Perspectives on politeness

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Whither politeness

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The paper addresses a number of questions raised by Brown and Levinson model of politeness, questions such as Is politeness communicated? What is the status of a politeness principle? What is the relationship between deference and politeness? Should a theory of politeness be extended to impoliteness? What is the status of politeness strategies? Is the notion of face universal? What is the status of Wx? These raise but a few of the important questions to be asked in pursuit of an understanding of what linguistic politeness is, how it is used, what factors influence a speaker’s choice to be heard as polite and what sort of a model is maximally useful. Optimists take the position that if we continue to work on the problem, we can expect to arrive at a serious theory of politeness, necessarily somewhat different from the existing model. Pessimists, on the other hand, take the position that while we all know polite behavior when we see it, we will never be able to speak definitively about it. I am an optimist.

Introduction1

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Keywords: Politeness; challenges; status; future

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The initial publication of Politeness: Some Universals of Language Usage (Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987)2 some 25 years ago provided focus to the area of linguistic politeness and subsequently gave rise to an extraordinarily large number of articles and several books on politeness. Indeed, a bibliography edited by DuFon et al. which appeared in the Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 21 in 1994 listed more than 900 articles and books, most of them after 1978 (DuFon et al. 1994), and in the past five years the number has increased by several hundred. Yet, as we might expect, all is not settled in the domain of linguistic politeness. Several alternate models have been suggested, and the original model, not altered in the second edition (Brown & Levinson 1987), has been challenged on almost every aspect. It is my purpose in this paper to identify some of the

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. Challenges to the Brown and Levinson model

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challenges which have been made of Brown and Levinson’s model and thereby suggest areas where the field of linguistic politeness might be heading in the 21st century.

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. The underlying assumptions

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The model proposed by Brown and Levinson, claimed by the authors to be a universal model, has been challenged in a number of ways. In fact, Meier (1995b: 388), one of the most pessimistic, writes, “Politeness can be said to be universal only in the sense that every society has some sort of norms for appropriate behavior although these norms will vary, thereby accounting for societies in which the individual’s position within a group or those where the individual takes precedence”. As we shall see, there are a number of researchers who agree with him that the universality of politeness and the all-encompassing claims for the model are simply overstated.

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There are challenges to the assumptions underlying the model. For example, both Fraser (1990) and Jary (1998) questioned if politeness is in fact a message, specifically an implicated message along the lines of Grice’s implicature, as Brown and Levinson had claimed (emphasis added):

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Linguistic politeness is therefore implication in the classical way [. . .] politeness has to be communicated and the absence of communicated politeness may, ceteris paribus, be taken as absence of the polite attitude. (Brown & Levinson 1987: 5)

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Politeness is implicated by the semantic structure of the whole utterance (not sentence), not communicated by ‘markers’ or ‘mitigators’ in a simple signaling fashion which can be quantified. (22)

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Politeness is then a major source of deviation from such rational efficiency, and is communicated precisely by that deviation. (95)

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It follows from this view of Brown and Levinson that there is no politeness associated with bald on-record strategies – it is not a politeness strategy, and that whenever politeness strategies are used, an additional message is being conveyed: “I’m being polite here because I’m sensitive to your face needs”. In fact, this view is counterintuitive, since politeness is normally anticipated, it is the

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norm, and it is the breach of this norm of polite communication that is signaled and thus noted by the hearer as being impolite. As Kasper (1990: 193) wrote:

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Competent adult members comment on absence of politeness where it is expected, and its presence where it is not expected.

and, as Jary (1998: 2) has written,

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if this observation is accepted, then it is hard to see how the claim that the use of these forms/strategies always communicates politeness can be maintained.

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If Brown and Levinson’s position is adopted, there are the following questions which need to be answered: What is communicated when politeness is communicated? What is the content of the message? Is politeness always communicated or is it communicated only in certain circumstances? If so, how can these cases be identified?

