Конспект

Leech
Propositional Content condition: Future act A of H 1. H is able to do A.
Preparatory conditions: 2. It is not obvious to both S and H that H will do A in the normal course of events
of his own accord.
Sincerity condition: S wants H to do A.
Essential condition: Counts as an attempt to get H to do A.
A request is normally considered a speech event that gives H a choice as to whether to perform the desired
act or not. The favorite device is that of rendering a request in the form of a yes-no question
Could / Can / Would / Will you ...
In the framework presented in Chapter 4 (4.3.1), a request, as a kind of directive, has a competitive
illocutionary function. It seeks an accommodation between competing goals: the goal of benefiting S or
some third party, and of placating O.
The defining characteristic of requests, and more generally of directives, is that they propose actions to be
performed by O at a cost to O—and normally, for the benefit of S.
Dorothy: Tim would you like to come and do your teeth. <pause> Please.
Tim: Not <-|-> yet. [BNC KBW]
Dorothy, the mother, is asking her son to clean his teeth, but she presents it as if offering him the chance to
do something he might really like to do. However, the word Please, added when no action results, makes it
clear that she intends it to be taken as a directive
Instructions tend to have a collaborative illocutionary function, and therefore they lie outside the realm of
(im)polite behavior, as they involve two parties who are working toward a common goal, usually for the
particular benefit of H, where it is recognized by both parties that S is entitled to tell H to do something,
usually on account of S’s special competence. For example, a vet may instruct a client to change a pet’s
diet, or a tennis coach may instruct an amateur player to return the ball waist-high. As both instructor and
instructee are assumed to share the same goals, instructions are not generally face-threatening in the way
commands or requests often are, so there is no need to avoid using the bald-on-record imperative, as in
these street directions: Go on to the second set of traffic lights, and then turn left, OK
A possible explanation for this is that between close friends or between distant acquaintances (or
strangers), there is little threat of face loss or social instability, whereas in the in-between area of the bulge
there is less stability, and consequently more need for careful rapport management.
It is generally O-oriented, in that the speech event proposes a future act by O. (In this chapter I use O in
preference to H from now on, because there are requests where the action is performed by a third person
rather than by H: for example, Could Marvin collect the kids from school tomorrow?—say, where Marvin is
the addressee’s husband.)
For example, in thanking, we thank someone FOR something; in requesting, we make a request FOR
something; in making an offer or invitation, we offer something to the addressee. The “something” referred
to here is something of value (either material or abstract) that is supposed to pass from one person to the
other.
This is particularly clear in the cases of thanks and apologies, two speech acts that may be described as
remedial, because they seek to rectify the sense of debt that one participant has to the other. In one
case, thanking, the sense of debt arises from an act of kindness of the other party;
Pos-politeness, on the other hand, gives or assigns some positive value to the addressee. Offers, invitations,
compliments, and congratulations, then, are examples of pos-politeness. Thank-yous and apologies are also
kinds of pos-politeness, although they presuppose a position where A is deemed to owe something to B. As
remedial strategies, they can be regarded as a subcategory of pos-politeness: the speaker makes a positive
gesture to cancel out an imbalance favoring the speaker or disfavoring the hearer. (This will be discussed
further in Chapter 5 and in 7.3.)
The best way to tell the difference between neg- and pos-politeness is this. In the case of neg-politeness, to
increase the degree of politeness, we diminish or soften the expression of (negative) value in the
transaction. But in the case of pos-politeness we magnify or strengthen the expression of (positive) value.
Thus to increase the politeness of our thanks, we can use various intensifying strategies:
One afterthought to this section arises. I described thanks and apologies as examples of pos-politeness
(because politeness is increased by intensifying the thanks or the apology). However, in one respect, these
remedial speech acts resemble neg-politeness. Because they are remedies for a debt owed to the other
person, failure to thank or apologize can cause a sense of grievance in the hearer, just as failure to be negpolite (as in a directive) does. Partly for this reason, thanks and apologies are felt to be particularly salient
forms of polite behavior, and thank you and sorry are among the most frequent markers of politeness in
English.
What I called “absolute” and “relative” politeness in Leech (1983), I now prefer to call pragmalinguistic and
sociopragmatic politeness.
There are two ways of looking at politeness:
(i) Pragmalinguistic (formerly “absolute”) politeness scale: We can order utterances on a scale of politeness
while keeping context invariant. For example, out of context, on the pragmalinguistic scale of politeness,
we can judge that Can I borrow your camera? is more polite, as a request, than Lend me your camera, and
is less polite than Could I possibly borrow your camera? There is a semantic reason for this: in a default
sense, the more a request offers choice to H, the more polite it is. Similarly, Thank you very much is more
polite than Thanks, because it intensifies an expression of gratitude, rather than expressing gratitude in a
minimal way.
This scale is unidirectional and registers degrees of politeness in terms of the lexigrammatical form and
semantic interpretation of the utterance.
(ii) Sociopragmatic (formerly “relative”) politeness scale: This is politeness relative to norms in a given
society, group, or situation. Unlike the absolute or semantic scale, it is sensitive to context and is a
bidirectional scale. Hence it is possible that a form considered more polite on the pragmalinguistic
politeness scale is judged less polite relative to the norms for the situation. For example, Could I possibly
interrupt? could be understood as “too polite,” say, if spoken to family members monopolizing the
conversation; it would probably be interpreted as sarcastic and hence offensive (see 4.4.3). The
sociopragmatic politeness scale registers “overpoliteness” and “underpoliteness,” as well as “politeness
appropriate to the situation.”
As Aijmer says in her excellent chapter on “Thanking” (1996: 33–79):(4) Thanking and apologizing have
much in common, which is the result of the fact that both are expressive speech acts, i.e. they express the
speaker’s psychological state towards a state of affairs or a person
For example, at the end of a phone call, each of the participants may help to signal the end of the
conversation by thanking the other:
A: so we’ll see you in an hour’s time
B: excellent. thanks a lot
A: thank you
B: bye [WSC DGZ042]
Here the thanks serve to indicate that A and B have no more business to transact; they
enact what conversation analysts have called a pre-closing of the encounter (Levinson
1983: 319). Nevertheless, I would argue that the thanks do not serve just a closure
function: they also convey an appreciative acknowledgment, however minor, that the
conversation has been beneficial to each speaker. Hence, as often happens and again
can happen with sorry, there is a ritual exchange of pos-polite acknowledgments.
Propositional content condition: Past act A done by H
Preparatory condition: A benefits S and S believes A benefits S
Sincerity condition: S feels grateful or appreciative for A
Essential condition: Counts as an expression of gratitude or
Appreciatio
(As Searle points out, the sincerity and essential rules overlap.) These conditions are
a sound starting point for an account of thanking, but one has to be aware that the
propositional content rule does not always apply. Somewhat strange even for native speakers is the habit,
increasingly found in public notices, of using thank you in
referring to a favor that has not yet been granted. Three examples of this “premature
thanks” are the following:
Customers are respectfully advised that
only food purchased from this restaurant should be consumed here.
Thank you for your understanding.
[a sign at Middleton Stoney services on the M40 motorway, UK]
Only Food And
Drink Purchased At
The Venue Can
Be Consumed
On These
Tables
Thank you
[a notice on the door of The Venue, a café at Lancaster University, UK]
Thank you for not taking your trolley beyond this point
[a notice on the perimeter of the car park outside Sainsbury’s supermarket,
Lancaster, UK]
After reading these notices, customers may or may not refrain from the implicitly forbidden action. Only
after they decide to obey the injunctions above will the Thank you
be felicitous according to Searle’s rules. I believe that examples of premature thanks
such as those above cannot be regarded as a true expression of gratitude, as they
contravene the normal understanding that thanks are not to be given unless the action has been
performed. It is possible, however, that a change in the meaning of thank
you in English is taking place. Given that one form of politeness is to attribute politeness to the other party,
there may be, too, an increasing use of premature thanks as a
device of politeness. It is an up-and-coming indirect form of request in which, instead
of using the request marker please, the author states a general rule, and then assumes
in advance that the reader will be considerate enough to conform to it. Pos-politeness
replaces neg-politeness, both in thanking the public and in implicitly complimenting
them on their politeness.
Incidentally, Searle’s propositional content rule is also incomplete in that the favor to be thanked
for may be a nonaction ~A (i.e., refraining from carrying out a particular act) as well as an action A.
In this conditionality can be claimed yet another resemblance between thanks and apologies: premature
thanks are the counterpart of the conditional apology (I’m sorry if ...) discussed in 5.
Let me begin with a single superconstraint, which comprehends all these maxims,
and which I call the General Strategy of Politeness (or GSP):
General Strategy of Politeness: In order to be polite, S expresses or implies
meanings that associate a favorable value with what pertains to O or associates an unfavorable value with
what pertains to S (S = self, speaker).
Brown&Levinson
Central to our model is a highly abstract )
notion of ‘face’ which consists of two specific kinds of desires (‘facewants’) attributed by interactants to
one another: the desire to be unimpeded in one’s actions (negative face), and the desire (in some respects)
to be approved of (positive face).
In broad terms, research seems to support
our claim that three sociological factors are crucial in determining the level f
of politeness which a speaker (S) will use to an addressee (H): these are
relative power (P) of H over Sa the social distance (D) between S and H,
and the ranking of the imposition (R) involved in doing the face-threatening
act (FTA).
Blum-KulJsajQ985) found, in a series of experiments designed to test
perceptions of politeness and indirejQlness in English and H&hrg-W, that the
highest politeness level in both languages was awarded t^,.ii^tively^qlite
indirect speech acts and not to hints, off-record requests. She suggests
that, in requests at any rate, politeness and indirectness are linked for
conventional indirect requests but not necessarily:'in .S’Sirbf..no.nconventional indirectness.
We make the following assumptions: that all competent adult members of
a society7 have (and know each other to have)
(i) ‘face’, the public self-image that every member wants to claim for
himself, consisting in two related aspects:
(a) negative face:8 the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction - i.e. to
freedom of action and
freedom from imposition
(b) positive face: the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality’
(crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants
(ii) certain rational capacities, in particular consistent modes of reasoning from ends to the means that will
achieve those ends.
Given these assumptions of the universality of face and rationality, it is
intuitively the case that certain kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face,
namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of
the addressee an3/or of the speaker. By ‘act’ we have in mind what is
intended to be done by a verbal or non-verbal communication, just as one
or more ‘speech acts’ can be assigned to an utterance.11
Those acts that primarily threaten the addressee’s (H’s) negative-face
want, by indicating (potentially)TKatlhe speaker (S) does not intend to
avoid impeding H’s freedom of action, include:
(i) Those acts that predicate some future act A of H, and in so doing
put some pressure on H to do (or refrain from doing) the act A:
65
(a) orders and requests (S indicates that he wants H to do, or
refrain from doing, some act A)
(b) suggestions, advice (S indicates that he thinks H ought to
(perhaps) do"some act A)
(c) remindings (S indicates that H should remember to do some
—
(d) threats, warnings, dares (S indicates that he - or someone,
oFsomething - will instigate sanctions against H unless he
does A)
(ii) Those acts that predicate some positive future act of S toward H,
and in so doing put some pressure on H to accept or reject them,
and possibly to incur a debt:
(a) offers (S indicates that he wants H to commit himself to
wEeffier or not he wants S to do some act for H, with H
thereby incurring a possible debt)
(b) promises (S commits himself to a future act for H’s benefit)
(iii) Those acts that predicate some desire of S toward H or H’s goods,
giving H reason to think that he may have to take action to protect
the object of S’s desire, or give it to S:
(a) compliments, expressions of envy or admiration (S indicates
that he likes or would like something of H’s)
(b) expressions of strong (negative) emotions toward H — e.g.
ffitreS, anger, lust (S indicates possible motivation for harming H or H’s goods)
Those acts that threaten the positive-face want , by indicating (potentially) that the speaker does not care
about the addressee’s feelings, wants,
etc. — that in some important respect he doesn’t want H’s wants — include:
(i) Those that show that S has a negative evaluation of some aspect of
H’s positive face:
(a) expressions of disapproval, criticism, contempt or ridicule,
complaints and reprimands, accusations, insults (S indicates
that he doesn’t like/want one or more of H’s wants, acts,
personal characteristics, goods, beliefs or values)
(b) ^contradictions or disagreements, challenges (S indicates that
he thinks H is wrong or misguided or unreasonable about
some issue, such wrongness being associated with disapproval)
(ii) ThoseJhat show that S doesn’t care about (or is indifferent to) H’s
positive face:
(a) expressions ,olJdQlwitXout^f^ontrQ.l) emotions (S gives H
possible reason to fear him or be embarrassed by him)
66
(b) irreverence, m en tio n including those that are
inappropriate in the context (S indicates that he doesn’t value
H’s values and doesn’t fear H’s fears)
(c) bringing of bad news about H, or good news (boasting) about
S (S indicates that he is willing to cause distress to H, and/or
doesn’t care about H’s feelings)
(d) raising of dangerously emotional or divisive topics, e.g. politics,
race, religion, women’s liberation (S raises the possibility or
likelihood of face-threatening acts (such as the above) occurring; i.e., S creates a dangerous-to-face
atmosphere)
(e) blatant non-cooperation in an activity — e.g. disruptively
interrupting H’s talk, making non-sequiturs or showing nonattention (S indicates that he doesn’t care about
H’s negativeor positive-face wants)
(f) use of address terms and other status-marked identifications
in initial encounters (S may misidentify H in an offensive or
embarrassing way, intentionally or accidentally)
ositive politeness is oriented toward the positive face of H, the positive self-image that he claims for
himself. Positive politeness is ajpproach6ase3jit ‘anoints’ the face of the addressee by indicating that in
some
l^spects.5 wants H’s wantsje.g. by treating him as a member of an ingroup, a friend, a person whose wants
and personality traits are known
and liked). The potential face threat of an act is minimized in this case
by the assurance that in general S wants at least some of H’s wants; for
example, that S considers H to be in important respects^‘the same’ as he,
with in-group jlghtsm d duties and expectations of recipXQdly, or by the
implication that S likes H so that the FTA doesn’t mean a negative
evaluation in general of H’s face.
