Politeness vs Indirect Speech Act

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TOPIC 6

POLITENESS IN

SOCIAL

INTERACTION AND

INDIRECT SPEECH

ACTS

Arnis Silvia



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POLITENESS VS INDIRECT SPEECH ACT

A. ‘Face’ and Politeness

In social interaction, one needs a recognition from the other parties. In Goffman’s

(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 interactants’2. Whereas, negative face deals with the desire to be

unimpeded by others in one’s 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 other’s 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

1Brown, P & Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, p. 612Ibid.

3Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 277

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.

It’s lecturer’s parking lot. What’s 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)



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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.

.

\

These are some examples of positive and negative politeness adapted from Brown and

Levinson5’s work.

Positive Politeness

Attend to hearer’s 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: I’ll just drop by your house this afternoon, if you don’t 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, I’ll cook the lunch.

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Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 2775Brown, P & Levinson, S.C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

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)



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Exaggerate interest in hearer and his interests

Ex: That’s a nice bag you have; Prada?

Avoid Disagreement

Ex: Yes, it’s rather salty; but still eatable.

Joke

Ex: Wow, that’s 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 couldn’t manage to pick me up this afternoon, could you?

Minimize the imposition

Ex: It’s 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 husband’s 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.



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B. Politeness and Culture

To some Western countries, politeness strategy might be seen as universal,

stereotyped or similar. However, that doesn’t work for some culture, let’s 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 rice and cassava now ?

3aMenapa pandjenengan bade dahar sekul kaliyan kaspé samenika?

3 Menapa pandjenengan bade neda sekul lan kaspé samenika?

2 Napa pandjenengan adjeng neda sekul lan kaspé sakniki?

1b Apa pandjenengan arep dahar sega lan kaspé saiki?

1a Apa sampeyan arep neda sega lan kaspé saiki?

1 Apa Kowe arep mangan sega lan kaspé saiki?

6Geertz, C. 1960. The Religion of Java. Glencoe: The Free Press, p.248

7Wardhaugh, R. 2006. Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, p. 279



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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 hearer’s 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:

A. bald on-record strategy

B. positive politeness

C. negative politeness

D. off-record / indirect

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."



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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, it’s 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 “I’ll 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 doesn’t want to, at least he

doesn’t feel that he is being ordered.

(3) I would appreciate it if you could make less noise.

Compare sentence (3) with ‘Shut up!’ or ‘Don’t 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 speaker’s 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.

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