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. The status of the politeness principles

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Brown and Levinson fail to state what the status of politeness is within linguistic pragmatics, except to strongly object to placing a Politeness Principle (PP) on a par with the Cooperative Principle (CP) as did Leech (1983). Assuming that the PP would have a set of maxims, as suggested by Leech, they write:

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Now if politeness principles had maxim-like status, we should expect the same robustness [as the Cooperative Principle]: it should, as a matter of fact, be hard to be impolite. (Brown & Levinson 1987: 5)

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Whereas there is little argument for making the PP parallel to the CP, there is certainly an argument for making a single Politeness Maxim (PM) under the CP, as Burt (1999) and earlier Fukada (1998, quoted in Burt’s paper) have done.3 They suggest that politeness should be another maxim under the CP, analogous to the maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner, and argue that it is better to have the PM follow from the CP, rather than some superordinate principle, which would be the case if it were placed parallel with the CP. They see the PM reflecting a rational behavioral manifestation, as do the other maxims, stating that “attention to communicative goals relevant to politeness is an aspect of rational behavior, not a departure from it, thus no clash between politeness and CP” (Burt 1999: 2). Furthermore, they claim that it is reasonable for the CP to enter into the calculation of politeness, that clashes can occur between the PM and other maxims, that one can opt out of the PM similar to the other maxims, and finally that a speaker can flout the PM. If, in-

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. The conflation of deference with politeness

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deed, politeness is the rational way of behaving, analogous to speaking clearly, to the point, being relevant, reflected in the other maxims, then a strong case can be made for maxim status.

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The concept of politeness and the more narrow concept of deference are often not separated by Brown and Levinson. Ide (1989) writes of “indexing” terms and terms of “discernment”, Watts (1992) writes of “politic behavior”, and Matsumoto (1988) writes of “honorifics”:

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honorifics, all convey rank differences. It is not negative politeness, the acknowledgement of the addressee’s freedom from imposition that is conveyed by these forms, but a reflection of rank-ordering. (Matsumoto 1988: 414)

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Honorific terms, for example sensei in Japanese, Usted in Spanish, and Sie in German, are, as Goffman (1971: 56) commented, “that component of activity which functions as a symbolic means by which appreciation is regularly conveyed.” All of the terms reflect the socio-cultural relationship that exists between the interactants prior to the utterance, a relationship that is fixed, usually not negotiable, is not subject to the content of what is said, and thus are not strategies for us to consider as there is for politeness purposes.4 When used properly, they are not noticed. Of course, as Matsumoto (1988) claims, unexpected social markings can give rise to implicatures. Thus, for example, the utterance, “Sir, would you please pass me the butter,” spoken by a wife to her husband, implies anger. Hwang (1990) argues for the separation of the concepts of politeness and deference in Korean, arguing that one can be deferential without being polite or non-deferential while being polite:

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To sum up, the availability of various linguistic and pragmatic means of encoding polite intention outside the dimensions of deference not only enable the speaker of Korean to show – or not to show – their modesty and politeness while still having the status relationship properly encoded by levels of deference [. . .]. (48)

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Whereas in some languages, like Japanese and Korean, nearly every sentence is marked for this social indexing, in English it is absent in most sentences. Sir, in English, is a deference marker and its presence signifies, by convention, that the speaker is showing (or giving) deference to the addressee. But this is deference, not politeness.

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Green (1989) captures this notion of deference when she writes of euphemisms that

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as with many politeness techniques, the speaker is really only going through the motion of offering options, of showing respect [deference; B.F.] for the addressee’s feelings. The offer may be a facade, the option nonviable, and the respect a sham. It is the fact that an effort was made to go through the motions at all that makes the act an act of politeness. (Green 1989: 147)

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Deference is required by situation, not utterance. Moreover, politeness and deference are related in the following way: A

Deference D

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Politeness B

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In the chart below, the English examples illustrate that deference and politeness are independent factors. Pol.

