Pedagogical institute of termiz state university faculty of foreign language and literature raxmatova mohinur baxodir qizi

II. COMPARISON OF STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PRINCIPLE OF POLITENESS IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK

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   THE ROLE OF POLITENESS IN COMMUNICATION
   

During the 1960s, philosophers and linguists have become attracted to the pragmatic study of language, i.e. they developed an interest in the way language is used in communication between people. In 1962, Austin introduced his theory of speech acts, in 1969 Searle elaborated on it; then came Grice in 1975 with his cooperative principle (henceforth: CP) and its four maxims to study discourse.Leech (1983: 80) explains that Grice’s CP in itself cannot explain why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean; and what the relation is between the sense [meaning as semantically determined] and force [meaning as pragmatically as well as semantically determined] when non-declarative types of sentence are being considered. He, therefore, introduces what he calls the politeness principle (henceforth: PP) and shows that both the CP and the PP are needed for pragmatic interpretations Very often in everyday speech, utterances which flout CP are used and are perfectly understood. The interpretation of these indirect illocutions can be well attained if interlocutors succeed in working out the implicatures behind such flouting. Leech (1983: 80) believes that CP is flouted for the sake of politeness and he cites the following example to illustrate how this happens:
(1) A: We’ll all miss Bill and Agatha, won’t we?
B: Well, we’ll all miss BILL
Leech (ibid: 81) comments that in this example the maxim of quantity is flouted since (B) confirms the first part of (A)’s utterance and ignores the second, implying that they will not miss Agatha because otherwise the answer should have been Yes alone. Why did not (B) say “we will miss Bill but not Agatha”? politeness is the reason according the Leech.Surely in producing such an implicature instead of a direct illocution the speaker intends to maintain a good social relationship with the hearer by being polite and yet at the same time indirectly expressing his own opinion.An important point to be mentioned here is that the choice of one of the different realizations of a speech act depends in part on the extent to which the contextual situation requires politeness, for the PP applies differently in different contexts. This is what Leech sets out to study.Though it cannot be denied that there are certain features of politeness common to some languages, yet the use of politeness does alter from one culture to the other, in that, one society can give precedence to one maxim of PP rather than another while other societies would not. Mazid (2006: 68) reports the Arabic society, for example, exhibits a general tendency towards the generosity maxim while the English society favours the agreement maxim (see also Alaoui, 2011: 8). In this respect, politeness can be said to be culture-specific contextual situation requires politeness, for the PP applies differently in different contexts. This is what Leech sets out to study.Though it cannot be denied that there are certain features of politeness common to some languages, yet the use of politeness does alter from one culture to the other, in that, one society can give precedence to one maxim of PP rather than another while other societies would not. Mazid (2006: 68) reports the Arabic society, for example, exhibits a general tendency towards the generosity maxim while the English society favours the agreement maxim (see also Alaoui, 2011: 8). In this respect, politeness can be said to be culture-specific.Taking into consideration the fact that the realization of politeness is culture specific, it becomes obvious why EFL learners face difficulties when they try to be polite in L2. Solely mastering the linguistic features of a language (rules of usage), they will not be able to communicate appropriately at the pragmatic level (rules of use). In part, L2 speakers’ pragmatic failures have shown to be traceable to cross-linguistic differences in the speech act realization rules, indicating that learners are just as liable to transfer rules of use (contextual appropriateness) as those of ‘usage’ (linguistic accuracy) (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984: 196). To exemplify the differences between cultures, Alaoui (2011: 9), who is a Moroccan, states that Moroccan speakers of English, for example, sound unauthentic or lacking sincerity to native speakers of English because of the excessive usage they make of “polite” forms. To illustrate this fact, Alaoui (ibid) reports that if say Arabic EFL learners meet acquaintances they know, even though they are not their close friends, a likely greeting could be something like the following: Indeed this kind of greeting is usually originated in our Iraqi culture, and it is so common and ritualistic that, I think, no documentation is needed. Such a greeting, however, will shock a native speaker of English who would regard it as unnatural, overfriendly and tautological. What is more, they might consider the speaker as treading on private territories because they are not keeping the social distance usual in the British society (ibid). Politeness is a core communication skill. As soon as we begin to learn language, our parents teach us to say 'please' and 'thank you' and 'excuse me' and 'I'm sorry.' It's no mistake that we learn politeness so early. Our parents intuitively sense that politeness skills are central to our being seen as decent people.

Being polite allows us to show basic human decency to others, even strangers. Receiving politeness acknowledges and reaffirms our humanity. Politeness makes a risky and sometimes frightening social world just a little bit safer.

