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Impoliteness . ENGL408 Meaning in Professional Interaction. Pragmatic Impoliteness . The notion of pragmatic politeness is linked to the default context of communication in which the speaker/writer tries to save, or enhance, her/his own face and/or the face of the hearer/reader.
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Impoliteness ENGL408 Meaning in Professional Interaction
Pragmatic Impoliteness The notion of pragmatic politeness is linked to the default context of communication in which the speaker/writer tries to save, or enhance, her/his own face and/or the face of the hearer/reader. However, this is not always the context for communication. What about contexts in which the speaker/writer is angry or upset with the hearer/reader or simply dislikes the hearer/reader for some reason?
Pragmatic Impoliteness In these contexts, the default objective is not to save or enhance the face of the hear/reader, but to cause the hearer/reader to lose face. In such contexts, it is possible to analyse the impoliteness strategies used by the speaker/writer. Obviously, the use of impoliteness strategies is far less frequent than the use of politeness strategies and there are fewer studies of impoliteness (see, for example, Lachenicht, 1980; Culpeper, 1996 & 2005; Bousfield, 2008).
Pragmatic Impoliteness Just as studies of politeness have listed strategies into two categories (positive and negative), so studies of impoliteness have done the same. Bousfield (2008) reviews the studies on impoliteness and offers a framework largely based on the work of Culpeper (1996 and 2005). As with politeness, impoliteness consists of five “super-strategies” and specific positive and negative strategies.
Pragmatic Impoliteness Impoliteness super-strategies (in rank order) • Bald on record – used when much face is at stake and the speaker/writer does not have the power to (safely) speak directly and unambiguously. • Positive impoliteness – the use of strategies to damage other’s positive face. • Negative impoliteness - the use of strategies to damage other’s negative face. • Off-record impoliteness – the damage to face is done indirectly using an implicature which can then be cancelled by the speaker/writer. • Withhold politeness – the speaker/writer keeps silent or fails to act where politeness is expected. (Culpeper, 2005)
Pragmatic Impoliteness Culpeper (2005) also adopts the formula advocated by Brown and Levinson to assess the extent of the face threat and then to determine how best to damage the face of hearer/reader. Calculation for how to achieve face loss: Power + Distance + Imposition = degree of face-loss to be achieved by appropriate impoliteness strategy