Negative politeness, on the other hand, is oriented mainly toward
partially satisfying (redressing) H’s negative face, his basic want to maintain
claims. of temtoiag^«A^Metenn,ination. Negative politeness, thus, is
essentially £^dance-based^ and realizations of negative-politeness strategies
consist in assuranres^ttrat^^ speaker recognizes and respects the addressee’s negative-face wants and will
not (or will only minimally) interfere
with the addressee’s freedom of action. Hence negative politeness is
characterized by self-effacement, formality and restraint, with attention
to very restricted aspects of H’s self-image, centring on His want to be
unimpeded. Face-threatening acts are redressed with % olo^eyor interfering or transgressing, with
linguistic and non-linguistic^Jeierence, with
hedges on the illocutionary force of the act, with impersonalizing mechanisms (such as passives) that
distance S and H from the act, and with other
softening mechanisms that give the addressee an ‘out’, a face-saving line
of escape, permitting him to feel that his response is not coerced.
Where maximum efficiency is very important, and this is mutually known to both S and H, no.
face redress is necessary. In cases of great urgency or desperation, redress would actually decrease the
communicated urgency. For example:
(1) Help! (compare the non-urgent ‘Please help me, if you would be so
y referring explicitly to the difficulty of H’s complying (in 429), S
implicitly puts himself in debt to H for causing him the difficulty. In (430)
‘difficult’ modifies ‘speaking’, implying that S finds it difficult to speak
because he is about to impose heavily on H. In both cases the strategy is
just the opposite of output strategy 4 discussed above (p. 176), where S
tries to minimize the imposition. "
In the same way, expressing thanks puts S on record in accepting a
debt:
(431) wokola9wal hwe9tik 9a9wot.
difficult your speech we (inclusive) eat your tortillas, (c.i. ‘Thank
you for feeding me’)
Here the ‘difficult’ appears to involve a role switch: S says ‘difficult your
words’ meaning 7 thank you’. This implicit role switch embedded in the
conventionalized expression for ‘thank you’ might perhaps be taken as
evidence that Tzeltal members perceive FTAs such as thanking as ‘difficult’
for both S and H.
Watts
The central concept in Leech’s model is that of a cost--benefit scale
of politeness related to both the speaker and the hearer. Politeness,
according to Leech, involves minimising the cost and maximising the
benefit to speaker/hearer. The PP thus consists of six maxims, all of
which are related to the notion of cost and benefit, and related pairs
of values:
1. The Tact Maxim (which is only applicable in illocutionary functions classified by Leech as ‘impositive’, e.g.
ordering, requesting,
commanding, advising, recommending, etc., and ‘commissive’,
e.g. promising, vowing, offering, etc.): a. Minimise cost to other
[b. Maximise benefit to other]
We can illustrate the Tact Maxim with example (4) for the illocutionary
function of advising:
(4) You know, I really do think you ought to sell that old car. It’s costing more and more
money in repairs and it uses up far too much fuel.
The Tact Maxim is adhered to by the speaker minimising the ‘cost’
to the addressee by using two discourse markers, one to appeal to
solidarity, you know, and the other as a modifying hedge, really, one attitudinal predicate, I do think, and
one modal verb, ought. On the other
hand, the speaker maximises the benefit to the addressee in the second
part of the turn by indicating that s/he could save a lot of time and
money by selling the car.
2. The Generosity Maxim (which is only applicable in impositives
and commissives): a. Minimise benefit to self [b. Maximise cost to
self ]
To illustrate the Generosity Maxim we can take the illocutionary function of recommending in example (5):
(5) It’s none of my business really, but you look so much nicer in the green hat than in the
pink one. If I were you, I’d buy that one.
In the first part of the utterance the speaker reduces any concern of
hers to a minimum but indicates in the second half that she would
far prefer to see her friend in the green hat rather than the pink one.
3. The Approbation Maxim (which is only applicable in illocutionary functions classified by Leech as
‘expressive’, e.g. thanking,
congratulating, pardoning, blaming, praising, condoling, etc.,
and ‘assertive’, e.g. stating, boasting, complaining, claiming, reporting, etc.): a. Minimise dispraise of other
[b. Maximise praise
of other]
Modelling linguistic politeness (I) 67
Examples (6) and (7) will serve to illustrate the illocutionary functions
of thanking and complaining, in which the speaker maximises praise
of the addressee in (6) and minimises dispraise in (7):
(6) Dear Aunt Mabel, I want to thank you so much for the superb Christmas present this
year. It was so very thoughtful of you.
(7) I wonder if you could keep the noise from your Saturday parties down a bit. I’m finding
it very hard to get enough sleep over the weekends.
4. The Modesty Maxim (which is only applicable in expressives and
assertives): a. Minimise praise of self [b. maximise praise of other]
In example (8), illustrating the illocutionary function of praising,
the speaker belittles her/his own abilities in order to highlight the
achievements of the addressee:
(8) Well done! What a wonderful performance! I wish I could sing as well as that.
5. The Agreement Maxim (which is only applicable in assertives):
a. Minimise disagreement between self and other [b. maximise
agreement between self and other]
In example (9) the speaker and the addressee are engaged in a political
debate. The speaker wishes to make a claim about his political party
but to minimise the disagreement with the interlocutor:
(9) I know we haven’t always agreed in the past and I don’t want to claim that the
government acted in any other way than we would have done in power, but we believe
the affair was essentially mismanaged from the outset.
6. The Sympathy Maxim (which is only applicable in assertives): a.
Minimise antipathy between self and other [b. Maximise sympathy
between self and other]
Example (10) illustrates the illocutionary function of reporting, in
which the speaker makes an effort to minimise the antipathy between
himself and the addressee:
(10) Despite very serious disagreements with you on a technical level, we have done our best
to coordinate our efforts in reaching an agreement, but have so far not been able to find
any common ground
Discursive theory
It tries
to offer ways of recognising when a linguistic utterance might be open
to interpretation by interlocutors as ‘(im)polite’. It does not evaluate
politeness in terms of social harmony, mutual consideration for others, comity, etc. Instead, it aims to
provide the means of assessing how
lay participants in ongoing verbal interaction assess social behaviour
that they have classified as (im)polite utterances as positive or negative. It does not, in other words, try to
define politeness as a term in
a model of society, but it allows us to see how social members themselves define the term
Ongoing interaction constitutes social practice, but
that practice is determined by previous experiences of similar practice
and by objectified social structures. Just as the individual only exists by
virtue of her/his own specific history, so too does society only ‘exist’ by
virtue of the history of previous social interaction, which lends those
forms of behaviour the impression of objective validity. Throughout
the social history of an invidual s/he constructs the idea of an objectified ‘society’ with objectified social
structures that sanction the ways
in which s/he behaves in ongoing interaction.
he key to understanding the nature of politeness is to consider
the ways in which the individual maximises its utility as a symbolic
resource. The five points in Werkhofer’s analogy of politeness with
money bear repeating here:
144 politeness
(i) ‘Politeness, like money, is a socially constituted medium.’
(ii) Politeness, like money, is ‘a symbolic medium in the sense that
its functions originally derive from an association to something
else, namely to values’.
(iii) Politeness, like money, is ‘historically constituted and reconstituted; its functions and the values it is
associated with are essentially changeable ones’.
(iv) ‘During its history, the functions of politeness turn into a power
of the medium in the sense that it may, rather than being only
a means to the ends of an individual user, itself motivate and
structure courses of action.’
(v) The chances of the user being able ‘to master the medium completely . . . will be diminished’.
Politic behaviour: that behaviour, linguistic and non-linguistic,
which the participants construct as being appropriate to the ongoing social interaction.
Participants enter verbal interaction in a specific social situation with
a knowledge gained from previous experiences about what forms of
social behaviour are appropriate and inappropriate to that type of situation. Their knowledge is
constructed through their own personal
A social model of politeness 145
history and the way it has been linked in the past with objectified
social structures. During the ongoing interaction, however, individual members not only reproduce the
appropriate
behaviour through the habitus but they may even change and reconstruct what is appropriate. So politic
behaviour is behaviour which is
consistent with the dispositions of the habitus in accordance with the
social features of the situational context
что предполагает анализ не единичных высказываний, а про-тяженных отрывков, в данном случае
американского общественно-политического дискурса, а также фокус не на интенции нападающей
стороны, а на реакции участ-ника КСО, позиционирующего себя как жертву.
articipants in verbal interaction are thus quite capable of temporarily changing the nature of the politic
behaviour and adapting their
habitus in accordance with the exigencies of the ongoing interaction.
What is now essential is to explore the relationship between the habitus and politic behaviour
The Parsonian view of society thus consists of ‘regularised’ constraints
on ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ social behaviour and sets of institutions
(first and foremost of these being the state). These determine the structuring of social groups and the roles
which individuals are ‘expected’ to play in those groups. According to Parsons, society thus regulates
individual instances of social interaction. Social structure is seen as consisting of a set of ‘givens’ which
need to be discovered empirically before they can be manipulated in different ways. The individual human
being is thus reduced to the status of a pawn in the hierarchical chess
game of ‘society’.
The subjective approach to social structure, on the other hand, takes society to be part of the natural
world, which can be neither acted upon nor changed by individuals. In a subjective view of society
individuals see themselves as powerless to reflect upon the conditions of their own existence. Although
subjective and objective approaches to social structure start their theorising from different ends of the
spectrum of objectivity, both approaches reify the social world as a ‘given’, functionalist--structuralist
sociology seeing it as a culturally determined, institutionalised entity and existentialist—phenomenological
and ethnomethodological sociology seeing it as a natural entity. Bourdieu’s solution is to synthesise the
objective and subjective approaches by proposing a third option, which he calls the ‘theory of practice’:
The theory of practice as practice insists, contrary to positivist materialism, that the objects of knowledge
are constructed, not passively recorded, and, contrary to intellectual idealism, that the principle of this
construction is the system of structured, structuring dispositions, the habitus, which is constituted in
practice and is always oriented towards practical functions. (Bourdieu 1990: 52)
The central concept in Bourdieu’s theory of practice is the habitus, and it is this term that is most closely
related to the concept of politic behaviour outlined in the previous section. The habitus, in Latin ‘a state of
being’, ‘a demeanour, manner or bearing’, or the ‘style of dress or toilet’, is the set of dispositions to act in
certain ways, which generates cognitive and bodily practices in the individual. The set of dispositions is
acquired through socialisation. In typical Bourdieuan fashion thereare two aspects to the habitus just as
there are to the theory of practice in general. The first is that the habitus shapes the ways in which the
individual internalises objectivised social structures in order to use them in dealing with ongoing
interaction. In other words, the habitus actually constructs out of those objectivised structures forms of
politic behaviour. So the product of both collective and individualised history gives the individual in ongoing
social interaction the ‘feel for the game’. The other aspect of the habitus is that, in instances of ongoing
interaction, it generates practices and actions. The habitus is therefore responsible for both the
reproduction and the сhange of social structure as we saw from the example taken from the beginning of
the interaction between the moderator and a caller in a radio phone in programme in the previous section.
The final two terms which are necessary to my discussion of Bourdieu’s theory of practice are doxa (and the
related terms orthodoxy and heterodoxy) and symbolic power. The doxa of a field is the ‘undisputed, prereflexive, naıve, native compliance with the fundamental presuppositions of the field’ (Bourdieu 1990: 68).
It is, in other words, the social order of the field in question and is specific to that field. A challenge to the
structure of the field in which the habitus tries to break with the doxic experience constitutes heterodoxy,
i.e. it is subversive behaviour. The attempt to restore the old order, to ‘restore the silence of the doxa’
(Bourdieu 1991: 131), is termed orthodoxy.
Symbolic power as ‘every power which manages to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate by
concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force’. It can, in other words, only be effective
either if it successfully manages to conceal its true nature through the silent orthodoxy of the doxa or by
exercising symbolic violence.
This point we can bring in the comparison with money by suggesting that each utterance has a certain
value for both (or all) interactants, although the values may not be the same for each of them.
The three ‘sentence moods’ assertive, interrogative and imperative can be
interpreted, very broadly of course, as follows:
(i) Assertives give a value and can therefore expect the payment of
some other equivalent value.
(ii) Interrogatives request a value but cannot automatically expect the
payment of that value. If the value is given, however, some form
of return payment can be expected by the giver.
(iii) Imperatives request a value, which may or may not be in the form
of a linguistic utterance, and generally do expect the payment of
that value.
The Palgrave Handbook
Convention and Ritual (Im)politeness 171
Marina Terkourafi and Dániel Z. Kádár
It is, then, possible to distinguish between two types of convention: conventions in a weak sense are, at
their most basic, necessary for sequences of sounds to become meaningful, that is, to become signifiers in
the first place; conventions in a strong sense, on the other hand, invest linguistic expressions with
additional meaning based on how speakers use them in conversation. It is conventions in this second sense
that are most relevant to (im)politeness, as we shall see below.
Remains are brief rituals one individual performs for or to another, attesting to civility and good will on the
performer’s part and to the recipient’s possession of a small patrimony of sacredness’ (Goffman 1971, p.
63). This interpretation of ‘ritual’ is adopted by Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 43)
With respect to the second objection, it has been pointed out that Lewis’s definition cannot account for
conventions honoured in the breach. For instance, Gilbert (1989) argues that sending thank-you notes after
a dinner party is a convention in some circles, although few people abide by it these days. By making
convention a matter of people’s actual behaviour (clause (1) of his definition above), Lewis must deny that
sending thank-you notes is a convention, contrary to many critics’ intuition (cf. Davis 2003; Millikan 2005).
If in the case of thank-you notes (and, generally, conventions that seem to be falling out of fashion) the
consequences of non-compliance are negligible, the opposite is true of conventions that are in full effect,
such as waiting for one’s turn to be served at a food stall: here, non-compliance can lead to serious
consequences, ranging from negative evaluation to tangible forms of punishment or exclusion.
