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Politeness Theory:
Wei Ren (2012) argues that among all of the perspectives of politeness, one of the most influential theoretical foundation for the examination of the politeness in the arenas of ILP and cross-cultural pragmatics (linguistic politeness) was proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), offering a framework in which the notion of face is associated to politeness. As mentioned earlier and according to Brown and Levinson (1987) as well as Searle (1969, 1975, 1979), the level of politeness hinges on the speaker’s degree of directness and transparency. Sukamto (2012: 2) states that Brown and Levinson (1987) propose two-fold face wants (desires): negative face and positive face, and thus suggesting two different kinds of politeness: positive politeness and negative politeness.
They define the negative face as “the freedom of action and freedom from imposition”, whereas the positive face as “the expression of involvement or belonging in a group, which includes the desire to be liked and approved of.” Brown and Levinson also propose the relationship between social variables including power (P), distance (D) and size of imposition (SI) and the degree of politeness, the relative politeness between the speaker and the interlocutor.
According to Brown and Levinson, when focus shifts away from the interlocutors’ status differences, solidarity, shared attitudes and values are emphasised and this is where positive politeness is at play. By contrast, negative politeness encourages people to avoid intruding or interrupting each other; in fact, social distance between the speakers is emphasised in which maintaining others’ face is crucial to performing politeness, and accordingly power and distance have to be carefully considered before a speaker chooses a strategy to realise a request. Showing awareness of each other’s face and cooperating to maintain it is at the heart of social interactions in which people should avoid face-saving defensive techniques, minimise cost and maximise benefit which are integral to politeness used in “face-threatening acts” FTAs. They emphasise that when confronted with the need to perform a FTA, one must make a decision concerning how to perform the FTA. It is either one performs it in the most direct manner or that he/she attempts to mitigate FTA effect on the hearer's face (Brown & Levinson,1987: 76). The decision of the strategy employed is driven by the assumed seriousness of the FTA, which is governed by the social situation as evaluated by the speaker. Brown and Levinson (1978: 143) assert “the more effort a speaker expends in face-preserving work, the more he will be seen as trying to satisfy the hearer’s face wants”. Therefore, the more indirect an utterance is, the politer it is assumed to be.
With reference to the intention and the force behind the words, the illocutionary force of an utterance, Schauer (2009: 8) states that Searle (1975, 1976) argues that indicating politeness involves less transparent expressions and verbs. For instance, it is less polite to utter I request you to+ verb as in, ‘I request you to pass me the salt’; instead utterances as ‘Can you pass me the salt?’ are politer. He terms the speech acts using these tentativeness and indirectness characteristics of the authentic language as indirect speech acts. Zufferey (2015: 7) reiterates an indirect request formed as a question opens possibilities for the interlocutor to comply without seeming to obey to an order, or that he or she is able to discard it without damaging the face of the hearer who is ready to take and accept whatever response.
Tan and Farashaiyan (2012:43), motivated by Brown and Levinson's (1987: 65) politeness theory reiterates the practical aspect; claiming requests are FTAs in which there is a risk that a speaker will threaten the hearer’s face. In direct requests, the illocutionary force of the utterance is communicated via grammatical, lexical, or semantic means (for example, “Leave me alone.”). Conventionally indirect statements express the illocution through fixed linguistic behaviour recognised and conventionalised in the TL speech community (for example, “How about cleaning up?”). Non-conventionally indirect requests are realised when the addressee computes the illocutionary force from the interaction of the locution within its context parameters (for example, “The game is boring”, or “we have been playing this game for an hour now”), where there is partial or no reference to the elements of the request (Jalilifar, 2009: 47). Olshtain and Blum-Kulka (1985) apprise requests usually involve reference to the requestor, the requestee, and the action requested, indication to the speaker is likely to soften the imposition. They add there are different perspectives of request which include array of orientations: hearer- orientation, speaker- orientation, a mix of speaker and hearer orientations or impersonal- orientation. Different cultures around the world have different notions and expectations about how speech acts should be expressed in the L2, although the concept of politeness is universal. Woodfield (2008) and Bardovi-Harlig (2010) among others argue the study of speech as a cultural phenomenon, claiming that it plays a vital role in shaping cultural identity. They contend that different communities vary in their production and interpretation of linguistic conventions and behaviours. Intercultural miscommunication or communication breakdown may occur due to the cultural differences between a speaker and his/ her interlocutor(s).
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