This document discusses linguistic politeness and various models of politeness. It defines politeness as linguistic structures that express a speaker's attitude in a pragmatic rather than semantic way. Interactions involve both conveying meaning and observing social rules shaped by distance and closeness between participants. Watts groups standard behaviors like "thank you" and address terms under the term "politic behavior" which society expects in certain situations. The document outlines politeness models including Lakoff's social norm model, Leech's conversational maxim model, Fraser and Nolen's conversational contract model, and Brown and Levinson's face theory of politeness involving face-threatening acts and strategies to maintain one's own and others' positive and negative face.

1. Linguistic Politeness
Muhammad Azam
Research Scholar
COMSATS Institute of Information
Technology Lahore, Pakistan

2. Definition
• Held (2005)
• Politeness may be understood as a specific type of
linguistic structure, which “expresses the speaker´s
attitude and are thus not explicable by semantic, but
rather by pragmatic means”

3. Definition
• Yule (1996, p. 59)
• A linguistic interaction is necessarily a social
interaction. Thus, participants do not only convey
meaning but also observe social rules and their
utterances are shaped also by social distance and
closeness.

4. Political Behaviour
• “Thank you” or “Have a nice day” or address terms
“sir” and “madam” as polite,
• Watts (2003) groups them under the term “politic
behaviour”.
• The politic behaviour is a standard behaviour
expected by society in certain situations. Its omission
would be considered as impolite, rather than neutral
behaviour.

5. Political Behaviour
• “Thank you” or “Have a nice day” or address terms
“sir” and “madam” as polite,
• Watts (2003) groups them under the term “politic
behaviour”.
• The politic behaviour is a standard behaviour
expected by society in certain situations. Its omission
would be considered as impolite, rather than neutral
behaviour.

6. Politeness Models
• Social norm model
• Robin Lakoff
• Her model of politeness is highly rationalist and leans
on Grice´s Cooperation Principle.
• Two rules are given: be clear and be polite.
According to these rules, utterances can be classified
as “well-formed or non-well-formed”

7. Politeness Models
• Conversational maxim model
• it is not sufficient to use the Cooperative Principle as
the sole criterion for explaining the relation between
sense and force and he introduces Politeness
Principle.

8. Politeness Models
• Tact Maxim: Minimize cost to other, Maximize benefit to other
• Generosity Maxim: Minimize benefit to self, Maximize cost to
self
• Approbation Maxim: Minimize dispraise of other, Maximize
praise of other
• Modesty Maxim: Minimize praise of self, Maximize dispraise of
self
• Agreement Maxim: Minimize disagreement between self and
other, Maximize agreement between self and other
• Sympathy Maxim: Minimize antipathy between self and other,
Maximize sympathy between self and other (Leech, 1983, p.
132).

9. Politeness Models
• Conversational contract model
• Fraser and Nolen
• Politeness is seen as acting according to
requirements of the conversational contract.
Participants´ rights and obligations represent the
substance of the contract and “every individual on
entering a social interaction, must recognise a set of
rights and obligations which determine how s/he is
meant to behave.

10. Brown and Levinson´s Politeness
Theory
• The use of politeness is seen as deliberate and free decision of
the individual based on consideration of context and the face
wants of involved participants.
• Face and face threatening acts
• Every member of society has a public self image, or “face”.
– It represents the way a person is perceived and since it is not a
constant value and it continually develops, it has to be attended to in
interaction.

11. Brown and Levinson´s Politeness
Theory
• In the process of maintaining face, every person has
two aims:
• saving their own face (defensive orientation)
• saving others´ faces (protective orientation)
• Face consists of two aspects,
• positive face is the want to be independent and not imposed on by
others.
• negative face Positive face is less obvious and it
denotes the want to be accepted and liked, to be
treated as a member of the same group, and to know
that one´s wants are shared by others

12. Negative politeness strategies
• Brown and Levinson list following 10 strategies that make use
of negative politeness:
• 1. Be conventionally indirect
• 2. Question, Hedge
• 3. Be pessimistic
• 4. Minimize the imposition
• 5. Give deference
• 6. Apologize
• 7. Impersonalize S and H, avoid the pronouns “I” and “you”
• 8. State the FTA as a general rule
• 15
• 9. Nominalize
• 10. Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H (1987, p. 131).

13. Positive politeness strategies
• 1. Notice, attend to H
• 2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with hearer)
• 3. Intensify interest to H
• 4. Use in-group identity markers
• 5. Seek agreement
• 6. Avoid disagreement
• 7. Presuppose/raise/assert common ground
• 8. Joke
• 9. Assert or presuppose S´s knowledge of and concern for H´s wants
• 10. Offer, promise
• 11. Be optimistic

14. Positive politeness strategies
• 12. Include both S and H in the activity
• 13. Give (or ask for) reasons
• 14. Assume or assert reciprocity
• 15. Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation) (Brown
&
• Levinson, 1987, p. 102)