However, it wasn’t until Brown and Levinson analysed conventional indirectness as effectuating a
compromise between the want to do the fta on record and the want not to coerce the addressee (1987, p.
132ff.) that an explicit link between conventional indirectness and (im)politeness was drawn. Brown and
Levinson attribute this link to the fact that conventionally indirect speech acts tend to satisfy wants
motivated by negative face (1987, pp. 135–6), making conventional indirectness the most populous output
strategy under their negative politeness super-strategy he first to put this claim to the test was Blum-Kulka
(1987). Drawing on questionnaire data from English and Hebrew, she found that conventionally indirect
requests were judged most polite across the board but judgements about the politeness of hints (offrecord indirectness) varied: whereas English speakers consistently ranked them second only to
conventional indirectness, Hebrew speakers ranked them quite low. She accounted for this by surmising
that the amount of inferential work the listener must do to extract politeness from the speaker’s utterance
constitutes a separate imposition on the hearer’s cognitive resources that can subtract from the politeness
of the utterance.
However, as Culpeper (2011, pp. 130–132) has pointed out, information about norms doesn’t just come
from direct observation but also from (im)politeness meta-discourse; that is, discourse about politeness
and impoliteness. This is especially important in the case of impoliteness, which is less available to be
directly observed in everyday life and generally marked.
(bare imperatives as requests in Cypriot Greek; Terkourafi 2001) can be the most frequent realisations of
speech acts in particular contexts, making the speaker’s goal illocutionarily transparent to the addressee
and her utterance polite at one and the same time. On this view of conventionalisation (which contrasts
starkly with the semantic one in the rest of the literature), the listener who receives, say, an imperative in
Cypriot Greek in a context where imperatives are the normal way of requesting (which is most contexts in
this variety of Greek, including employee to boss and seller to customer), will not only likely interpret it as a
request but will also be aware that this is the most common way of performing requests in this context.
Conventionalisation consists precisely in having this kind of meta-knowledge about not what expressions
mean but how often they mean that. This metaknowledge is crucial to politeness: using what is in the
listener’s experience the most common way of requesting in this context serves as a token of the speaker’s
familiarity with the norms governing the current exchange and, assuming the speaker and hearer agree on
what these norms are, by using it the speaker has done what is ‘right’ (positively evaluated by the hearer)
in this context.
3.2 Requests and Directives H.M. Cook and M. Burdelski
Language socialization research and related approaches such as discourse analysis of family interaction
(Blum-Kulka 1997; Tannen 2004) have examined requests and ‘directives’, or communicative behaviours
‘designed to get someone else to do something’ (Goodwin 1990, p. 67). In Brown and Levinson’s (1987)
model of politeness, requests are ‘face-threatening acts’, or ones that violate another’s ‘negative face
wants’ (i.e., desire to be free from imposition).
Thus, such social actions are often mitigated with ‘negative politeness strategies’ in order to lessen their
illocutionary force so as to maintain face and interpersonal harmony. For instance, in North American
White middle-class households, parents address children using polite formulas, such as ‘please’ and ‘thank
you’, and instruct children to say such formulas to family members and others, such as when making a
request (e.g., Gleason 1980). Moreover, H.M. Cook and M. Burdelski when making requests to children, US
parents use endearments, impersonal pronouns, passive voice, and inclusive constructions (e.g., ‘Let’s sit
down’ = ‘You sit down’) (Blum-Kulka 1997, p. 147). Similarly, Japanese caregivers address children using
polite requests (using X-te kudasai ‘please do X’), and also prompt them to say such requests to adults and
children (e.g., to adult guest: doozo, suwatte kudasai tte ‘Say, “Please sit down”’) (Burdelski 2006, 2010). In
these ways, many caregivers instruct and provide a model to children on how to make requests as an index
of politeness.
A central focus of analysis in studies on requests and directives is indirectness (Searle 1975), in which a
speaker does not go on record as issuing an imposition. The use of indirectness with hildren varies across
cultures. In a study of an Athabaskan community, Scollon (1982) observes that adults pose questions to
children as a directive (e.g., ‘Where’s your pencil?’), which provides a model to them on preferred
indirectness in this community. Scollon also observes that children pose questions to adults in attempting
to obtain permission or in requesting things (e.g., ‘You got a what you call? Ruler’), which suggests they
acquire linguistic means of indirectness from a young age. Clancy (1986) points out that indirectness is a
central feature of Japanese communicative style, and shows how children are socialized to indirectness
from a young age.
She finds that in issuing directives to two-year-old children, mothers often use hints, questions, appeals to
feelings, and reported speech. Moreover, Clancy observes that the mothers often paired an indirect form
(such as a hint) with a direct form (such as an imperative) in order to convey to children the communicative
intent of the indirect form. Similarly, Takada (2013) shows that apanese caregivers use various kinds of
indirectness with children, for instance by reporting the imagined speech of third parties who cannot
ostensibly speak, such as infants (including those soon to be born). In some languages such as Korean and
Japanese, adults attempt to control children’s actions by encouraging them to consider the adult’s or
another’s feelings. For instance, Lo (2009), shows how a teacher in a Korean as a heritage language
classroom in the United States urged the children to work harder in their schoolwork by referring to the
teacher’s maum ‘seat of emotion’ (Teacher: ‘…because you never keep up with class, when I leave here
after class, I feel bad (lit. my maum hurts)’). In research in Japanese preschools, Hayashi et al. (2009)
observe that in encouraging children to eat all the food on their plate, teachers evoked the feelings of the
non-eaten food (‘Poor Mister Carrot!… Don’t you think he feels lonely?’).
In these ways, adults around the globe often use various means for controlling children in non-imposing
and indirect ways. Several studies have also shown how adults socialize children to indirectness by speaking
(or encouraging children to speak) through others, including children and animals. For instance, in a Navajo
community, Field (2001) shows that teachers and parents engage children in triadic directive-giving
exchanges with others, which socializes them into the communicative practice of making requests through
third parties. Also, in a discourse analytic study of four middle-class families in the United States, Tannen
(2004) shows how a mother ventriloquised the speech of the pet dogs in indirectly encouraging a child to
pick up and put away his toys (e.g., Mother speaking in an extra high pitch to the dogs: ‘We’re naughty, but
we’re not a naughty as Jason, he’s naughtiest’). In a language socialization study of seven two-year-old
Japanese children, Burdelski (2011) observes that when a family was visiting the home of the paternal
grandparents, the mother prompted the two-year-old child what to say to the grandmother (her mother-inlaw) (Mother to child: Baaba, mukoo de mite kudasai tte ‘Say to granny, please look at (your newspaper)
over there), which functioned as an indirect request from the mother to the grandmother, as the child was
not expected to (and did not subsequently) repeat the prompted expression. In these ways, caregivers in
diverse societies employ a range of strategies in modelling to children and instructing them in preferred
ways of issuing requests and directives in indirect ways. Such strategies convey norms of politeness in
relation to managing face concerns among parties and constructing relationships
Facework and (Im)politeness in Political Exchange
Karen Tracy
It is also the case that traditional politeness moves, such as thanking people for their efforts, can be used to
attack co-present third parties. For instance, in one American community that had experienced a major
financial crisis in its school district due to mismanagement, citizen testifiers at a pubic meeting thanked one
category of person to implicate the incompetent conduct of others (Tracy 2007). In another conflict-rich
local meeting, an elected board member resigned because of the group’s ‘lack of democracy’ and thanked
two of the six other members of the existing Board (Tracy 2010). In the context where a person thanks
people who have assisted self during time in an elected role, the absence of thanks for others in the same
category as the thanked becomes hearable as criticism of un-thanked persons.
Historical (Im)politeness 433
Andreas H. Jucker and Joanna Kopaczyk
Busse (2002b) describes the politeness effects that the diachronic shift from requests with pray to requests
with please had in English. On the basis of data that are mostly drawn from the Oxford English Dictionary,
he interprets this development as a pragmatic shift from requests that assert the sincerity of the speaker (I
pray you, I beseech you) to requests that focus on the addressee’s willingness to perform the requested
action (if it pleases you) (Busse 2002b, p. 31). Del Lungo Camiciotti (2008) looks at the politeness of
requests in a nineteenth-century corpus of 151 English model letters for merchants.
Blum-Kulka
Which aspects of social relations are important in determining variation in speech acts? One of the major
findings that emerges from studies in this area is that degrees Of social distance and power between
participants are among the most important factors. yet_their relative importance can interact with other
situational factors-and might be subject to cultural variation.
The relative importance played by these and other situational factors may differ from culture to culture.
Variance in the directness of requesting behavior in Israeli society (Blum-Kulka et al., 1985) has been found
to be affected by personal variables (relative age of the speaker, but not his/her sex), type of request goal
(whether the request is for action/goods/permission or information), setting (private/public), and medium
(oral/written), as well as by the social variables of relative distance and power. Requests trom children to
adults and those addressed to people in positions of greater power were found to be less direct than
requests made in the reverse situation, Direciness (ends to rise with increase in familiarity, as well as with
the transition from the public io the private domain. Requests in written communication, were found to
have a distinct, explicit, and direct (performative) pattern differing from the pattern prevalent in oral
communication,
Distinct patterns were also revealed for different types of request goals, with requests for action being the
most direct and requests for permission the least direct. These results show that relative social distance
and power in Israeli society affect choice of requesting behavior. The trend in Hebrew for more directness
with un increase in familiarity is similar to the one depicted for American English (Ervin-Tripp, 1976), But,
contrary to expectations, these two factors were not found to be the dominant ones in accounting for
variation, The most important factors that account for variation in Israelt speaker's choice of oe levels, by
Che af SEATS: were found to be the relative to other | factors, sacial distance t between the interlocutors
and House (1979) and House and Kasper (1981) reveal a similar trend when comparing German with British
English: German speakers tend to realize requests and complaints more directly than do English speakers,
and they also consistently use more upgrading (emphatic aggravating) modality markers.
Theoretical work on requests has shown, on the one hand, the complexity of the relationship between
form, meaning, and pragmatic prerequisites involved (Gordon & Lakoff, 1975; Searle, 1975), and, on the
other hand, the high social stakes involved for both interlocutors in choice of linguistic options. Requests
are pre-event acts: they express the speaker’s expectation of the hearer with regards to prospective action,
verbal or nonverbal. Requests are face-threatening by definition (Brown & Levinson, 1978): hearers can
interpret requests as intrusive impingements on freedom of action, or even as a show in the exercise of
power; speakers may hesitate to make the request for fear of exposing a need or risking the hearer’s loss of
face. The abundance of linguistic options vailable for requesting behavior testifies to the social intricacies
associated with choice in mode of performance. Yet, despite the richness of the subject for both
sociolinguistics and cross-cultural pragmatics, surprisingly few studies have attempted to empirically
document requesting behavior in one particular society, let alone compare it across different speech
communities.
requests to study politeness phenomena (Brown & Levinson, 1978; Leech, 1983; Lakoff, 1973, House &
Kasper, 1981; Blum-Kulka, 1987)
While requests are made to cause an event or to change one, the request, in requiring a future effort from
the interlocutor, imposes mainly on the bearer requests call for mitigation, compensating for their
impositive effect on the hearer (e.g., Fraser & Nolen, 1981; House & Kasper, 1981; Rinteil, 1981; Walters,
1981).
Requests. We identify as a request sequence all the utterance(s) involved in the turn completing the
dialogue in the DCT. For exarmnple:
Judith, I missed class yesterday, do you think I could borrow your notes? I promise to return them by
tomorrow.
As this example illustrates, the request sequence may include: alerters, such as address terms (‘Judith’),
preposed supportive moves (‘I missed class yesterday’), the request proper, or Head Act (‘could I borrow
your notes?’), optionally elaborated with downgraders (‘do you think’) or upgraders and postposed
supportive moves (‘I promise to return them by tomorrow’).
Alerters. When preceding requests, alerters serve as attention-getters, and hence are equal in function to
all verbal means used for this purpose. Coding of address terms proceeds by type (nominal categories)
noting variations in type of apellations (Title+ surname/Sumame only, etc.) as well as semantic variations in
items used (‘darling, could you...’ as opposed to ‘you fool, why don’t you. . .”). (See Appendix for full list of
categories.)
Supportive moves. Requests are often preceded by checks on availability (‘Are you busy?’) (Edmondson &
House, 1981) and attempts to get a precommitment (‘Will you do me a favor?’), They may also be
preceded, or followed, by grounders (Edmondson, 1981), which provide the reason for the request (‘I
missed class yesterday, could I. . . °) or by promises and threats, ali of which serve to persuade the hearer to
do x. Some supportive moves, like grounders, can setve as requests by themselves (‘I must have left my pen
somewhere’ responded by ‘here, take mine’).
Head acts, (the request proper): The Head Act is that part of the sequence which might serve to realize the
act independently of other elements. Head Acts can vary on two dimensions: strategy type, and
perspective.
Strategy types. Following previous classifications of request strategy types in empirical research (ErvinTripp, 1976; House & Kasper, 1981; Blum-Kulka, 1982), the CCSARP scheme classifies requests on a ninepoint scale of mutually exclusive categories. The nine strategy types (on a scale of indirectness) are as
follows:
1. mood derivable: witerances in which the grammatical mood of the verb signals illocutionary force (‘Leave
me alone’; ‘Clean up that mess’).
2. performaiives: utterances in which the illocutionary force is explicitly named (‘I am asking you to clean up
the mess’).
3. hedged performatives: utterances in which the naming of the illocutionary force is mocified by hedging
expressions (‘T would like to ask you to give your presentation a week earlier than scheduled’)
4. obligation statements: utterances which state the obligation of the hearer to carry out the act (“You’ll
have to move that car’).
5. want statements: utterances which state the speaker’s desire that the hearer curries out the act (‘I really
wish you’d stop bothering me’).
6. suggestory formulae: utterances which contain a suggestion to do x (‘How about cleaning up?’).
