Politeness Principles

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hearer, would naturally abide by the principle in order to converse with each other in an efficient, rational, and co-operative way.

Moreover, Horn (1984) further proposes the Principle of Least Effort (and the Principle of Sufficient Effort) to revise Grice’s Cooperative Principle. He suggests that CP can be reduced into two principles: The first one is the Q Principle-Make your contribution sufficient, and R Principle-Make your contribution necessary. From the works of Tannen (1975, 1979) mentioned in Horn (1984: 16), there is a tendency that female obeys the Q Principle more, while male obeys the R Principle more. In other words, female is considered more hearer-oriented, while male is considered more speaker-oriented.

However, in real conversation, Grice’s Cooperative Principle is often found violated or flouted. People would rather take a risk of causing communication to fail down and break the rules which are universally known. It means that these principles mentioned above are still not enough to explain how people communicate with each other. Politeness Principle (PP) can be one of the probable explanations.

2.3. Politeness Principles

When people proffer agreement, the most efficient and effort-saving way is to utter a word, “yes” or “right.” Nevertheless, in daily conversation, the agreeing party, not afraid of being considered flattering, usually adds similar experiences or gives a justification to strengthen their agreement. It means that people would rather violate CP (Quantity in this example) for politeness’ sake. Leech (1983) suggests that when CP enables the speakers to communicate which is based on the assumption that all the interlocutors are cooperative, Grice overlooks the role of politeness in the social interactions. According to Leech (1983), being polite in words not only establishes and keeps “comity” among people, but also helps the interlocutors engaged in a

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harmonious social interaction. When it comes to agreement, Brown and Levinson (1987) propose that agreement is a way to seek positive politeness because by agreeing, the speaker can claim common ground with the hearer. Therefore, briefly reviewing theories of politeness is necessary when conducting the analysis of agreement. The following paragraphs are about some major studies on politeness.

2.3.1. Politeness Principle by Lakoff (1973)

Lakoff (1973, 1975, 1977) is the first scholar to consider politeness from the conversational-maxim point of view. She suggests two rules of Pragmatic Competence: Be clear and Be polite. The first rule covers the maxims of the Gricean CP, while the second rule consists of three sub-rules: (a) don’t impose (distance), (b) give option (deference), and (c) be friendly (camaraderie). Lakoff (1979) further claims that these politeness rules are not in a hierarchical relationship but are points on a continuum scale, with one end stood by the Gricean CP and the other end, camaraderie. People from different cultures have different priority among these rules which could cause stylistic differences or even communication breakdown.

2.3.2. Politeness Principle by Brown and Levinson (1978)

Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) politeness theory is derived from Goffman’s (1967) notion of face. They propose that face, emotionally invested, is something that people can lose, maintain or enhance. In conversation, people cooperate with each other in order to maintain face in interaction. Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) further suggest that every individual has two faces: negative face and positive face. Negative face means the desire for freedom of action and freedom from being imposed, while positive face means the eager to be complimented and approved of in social interaction. Based on the concept of face, they find the intrinsic nature of the

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addressee’s and the speaker’s face wants runs contradictory with each other. The contradiction inspires them the face-threatening acts (FTAs) which mean acts threatening face intrinsically. Figure 1 shows five strategies for dealing with FTAs.

on record with redressive action Do the FTA 4. off record

5. Don’t do the FTA

Figure 1. Possible strategies of dealing with FTAs

Among five possible responses to FTAs, positive politeness is highly related to this study. According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 70), positive politeness is oriented to the hearer’s positive face which means the positive self-image that the hearer claims for self. Positive politeness is “approach-based;” When focusing on positive politeness to deal with FTAs, the speaker intends to express that he/she wants the hearer’s want. For example, the speaker would treat the hearer as a friend or family member whose wants or personality are known and liked. And agreement is one of the sub-strategies of positive politeness for the speaker to claim common ground with the hearer (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 112). Agreeing with the evaluation which the hearer has made in the previous context satisfies the hearer’s want to be “right” and to be verified in his/her opinions. Therefore, agreeing with others can be taken as a social accelerator which indicates the speaker wants to be more intimate with the hearer.

1. Without redressive action, baldly

2. positive politeness 3. negative politeness

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2.3.3. Politeness Principle by Leech (1983)

Another powerful Politeness Principle is brought up by Leech (1983). He proposed six maxims of his Politeness Principle (PP) (1983: 132) which are summarized below.

1. TACT MAXIM

(a) Minimize cost to other; (b) Maximize benefit to other 2. GENEROSITY MAXIM

(a) Minimize benefit to self; (b) Maximize cost to self 3. APPROBATION MAXIM

(a) Minimize dispraise of other; (b) Maximize praise of other 4. MODESTY MAXIM

(a) Minimize praise of self; (b) Maximize dispraise of self 5. AGREEMENT MAXIM

(a) Minimize disagreement between self and other (b) Maximize agreement between self and other 6. SYMPATHY MAXIM

(a) Minimize antipathy between self and other (b) Maximize sympathy between self and other

Among the six maxims, the first four are in pairs with bipolar scales, while the last two deal with unipolar scales. Leech (1983: 133) further suggests that not all of the maxims and sub-maxims are equally important. For example, Tact Maxim is more important than Generosity Maxim, while Approbation Maxim is more important than Modesty Maxim. Further, every sub-maxim (a) is more important than the sub-maxim (b). In other words, negative politeness is considered weightier than positive politeness. However, when it comes to socio-cultural differences, this unequal relationship may not be true in Chinese society. Chinese people are considered the group emphasizing both negative politeness and positive politeness. And when it comes to Agreement Maxim, the analysis of this research can provide some evidences that Chinese people use many strategies to maximize their agreement.

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Besides Agreement Maxim, the other two relevant maxims for this paper are the Tact Maxim and the Generosity Maxim. When the speaker enforces their agreement by agreement markers and supportive moves, such as account or elaboration, he or she increases cost for self and benefit for other. The speaker makes effort to talk a lot, while the hearer is benefited because of receiving more information.

For politeness principles within the discussion of this study, Brown and Levinson’s face theory and Leech’s PP are taken into account because these principles are highly related to the agreement act. In addition, these two theories take both the speaker and the hearer into consideration. Lakoff’s theory focuses more on the speaker’s aspect so that it is excluded.