Politeness

Politeness

1. It is a possible to specific s number of different general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particualar culture.

   • Positive face reflects an individual's need for his or her wishes and desires to be appreciated in a social context. This is the maintenance of a positive and consistent self-image.
   • Negative face reflects an individual's need for freedom of action, freedom from imposition, and the right to make one's own decisions

2. R. Lakoff.

   • Lakoff shows that the information itself is not enough to explain the everyday uses of language.
   • The fulfillment of conversational maxims would be a problem for life in society, because they may be at odds with courtesy
   • There are three maxims in which we already see the two notions that will then be fundamental, respect for personal space in the first two and appreciation, in the third of them. This is considered an instrument to reduce friction in social interaction
     • 1.Do not impose your will on the interlocutor
     • 2. Indicate options
     • 3. Make your interlocutor feel good: be kind

3. Leech

   • He proposes a Politeness Principle (courtesy principle) whose maxims refer to behavior in general and less to language.
     • The principle indicates specifications of how to be courteous: minimizing the expression of discourteous beliefs and maximizing the expression of courteous beliefs, where discourtesy is defined as unfavorable to the listener.
     • Maxims of tact, generosity, approval, modesty, unanimity and sympathy
       • Maximum touch means minimizing costs to the listener, and maximizing its benefits; the maximum goal orders not to put another in the position of breaking the touch maximum; maximum generosity recommends maximizing the benefit of the other and minimizing one's own; that of approval, maximize praise and minimize criticism; modesty, minimize self-praise and maximize the praise of the other; the agreement, minimize the disagreement and maximize the agreement; that of sympathy, minimize antipathy and maximize sympathy.

4. Brown y Levinson

   • Focuses on that courtesy
     • They don't take into account the speaker’s image when they deal with polite strategies
   • An important contribution to the understanding of courtesy is to give importance to the image of the sender as well as that of the receiver
   • As a regressive action to counterbalance the disruptive effect of threatening acts of the image