7. query preparatory: utterances containing reference to preparatory conditions (e.g., ability, willingness)
as conventionalized in any specific language (‘Could you clear up the kitchen, please?’; ‘Would you mind
moving your car?’).
8. strong hints: utterances containing partial reference to object or element needed for the implementation
of the act ("You have lefl the kitchen in a right. mess’),
9. mild hints: utterances that make no reference to the request proper (or any of its elements) but are
interpretable as requests by context ("I am a nun’ in response to a persistent hassler).
Perspective. Choice of perspective presents an important source of variation in requests. Requests can
emphasize the role of the agent and be speaker oriented (“Can I have it?’) or focus on the role of the
recipient and be hearer oriented (‘Can you do it?’). Two other possibilities are fer requests to be phrased as
inclusive (‘Can we start cleaning now?’) or as impersonal (‘It needs to be cleaned’).
Choice of perspective affects social meaning; since requests are inherently imposing, avoidance to name
the hearer as actor can reduce the form’s level of coerciveness. The four altermatives are often available to
speakers within a single situation, though not necessarily for the same request strategy.
Internal modifications (downgraders and upgraders). We have defined as internal modifiers elements
within the request utterance proper (linked to the Head Act), the presence of which is not essential for the
utterance to be potentially understood as a request. Thus, the omission of any or all of the bracketed parts
in the following will leave the pragmatic force of the utterance as a request intact:
{Darling},{if you are going into town tomorrow}, would you mind {awfully} cashing this cheque for me, {please}?
Such modifiers can be multifunctional in two distinct ways. First, they may act both as indicating devices,
used to signal pragmatic force, as well as sociopragmatic devices, meant to affect the social impact the
utterance is likely to have (Blum-Kulka, 1987; House, this volume). Second, in their sociopragmatic role,
they may act either as downgraders, meant to mitigate, (soften) the act or allernalively as upgraders that
emphasize its degree of coerciveness (House & Kasper, 1981; Faerch & Kasper, this volume). Examples of
lexical and phrasal downgraders are consultative devices (‘Do you think 1 could borrow your notes?") and
understaters (‘Could you tidy up @ bit before they come?’), and examples of upgraders are intensifiers
(‘Clean up that disgusting mess) and expletives (‘Why don’t you get your bloody ass out of here’).
Syntactic downgraders, A further factor contributing to the effect a request is going to have may be
achitved by playing with syntactic elements. Being linked to the grammatical systems of the respective
Janguages, this aspect of the analysis is realized by language specific sub-categories, such as the distinction
between different types of modal verbs (can/could;will/would, ete.) in English.
CCSARP data allows us to discuss these issues from an empirically based vantage point. Blum-Kulka and
Weizman discuss these issues from two perspectives: the former by focusing on conventionally indirect
requests, the latter by focusing on nonconventionally indirect requests. Blum-Kulka is concerned with
establishing the universal pragmatic criteria which necessarily distinguish between conventional and
nonconventional types of indirectness; her analysis yields two basic criteria: (a) the types of conventions
that determine the requestive interpretation, and (b) the types of pragmatic ambiguity associated with the
utterances in question (cf. Blum-Kulka, this volume). Weizman focuses on the phenomenon of
nonconventional indirectness; she distinguishes for such requestive_Hints between two opacity
dimensions: propositional and illocutionary. A Hint is described as opaque on the illocutionary scale if it
carries the potential to perform a number of illocutionary acts, and therefore any illocutionary intention
assigned to the speaker can be acceptably canceled.
2. Cultural ways of speaking. Do cultures manifest culture-specific interactional styles? And if they do, as all
travelers to foreign countries would intuitively agree they do, then how are we to account systematically
for the differences between any two given interactional styles? The host of issues involved in this line of
investigation is far beyond the scope of our project. Within the framework of CCSARP, we can delimit
specific areas of cross-cultural differences which we believe belong to the characterization of interactional
styles. In regard to requesting behavior, interactional styles can vary along at least two of the dimensions
studied by CCSARP: (a) levels of directness, and (b) amount and type of request modifications. In both
cases, the results of our investigation reveal marked cross-cultural differences. For example, Blum-Kulka
and House found that, under the same social constraints, speakers of Hebrew tend to phrase their requests
more directly than speakers of German, who use more request modifications than speakers of other
languages (Blum-Kulka & House, this volume). But the results also show that the cultural factors interact
strongly with simational ones: all the languages we study vary their mode of speech act performance by
situational factors.
3. Contrastive pragmatics. The request and apology patterns provided by native speakers in several
languages testify to the conceptualization of these speech acts by speakers of different languages, and
allow us to test the validity of the theoretical assumption that all languages will manifest the same primary
features in regard to the two speech acts studied
Levinson
that the three basic sentence-types, inter rogative, imperative, and declarative are universals — all
languages appear to have at least two and mostly three of these
Austin termed these peculiar and special sentences, and the utterances realized by them, performatives,
and contrasted them to statements, assertions and utterances like them, which he called constatives.
Austin then went on to suggest that although, unlike constatives, performatives cannot be true or false
(given their special nature, the question of truth and falsity simply does not arise), yet they gan go wrong.
He then set himself the task of cataloguing all the ways in which they can go wrong, or be 'unhappy', or
infelicitous as he put it.
He called these conditions felicity conditions, and he distinguished three main categories:
A. There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect The circumstances and persons
must be appropriate, as specified in the procedure
B. The procedure must be executed correctly and completely
C. Often, the persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, as specified in the
procedure, and (in) if consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant parties must so do
The bridgegroom must say I will. Further, the procedure must be complete as required by B (ji): if I bet you
six pence that it will rain tomorrow, then for the bet to take effect you must ratify the arrangement with
You're on or something with like effect - or in Austin's terminology, there must be satisfactory uptake.
Austin notes that these violations are not all of equal stature.
Violations of A and B conditions give rise to misfires as he puts it - i.e. the intended actions simply fail to
come off. Violations of C conditions on the other hand are abuses, not so easily detected at the time of the
utterance in question, with the consequence that the action is performed, but infelicitously or insincerely.
Consequently there are two crucial sliding definitions or concepts: firstly, there is a shift from the view that
performatives are a special class of sentences with peculiar syntactic and pragmatic properties, to the view
that there is a general class of performative urterances that includes both explicit performatives (the old
familiar class) and implicit performatives, the latter including lots of other kinds of utterances, if not all.
Secondly, there is a shift from the dichotomy performative/constative to a general theory of illocutionary
acts of which
This suggestion seems to rely on the claim that every non-explicit performative could in principle be put
into the form of an explicit performative, so that by studying the latter alone we shall not be missing any
special varieties of action that can be achieved only by other kinds of utterance. (A principle reified by
Searle (1969: roff) as a general principle of expressibility 'anything that can be meant can be said";
Three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed:



locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference
illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, ete. in uttering a sentence, by virtue of
the conventional force associated with it (or with its explicit performative paraphrase)
perlocutionary act: the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the
sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance
It is of course the second kind, the illocutionary act, that is the focus of Austin's interest, and indeed the
term speech act has come to refer exclusively (as in the title of this Chapter) to that kind of act
Searle appeals to a distinction by Rawls (1955) between regulative rules and constitutive rules. The first are
the kind that control antecedently existing activities, e.g. traffic regulations, while the second are the kind
that create or constitute the activity itself, e.g. the rules of a game. The latter have the conceptual form:
'doing X counts as Y', e.g. in soccer, kicking or heading the ball through the goal-posts counts as a goal.
(Searle assimilates the 'uttering IFID X counts as doing Y' condition to the same schema, calling it the
essential condition). Searle suggests a classification into four kinds of condition, depending on how they
specify propositional content, preparatory preconditions, conditions on sincerity, and the essential
condition that we have already mentioned.





representatives, which commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition (paradigm
cases: asserting. concluding, etc.)
directives, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something (paradigm
cases: requesting. questioning)
commissives, which commit the speaker to some future course of action (paradigm cases:
promising, threatening. offering)
expressives, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing,
welcoming, congratulating)
declarations, which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to
rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war,
christening, firing from employment)
Nevertheless there nte certain recurring linguistic categories that do need explaining; for example, it
appears that the three basic sentence-types, interrogative, imperative, and declarative are universals - all
languages appear to have at least two and mostly three of these
Hare (1952) introduced the terms phrastic for propositional content (certainly preferable for WH-questions
which do not, arguably, express complete propositions), and neustic for illocutionary force. He later went
on to suggest (Hare, 1970) that illocutionary force was in fact an amalgam of neustic (speaker commitment)
and a further element, the tropic (the factuality of the propositional content), and Lyons (19778: 749ff)
sees some linguistic merit in these distinctions.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we must be careful to distinguish the set of terms imperative, interrogative,
and declarative from the set of terms order (or request), question and assertion (or statement). The first
set are linguistic categories that pertain to sentences, the second set are categories that pertain only to the
use of sentences (i.e. to utterances and utterance-types). Now the term mood is often used to designate
the first set, but this is inaccurate as mood, in traditional grammar at any rate, is a category of verbal
inflection, and on this dimension imperative contrasts with indicative and subjunctive rather than
declarative and Interrogative. Lyons (1977a: 747ff) therefore proposes a change in terminology;
nevertheless we shall retain the familiar terms imperative, interrogative and declarative, using however the
cover term sentence-types instead of the misleading term mood. (Here see also the helpful discussion in
Sadock & Zwicky, in press.)
Felicity conditions (or FCs) for each force. FCs may be classified, following Searle, into preparatory
conditions that concern real-world prerequisites to each illocutionary act, propositional content conditions
that specify restrictions on the content of S' in (26), and sincerity conditions, that state the requisite beliefs.
feelings and intentions of the speaker, as appropriate to each kind of action. (There is also in Searle's
schema, as we noted, an essential condition, which is of a rather different order.)
Antithesis: according to Antithesis there is no need for a special theory of illocutionary force because the
phenomena that taxed Austin are assimilable to standard theories of syntax and truth-conditional
semantics.
To generalize the attack on Thesis, we may then bring in the performative analysis (or performative
hypothesis) to handle implicit performatives. According to this hypothesis, which we may refer to as the
PH, every sentence has as its highest clause in deep or underlying syntactic structure a clause of the form in
(26) - i.e. a structure that corresponds to the overt prefix in the explicit perfor-mative, whether or not it is
an overt or explicit per formative in surface structure.
Now some of the most persuasive evidence for the PH comes from dverbs like frankly that appear to
modify performative verbs (let us call these performative adverbs without prejudging whether in fact they
do actually modify such verbs).
Тезис
There has emerged a coherent theory of speech acts that demands the linguist's attention.
This position, which is a judicious selection and slight abstraction from Austin and Searle's particular views,
we may call the irreducibility thesis, or Thesis for short. In brief, the position can be formulated as follows.
First, all utterances not only serve to express propositions, but also perform actions. Secondly, of the many
ways in which one could say that in uttering some linguistic expression a speaker was doing something,
there is one privileged level of action that can be called the illocutionary act - or, more simply, the speech
act. This action is associated by convention (pace Strawson, 1964 and Schiffer, 1972) with the form of the
utterance in question, and this distinguishes it from any perlocutionary actions that may accompany the
central illocutionary act, and be done via that central action. Thirdly, although any particular illocutionary
force may be effectively conveyed in various ways, there is at least one form of utterance that (in some
languages at any rate) directly and conventionally expresses it namely, the explicit performative
(An explicit performative is one in which the utterance inscription contains an expression that makes
explicit what kind of act is being performed (Lyons, 1981: 175). An explicit performative includes a
performative verb and mainly therefore, as Thomas (1995: 47) claims, it can be seen to be a mechanism
which allows the speaker to remove any possibility of misunderstanding the force behind an utterance.)
Антитезис
1. Every sentence has a performative clause in deep or underlying structure
2. The subject of this clause is first person singular, the indirect object second person singular, and the verb
is drawn from a delimited set of performative verbs, and is conjugated in the indicative active simple
present tense (or is associated with the underlying representation thereof)
3. This clause is always the highest clause in underlying structure, or at the very least always occurs in a
determinable position in that structure
4. There is only one such clause per sentence
5. The performative clause is deletable, such deletion not changing the meaning of the sentence
6. Illocutionary force is semantic (in the truth-conditional sense) and is fully specified by the meaning of the
perfor-mative clause itself
Коллапс
For all these reasons, and others, Antithesis cannot be considered an adequate theory of illocutionary
force. It fails both on internal grounds, because it leads to semantic and syntactic incoherencies, and on
external grounds because it fails to capture the basic intuitions that led to the theory of speech acts in the
first place. The collapse of Antithesis would appear to leave Thesis unassailed, though not without its own
problems. For of course it inherits in part the problems with the evaluation of performative adverbs, and is
obliged to offer some pragmatic account of all the distributional phenomena that prompted the PH in the
first place. No such account has been worked out in detail, and in general there has been surprisingly little
recent thought on how the apparent pragmatic conditioning of syntactic facts should be accommodated
within a general linguistic theory (what ideas there have been will be considered in section 5.5; ice also the
remarks in earlier Chapters in connection with deixis (2.2), conventional implicature (3.2.3) and
presupposition (4.2)).
However, there are further reasons to doubt the adequacy of Thesis too, and there is at least one
alternative and elegant way of thinking about speech acts. Before proceeding to it, let us discuss a
pervasive phenomenon that is a serious problem for both Thesis and Antithesis as they are usually
advanced.
A major problem for both Thesis and Antithesis is constituted by the phenomena known as indirect speech
acts (or ISAs for short). The notion only makes sense if one subscribes to the notion of a literal force, i.e. to
the view that illocutionary force is built into sentence form. Let us call this the literal force hypothesis for
LFH for short). As Gazdar (1981) has pointed out, LfH will amount to subscribing to the following:
Explicit performatives have the force named by the performative verb in the matrix clause
Otherwise, the three major sentence-types in English, namely the imperative, interrogative and declarative,
have the forces traditionally associated with them, namely ordering (or requesting), questioning and stating
respectively
Two basie kinds of theory have been proposed to rescue LFH, which we may call idiom theory and
inference theory.