Politeness is more than etiquette. Understanding politeness provides insight into fundamental truths about the social world and what it means to be a person—someone with a self and an identity. Politeness also illustrates how the social world is at times rule-governed. Like many concepts in communication, politeness is familiar yet difficult to define. Luckily, we do not have to start from scratch. We can stand on the shoulders of giants: in this case, the sociologist Erving Goffman, and the linguists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson.
Vancouver really got me thinking about how politeness works to make communications more effective. Some observations:

Politeness attracts positive attention. People notice mannerisms and tend to respond in kind. Seeing a smile or hearing one tends to make you smile too.

Politeness gives tough situations a chance to get turned around. We had a service issue at a restaurant. The manager apologized, acknowledged our point of view, took our suggestions under advisement and bought us lunch – all with a smile and calming anecdotes. We left as happy customers Politeness gets your message delivered and responded to in the ways you want. When you communicate with courtesy and with a posture that seeks a positive outcome, that will likely get your message across without push back or dismissal. A polite person (or company) will have a stronger, more persuasive brand. My trip to Vancouver impressed me. Since getting back, I’ve been very aware of how I can be politer. That’s my challenge to you and to my fellow Americans. How can we each individually and collectively as a nation be more polite? I think we’d all get a lot more accomplished and be happier too. Drawing from these assumptions, researchers have identified three main strategies for performing speech acts: positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record politeness. In positive politeness, the speaker's goal is to address the positive face needs of the hearer, thus enhancing the hearer's positive face. This is also known as positive face redress. Positive politeness strategies highlight friendliness and camaraderie between the speaker and hearer; the speaker's wants are in some way similar to the hearer's wants. There are many ways to accomplish this familiarity and claim common ground. First, the speaker can notice and attend to the hearer's wants, interests, needs, or goods. Second, the speaker can exaggerate his/her interest, approval or sympathy with the hearer. Third, the speaker can demonstrate an intensified interest to the hearer. The speaker can also use in-group markers, which demonstrate that both the speaker and hearer belong to the same social group, such as a work culture or religious affiliation. These can include forms of address, use of in-group language or dialect, use of jargon or slang, and linguistic contractions. An example might be, "Dude, you know…" or, "Brother, I'd like to discuss with you…" The speaker can also seek agreement with the hearer by choosing safe topics and using repetition. On the flip side of that, the speaker can also seek to avoid disagreement with the hearer by employing a token agreement, a pseudo-agreement, a white lie, or hedging an opinion. Further, the speaker can presuppose knowledge of the hearer's wants and attitudes, presuppose the hearer's values are the same as the speaker's values, presuppose familiarity in the speaker-hearer relationship, and presuppose the hearer's knowledge on the topic. Another strategy to invoke familiarity between speaker and hearer is to use humor/joking. In addition to claiming common ground, the speaker can use some tools to convey that the speaker and hearer are cooperators. These include asserting or presupposing the speaker's knowledge of, and concern for, the hearer's wants, offering or promising, being optimistic, including both speaker and hearer in a target activity, giving or asking for reasons, and assuming or asserting reciprocity. Finally, in an effort to establish positive politeness, the speaker can seek to fulfill the hearer's wants in some way. This can be induced through gift-giving, though these gifts can be material objects, as well as sympathy, understanding, or cooperation. Examples of positive politeness include compliments, and might also include statements such as, "I really like the way you've done this," or, "It took me forever to figure this out, but what I eventually came to was…" or,"You know it's always important to me to do the best job I can, and I know the same is true for you. That's why I think we should pay attention to this piece a little," or, "I really like the way you approach this here. I think this other part might be a little stronger with a similar approach." In many of these cases, the speaker is bringing their own perspectives into the equation within his or her suggestions to the hearer; in this way, the speaker is emphasizing similarity and familiarity with the hearer and the content under discussion. Several researchers offer varying definitions and sub-classifications of politeness. Research from 1990 posits four main approaches to viewing politeness: as a "social norm," as a component of "conversational maxim" (rules guiding conversations), as "face-saving" (Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory fits here and as "conversational-contract." Other researchers argue that politeness is strategic conflict-avoidance, as well as a means of social indexing. That politeness should be understood as strategic conflict-avoidance is exemplified in the perception that "the basic social role of politeness is its ability to function as a way of controlling potential aggression between interactional parties," or within the perception of politeness as connected with smooth communication, or with avoiding disruption and maintaining the social equilibrium and friendly relations..

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