Alle Publikationen
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2016
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(2016): Being Politically Impolite. Extending Politeness Theory to Adversarial Political Discourse. In: Discourse & Society 12 (4), S. 451-472. DOI: 10.1177/0957926501012004003
Abstract: This article attempts to extend politeness theory beyond informal situations to adversarial political discourse, using Prime Minister's Question Time in the British Parliament as data. Viewing the House of Commons as a 'community of practice' (Lave and Wenger, 1991) provides a way of exploring concepts of politeness and impoliteness against a set of member expectations. The article argues three main propositions: (1) that much of the discourse of Prime Minister's Question Time is composed of intentional and explicitly face-threatening (or face-enhancing) acts and that these can be analysed in terms of both propositional and interactional levels: (2) that negative politeness features co-exist with the performance of intentional threats to the hearer's positive face and that these can only be understood and interpreted in relationship to Parliament as an Institution and the wider political context; and (3) that systematic impoliteness is not only sanctioned but rewarded in accordance with the expectations of Members of the House by an adversarial and confrontational political process.
2008
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(2008): Impoliteness in Interaction
Abstract: This study concerns the nature of impoliteness in face-to-face spoken interaction. For more than three decades many pragmatic and sociolinguistic studies of interaction have considered politeness to be one central explanatory concept governing and underpinning face-to-face interaction. Politeness' "evil twin" impoliteness has been largely neglected until only very recently. This book, the first of its kind on the subject, considers the role that impoliteness has to play by drawing extracts from a range of discourse types (car parking disputes, army and police training, police-public interactions and kitchen discourse). The study considers the triggering of impoliteness; explores the dynamic progression of impolite exchanges, and examines the way in which such exchanges come to some form of resolution. 'Face' and the linguistic sophistication and manipulation of discoursally expected norms to cause, or deflect impoliteness is also explored, as is the dynamic and sometimes hotly contested nature of an individual's socio-discoursal role.
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(2008): Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Abstract: This study concerns the nature of impoliteness in face-to-face spoken interaction. For more than three decades many pragmatic and sociolinguistic studies of interaction have considered politeness to be one central explanatory concept governing and underpinning face-to-face interaction. Politeness' "evil twin" impoliteness has been largely neglected until only very recently. This book, the first of its kind on the subject, considers the role that impoliteness has to play by drawing extracts from a range of discourse types (car parking disputes, army and police training, police-public interactions and kitchen discourse). The study considers the triggering of impoliteness; explores the dynamic progression of impolite exchanges, and examines the way in which such exchanges come to some form of resolution. 'Face' and the linguistic sophistication and manipulation of discoursally expected norms to cause, or deflect impoliteness is also explored, as is the dynamic and sometimes hotly contested nature of an individual's socio-discoursal role.
2007
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(2007): The discursive challenge to politeness research. An interactional alternative. In: Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture 3 (2). DOI: 10.1515/PR.2007.013
Abstract: The discursive approach to politeness represents one of the most coherent challenges to the dominance of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory to date, and indeed to the continuing viability of the field of politeness research itself. However, while the discursive approach advocates the displacement of politeness as the focus of research, upon closer examination of the epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying this approach, a number of inconsistencies arise. In particular, the issue of how researchers can identify instances of (im)politeness without imposing the analysts' understandings comes to the fore. In this paper it is suggested that a theory of (im)politeness needs to examine more carefully how (im-) politeness is interactionally achieved through the evaluations of self and other (or their respective groups) that emerge in the sequential unfolding of interaction. This entails the analyst looking for evidence in the interaction that such (im)politeness evaluations have been made by the participants, either through explicit comments made by participants in the course of the interaction (less commonly), or through the reciprocation of concern evident in the adjacent placement of expressions of concern relevant to the norms invoked in that particular interaction (more commonly). In this way, the development of a theory of (im)politeness, within a broader theory of facework or interpersonal communication can remain a focal point for the field of politeness research.
1997
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(1997): Varieties of rudeness. Types and functions of impolite utterances. In: Functions of Language 4 (2), S. 251-287. DOI: 10.1075/fol.4.2.05kie
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.4.2.05kie Abstract: Standard theories of politeness (Lakoff 1975, Leech 1983, Brown and Levinson 1987) face a number of problems. To mention but a few, it can be doubted that these theories have managed to establish truly universal concepts and classifications of (im)polite behavior; they exaggerate the relative importance of indirectness; they do not treat situational and societal constraints sufficiently; finally, they do not deal with rudeness in enough detail. Therefore, it does not seem to be possible to describe rudeness simply as a deviation from or violation of rules and maxims of cooperative/polite communication. Starting from suggestions made by Kasper (1990) and Culpeper (1996), I will try to refine standard definitions of politeness and rudeness. Moreover, examples of rude utterances (mostly taken from spoken and written English and German dialogues) will be used to establish a typology of communicative rudeness. Several subtypes of cooperative (e.g. ritual insults, reactive rudeness, sociable rudeness) and non-cooperative (e.g. strategic rudeness in public institutions) rudeness are distinguished.
1996
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(1996): Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. In: Journal of Pragmatics 25 (3), S. 349-367. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3
Abstract: Politeness theories have focussed on how communicative strategies are employed to promote or maintain social harmony in interaction. On the other hand, little work has been done on communicative strategies with the opposite orientation, that of attacking one's interlocutor and causing disharmony. In this paper, I consider the notions of inherent and mock impoliteness, and discuss contextual factors associated with impoliteness. In particular, I attempt to build an impoliteness framework which is parallel but opposite to Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness. Finally, I demonstrate that in some contexts - specifically that of army training and literary drama - impoliteness behaviour is not a marginal activity, and that we need an appropriate descriptive framework in order to account for it.
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