According to idiom theories, the indirectness in many putative cases of ISAs is really only apparent.
This suggests at least that both readings are simultaneously available and utilized, but not in the way that
they might be in a pun, Secondly, the argument that idiom theory is the only way to get the syntactic or
distributional facts right for phenomena like pre-verbal please has the embarrassment that whenever
there's a grammatical reflex of indirect force, idiom theorists must claim an idiom.
In effect, idiom theory will need to be complemented by a powerful pragmatic theory that will account for
which interpretation will be taken in which context, i.e. a theory that will bridge the gap between what is
said and what is meant (intended). But if such a theory is required anyway, then we don't need idiom
theory at all because we will in effect have need of an inference theory in any case (see below).
We are left with inference theories as the only way of maintaining LFH. The basic move here is to claim that
ISAs have the litèral force associated with the surface form of the relevant sentence by rules (i) and (il) in
(87) above.
The first such inference theory was that proposed by Gordon & Lakoff (1971, 1975). In that theory,
property (i) was met by assuming the PH; while the trigger in (ii) was provided whenever the literal force of
an utterance was blocked by the context. For property (it), some specific inference rules were offered,
conversational postu-lates, modelled on Carnap's meaning postulates (which state analytic equivalences
not captured elsewhere in a semantical system - see Allwood, Andersson & Dahl, 1977: 144), but with
additional reference to contextual factors.
Moreover this general principle, that by questioning or asserting a FC on an act one can indirectly perform
that act itself, successfully predicts across quite unrelated languages and cultures (see Brown & Levinson,
1978: 141f).
For example, imperatives are rarely used to command or request in conversational English (see Ervin-Tripp,
1976), but occur regularly in recipes and instructions, offers (Have another drink), welcomings (Come in),
wishes (Have a good time), curses and swearings (Shut up), and so on (see Bolinger, 1967).
5.6 The context-change theory of speech acts
One candidate for such a pragmatic theory of speech acts
is a view that treats speech acts as operations (in the set-theoretie sense) on context, i.e. as functions from
contexts into contexts, the context is its speech act force or potential.
On Russian and English Pragmalinguistic Requestive Strategies
Margaret Mills
Journal of Slavic Linguistics
Vol. 1, No. 1 (winter-spring 1993), pp. 92-115 (24 pages)
Leech's concern for viewing politeness from H's, rather than S's, perspective prompted his proposal of four
illocutionary classifications, which are based upon function in relation to the social dictates of the speech
act:
1) Competitive illocutionary goal competes with the social goal = ordering, asking, demanding, begging;
2) Convivial illocutionary goal coincides with the social goal = offering, inviting, greeting, thanking,
congratulating;
3) Collaborative illocutionary goal is indifferent to social goal = asserting, reporting, announcing,
4) Conflictive illocutionary goal conflicts with social goal = threatening, accusing, reprimanding.
Despite Leech's warnings about biasing the impositive to allow H the opportunity to say "No"* a very
prominent request strategy for native Russians in our study was, in fact, a variant of the following direct
imperative:
Podvezi menja domoi!
"Take me homel
Such a direct strategy not only fails to minimize cost to H, but allows H little hope of finding an out to avoid
performing A. Moreover, these blatant violations of tact provide very real pragmatic stumbling blocks for
many advanced L, speakers of Russian who strive to avoid such direct speech behavior in their native
English, especially in a request such as (10), whose performance will inconvenience H to some degree.
Thus, to arrive at the appropriate surface structures for relaying requests in these two separate speech
cultures, we must look more closely at any underlying cultural factors, along with syntactie and semantie
variables, charting the route of the request schema from S's intended illocution to H's perception in the
speech exchange. in cases where L, produces "inappropriate" surface structures for issuing the request, the
resulting mixed message of the illocutionary force can best be described as a "pragmalinguistic error, a
cultural linguistic phenomenon which will be discussed below.
4. Pragmalinguistic Failure: L, Behavior and Requestive Strafegies Our hypotheses regarding the
phenomenon of pragmalinguistic failure posit several culture-specific distinctions likely to appear in the L,
elicited data in the study:
1) more verbosity in general; particularly "pre-requests" and "grounders* , i.e., a greater propensity to
provide a rationale for making the request in the target language;
2) avoidance of the direct imperative form (impositive) in mapping the request;
3) an overreliance on English forms questioning H's ability to perform A;
4) an overreliance on typical Russian syntactic structures related to extremely polite speech
behavior/etiquette: notably, combinations comprised of negative, conditional, and interrogative particles.
Thomas (1983: 99) distinguishes pragmalinguistic failure (inappropriate linguistic form) from
"sociopragmatic failure"
(insufficient knowledge of the culture): "Pragmalinguistic failure occurs when the pragmatic force mapped
by S onto a given utterance is systematically different from the force most frequently assigned to it by
native speakers of the target language, or when speech strategies are inappropriately transferred from L, to
L. Sociopragmatic failure [a term from Leech 1983: 10] refers to the social conditions placed on language in
use. While pramalinguistic failure is basically a linguistic problem, caused by differences in the linguistic
encoding of the pragmatic force, sociopragmatic failure stems from cross-culturally different perceptions of
what constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior (1983: 99)
A visual comparison of Russian and English preferred forms drawn from our data (indicated by bold type in
the tables) reveals a contrast in both linguistic and cultural attitudes. Broadly speaking, Russian opts for the
"anchored" ends of the continuum, favoring impositives and inquiries regarding H's intention to perform A
(1-3) and hints (11-13). Although both sets of Russian data contain requests referring negatively to H's
ability (via conditional and interrogative particles) and potential inconvenience to H, native informants
deem possible pragmalinguistic errors. Before assessing these particular disjunctures which preclude direct
transference of the request from one language to the other, we will begin with a brief discussion of each
language's preferred forms and functions of their respective request strategies.
The Russian data reveal pronounced preference for conventionally indirect interrogatives which negatively
question H's intention to perform A. These include a variety of lexical variants: (Ty menja ne
podueze$'/podbrosis ' /podkinis? 'You won't take me home/ drop/toss me off?"). As shown in Table 2,
negative appeals are inappropriate in English, which questions H's intention& and abilities (Will you, can
you, could you give me a ride home?). In addition to the incredulous tone that negative inquiries produce
(Won't you, couldn't you give me a ride?!), they carry an undercurrent of reproach, as observed in the
attested sample earlier in this paper (example (9) above:
Jeff, you won't take me home today?!). This is further emphasized in classification 4, which appeals
(negatively) to H's ability to perform A.
Although these linguistic structures were not prevalent in the Russian data, they certainly serve a polite
function (Ty ne mozes"/ ty ne mog(la) by menja poduezti domoj? 'Can't you/couldn't you give me a ride
home?'). In English, negative reference to H's inability to perform A only heightens the degree of surprise
and disapproval: You can't give me a ride home today?! [Why not? What's the problem?]
Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints, and Apologies
Anna Trosborg
January 1995
8.1 The speech act request
A request is an illocutionary act whereby a speaker (requester) conveys to a hearer (requestee) that he/she
wants the requestee to perform an act which is for the benefit of the speaker. The act may be a request for
non-verbal goods and services, i.e. a request for an object, an action or some kind of service, etc., or it can
be a request for verbal goods and services, i.e. a request for information.
The desired act is to take place post-utterance, either in the immediate future ("requests-now") or at some
later stage ("requests-then") (cf. Edmondson-House 1981: 99). Thus the speech act of a request can be
characterized as pre-event, in contrast to, for example, complaints, which are post-event, in that they
concern an offensive action which took place prior to the verbal act of complaining.
8.1.1 The request as an impositive act
When the requester wants somebody to do him/her a favour, this is generally at the cost of the requestee.
The requester imposes on the requestee in some way when demanding goods or services. Impositive
speech acts have been defined as follows by Haverkate:
Impositive speech acts are described as speech acts performed by the speaker to influence the intentional
behaviour of the hearer in order to get the latter to perform, primarily for the benefit of the speaker, the
action directly specified or indirectly suggested by the proposition. (Haverkate 1984: 107)
The degree with which the requester intrudes on the requestee, called degree of imposition, may vary from
small favours to demanding acts.
8.1.2 The request as a face-threatening act
As an impositive act, the request is per definition a face-threatening act (FTA) (see 1.5.3). The speaker who
makes a request attempts to exercise power or direct control over the intentional behaviour of the hearer,
and in doing so threatens the requestee's negative face (his/her want to be unim-peded) by indicating that
he/she does not intend to refrain from impeding the requestee's freedom of action. The requester also
runs the risk of losing face him/herself, as the requestee may choose to refuse to comply with his/her
wishes.
8.1.3 The request as distinguished from other impositive speech acts
In a request, the act to be performed is solely in the interest of the speaker and, normally, at the cost of the
hearer. The features "benefit to speaker" "cost to hearer" are, in principle, decisive when distinguishing
requests from other acts in which the speaker tries to exert his/her influence over the hearer.
In contrast, a suggestion is defined as being beneficial to both speaker and hearer, and if the act to be
performed is exclusively for the benefit of the hearer, it is an instance of giving advice or instruction, or a
warning.
The latter act is potentially imposed on the hearer to prevent him/her from a state of affairs which is clearly
contrary to his/her interests.
In a threat, the speaker indicates to the hearer that he/she (or someone else) will instigate sanctions
against the hearer unless he/she complies with the speaker's wishes. There is no sharp dividing line
between the illocutionary acts in question. What is really a request may be presented as a suggestion or
even as a piece of advice, a warning or a threat. Thus a desire on the part of the speaker to have the grass
cut may take the following forms:
1) Would you mind cutting the grass. (request)
2)Wouldn't it be an idea to cut the grass. (suggestion)
3)I think you'd better cut the grass (before it gets too long). (advice)
4) If you don't cut the grass it'll get too long. (warning)
5) If you don't cut the grass you won't get your pocket money. (threat)
By "pretending" that the act specified by the proposition is for the "common good" (or in the interest of the
hearer) the speaker may try to diminish the degree of imposition. He/she can use the strategic device of
presenting his/her own interest as being in the interest of both parties (or for the benefit of the hearer).
Conversely, a speaker may present his/her advice, warning, etc., as a re-quest, e.g.
(6) You must take a holiday/go and see a doctor. etc.
thus presenting as his/her own concern what is really for the benefit of the hearer. See also Edmondson House (1981: 124-125).
In the present study, the speech act request is taken to comprise acts with the illocutionary point of
"getting somebody to do something" which is "primarily to the benefit of the speaker". These acts may
range in illocu-tionary force from ordering to begging.
8.2 Assignment of illocutionary force
The essential condition that characterizes a request in a communication situation is that the utterance
addressed by the speaker to the hearer "counts as an attempt to get H to do A" (Searle 1969: 66).
There are several ways in which a locution can be assigned the illocu-tionary force of a request.
8.2.1 Mood
The theory of speech acts is based on the assumption that an utterance is composed of a proposition and a
modality. Traditional grammatical theory associates the imperative mood with the force of a directive; the
imperative is the canonical grammatical form for getting somebody to do something, e.g. Go ahead and do
it, or just Do it. Thus the utterance Open the door will count as an attempt on the part of the speaker to
make the hearer perform the desired act of opening the door. In imperatives, the grammatical subject (2nd
person pronoun you) may be deleted from the surface structure, but when interpreting these structures
the addressee is assigned the role of agent of the desired action.
However, as is well-known, mood is not the only way of deriving the il-locutionary force of an utterance.
Mood and speech act modality is to some extent independent. An imperative structure does not
necessarily convey the force of a request. Consider the following examples in which the speaker has no
apparent intention of getting the hearer to do something for him/her:82
7) Steer not after every mariner's direction.
8) Give a thief enough rope and he'll hang himself.
(7) expresses a piece of advice, while in (8), the speaker puts forward a generalizing statement.
Furthermore, the imperative is the mood frequently chosen when giving instructions.
Conversely, a request is often realized by means of declarative and interrogative structures. Structures (9)
and (10) are typical examples of requests employing a declarative and an interrogative structure,
respectively:
9) I would like X.
10) Could I have X.
8.2.2
Performative verbs
The speaker can convey a request simply by using a performative verb which explicitly signals the
illocutionary force, e.g. I request/order/de-mand that you open the window. The verb in question marks
the utterance as a request.
8.2.3
"Felicity conditions"
According to Searle (1969), the force of an utterance derives from a set of necessary and sufficient
conditions relating to the particular act. These conditions relate, on the one hand, to the beliefs and
attitudes of speaker and hearer, and, on the other, to their mutual understanding of the use of linguistic
devices for communication: The conditions which underlie a sincere request are specified as follows (Searle
1969: 66):
Participant roles: S(peaker), H(earer) propositional content (future act of H): A
(a)
S wants H to do A.
(b) S assumes H can do A.
(c) S assumes H is willing to do A.
(d) S assumes H will not do A in the absence of the request.
Reference to these conditions regularly convey the illocutionary force of a request, which has given rise to a
theory of "indirect requests". Given the sincerity conditions of a request, a speaker may convey a request
by questioning one of the hearer-based conditions, or by asserting one of the speaker-based conditions (cf.
Gordon -Lakoff 1971).
The theory of indirect requests, proposed by Gordon -Lakoff in 1971, suggests that people often use
indirect language when making requests. According to this theory, people use indirect language because it
allows them to make a request without appearing too demanding or aggressive.
Searle (1969: 66) points to the relative status of speaker and hearer as being a decisive condition for the
felicitous performance of a request. Lack of authority is likely to invalidate orders, and if the speaker asked
the hearer to perform an act which is clearly his/her own responsibility, the speech act is likely to be
defective. In this connection, Labov-Fanshel (1977: 78) have attempted to build social felicity conditions
into speech act theory. They make the claim that the requester must believe that the requestee is under
obligation to carry out the desired act, and that the requester has the right to tell him/her to do so. These
conditions are explicated in requests employing modal verbs like must, ought to, have to, etc. See also Reiss
(1985).