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“Sir, may I help you?” said by waiter to patron “Scapel, right now.” said by doctor to assistant “Sir would you mind shutting up?” said by waiter to patron “Shut up!” said by waiter to patron

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. The limitation on the concept of politeness

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Other researchers have suggested that the Brown and Levinson notion of politeness is too limited, that politeness phenomena includes rudeness phenomena as well. Lakoff (1989: 102) identifies three kinds of politeness: (1) polite behavior, when participants adhere to politeness, expected or not; (2) nonpolite behavior, when participants are not conforming with politeness rules where conformity is not expected; (3) rude behavior, where politeness is not conveyed even though it is expected. The first two are in accordance with ‘politic’ behavior,

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i.e. socially sanctioned norms of interaction, with polite behavior serving the explicit function of ensuring comity, social harmony, and counterbalancing

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potential conflict. Rudeness, by contrast, is constituted by deviation from whatever counts as polite in a given social context, is inherently confrontational and disruptive to social equilibrium. Politic behavior normally goes unnoticed [. . .]. (Kasper 1990: 208)

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Kasper (1990) herself distinguishes motivated from unmotivated rudeness, where unmotivated rudeness refers to the violation of the norms of politic behavior due to ignorance (e.g., by children, second language learners, people unfamiliar with the expectations of the situation) and distinguishes three types of motivated rudeness (Kasper 1990: 208): (1) Due to lack of affect control; (2) Strategic rudeness, e.g., courtroom behavior; and (3) Ironic rudeness, e.g., “DO help yourself,” (cf. strategic rudeness, à la Jary 1998). It is precisely the aggravated rude force that distinguishes sarcastic utterances from ironic ones, where the speaker rationally tries to not address face, and thus tries to be impolite. Brown and Levinson basically ignore the obverse of politeness: impoliteness/rudeness/aggravation. Turner (1996) writes that “there are exchanges in which the speaker not only declines the attempt to preserve the addressee’s face, as he or she might if s/he were speaking with Gricean rationality, but actively and intentionally seeks to damage it”, thereby suggesting a fourth type of rudeness. There are numerous questions about impoliteness. Where is rudeness/impoliteness to be situated? Is there a continuum with politeness at one end, impoliteness at the other, and degrees of (im)politeness along the way? Nearly every utterance can be construed as polite or impolite, depending on the circumstances: is it possible for the Wx formula be extended to account for impoliteness? Lachenicht (1980), in fact, went so far as to extend the Brown and Levinson strategies to include aggravation, where he adds bald on-record type of negative aggravation, defined as that which willfully impedes the addressee’s own actions, and positive aggravation, defined as that which willfully conveys to the addressee that he or she is not liked or respected. He writes:

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It is important to study not only the socially positive, but also the socially negative. Just as we cannot attain an adequate appreciation of value without an understanding of rubbish [. . .] so we cannot attain an appreciation of the positive uses of language without an understanding of invective. The one complements the other. (Lachenicht 1980: 680)

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. The status of politeness strategies

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There are a number of issues concerning the hierarchy of politeness strategies. Meier (1995b), concerned about whether a speech act serves as a FTA or a politeness strategy and, if the latter, is a negative or positive strategy, writes:

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Apologies, [. . .] classified by Brown and Levinson as negative politeness strategies, could be viewed as requests for exoneration (e.g., please forgive me, please excuse me) and as requests, would be threats to H’s face which would bring their status as politeness strategies into question. Furthermore, although request are considered to be FTAs, one could well imagine a context in which they could be a sign of solidarity [. . .] this would then qualify them for positive politeness status. (Meier 1995b: 385)

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He later raises a different issue when he writes, “Politeness is not simply a secondary act piggy-backed to another, as in Brown and Levinson’s framework. An apology may itself constitute the primary act” (Meier 1995b: 387). In fact, the bald on-record strategy isn’t really a politeness strategy at all in the Brown and Levinson model, since it lacks any linguistic form which could implicate politeness. Yet it clearly is a polite way of communicating, given the proper circumstances. Turner (1996) echoes this problem when he points out that in addition to the allegation of the non-universality of face, there are many politeness strategies which address more than one face want at the same time. He suggests that the request, “Could you look after the baby for half an hour?,” is customarily taken to threaten the addressee’s negative face in that it serves to constrain future actions and may also undermine the speaker’s positive face because it implies that he/she is not able to act without assistance. He continues,

