Politenessprinciple.doc

In 1967, H. P. Grice, American philosopher and linguist, proposed the Cooperative Principle (abbrev. CP) in William James lecture delivered at Harvard University. He thought that in order to make the conversation go on, we should obey some basic principles, especially “Cooperative Principle”. This new theory brings about a great development in the concept of conversational implicature, and has been attached great attention to in the linguistic circle. Some critics set such high value upon the notion that they regard it as a breakthrough in pragmatics. However, Geoffrey N. Leech, the famous British linguist, considered that “the CP in itself is not sufficient to explain ‘(1) why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean; and (2) what is the relation between sense and force when non-declarative types of sentences are being considered.’”[3] In 1983, Leech proposed Politeness Principle (abbrev. PP) so as to rescue the CP from serious trouble. Leech believes the main reason that why people violate Cooperative Principle intently is the consideration of politeness.

the cooperative principle describes how people interact with one another. As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it, it states, "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." Though phrased as a prescriptive command, the principle is intended as a description of how people normally behave in conversation.
The cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims, called the Gricean maxims,
Maxim of Quality
Be Truthful
· Do not say what you believe to be false
· Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Quantity
Quantity of Information
· Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
· Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Maxim of Relation
Relevance
· Be relevant.:With respect to this maxim, Grice writes, "Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversations are legitimately changed, and so on. I find the treatment of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I hope to revert to them in later work." (Grice 1989:27)
Maxim of Manner
Be Clear
· Avoid obscurity of expression.
· Avoid ambiguity.
· Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
· Be orderly.