Together with imperative and performative utterances, utterances questioning/asserting felicity conditions
comprise many of, though not all, the ways in which a request can be formulated.
8.6.3
Imperatives - Str. 8
The imperative is the grammatical form directly signalling that the utterance is an order. In its unmodified
form it is very authoritative. Orders issued by authority figures must be obeyed. If the speaker has power
over the hearer, the latter is obliged to carry out the order, e.g. orders from parent to child, from teacher
to pupil, from officer to soldier, from employer to em-ployee, etc., e.g.
(86) Leave the place at once.
(87) Get out of here.
Imperatives can be softened by adding tags and/or the marker please:
(88) Open the door, please.
(89) Leave it to me, will you.
Elliptical phrases, i.e. phrases in which only the desired object is men-tioned, may be used in situations
where objects are for sale, on distribution, etc.*
(90) Two coffees, please.
(91) A Scotch, please.
8.7
Summary and discussion
The request strategies outlined above and summarized in Table 19 will serve as an instrument for
classification of the data. Realizations of the eight major levels of directness are formulated with regard to
a situation in which the speaker asks to borrow the hearer's car and presented at levels of increasing
directness (Str. 1 being the most indirect, Str. 8 the most di-rect).%
The presented scale of directness levels acknowledges the request as a face-threatening act demanding
face-work for its polite realization. In Brown-Levinson's terms (1978, 1987), it ranges from "on-record"
strate-gies, which are pragmatically transparent ways of performing the act, to "off-record" strategies,
which are pragmatically opaque ways of doing it.
If a speaker wants to carry out an act with maximum efficiency, he/she can perform the act "baldly on
record", i.e. without face redress, as in direct requests. The speaker also has the option of going "on
record", but at the same time employing face redress using positive or negative politeness strategies.
Face redress pertaining to the hearer's negative face (i.e. negative polite-ness) providing redress to hearer's
want to be unimpeded involves indications from the speaker that he/she does not presume/assume the
hearer's co-operation, that he/she does not coerce the hearer, and that he/she communicates his/her
intention not to impinge on the hearer (Brown -Levinson 1987: 131). Negative politeness is particularly
relevant in the realization of conventionallv indirect reanests. as hedges on illocutionarv force and
noconventionally indirect requests, as hedges on illocutionary force, and polite pessimism about the
success of a request.
Finally, the speaker can choose to go "off record" and not specify his/her intention in any direct way. This
leaves him/her the possibility of formulating a request so that he/she can avoid taking responsibility for the
act. Off-record strategies add an additional element of avoidance and as such they are "a natural extension
of negative politeness". In going "off record" the speaker chooses *a solution half-way between doing the
FTA (= face-threatening act) on record and not doing it at all" (Brown - Levinson 1987:20).
Coupled with an increase in directness of the request, the requester's anticipation of compliance increases.
Consequently, the strategies also differ with regard to the ease with which a request can be refused.
At the lowest level of directness (Str. 1 hints), the speaker's impositive intent is not made explicit and can
easily be overlooked by a non-compliant listener. If the hint is formulated as a statement, the potential
requestee need not respond at all, although it is always polite to signal uptaking. In the case of an
interrogative, the hearer who does not want to comply with the impositive intention is often offered the
possibility of interpreting the locution as a request for information.
This means that no excuse is needed if the hearer does not want to comply. Conversational continuity can
be maintained without any recognition that interpersonal failure has ever occurred (cf. Ervin-Tripp 1976:
50). Thus hints are normally not face-threatening to any of the two parties, and for that reason, they are
useful in situations in which non-compliance is likely, or if the requester wants to be particularly careful and
modest.
Requests alluding to hearer-based preparatory conditions (Str. 2) are transparent requests and an excuse
for non-compliance is generally needed.
However, by questioning the hearer's ability/willingness, etc. to perform, the requester has already shown
that he/she does not take compliance for granted. The non-compliant listener is allowed the option of
politely refusing by stating that the condition in question, or some other condition, is not fulfilled.
If the requester is willing to comply, requests formulated with reference to hearer-based preparatory
conditions allow the requestee to respond as if acting voluntarily (cf. Ervin-Tripp 1976: 51). He/she is
offered the opportunity of voicing his/her willingness, etc. (e.g. Yes, Sure, Okay, etc.). In that way, the
requestee is engaged in conversational exchange and appears to make a voluntary commitment, rather
than to be merely obeying orders.
Modificational patterns
10.2.2 Tense
The use of the past tense as a downgrading device was very frequent in NS-E, whereas the use of the
present tense was the exception, rather than the norm. Therefore, interest centres on the use of the latter.
NS-E used the present tense with a frequency of 0.205, either in the verb in the request, or in the verb in a
clause in which the request was embedded (see Table 27). Learners used the present tense more often
than NS-E. For Group I learners the observed frequency was 0.318, for Group II it was 0.409, and for Group
III 0.377, which means that the two latter groups made use of the present tense almost twice as often as
NS-E, thus disregarding the mitigating effect involved in the choice of past tenses.
10.2.3 Negation
Negation did not occur frequently in requests performed in English. It was not used at all by Group I
learners, and it occurred only with a frequency of 0.068 in Group Il, which is similar to the performance of
NS-E (0.072). For Group III, occurrence of negation was restricted to 0.018.
However, negation was used relatively frequently in requests performed in Danish (0.262).
In English, negation as request modification is typically combined with an interrogative structure (see, e.g.
Faerch-Kasper 1989: 27), whereas in Danish it occurs in declarative sentences as well, e.g.
10.2.8 The use of modals
The distribution of modal auxiliaries is closely related to the selected directness level. Apart from the
modals which are an immediate consequence of the selected request strategy (can/could,will/would,
may/might (in the permission sense), need, shall/should, must, have to) only a few instances with the
modal might were observed, e.g.
Ext. 41 (Situation: Maths paper (c))
R: Well, you have done your math, you know, what I thought, I thought you might let me, you know, copy
them.
Ext. 42
RL: I wanted to ask you if you might be able to help me.
Use of the modal verb shall to issue orders was not observed in the data.
The authoritative meaning of mandatory shall greatly limits the applicability of this verb in request
situations.104 The modals should and ought to were observed in utterances with the illocutionary force of
giving advice.
The learners' use of modals which are crucial to the realization of conventionally indirect requests because
they refer to the topicalized preparatory conditions has been discussed in relation to the obtained
performance on these strategies (9.4-9.6.1).
10.3 Lexical/phrasal downgraders
When the corpus was analysed for lexical/phrasal downgraders as internal request modifiers, all three
groups of learners fell short in their use of these devices in comparison with NS-E and NS-D.
Table 28 presents the frequency of occurrence for the observed categories of lexical/phrasal downgraders
for the five groups under study.
NS-E favoured the use of downtoners, hesitators, and interpersonal mark-ers, which were used with a
frequency of 0.349, 0.253, and 0.241, respec-tively. Understating was used with a frequency of 0.133, while
for hedging the frequency was somewhat lower (0.072). NS-E avoided the use of po10.3.1 The use of politeness markers
As mentioned, politeness markers were not obtained in the performances of NS-E and NS-D, and only a few
instances were observed in the learner data.
The lack of occurrence of the politeness marker please seemed a little surprising considering the frequency
with which this marker is mentioned in connection with descriptions of requests in exemplifications of this
speech act, in teaching material, etc. However, when the function of please and its typical usage are
considered, the finding in question is in agreement with the situational constraints on that marker.
The marker please has a double function: on the one hand, it signals politeness and thus serves as a
mitigating device; on the other, it functions as an illocutionary force indicator clearly signalling the
requestive force of the locution. The marker does not hedge the request, or in any way blur the illocutionary point (House- Kasper 1987).
In additon, I should like to draw attention to the co-occurrence restrictions the marker please seems to
impose. The occurrence of this marker does not easily allow the inclusion of other markers whose function
is to hedge the impositive intent of the utterance. Consider the following hedged request formulated by
reference to a preparatory condition:
10.4 Upgraders
Upgraders were not observed frequently in connection with requests. For NS-E they were used with a
frequency of 0.15 per request strategy, and for the learner groups the obtained frequencies were even
lower. The reason for the low frequency of the occurrence of upgraders as internal modifiers in request
strategies is that when an upgrader is used to modify the illocutionary force of a request, it tends to
increase the impositive force, rather than to decrease it, e.g.
Ext. 51 (Situation: Maths paper (c))
RL: So you really have to help me.
(Group III)
Ext. 52 (Situation: Borrowing records (c))
RL: I'd figured out if you could lend us some, hm.
(Group II)
In Ext. 51, the upgrader really is inserted to strengthen the requestee's obligation. The embedding clause
I'd figured out (in Ext. 52) signals that RL anticipates NS to comply with the request.
In contrast, compare Ext. 53 in which a commitment downgrader successfully downtones the force of a
request, e.g.
The preference for using hints in conversations with authority figures and strangers, rather than in
conversations with friends, is not surprising when viewed in terms of directness level, hints being the least
intrusive request strategy. If the requester is unwilling to comply with the requester's implied wish, a
dispreferred response 107 in the form of a refusal need not occur, and the conversation can proceed
smoothly without any linguistic signs of dis-cord.
Hints are therefore particularly useful in situations where there is a great risk of non-compliance, and
where great tact is needed when interacting with a person of superior social standing, or a stranger with
whom the requester may find it very difficult to formulate his/her impositive intention explicitly.
When considering the number of hints in relation to the social role constellations set up in the present
project, it is important to consider the nature of the hints obtained. The hints occurred in situations in
which the requested service, etc. was felt to be special and carry a high degree of im-position; consequently
the requester felt reluctant to be explicit about his/her request.
In addition to the above mentioned function, hints are also frequently used in families and communal
groups. As pointed out by Ervin-Tripp (1976: 43), hints serve multiple functions, such as teasing, joking,
alluding to shared knowledge; they serve solidarity enhancement, as in-group jokes do, etc., and
consequently, they appear frequently in high solidarity networks of communication such as families and
compatible living groups where personal relationships resting on shared knowledge about norms, be-liefs,
habits, etc. are central.
For these reasons, hints may be difficult to interpret, if the receiver does not possess this knowledge. Hints
resting on this kind of shared information were not encouraged in the role descriptions; 108 hence the low
occurrence of hints in interaction in which the situation was specified as [- social dis-
Victor Ho
Evaluating while justifying intercultural requests
Appraisal Theory concerns, among others, the ways speakers or writers share their emotions and tastes,
judge people’s behavior, advance their value position, align or disalign themselves with such position, and
the actual or potential respondents (Martin & White 2005: 1). It regionalizes appraisal, or the language of
evaluation, into attitude, engagement, and graduation. Attitude can be divided into effect, judgment, and
appreciation, which deal respectively with people’s emotions/feelings (un/happiness, in/security,
dis/satisfaction), judgment of people’s behavior (normality, capacity, tenacity, veracity, propriety), and
evaluation of semiotic and natural phenomena (reaction, composition, valuation). Examples (1) to (3) below
show how affect can be expressed lexicogrammatically:
(1) [affect-happiness/unhappiness]
The head of the department felt happy/sad upon seeing the amount of revenue his department generated
in the first quarter of the year.
(2) [affect-security/insecurity]
The staff were confident/worried about their performance appraisal, which would have a consequential
effect on their annual salary increment.
(3) [affect-satisfaction/dissatisfaction]
The public was impressed/disappointed with the performance of the newly elected government.
A close examination of the lexicogrammar of the grounders for the intercultural requests made by the CP
and NCP shows that members of both groups evaluated with all the categories identified (except that three
such categories were only used by either the CP or NCP – engagement-proclaim, engagement-attribute,
and graduation-focus). The following extracts show the use of each category of evaluative language by
either the CP or the NCP in justifying their requests. For confidentiality reason, all the names (including
those of people, activities, and places) used in the extracts are not real. However, the highest possible
authenticity was obtained by retaining all the linguistic and discursive features of the request email
discourse. For clarity reason, the lexicogrammatical resources giving expressions to attitude, engagement,
and graduation in the justification are highlighted in bold, and the requests are underlined. Notes
explaining why the highlighted lexicogrammatical items served the evaluative function will follow each of
the extracts.
Attitude (affect, judgment, and appreciation):
(1) [affect] I hope that the celebrations will not cause any inconvenience to your
planned lesson, please let me know if you foresee any problems.
[NCP, email 12]
The verb “hope” expresses the sender’s desire for something – the absence of
inconvenience in this case – and thus falls within the affect-happiness-affection
category. The word “inconvenience” conveys a sense of dissatisfaction and thus
falls within the affect-dissatisfaction-displeasure category
Attitude (affect, judgment, and appreciation):
(1) [affect] I hope that the celebrations will not cause any inconvenience to your
planned lesson, please let me know if you foresee any problems.
[NCP, email 12]
The verb “hope” expresses the sender’s desire for something – the absence of
inconvenience in this case – and thus falls within the affect-happiness-affection
category. The word “inconvenience” conveys a sense of dissatisfaction and thus
falls within the affect-dissatisfaction-displeasure category
Conventionalization: A new agenda for im/politeness research
Marina Terkourafi*
At this point, it is paramount to clarify what I mean by ‘‘conventionalization.’’ I consider an expression to be
conventionalized for some use relative to a context for a speaker if it is used frequently enough in that
context to achieve a particular illocutionary goal to that speaker’s experience. This makes
conventionalization a three-way relationship between an expression, a context, and a speaker. I comment
separately on each of these below.
By ‘‘expression’’ I mean a form of words, including their prosodic contour, that tend to be used together to
achieve a particular illocutionary goal. That is, an expression is a specific form/function combination with
certain parts being fixed and others being open variables, akin to constructions in Construction Grammar
(Goldberg, 2006). Examples include the ubiquitous ‘Can you VP?’ for requests, but also ‘NP is/looks really
ADJ’ for compliments in AmE, and ‘exi NP/exete NP?’ for requests in some transactional contexts in Cypriot
Greek.