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But, and this is what is not so often remarked, the utterance may also be said to anoint the addressee’s positive face because the speaker is selecting the addressee as a reliable and responsible person to undertake this particular important task. [. . .] It is not too hard to see that positive politeness may put constraints on the addressee such that it doubles as negative politeness. For example, the positive polite ‘You’re good with children’ may implicate a threat to the addressee’s negative face such as ‘Perhaps you’d like to offer to look after mine for half an hour’ which itself implicates anointing of the addressee’s positive face such as ‘I regard you as a reliable and responsible person’. (Turner 1996: 4f.)

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The Brown and Levinson hierarchy of strategies from bald on-record to offrecord (indirect) appears to be a continuum, although we are not told the relative placements of the two intermediary strategies: on-record with positive

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politeness and on-record with negative politeness. Blum-Kulka (1987) found it necessary to distinguish between conventional indirection (e.g., “Can you pass the salt?”) and non-conventional indirection (e.g., “I probably need some more salt for this.”), and concludes that politeness is routinely found associated with the former but only sometimes with the latter, in part because of the difficulty and time associated with working out the indirect message. This suggests, minimally, that there needs to be a distinction with off-record strategies. Scollon and Scollon (1981) suggest that positive and negative politeness are sufficiently different kinds of things that their placement on the same hierarchy is conceptually awkward, if not incoherent, and claim that “while positive politeness is directed more to the general nature of the relationship between interactants, negative politeness is direct to the specific act of imposition” (Scollon & Scollon 1981: 174). Strecker (1988) takes another approach when he argues that positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record politeness are not independent and discrete domains. Although dealing with Hamar, spoken in Southern Ethiopia, his comments apply widely:

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[. . .] off-record speech abounds in the strategies of positive and negative politeness [. . .] on-record strategies are often combined with off-record strategies. These exist switches from positive politeness to negative politeness and vice versa. In fact, these switches can be seen to follow logical and/or temporal sequences which constitute a type of super-strategy. (Strecker 1988: 155)

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In response, Brown and Levinson state that

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present evidence is too equivocal to entail the abandonment of our original scheme. But we do concede that the possibility that the off-record strategy is independent of, and co-occurrent with, the other two super-strategies is something which definitely requires closer investigation. (Brown & Levinson 1987: 21)

But then they add, that

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politeness is not the only motivation for using these strategies; they may for example be used to put on a social ‘brake’ or ‘accelerator’ in the development of social relationships, or an off-record utterance may be used to avoid responsibility for actions unrelated to face concerns. (22)

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the wants outlined [. . .] are not the only motivations a speaker may have for using the linguistic realizations characteristic of negative politeness. The outputs are all forms useful in general for social ‘distancing’ [. . .] they are therefore likely to be used whenever a speaker wants to put a social brake on to the course of his interaction. (130)

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Thus, it is not clear whether there are, in some cases, politeness strategies or just indirect strategies for sending a message which, perhaps incidentally, are useful in the course of addressing face. What about intercultural variation? Brown and Levinson write:

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We have argued in this section that indirect speech acts have as their prime raison d’etre the politeness functions they perform. We went on to argue that their internal structure is best accounted for as conforming with the demands of particular politeness strategies. And finally we took pains to establish that indirect speech acts are universal and for the most part are probably constructed in essentially similar ways in all languages. We may suggest, then, that the universality of indirect speech acts follows from the basic service they perform with respect to universal strategies of politeness. (Brown & Levinson 1987: 142)