The politeness principle
Leech's maxims | Face and politeness strategies | Examples from Brown and Levinson |
The politeness principle is a series of maxims, which Geoff Leech has proposed as a way of explaining how politeness operates in conversational exchanges. Leech defines politeness as forms of behaviour that establish and maintain comity. That is the ability of participants in a social interaction to engage in interaction in an atmosphere of relative harmony. In stating his maxims Leech uses his own terms for two kinds of illocutionary acts. He calls representatives “assertives”, and calls directives “impositives”.
· Each maxim is accompanied by a sub-maxim (between square brackets), which is of less importance. These support the idea that negative politeness (avoidance of discord) is more important than positive politeness (seeking concord).
· Not all of the maxims are equally important. For instance, tact influences what we say more powerfully than does generosity, while approbation is more important than modesty.
· Note also that speakers may adhere to more than one maxim of politeness at the same time. Often one maxim is on the forefront of the utterance, with a second maxim being invoked by implication.
· If politeness is not communicated, we can assume that the politeness attitude is absent.
Leech's maxims
· Tact maxim (in directives [impositives] and commissives): minimise cost to other; [maximise benefit to other]
· Generosity maxim (in directives and commissives): minimise benefit to self; [maximise cost to self]
· Approbation maxim (in expressives and representatives [assertives]): minimise dispraise of other; [maximise praise of other]
· Modesty maxim (in expressives and representatives): minimise praise of self; [maximise dispraise of self]
· Agreement maxim (in representatives): minimise disagreement between self and other; [maximise agreement between self and other]
· Sympathy maxim (in representatives): minimise antipathy between self and other; [maximise sympathy between self and other]
Face and politeness strategies
· “Face” (as in “lose face”) refers to a speaker's sense of linguistic and social identity. Any speech act may impose on this sense, and is therefore face threatening. And speakers have strategies for lessening the threat. Positive politeness means being complimentary and gracious to the addressee (but if this is overdone, the speaker may alienate the other party). Negative politeness is found in ways of mitigating the imposition.
· Hedging: Er, could you, er, perhaps, close the, um , window?
· Pessimism: I don't suppose you could close the window, could you?
· Indicating deference: Excuse me, sir, would you mind if I asked you to close the window?
· Apologizing: I'm terribly sorry to put you out, but could you close the window?
· Impersonalizing: The management requires all windows to be closed.
Examples from Brown and Levinson
Perhaps the most thorough treatment of the concept of politeness is that of Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, which was first published in 1978 and then reissued, with a long introduction, in 1987. In their model, politeness is defined as redressive action taken to counter-balance the disruptive effect of face-threatening acts (FTAs).
In their theory, communication is seen as potentially dangerous and antagonistic. A strength of their approach over that of Geoff Leech is that they explain politeness by deriving it from more fundamental notions of what it is to be a human being. The basic notion of their model is “face”. This is defined as “the public self-image that every member (of society) wants to claim for himself”. In their framework, face consists of two related aspects.
· One is negative face, or the rights to territories, freedom of action and freedom from imposition - wanting your actions not to be constrained or inhibited by others.
· The other is positive face, the positive consistent self-image that people have and their desire to be appreciated and approved of by at least some other people
The rational actions people take to preserve both kinds of face, for themselves and the people they interact with, add up to politeness. Brown and Levinson also argue that in human communication, either spoken or written, people tend to maintain one another's face continuously.
In everyday conversation, we adapt our conversation to different situations. Among friends we take liberties or say things that would seem discourteous among strangers. And we avoid over-formality with friends. In both situations we try to avoid making the hearer embarrassed or uncomfortable. Face-threatening acts (FTAs) are acts that infringe on the hearers' need to maintain his/her self-esteem, and be respected. Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with these FTAs
Brown and Levinson sum up human politeness behaviour in four strategies, which correspond to these examples: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record-indirect strategy.
· The bald on-record strategy does nothing to minimize threats to the hearer's “face”
· The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize that your hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity.
· The negative politeness strategy also recognizes the hearer's face. But it also recognizes that you are in some way imposing on them. Some other examples would be to say, “I don't want to bother you but...” or “I was wondering if...”
· Off-record indirect strategies take some of the pressure off of you. You are trying to avoid the direct FTA of asking for a beer. Instead you would rather it be offered to you once your hearer sees that you want one.
These strategies are not universal - they are used more or less frequently in other cultures. For example, in some eastern societies the off-record-indirect strategy will place on your hearer a social obligation to give you anything you admire. So speakers learn not to express admiration for expensive and valuable things in homes that they visit.
Bald on-record
· An emergency: Help!
· Task oriented: Give me those!
· Request: Put your jacket away.
· Alerting: Turn your lights on! (while driving)
Positive Politeness
· Attend to the hearer: You must be hungry, it's a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch?
· Avoid disagreement: A: What is she, small? B: Yes, yes, she's small, smallish, um, not really small but certainly not very big.
· Assume agreement: So when are you coming to see us?
· Hedge opinion: You really should sort of try harder
Negative Politeness
· Be indirect: I'm looking for a pen.
· Request forgiveness: You must forgive me but....
· Minimize imposition: I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?
· Pluralize the person responsible: We forgot to tell you that you needed to by your plane ticket by yesterday
Off-record (indirect)
· Give hints: It's a bit cold in here.
· Be vague: Perhaps someone should have been more responsible.
· Be sarcastic, or joking: Yeah, he's a real Einstein (rocket scientist, Stephen Hawking, genius and so on)!
Pragmatic failure
The study of pragmatic failure begins with Jenny Thomas. She first proposes the notion of pragmatic failure in her Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure in 1983.She classified pragmatic failure into pragmalinguistic failure(语言语用失误) and sociopragmatic failure（社交语用失误）.
 Pragmalinguistic failure（语言语用失误） occurs when the pragmatic force mapped by the speakers 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 act strategies are inappropriately transferred from L1 to L2.’(Thomas 1983, 99) Pragmalinguistic failure is closely linked with language itself, referring to the case that learners unconsciously transfer native expression_rs into English ignoring their pragmatic meaning, or use other inappropriate expression_rs of the target language. 
 Sociopragmatic failure（社交语用失误）in contrast, is closely related to cultures defined by Thomas (1983:99) as '…social conditions placed on language use’ stemming from‘…cross-culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behaviour.’ Sosiopragmatic failure involves lack of awareness of the conventions and the socio-cultural norms of the target language, such as not knowing the appropriate registers and topics or taboos governing the target language community.

Chinese Politeness Principle
Among the Chinese scholars who have contributed significantly to the study of politeness should be mentioned Prof. Gu Yueguo of Beijing Foreign Studies University. In his articles related to the study of politeness in modern Chinese, Prof. Gu has traced the origin of the motion of politeness in the Chinese culture, and has also formulated a different set of politeness maxims, which he thinks are more suitable to the Chinese environment.
“ Gu holds that there are basically four notions underlying the Chinese conception of limao: respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement. And he concluded five maxims of limao according to Leech’s Politeness Principle:
A. Respectfulness Maxim: self’s positive appreciation or admiration of other concerning the latter’s face, social status, and so on.
B. Appellation Maxim: use proper appellation to address other.
C. Refinement Maxim: self’s demonstration of kindness, consideration, and hospitality to other.
D. Consistency Maxim: self’s behaviour to other which meets certain standards.
E. Virtue, Speech and Behaviour Maxim: on motivation, minimize other’s cost and maximize other’s benefit; on verbalism, maximize benefit self received and minimize cost self paid out.”[