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mitigated directness
is due to the unique characteristics of
family discourse – the family domain is characterised by asymmetrical role
relationships, a high level of informality and a preference for linguistic features that
index positive affect. These function to „license the prevailing direct style, lending it a
solidarity politeness interpretation‟ (1997a: 177). Vuchinich (1984: 220) maintains that
relations in the family are „multiplex‟, involving more than one relation type, for
example, power and affect. He claims that „where multiplex relations are prevalent,
more complex social control mechanisms than simple dominance are necessary to
maintain social control.‟ Blum-Kulka (1997a) argues that solidarity politeness is
essential in regulating family discourse in order that parents can be sociable with their
children while simultaneously socialising them.
Brumark (2003a, 2003b) examined parents‟ use of directives at the dinner table in 19
Swedish families. She found a clear gender distinction regarding the use of indirectness
for socialising purposes. When addressing children, women use more syntactically
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indirect directives, those traditionally associated with politeness, than men. She
maintains that men tend to be either more direct in their speech or use
off-record
politeness strategies such as sarcasm (Brown and Levinson, 1987), especially when
trying to regulate the behaviour of their children. Brumark (2003a, 2003b) demonstrated
that with these parents, the women‟s indirect directives appeared to be more
„successful‟, i.e. the children obeyed them, than the direct style of the men which
resulted in the children protesting or resisting (see also Brumark, 2006). Becker (1988)
found that American parents employed indirect comments in the majority of cases
(92%) in order to correct their children‟s pragmatic behaviour. She suggests a number
of possible reasons for this level of indirectness. Firstly, the parent‟s are using them in a
face saving manner (Brown and Levinson, 1987) in that indirectness draws less
attention to the child‟s error or omission. Secondly, parents are using indirect teaching
techniques as models from which the children then learn indirectness. Thirdly,
indirectness places a cognitive load on the children as they have to generate the correct
responses themselves rather than being given them directly by the parents. Finally, she
suggested that indirectness in the form of sarcasm or deliberate vagueness may be used
as a form of punishment by the parents. Ironically, Ervin-Tripp
et al
. (1984) found that
polite requests, when used by children, were refused more often than they were
successful. However, what they did discover is that these requests are virtually never
ignored by adults. They conclude that „this must explain at least part of the motivation
for using polite forms, and it may represent the principal force towards the acquisition
of politeness‟ (p. 134).
Blum-Kulka (1990, 1991) also emphasised the role culture has to play in language
socialisation. For example, she found that Israeli families tend to prefer markers of
solidarity politeness such as nicknames, whereas American families prefer conventional
politeness markers such as full first names. De Geer
et al
. (2002) analysed the
dinnertime talk of 100 middle class families from five different groups living in three
different countries; Estonian families in Estonia, Finnish families in Finland, Swedish
families in Sweden as well as immigrant Estonian and Finnish families in Sweden. They
examined the parents‟ use of metapragmatic comments and noted a high degree of
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directness across all groups. They claim that in Sweden one might have expected to find
more indirect comments due to the individualistic nature of the country in comparison
to, say, Estonia. However, Daun (1994) points out that Swedes behave differently at
home than in official contexts, and may therefore be expected to express themselves
differently. De Geer
et al
. (2002) also found that all groups produce more comments in
relation to their children‟s behaviour than their language use. However, the Finnish and
Estonian families are primarily concerned with the children‟s table manners whereas the
Swedish families comment considerably more on ethical and moral issues.
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