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But this is surely too narrow a view, since there are many counterexamples of a strategy having one purpose in one language, another purpose in another.5 For example, Escandell-Vidal (1996: 631) reports that whereas “Can you pass the salt?” is taken as a conventional (standardized) indirect request in English and Spanish, in Poland the same utterance is taken only as a genuine question while in Thailand the inference is taken that there is a doubt about the hearer’s ability. Clancy (1986: 221) suggests whereas the indirect form in US is seen as mitigating negative face threat, in Japan it emphasizes empathy between the participants, symbolizing a high degree of experience that would render a more explicit request unnecessary but even disrupt social bonds, while Blum-Kulka (1987) finds that indirectness is assessed as less polite than both conversational indirectness and direct requestive strategy by Israelis, since the noncommitting character of indirect request is viewed as lacking speaker sincerity and imposes in inferential burden on the hearer that runs counter to cultural values (cf. Kasper 1990: 200). Escandell-Vidal (1996: 631) writes:

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These striking differences, which affect both the conditions of use of a formula and the interpretation associated with it, clearly indicate that posing a question about a precondition of an action is not a universal means of requesting [. . .] if the interpretation of indirect illocutions is based on gen-

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eral, universal inference mechanisms, as claimed, then this would be a rather unexpected result.

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. The universal notion of face

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As viewed by Brown and Levinson (1987), the notion of face is taken to be universal. Repeating, the concepts of face are the following:

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Negative Face: “the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, right to nondistraction – i.e., to freedom of action and freedom from imposition” (61) “[. . .] the want of every competent adult member that his action be unimpeded by others” (62).

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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” (61) “[. . .] the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others” (62).

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But their view has come under fire an being far too ‘Western-oriented’, primarily by researchers writing from an Asian or African perspective. Matsumoto (1988), for example, concludes that the Japanese concepts of face are qualitatively different from those defined as universals by Brown and Levinson. The notion of individuals and their rights plays a dominant role in European and American culture, but cannot be considered basic to the Japanese culture and society:

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What is of paramount concern to a Japanese is not his/her own territory, but the position in relation to the others in the group and his/her acceptance by those others. Loss of face is associated with the perception by others that one has not comprehended and acknowledged the structure and hierarchy of the group. The Japanese concepts of face, thus, are qualitatively different from those defined as universals by Brown and Levinson. The difference transcends the variability of cultural elaboration acknowledged in Brown and Levinson’s theory (e.g. what kinds of acts threaten face, what sorts of persons have special rights to face-protection, etc.) and call into question the universality of a core concept; the notion of face as consisting of the desire for approval of wants and the desire for the preservation of one’s territory. (Matsumoto 1988: 405)

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of face for a Japanese is different from that of European and Americans, and Matsumoto concludes that the constituents of face are culturally dependent. In fact, Ide (1989) suggests that discernment, rather than face, is the motivation force behind Japanese politeness. She says that “people in a culture choose strategies of politeness according to the cultural expectation and requirement” (230).6 In contrast to a universal notion of face, Matsumoto posits a general notion of face, or “socially given self-image,” the desire to maintain face as the dynamic of the politeness system, but has the framework include also a certain spectrum of styles that can be chosen, according to the culture and the situation, to effect face-preserving ends. But in giving up the universality of face, and accepting some cultural styles, he is making politeness relative. Nwoye (1992) discusses politeness in the Igbo society as a form of social contract existing between the group, as a whole, and individual members of the group.

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The individual is expected to behave properly, i.e., be polite, as defined by the group, in return for which (s)he is entitled to reciprocal behavior from the other members of the group [. . .]. Brown and Levinson’s view of politeness, especially their notion of negative face and the need to avoid imposition, does not seem to apply to the egalitarian Igbo society, in which concern for group interests rather than atomistic individualism is the expected norm of behavior. (Nwoye 1992: 310)

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He characterizes the society as egalitarian, where

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through socialization, each member of society acquires this pattern of behavior, thus entering, as it were, into a type of social contract with other member of the society to do his/her best to keep social contact friction-free. [. . .] The difference between this type of society and Western society is that while the latter can be said to be individual-oriented, the former is group-oriented. (313)