‘‘Context’’ refers to the situational context which, by a process of abstraction over real-world contexts,
comes to be stored in memory as a combination of extra-linguistic features that include, but are not limited
to, the age, gender, and social class of the interlocutors, the relationship between them, and the setting of
the exchange -- what Terkourafi (2009) calls a ‘‘minimal context.’’ The precise list of extra-linguistic features
as well as their relative weights can vary: ethnicity may be important for some expressions but not others.
What matters is that certain social features of the situation that are often preemptively fixed from sensory
data are recorded together for the purposes of classification and easy retrieval as a whole later on (cf.
Minsky, 1975). The combination of an expression with a minimal context thus understood is what I call a
‘‘frame’’ (Terkourafi, 2001, 2009, 2012).
The final parameter in the above definition is the speaker. Because conventionalization is a matter of one’s
experience, the degree to which an expression is conventionalized relative to a context can vary for
different speakers, as well as for the same speaker over time. An expression can be onventionalized for two
people, for members of a group (e.g., a sports team), for a social category (e.g., men), or for an entire
language variety/culture (e.g., American English).
Cross-Cultural Variation of Politeness Orientation & Speech Act Perception
Nisreen Al-khawaldeh, Vladimir Zegarac
Hymes (1971) concludes that expressing thanks in most English speaking cultures seldom involves
establishing social reciprocity or indebtedness though it is common in all daily situations. In Hinkel's (1994)
view, thanking in the English culture is the fulfilment of a social expectation, as politeness in this culture is
not regulated or controlled by other features of the situation, such as indebtedness, gender, social status or
age (Hymes, 1971). Intachakra (2004) found that Thai and English cultures vary in the accessibility of
thanking strategies and that “Thais may not utter thanks as effusively as the British” (p.58) due to their
preference for expressing gratitude through their actions, rather than signalling it verbally.
An important reason for carrying out the present study of the speech act of thanking is the importance of
this speech act for establishing and maintaining social bonds (Intachakra, 2004). The sensitivity of rapport
management to appropriate thanking has been recognized in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) approach to
linguistic politeness where thanking is identified as a typical facethreatening act. These authors argue that
people who engage in communication usually collaborate to maintain each other's face. Thus, speakers
should be aware of when and how to thank in their culture and other target cultures in order to maintain
each other's face as well as their own. This suggests that thanking can be considered both as based on
some universal features of human communication and cognition, and as a social norm/convention. These
assumptions are not incompatible. They show that the ways thanking is institutionalized in different
cultures (the culture-specific social norms of thanking) should be explained as resulting from the interplay
between some universal features of social interaction and some culture-specific factors (values, attitudes).
In view of this, and the fact that thanking serves a societal function, people should not only know the
semantic formulae essential for expressing gratitude, but they should also understand and learn the
culture-specific rules and norms for thanking in the target language, including those about the appropriate
times and ways to use such formulae (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984).
An important reason for carrying out the present study of the speech act of thanking is the importance of
this speech act for establishing and maintaining social bonds (Intachakra, 2004). The sensitivity of rapport
management to appropriate thanking has been recognized in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) approach to
linguistic politeness where thanking is identified as a typical facethreatening act. These authors argue that
people who engage in communication usually collaborate to maintain each other's face. Thus, speakers
should be aware of when and how to thank in their culture and other target cultures in order to maintain
each other's face as well as their own. This suggests that thanking can be considered both as based on
some universal features of human communication and cognition, and as a social norm/convention. These
assumptions are not incompatible. They show that the ways thanking is institutionalized in different
cultures (the culture-specific social norms of thanking) should be explained as resulting from the interplay
between some universal features of social interaction and some culture-specific factors (values, attitudes).
In view of this, and the fact that thanking serves a societal function, people should not only know the
semantic formulae essential for expressing gratitude, but they should also understand and learn the
culture-specific rules and norms for thanking in the target language, including those about the appropriate
times and ways to use such formulae (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984).
In particular, all English participants highlighted the idea that expressing thanks is a sign of politeness and a
conventional social norm and cultural value. They pointed out that thanking is a matter of common ecency
and manners taught at home and school from an early age. They also pointed out that breaking this
convention is a sign of rudeness and indicates ungratefulness and underappreciation of the favour,
impoliteness and lack of basic manners, potentially leading to bad feelings, anger, and disappointment, as it
breaks the rule: “Deal with others as you want them to deal with you”.
Expressing gratitude is very common among the English family’s members, friends and people in service
encounters. All of them would thank regardless of the thankee’s occupation or familiarity with the thanker.
However, eighteen English participants said that they would go into detail when thanking a familiar person,
as opposed to a stranger, unless there is a high degree of imposition, in which case they would try to repay
the stranger for his or her kindness in some way, most likely by offering a small sum of money.
The present study also supports the widely held perception that thanking is a common feature of English
society: between friends, family members, and interactants in various service encounters. This could be
attributed to respect for personal autonomy, and the consequent need to acknowledge indebtedness for
relatively small favours between close friends or family members.
MARGARET H. MILLS
CONVENTIONALIZED POLITENESS IN RUSSIAN REQUESTS: A PRAGMATIC
VIEW OF INDIRECTNESS
a. Sentences concerning S's wish or want that H do A.
b. Sentences concerning H's ability to do A.
c. Sentences concerning H's desire or willingness to do A.
d. Sentences concerning H doing A.
The following confirms that CR possesses the means to express all four categories of indirect requests
noted above; what remains is to determine what particular combinations of politeness and
syntactic markers transform certain schema into conventionalized "norms" of polite speech:
Я бы хотел, чтобы вы вернули мою книгу.
I would like you to return my book, please.
[S's wish/want for H to perform A]
Вы не можете вернуть мою книгу?
Could you|can you please return my book?
[S's concern about H's ability to perform A]
Вам не трудно вернуть мою книгу?
Would it be convenient for you to return my book?
[S's concern about H's willingness/desire to perform A]
Вы не вернете мою книгу?
Will you not return/be returning my book?
[S/s concern about H doing/intending to perform A]
One need only glance at a handbook of Russian speech etiquette to verify that questioning H's ability to
perform an action has indeed been conventionalized in spoken Russian as an indirect request.
From the present examination of this CR continuum, one can conclude that the features of word order,
aspect and intonation interact to assist H in his perception of the utterance as an informatio
Беляева
В соответстви с критериями, приведенным в п. 1.1, ДР можн характеризоват ка двусторонни
инициатив ны универсальны (первичный) РАТ Эт означает, чт
ДР вотречаетс в обычных, неинституализированны ситуа ция общени в любо национально-культурно
общности.
ДР знаменуе начал речево интеракци в диалогичес ко единстве, дл успешно реализаци которо
требуетс ответна реакци с сторон адресата. Ожидаема реак ци адресат состои в том, чтоб о выполни
каузируе мо действи либ способствова ег выполнени (Храково кий, Володин, 1986, с. 12). Есл адреса
следуе принцип кооперации, т. е. веде себ в соответстви с ожиданиям говорящег и выполняе
действие, интеракци имее мини мальну протяженность: ДР
адреса веде себ «некооперативно» и отказываетс вы полнит каузируемо действие, т интеракци може
про текат п дву возможны направлениям: а) говорящи принимае отка и интеракци заканчивается, б)
говорящи принимае отказ и настаивае н выполнени желаемог действия.
С друго стороны, ДР являетс отражение побу дительно ситуации, котора включае следующи компо
ненты: источни побуждени (ил прескрипто - терми . А. Бирюлина, 1987, с. 17), потенциально действи
ил состояние, исполнител потенциальног действи и ак по буждения
Действительно, решени ореализаци потенциальног действи принимаетс те уча стнико
коммуникации, которы занимает приоритетную по зицию
ДР можн выделит тр апекта: семантический, синтаксически и прагматический.
Семантически аспек ДР составляе но содержани высказывания, называюще характеризую ще
потенциально действие, которо предстои совершит исполнителю. Будуще действи можн
характеризоват по дву параметрам: а) с точк зрения его содержания: действие физическое, речевое,
ментальное, социально и т. п., с точк зрени ег характера: трудно /легкое, срочное/ несрочное,
желательно / нежелательное, деликатно / обыч
Синтаксически аспек ДР составляе формальна сторон выражени коммуникативно интенции. Пла
выра жени Р можн характеризоват а) п лини средст вы ражения, т. е, с точк зрени того, како
лингвистически стату структурны варианто выражени директивно ил локутивно цели, б) п лини
способ выражени директивно иллокуции, т. е. с точк зрени того, являютс л данны средств прямым ил
косвенными, эксплицитным ил имплицитными, конвенциональным ил неконвенциона ЛЬНЫМИ.
Прагматически аспек ДР включае целый ряд факторов экстралингвистического, точнее,
социолингвистическо характера:
) распределени первичны и вторичны коммуник тивны роле межд участникам РА. Кажды участни P
може быт одновременн носителе дву ил тре комм никативны ролей. Например, в ДР предложени
говор щи являетс прескрипторо и исполнителе потенциал ног действия;
) распределени социальны роле межд коммуника тами;
) характе межличностны отношений, которы опред ляетс в зависимост о степен социальнопсихологическо дистанци межд коммуникантами;
) отношени коммуниканто к потенциальном дейс вию. Действи може быт охарактеризован п дву пар
метрам: бенефактивности, т. е. соответстви интереса одн и коммуникантов, и желательности. Одн и т
ж дейс ви може быт одновременн бенефактивны и желател ны с точк зрени одног и коммуниканто
(например, ДР просьбы) ил бенефактивным, н нежелательны (
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:31]
ДР совета), наконец, действи може быт желательны т дл одног и коммуниканто и нежелательны дл
другог (например, в ДР мольбы, запрещения).
нали описанны в лингвистическо литератур конк ретны разновидносте директивны высказывани и
ситуа ци позволи выделит тр основны тип директивов:
1) прескриптивных, т. е. предписывающи действи адресата;
2) реквестивных, т. е. побуждающи к действию, соверша мом в интереса говорящего, и 3)
суггестивных, т. е. в ражающи совет. Дл описани различи межд этим т пам ДР оказалос необходимы и
достаточны испол зоват тр прагматически признака: а) облигаторност выполнени действи дл
адресата, б) бенефактивност де стви дл одног и коммуникантов, в) приоритетност п ложени
говорящег ил адресата.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:11]
=
Прескриптивные
ДРА.
Прескринтивы характеризуются облигаторностью выполнения действия для адре-сата, приоритетностью позиции
говорящего.
Признак бенефактивности действия
B
данном
ТИПЕ
ДРА нерелевантен.
Исполнителем каузируемого действия
является адресат.
Источником побуждения может выступать как отдельное ли-цо, занимающее определенную
социальную позицию (позиЦИЮ авторитета), так и общественный институт.
Адресат
находится в неприоритетной позиции и не обладает правом решать вопрос о
выполнении/невыполнении действия, более
Того,
невыполнение действия наказуемо, влечет санкции
(Morris. 1960, p. 202).
Существуют несколько видов прескриптивных РА: приказ, распоряжение, разрешение, запрещение, инструкция, предписание, заказ.
1.1. В РА приказа служебная позиция говорящего-
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:12]
дает ему право на побуждение адресата к действию*. Не-
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:12]
выполнение приказа наказуемо, при этом отношение адресата к каузируемому действию для
говорящего нерелевантно.
качестве негативной прещение. Это превентивный РА,
формы приказа выступает з абазирующийся на пресуппозиции наличия у адресата желания совершить некото-рое действие, которое является
нежелательным для говоряЗдесь
щего 12.7000 бенитость
налицо дисгармония отношений к действию.
собственно
стоит в том, что каузируемое
побуждений
CO
целе
действие рационально,
сообразно в данной ситуации, поэтому собственно побужде
нию нередко сопутствует экспликация причин, заставляю
щих говорящего предпринимать попытку каузировать дейст
вия адресата, или изложение следствий каузируемого дей
ЯТ3. Речевым ахтом р а 3 р е п е н ж я говорящий санкиио
нирует действие, же
исходя из пресуппозиции, что адресат
лает его совершить.
не
Таким образом, желание адресата
вступает в конфликт с намерениями говорящего.
• 14.Инструкция
представляет собой
прескриптивов, в которых
особый вид
приоритетность позипии
говоря
щего основана на наличии у него определенной области. Инструкция
знаний
B
базируется на прагматической
пресуп
позиции о том, этих
что адресат заинтересован в получении
знаний. Цель инструкции указаниями
снабдить адресата
о ходе желае
выполнения действий, способных привести к
мому для него приступает к осуществлению
результату, всякий раз, когда он определенной деятельности.
Обязатель ность выполнения инструкции определяется соображениями целесообразности, ибо
невыполнение инструкции может при вести к неудовлетворительным результатам, T. e.
адресат будет косвенно наказан.
J15.
• Предписание является вариантом РА инструк
ции, источником побуждения в котором служат какая-либо
инстанция, законодательный орган или социальный институт.
Цель таких инструкций-предписаний в том, чтобы регулиро
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:13]
вать нормы поведения лиц, принадлежащих к определенной
социальной или служебной категории.
приняв
Любое лицо,
на себя
Или
определенную позиционную (ученик, студент)
ситуационную роль ( пассажир, клиент), обязан следовать
нормам, предписанным в деонтических
Несоб
инструкциях.
людение норм наказуемо.
17/168
выделяется в отдельный вид
прескриптив-ного РА на том связано с конвенциональными
основании, что его осуществление
ситуациями общения
бар,
- ресторан,
магазин, касса, бюро обслуживания
(Дорошенко,
1985).
Приоритетную позицию занимает говорящий, что обуслов
лено его ситуационной ролью клиента, чьи запросы должен удовлетворять адресат.
