Criticism of the Politeness Theory

The absolute ranking of the threat of the FTA.

Social distance between parties (symmetric relation).

Sociological Variables

Take into consideration three sociological factors when deciding whether and how to use the various strategies in real life situations.

Depending on three factors [2, 15]:

Distinguish kin or friend from a stranger with whom you may be of the same social status, but who is still separated by social distance. Different FTAs are used depending on the social distance between interlocutors.

Example: We may use less elaborate positive strategies or we may choose to use positive rather than negative politeness when speaking with family.

2. Power relations between parties (asymmetric relation).

We are inclined to speak to our social equals differently than those whose status is higher or lower than our own in a given situation.

Example: If a professor is working in her office and people are being very loud and disruptive in the next room, she will go over there and tell them to be quiet but the way she does it will differ depending on who it is.

If they are students she will use the bald on-record strategy to make sure there is no confusion in what she is asking: “Stop talking so loud!”

If they are colleagues she will claim common ground with them using the positive politeness strategy or frame an indirect request for them to stop talking: “I’m working on a lecture and it’s really hard to concentrate with all this noise.”

If they are really high status directors of the department she may end up saying nothing at all or apologize for interrupting them.

Some impositions are greater than others. Highly imposing acts like requests demand more redress to mitigate their increased threat level.

Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness has been criticized as not being universally valid, by linguists working with East-Asian languages, including Japanese. Matsumoto and Ide claim that Brown and Levinson assume the speaker's volitional use of language, which allows the speaker's creative use of face-maintaining strategies toward the addressee [11, 16]. In East Asian cultures like Japan, politeness is achieved not so much on the basis of volition as on discernment (wakimae, finding one's place), or prescribed social norms. Wakimae is oriented towards the need for acknowledgment of the positions or roles of all the participants as well as adherence to formality norms appropriate to the particular situation.

Japanese is perhaps the most widely known example of a language that encodes politeness at its very core. Japanese has two main levels of politeness, one for intimate acquaintances, family and friends, and one for other groups, and verb morphology reflects these levels. Besides that, some verbs have special hyper-polite suppletive forms. This happens also with some nouns and interrogative pronouns. Japanese also employs different personal pronouns for each person according to gender, age, rank, degree of acquaintance, and other cultural factors.

G. Leech’s Politeness Maxims

According to Geoffrey Leech, there is a politeness principle with conversational maxims similar to those formulated by Paul Grice. He lists six maxims: tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy. The first and second form a pair, as do the third and the fourth. These maxims vary from culture to culture: what may be considered polite in one culture may be strange or downright rude in another.

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