener that he is prohibited to make noise directly. To conclude, some linguists believe that politeness is one of the reasons of why there are so many indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts are considered more polite than direct speech acts. People are trying to be polite, either in making request, prohibition, asking for help, or order and thus they use indirect speech acts. These acts are avoiding the listeners to be face-threatened or to save their face and at the same time, also saves the speakers face. The listeners face are saved as they have options, either to do the act or simply apologizing for not being able to comply the request. On the other hands, the speakers face are saved as they are considered as a having credit in making a polite request which is not threatening the listeners face. As some examples proposed above, indirect speech acts are used in the negative politeness strategy, which respects a person's right to act freely.
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References
Brown, P & Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Geertz, C. 1960. The Religion of Java. Glencoe: The Free Press

Meyerhoff, M. 2006. Introducing Sociolinguistics. Oxon: Blackwell Publishing.

Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing

Watts, R. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.