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He then suggests that the notion of face, while useful as a heuristic device, should be further sub-classified into “individual face”, the individual’s desire to attend to his/her personal needs and to place his/her public-self image above those of others, and “group face”, the individual’s desire to behave in conformity with culturally expected norms of behavior that are institutionalized and sanctioned by society. But, here again, we have thrown away face as anything but a general notion without teeth. Brown and Levinson (1987: 24) state that “some acts are intrinsically threatening to face and thus require ‘softening.”’ But this ignores the fact that

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the social position, distance, and the circumstances may radically change the ‘politeness’ of an utterance. What is impolite in one set of circumstances (e.g, between a son and his father) may be quite polite in another (e.g., between military officers). Similarly, Nwoye states that requests, offers, thanks, and criticism in Igbo are carried out

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in the context of the stated attention to the dictates of the group within which the individual finds his/her own place and it will be shown that in many contexts, these acts are not face-threatening at all, even when performed in the most bald on-record manner. (Nwoye 1992: 317)

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Gu (1990), writing about Chinese, concludes that Brown and Levinson (1987) is not suitable to account for Chinese for two reasons. First, the notion of negative face seems to differ; for example, offering, inviting, and promising in Chinese, under ordinary circumstances, will not be considered as threatening the hearer’s negative face. “Rather, it [negative face] is threatened when self cannot live up to what s/he has claimed, or when what self has done is likely to incur ill fame or reputation” (Gu 1990: 242). And second, because of the social norm view, which emphasizes the group rather than individual first, “[I]n the Chinese context, politeness exercises its normative function in constraining individual speech acts as well as the sequence of talk exchanges” (242). Kong (1999) extends this to the domain of service encounters. The difference in face needs underlies the Western view that the Chinese are rude, relative to Western service encounters. However, these encounters are usually interpreted as an “outgroup” (Scollon & Scollon 1981) rather than an “ingroup” relationship and thus facework is not required of either of the participants.

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This topic-response pattern (without the preliminary call-answer sequence) contrasts strongly with the Western practice. In Asia in an outside relationship the positions of the parties are tightly fixed with a service role relationship; one is a teller, the other a customer; one is a waitress, the other a customer. Before the encounter begins, the possible moves are limited within a narrow range. [. . .] Because this is an outside relationship Asians regard it as impossible for any other topics to be introduced or for any other relationship to develop; therefore, no facework is required, no preliminaries are necessary to establish who you are or why you are there. The topic can (and, in fact, must) be introduced directly. (118)

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The upshot of these three cases – from Japanese, Igbo, and Chinese – is to cast serious doubt on the universality of face. To reduce face to a general notion with specific styles or sub-components reduces it to a figurehead, with each language constructing its conversation contract according to cultural and societal

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pressures, only some of which may overlap. We may then have to abandon the notion of cross-cultural research, at least insofar as it applies to politeness. But this wouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has looked seriously at any but the most trivial of cross-cultural issues. They are invariably treated emically, and when it comes to comparison, they are incommensurate. Ide (1989: 241) sums it up when she writes:

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In a Western society where individualism is assumed to be the basis of all interactions, it is easy to regard face as the key to interaction. On the other hand, in a society where group membership is regarded as the basis for interaction, the role or status defined in a particular situation rather than face is the basis of interaction.

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. The correctness of Wx formula

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There are a number of different issues raised about the Wx formula which supposedly captures the amount of face work required. Wx is presented as equal to D(S,A)+P(A,S)+Rx, where D is the social distance between the speaker and addressee, P is the relative power of the addressee over the speaker, and Rx is the imposition (inherent risk) of the speech act, sensitive to cultural and contextual variables, and where Wx is the overall weight of the particular FTA in the estimation of this specific speaker. Glick (1996), is among the most strident critics, writing that

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the central theoretical notion of ‘inherent risk’ [value of Rx – B.F.] was never clearly operationalized so that different utterances could be universally compared in its terms. How these various influences on linguistic use are reduced to a unilinear and unidimensional scaling can not be justified by appeal to their abstract theoretical definitions. [. . .] Unable to move from empirical data to theoretical definitions in an internally-consistent way, we are left with only the abstract rational and logical model that the authors propose as a universalizing explanation for linguistic use. (156)

