Politeness, face and discourse
Politeness and face are important for understanding why people choose to say things in a particular way in a spoken or written discourse.
The notion “face” comes from Goffman (1967). (можно упомянуть Лакофф из 57 вопроса) Robin Lakoff (1973) proposed three maxims of politeness:
1. Don’t impose
E.g. “I’m sorry to bother you but … “
2. Give options (by mitigating phrases)
E.g. “Do you think you could possibly …”
3. Make your hearer feel good
“You’re better at this than me”
A polite utterance is a speaker’s intended, marked and appropriate behavior which displays face concerns. The motivation for it lies in possible but not necessary in desire of the speaker to show positive concern to the addressee, and/or respect the addressee and the speaker’s own need for independence. Addressee will interpret the utterance as polite when it is perceived as appropriate and marked.
Politeness theory accounts for the redressing of affronts to a person's 'face' by face-threatening acts.
Although politeness has been studied in a variety of cultures for many years, Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's politeness theory has become very influential. Politeness is the expression of the speakers' intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts toward the listener.
Face is the public self-image that every person tries to protect. Brown and Levinson defined positive face as characterized by desires to be liked, admired, ratified. At the same time, they characterized negative face by the desire not to be imposed upon. Positive face refers to one's self-esteem, while negative face refers to one's freedom to act.
The key notions are involvement and independence. Involvement refers to people’s need to be involved with others and to show this involvement, to be treated as a member of the group. Independence refers to a person’s right not to be dominated and imposed on by others and to be able to act individually, to have options. People try to maintain each other’s involvement and independence at the same time.
Politeness strategies depend on how close or distant we are from our hearer, as well as on one’s age, social position etc; how much power the hearer has over you; significance of what you want and how much emphasis both speakers place on involvement and independence.
Adjacency pairs
An adjacency pair is a unit of conversation. An adjacency pair is composed of two utterances by two speakers, one after the other.
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AP are produced by two speakers in a way that the 2nd utterance is related to the 1st one as an expected follow-up.
The speaking of the first utterance (the first-pair part, or the first turn) provokes a responding utterance (the second-pair part, or the second turn). The turns are functionally related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.
(Я взяла примеры из Википедии) Examples of established adjacency pairs:
complaint → excuse/remedy
"It's awfully cold in here" → "Oh, sorry, I'll close the window"
compliment → acceptance/refusal
"I really like your new haircut!!" → "Oh, thanks"
degreeting → degreeting
"See you!" → "Yeah, see you later!"
greeting → greeting
"Hiya!" → "Oh, hi!"
offer → acceptance/rejection
"Would you like to visit the museum with me this evening?" → "I'd love to!"
question → answer
"What does this big red button do?" → "It causes two-thirds of the universe to implode"
request → acceptance/rejection
"Is it OK if I borrow this book?" → "I'd rather you didn't, it's due back at the library tomorrow"
AP can perform different functions (depends on the context). E.g. “Hello” can be a summons ina telephone call, a way of greeting, a response.
Political discourse.
Some philosophers (Descartes) have produced a definition of humans as essentially linguistic animals. Aristotle defined humans as political animals.
Many linguists (Chilton) have no doubt that both definitions have a germ of the truth, as one of the definitions necessarily involves the other.
Orwell: “In our age there is no keeping out of politics. All issues are political.”
Politics is concerned with power (the power to make decisions, to control resources, to control other people’s behaviour and values).
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Political discourse is the use of language to do the business of politics that includes persuasive rhetorics, the use of implied meaning, euphemisms, the exclusion of references to undesirable realities, the use of language to arouse political emotions.
Van Dyke: It concentrates on issues of power, control, domination and conflict.
Political discourse relies on the principle that people’s perception of certain concepts can be influenced by language. The task of political discourse analysis is to relate linguistic behaviour to what we understand by politics/political behaviour.
Some find 2 problems:
1) What is politics depends on a certain viewpoint;
2) The multiplicity of acts performed through discourse can be interpreted as serving many different purposes (e.g. informative).
With regard to the 1st problem, linguists define as potentially political actions which involve power or resistance. As for the 2nd problem, linguists link political situations and processes to discourse types and levels of discourse by way of an intermediate level (The intermediate level consists of political groups and institutions, as well as their shared representations, collective discourse, relations and interactions). It is given the name “strategic functions”. The notion of strategic functions enables discourse analysts to focus on details that contribute to the phenomena that people intuitively take as political.
Some characteristics of politics:
1) Coercion (forcing people to do something). Speech acts are backed by sanctions (laws, commands). Politicians often act coercively through discourse, even selecting topics or position for themselves and others.
2) Resistance, opposition, protests. Such forms include media, specific linguistic structures, slogans, social units.
3) Dissimulation (political control involves the control of information – quantitative or qualitative).
4) Legitimization (closely linked to coercion, as it establishes the right to be obeyed).
Peculiar features typical of political discourse:
1) lexical peculiarities (e.g. the use of “we”);
2) semantics (conceptual metaphors: conventional and novel);
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3) syntax. It is relevant to investigate 2 aspects of sentence organization: thematic roles and topicalisation. They have to do with the agent, what is being done, to whom, where, why, by what means.
Ruth Wodak made a list of features of political discourse as a social practice.
1) Field of action: segments of the respective societal reality, i.e. politics which contribute to shaping the frame of a discourse between law-making procedures or the functions of legislation. E.g. laws, bills, amendments, parliamentary speeches, ministers’ speeches, state of the union address, regulations, recommendations, guidelines, prescriptions.
2) Formation of public attitudes and opinions. E.g. Press-conferences, reviews, interviews, talk-shows, speeches of MPs, opening speeches, TV speeches, lectures, articles, books.
3) Party-internal formation of attitudes, opinions and will. E.g. party programmes, declarations, speeches on a party convention/party meeting, statement of principles.
4) Inter-party formation of public attitudes, opinions and will. E.g. coalition negotiations, coalition programmes, coalition agreements, speeches in inter-party/government meetings, commemorative speeches.
5) Organization of international relations. E.g. Speeches on a state visit, inaugural address, speech on various meetings (EU-sessions).
6) Political advertising. E.g. Election programmes, slogans, speeches announcements, direct mailing, political advertisements.
7) Political executive and administration. E.g. Decisions (approvals/rejections), chancellor’s speeches, speeches of appointment, governmental answers to parliamentary questions.
8) Political control. E.g. Declarations of an oppositional party, parliamentary questions, speeches of protest, election speeches, petitions for a referendum.
Other important features of political discourse: implicature (some information and attitudes are not given explicitly), political correctness (figurative language), stylistic devices (personifications, metaphors, euphemisms; they are based on shared knowledge – presupposition), manipulation of meaning, avoiding straightforward presentation.
Orwell: “Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
я здесь примеры допишу. в 17 вопросе можно привести примеры когнитивной метафоры, используемой в политике: есть метафора болезни, которая выражается во фразах spreading ideas, sick economy.
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