Адресат расценивает
каузируемое
действие как облигаторное, ибо оно входит в круг его слу жебных обязанностей.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:13]
17. Требование представляет собой вид
A
прескриптива, основанный на прагматической нежела
пресуппозиции
ния адресата одних
выполнить каузируемое действие. В
случаях это нежелание обусловлено психологическим состоЯ
нием адресата, в других
непризнанием
приоритетности
положения говорящего. Говорящий может присваивать при
оритет, действуя с «позиции силы» либо в ситуации особого напряжения, распо
когда он берет на себя ответственность
ряжаться действиями других людей время
(например, во
пожара, кораблекрушения, наводнения и т. п.).
П. Рек вест и в ы. В реквестивных ДРА искомое для говорящего действие, совершить которое он
побуждает адре-сата, не подлежит обязательному выполнению. Позиция говорящего в этом классе
ДРА неприоритетная по сравнению с позицией адресата. Каузируемое действие бенефактивно для
говорящего или (в случае приглашения) для говорящего и для адресата. Исполнителем действия
является адре-сат. Он же выступает как ответственный за принятие реше-НИЯ.
К реквестивным ДРА относятся: просьба, мольба и приглашение.
U.1.
Просьбу можно рассматривать как ядерный РА
в классе реквестивов, поскольку остальные виды реквестив ных ДРА имеют особенности в
реализации признаков.
Семантическим вариантом
прагматических
просьбы является
запрос разрешении.
Искомое для говорящего дей
ствие адресата - дать полномочия говорящему для совер шения некоторого действия.
прос о разрешении
А. Дорошенко определяет за
как «вынужденную просьбу» (Дорошен
КО,
1985, с. 24), так как действия говорящего по тем
или
иным причинам оказываются в сфере ведения другого лица,
T. е. адресата.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:13]
П.2. Мольба представляет собой вариант РА
Отличительным
0
пЯ
признаком мольбы является пресуппоu6
4
18/1
зиция нежелания адресата совершить действие, к которому побуждает высказывание. Другой
прагматической пресуппо-зицией данного РА служит наличие сильного мотива у гово-рящего,
который заставляет его пытаться преодолеть сопро-тивление адресата, используя различные тактики
настаива-ниЯ.
П.3. Приглашение совмещает признаки реквести-вов и суггестивов по линии бенефактивности
действия: действие одновременно желаемо для говорящего и приятно или полезно для адресата. В
речевом акте приглашения суще-ствен параметр социального пространства. Говорящий
заинтересован в прибытии адресата в определенное место.
ПП. Суггестивы представляют собой такой тип ди-рективов, в которых приоритетную позицию
занимает гово-рящий, на основе своего житейского опыта или знания положения дел в
определенной ситуации, считающий себя вправе каузировать действия адресата. По мнению
говорящего, каузируемое действие бенефактивно для адресата, хотя выполнение его не является
облигаторным и адресат сам принимает решение о его выполнении или невыполнении. Суггес-тивы
могут быть бенефактивны и для обоих участников коммуникативного акта (в случае предложения
совместного действия). Исполнителями действия являются адресат или адресат и говорящий, однако
ответственным за принятие решения всегда является адресат. К суггестивам относятся: совет,
предложение и предупреждение.
-1111. ComeT
можно рассматривать как ядерный
ВИД суггестивов.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:14]
1112. редложение представляет сооои побужде
ние к совместному или
действию говорящего и единичного
группового адресата.
Совершая ДРА предложения,
говоря
щий не только каузирует действия других, но и обрекает
себя на определенное действие.
Отсюда следует, что
пред
ложение является гибридным речевым актом, совмещающим
признаки директива и комиссива.
Вариантом
предложения
является предложение собственных услуг, в
ЭТОМ
случае исполнителем действия будет сам говорящий.
Ш.3.
Предупреждение* является косвенным
По-
* А. Дорошенко выделяет предупреждения в отдельный тип ДРА наряду с прескриптивными,
побудительными и реквестивными ДРА (До-рошенко,
1985). Нам представляется, что по ключевым прагматическим
признакам (необлигаторность действия для адресата, приоритетность позиции говорящего)
предупреждение относится к классу суггестивов, но имеет свою семантическую специфику.
2*
19
19/168
буждением, пропозициональное содержание которого указы-вает на существующую опасность или
на возможные не-благоприятные последствия какого-либо действия для адре-сата.
В заключение подчеркнем некоторые существенные положения главы.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:14]
1.Директивные речевые
акты представляют собой
дельный класс
OTдвусторонних
РА, относящихся к разряду
инициативных
ДлЯ
первичных (неинституализованных) РА,
успешной реализации которых требуется ответная
реакция адресата.
2. Адресованное побуждение к совершению действия составляет
некоторого
иллокутивное содержание ДРА и
ЯВЛЯстся существенным условием для данного речевого акта.
3. Дифференциация плана содержания ДРА определя ется действием следующих прагматических
факторов, отра жающих существенные признаки директивной ситуации:
Поблигаторность
каузируемого действия для адресата;
2)приоритетность/ неприоритетность позиции одного из ком муникантов; 3) бенефактивность
каузируемого действия для говорящего или для адресата.
Эти признаки составляют основу членения плана содержания ДРА.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:14]
Прямым
ЭКСплицИтНЫм
способом выражения
ДРА служат перформативные глаголы в их «классическом» употреблений, т. е. в форме настоящего
времени действительного залога изъявительного наклонения в сочетании с место-именнным
подлежащим 1 л. ед.
Ч.
Эти так называемые
«Эксплицитные перформативы»
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:15]
Например: I strongly re comm end you to stop smoking; I apologise for being late; I suggest that we should start immediately; I ass u re
you that it's true.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:15]
Имплицитные косвенные формы выражения представляют собою неконвенциональные способы
передачи коммуникативного намерения говорящего, и их интерпрета-ция как ДРА определяется
конкретными условиями коммуникации и зависит от таких факторов, как оценка говорящим
имеющегося положения дел
Почепцов Г. Г.,
1981),
релевантности/нерелевантности содержания высказывания для актуальной ситуации (Гладуш, 1985,
с. 18), иерархии отношений между коммуникантами (Gordon,
Lakoff.
1975),
фреймовой организации социального контекста (Dijk, 1981, р. 224), степени стандартизованности
коммуникативной си-
туации (Ervin-Tripp, 1976).
Косвенным имплицитным средством выражения ДРА чаще всего служит повествование-намек.
Например, выска-зывания, выражающие мотивацию для совершения некоторо-го действия и в силу
принципа вежливости имплицирующие совершение этого действия адресатом: It's cold here -› Close
the window; I can't concentrate with the TV on -› Turn off the TV.
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:16]
ТпрР; колицитные косвенные формы выражения
ДРА имеют в своей семантической структуре элементы, отражающие компоненты ситуации
побуждения и связанные с условиями успешности ДРА (см. об этом: Gordon, Lakoff,
1975; Searle, 1975).
Семантический анализ вопросительных высказываний,
служащих эксплицитным косвенным способом выражения
ДРА, показал, что они направлены на выявление следующих аспектов прагматической ситуации
побуждения:
a) возможностей адресата совершить желаемое дейст
bue: Can we go anywhere that's not so public? (J. Galsworthy);
Could you come and sit with me? quiet?
(B. Temple); Can't you be
б) наличия у него желания совершить требующееся дей
ствие: How do you feel about a little walk round?
(J. Priest
ley); Won't you come up and have tea? I wonder if care for a drive in the Park (J. Galsworthy);
you'd
в) наличия материальных объектов, требуемых для вы полнения желаемого действия: Do you have a
cigarette, Lieute
nant? (A. Elliot);
г)
будущих действий адресата, в исполнении которых
заинтересован говорящий: You
will put in a word for me,
wou't you? (G. Green).
Mariia, [20.01.2023 12:17]
В составных РА встречаются и другие вспомогательные элементы, создающие необходимые условия
для успешной реализации доминирующего РА. К ним относятся следующие элементы:
a) элементы, обеспечивающие прием сообщения адреса
том, привлекающие его внимание:
Er; Hren; Hey; I say: Oh,
I say, you won't say a word to Eustace about this, will you?
(P. Wodehouse);
6) обращения, выделяющие адресата из множества слу шающих или привлекающие его внимание:
Howard, please,
don't stay long, will you? (T. Caldwell);
в) контактоустанавливающие
элементы, выполняющие
также дополнительную функцию выражения вежливости:
Excuse me, I'm sorry to trouble/bother/disturb you; Excuse me.
Could you tell me the way to Trafalgar
Square?; Sorry to
bother you, but would you mind closing the window?;
г) метакоммуникативные
элементы, эксплицирующие
речеактовую задачу последующего высказывания: I want to
ask you a favour;
д) вопросительные высказывания, вводимые противите
льным соЮЗом, которые выполняют функцию корректировки
предшествующего PA: Do you want a sandwich? Or aren't you hungry?; Could you lend me a hundred
guilders? Or are you short of cash yourself? (Dijk. 1981, p. 170);
е) императивные предложения, повторяющие или пере
фразирующие предшествующее доминирующее
ДРА
C
целью его
усиления: Stop it! For God's sake do stop it!
(J. Oleck);
ж) условные обороты, ограничивающие сферу исполниКоммуникативный контекст употребления языковой формы составляют лингвистически релевантные
факторы ситуации общения, которые определяют ее функционирование в той или иной
коммуникативной ситуации. В качестве б а з о вых факторов, определяющих коммуникативный
контекст директивных речевых актов, мы предлагаем рассматривать три экстралингвистических
фактора: 1) ролевые отношения;
2) отношение социально-психологической дистанции и 3) об-становка общения. Для многих ДРА
существенным является и характер каузируемого действия.
Императивные предложения с конечными формативами В ИП этого типа в качестве конечного
форматива служат либо присоединительные вопросы will you? won't you? can you? can't you? could
you?, либо условные предложения
if you please, if you can, if you will, if you don't mind.
Эмфатические императивные предложения
Эмфатические ИП употребляются при равных отношениях между коммуникантами и близкой СП
дистанции. КК их употребления всегда эмоционально маркирован, ЧТО связано с признаком
желательности/нежелательности действия для говорящего или для адресата. Выполняя усилительную функцию, эти конструкции оформляют ДРА прось-бы, приглашения, собственно побуждения
в трех типах КК
1) когда говорящий подчеркивает свою особую заинте ресованность в каузируемом действии:
Жена мужу: Oh, do shut the door, Howard! (J. Priestley).
Императивные предложения с аналитической формой глагола
Данные ИП могут выражать побуждение к действию, гаправленное на любое лицо, включая
говорящего. Наиболь-нее распространение, однако, имеют ИП с местоимениями л. мн. ч.,
выражающие предложение совершить некоторое овместное действие. Такая форма ДРА уместна в
КК при есубординативных отношениях при близкой СП дистанции непринужденной обстановке.
Девушка молодому человеку (в кафе): Let's go away rom Copenhagen, from Denmark
Безглагольные ИП императивные предложения представляют собой достаточно распространенный
способ выражения ДРА в ситуациях определенного плана: а) в стандартизованных ситуациях с
заранее известным ритуалом поведения - в магазине, за сто-лом, в кафе, в классе, на плацу, на
марше, в операционной (ср. ситуации с фиксированным социальным пространством (Дорошенко,
1985), 6) в ситуациях, для которых «характерен дефицит времени» (Храковский, Володин, 1986, с.
173).
В таких ситуациях естествен процесс свертывания вы-сказывания за счет элиминирования элемента,
заранее из-вестного или очевидного для коммуникантов. Этот процесс соответствует «не только
соображениям экономичности ре-чи, но и стремлению выделить наиболее существенные, точки
зрения коммуникативного задания, элементы выска-зывания» (Звегинцев, 1976, с. 288).
В КК с заданной обстановкой общения эллиптические ИП выражают ДРА распоряжения-заказа.
Естественно, что в таких ситуациях ролевые характеристики говорящего и отношения интимности
нерелевантны. ИП, выражающее за-каз, может быть модифицировано, смягчено за счет обращения и
маркеров вежливости.
Хозяин слуге: Three whiskies and soda, Albert. Please
Для выражения ДРА употребляются такие оптативные предложения (ОП), которые имеют прямую
направленность на адресата: I wish you would do X; I wish you to do X; I want you to do X; 1 should like
you to do X. Данные предложения находятся на периферии поля оптативной модальности в зоне
пересечения его с полем императивной модальности по той причине, что не содержат
семантического компонента побуждения, однако в силу своей адресованности могут
интерпретироваться как побудительные.
Ядром функционально-прагматического поля реквести-ва является РА просьбы, при выполнении
которого говорящий побуждает адресата совершить действие, направленное на удовлетворение
потребностей говорящего. Решение о том, совершать или не совершать данное действие принимает
адресат. Таким образом, просьба - это такой директив-ный речевой акт, в котором приоритетную
позицию занима-ет адресат, контролирующий выполнение действия, бенефак-тивного для
говорящего.
Прескриптивы представляют собой отдельный тип ДРА, специфику которых составляет
облигаторность каузируемо-го действия для адресата. Причина обязательности выполнения
действия проста невыполнение его наказуемо. Невыполнение таких прескриптивных актов, как
приказ, распоря-жение, правил поведения, производственных регламентаций, правил игры,
должностных инструкций влечет санкции, вплоть, до устранения из данной сферы деятельности. В
других случаях, например технической или бытовой инструкции, ме-дицинского предписания,
кулинарного рецепта, невыполнение действия ведет к порче, поломке используемого объекта и тем
самым неадекватная деятельность адресата оказыва-ется косвенно наказуемой.
Суггестивы представляют собой определенный вид ди-рективных речевых актов, характерной
особенностью которых является оценка говорящим будущего действия как бенефактивного для
адресата. Иллокутивная цель суггести-ва состоит в побуждении адресата совершить действие, целесообразное или полезное для нега с точки зрения говоря-щего. Как и в реквестиве, адресат сам
принимает решение-об исполнении каузируемого действия, которое в этом случае не является
облигаторным. однако, в отличие от рек-вестива, , бенефициантом оказывается не говорящий, а
адре-сат.