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He goes on to point out that the independent variable of prediction, Wx, cannot be shown to have any predictive ability from either direction and the universal classes of strategic use have not been demonstrated to be regular classes at all (cf. 157). Brown and Levinson assume that each of these values can be “measured on a scale of 1 to n, where n is some small number and [. . .] the function that assigns a value to Wx on the basis of the three social parameters does so on a simple summative basis” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 76). But what is

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the meaning of the value of Wx which will determine the degree of politeness (face-saving) that the speaker concludes is required for the communication of the speech act, X? Asserted but untested is their claim that a Wx value of 5, for example, has the same significance for determining the strategy to be used, independent of what values of D, P, and R were summed to arrive at this value. How are the factors P and D to be defined? Brown and Levinson don’t tell us and, as Spencer-Oatey (1996: 5) points out:

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The precise meaning of many of the terms that the authors use often remains unclear, even when glosses or alternative wordings are given. For example, distance/closeness and familiarity could potentially refer to one or more of the following: frequency of contact, length of acquaintance, amount of selfdisclosure, and amount and type of affect. Yet very few of the authors discuss exactly how they interpret the terms.

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Brown and Levinson do write that:

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We assume that each of these values can be measured on a scale of 1 to n, where n is some small number [. . .] and assume that the function that assigns a value to Wx on the basis of the three social parameters does so on a simply summative basis. (Brown & Levinson 1987: 76)

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but they never give a precise definition of a variable or even how you would go about determining its value. On the next page, they write,

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P is an asymmetric social dimension of relative power. [. . .] That is, P(H,S) is the degree to which H can impose his own plans and his own self-evaluation (face) at the expense of S’s plans and self-evaluation. (77)

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So far so good. They then go on to discuss three methods of assigning a value for P in a given case, concluding that the roles played by the individuals coupled with other situational sources of power might contribute, “so the values assessed hold only for S and H in a particular context, and for a particular FTA” (79). Thus we are left with no idea of how to assign a number to P although we are told that it is relative to contextual factors.7 Are these three variables sufficient? Slugoski and Turbull (1988) suggest that the role of affect must be added to the lists of necessary factors. They write

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[the] tendency for subjects to perceive a positive relationship between perceived and reciprocal liking means that it may be practically impossible to manipulate perceived like without influencing people’s expectations about the social distance between the participants. (117)

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To what extent are the variables not independent of each other? Watts, Ide and Ehlich (1992) have commented on this, suggesting that

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the degree to which a social act is considered to be an imposition [Rx value] [. . .] depends crucially on P and D. So in order for the model person to be able to assess the value for R, s/he has to be able to calculate values for D and P first. [. . .] Similarly knowledge of the value of P may rely crucially on knowing the value of D. (Watts, Ide, & Ehlich 1992: 9)

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Is the formula correct, both in its symmetry and in its additive nature? This question is impossible to prove or disprove, since the quantification of any variable is highly suspect. Holtgraves and Yang (1992) write that

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when any of the three interpersonal variables reaches a particularly high level, the effects of the remaining variables lessen or drop out completely. For example, if an interactant has committee an extremely offensive act or intends to ask for an extremely large favor, he or she will be polite regardless of the closeness of the relationship with the other person. (Holtgraves & Yang 1992: 252)

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Also, if social distance increases because of a slight, politeness goes by the boards, and impoliteness may be called for. The imprecision of the Brown and Levinson model not only infects the determination of Wx, but once this number is determined, it is unclear how it should be applied to the hierarchy of politeness strategies and what the relationship of the main class of strategies is to each other. . Design flaw in hierarchy

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There is a design flaw in this hierarchy. There is no reason (and no evidence) to expect that the quantum of politeness between Strategy No. 3, on record with negative redress, and Strategy No. 4, off-record, is equal to the quantum between Strategy No. 4, and Strategy No. 5, don’t do the FTA. It might be, but there is no logical reason to support this implicit claim. In fact, under some circumstances, say when you have been directed to criticize another’s work, saying nothing is clearly less polite than criticizing off-record. Scollon and Scollon (1981) point out another difficulty in the hierarchy, namely that while “positive politeness is directed more to the general nature of the relationship between interactants, negative politeness is directed to the specific act of impositions” (174). Brown and Levinson responded with skepticism to these and other criticism, stating that “present evidence is too equivocal to entail the abandonment of our original scheme. But we do concede that

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the possibility that the off-record strategy is independent of, and co-occurrent with, the other two super-strategies is something which definite requires close investigation.” Blum-Kulka (1987) found that indirectness must be separated into two separate types, conventional indirectness (e.g., Would you turn up the heat?) always has politeness associated with it, while non-conventional indirectness (e.g., It’s cold in here) need not always, especially if the indirection were so great that the utterance itself created an imposition. Strecker (1988) wrote that the positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record politeness are not in fact independent of each other, and pointed out that,

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off-record speech abounds in the strategies of positive and negative politeness . . . What is more, on-record strategies are often combined with off-record strategies. There exist switches from positive politeness to negative politeness and vice-versa. In fact, these switches can be seen to follow logical and/or temporal sequences which constitute a type of super-strategy. Brown and Levinson have not dealt with such sequential switches and yet these switches abound in practice. (155)

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. Conclusion

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In the foregoing, I have provided a few of the many criticism levied at the Brown and Levinson model of politeness. For example, Is politeness communicated by an implicature or is it the norm, with only impoliteness being signaled? What is the status of a politeness principle? Is it a maxim, parallel to the Quantity Maxim, or does it have some other status? If so, what? Given that they are distinguishable, what is the relationship between deference and politeness? Should politeness be relegated to only attempts at maintaining harmony among the interactants, or should it be extended to impoliteness? What is the status of politeness strategies, both their relative distances from each other within the hierarchy and their internal structure? Is the notion of face universal or will there have to be cultural-relative definitions? Finally, what is the status of Wx, both in terms of its form and the definition of the component parts? These raise but a few of the important questions to be asked in pursuit of an understanding of what linguistic politeness is, how it is used, what factors influence a speaker’s choice to be heard as polite and what sort of a model is maximally useful. It is clear that considerable work on the Brown and Levinson model is necessary in the immedicate future if it is not be to relegated to the rag bin of rejected theories. Optimists take the position that if we continue to

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work on the problem, we can expect to arrive at a serious theory of politeness, necessarily somewhat different than the existing model, where concepts of face and the principles for interpretation are carefully articulated and well understood. Pessimists, on the other hand, take the position that while we all know polite behavior when we see it, we will never be able to speak definitively about it. I am an optimist.

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. A fuller, more complete version of the present paper was presented as one of the three plenary addresses in 1999 at the First Annual Conference on Politeness, Bangkok, Thailand. My thanks to Ken Turner for comments on an earlier draft.

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. The second edition of their book was published in 1987. While the main text remained unchanged, they did write a 50 page preface clarifying certain issues which had been raised over the preceding 9 years.

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. Grice made the same suggestion in his initial work on conversational implication but never followed it up. . Recall that politeness markers do not exist.

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. I am not considering here the case of a strategy being used differently because of cultural differences, for example, in Israel a request for a cigarette might be rendered in Hebrew as, Give me a cigarette, whereas in the U.S. under the same circumstances, the speaker would probably say, Could you give me a cigarette, please? Similarly, in the U.S. one normally thanks a waiter for bringing your food whereas in China this is seldom done.

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. Again, Ide and others conflate politeness and deference into one topic.

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References

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. The factors of distance and power are constantly renegotiable and, not surprisingly have different loadings in different languages, therefore different strategies for the same Rx. Scollon and Scollon (1991) write of two types of relationship: inside (nei) – intimate regular contacts, outside (wai) – temporary contacts in service encounters; don’t require redressing, while Hwang (1987) describes three types of relationship: expressive (family), mixed (friends) instrumental (stranger, short-term) and Yang (1992) also describes three types: (sheng) outside; (shu) inside; (jia) family.

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