Research Article
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Year 2020, , 243 - 263, 31.07.2020
https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.775805

Abstract

References

  • Aijmer, K. (2009). Please: A politeness formula viewed in a translation perspective. Brno Studies in English, 35(2), 63-77.
  • Aijmer, K. (2015). Will you fuck off please? The use of please by London teenagers. Soprag, 3(2), 127-149.
  • Andersen, G. (2001). Pragmatic markers and sociolinguistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. The Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452-471.
  • Arundale, R. B. (2006). Face as relational and interactional: a communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 2(2), 193-216.
  • Barron, A. (2000). Acquiring ‘different strokes’: A longitudinal study of the development of L2 pragmatic competence. German as a Foreign Language Journal (GFL Journal), 2, 1-29.
  • Barron, A. (2003). Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics: Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Bernal, M. (2008). Do insults always insult? Genuine politeness versus non-genuine politeness in colloquial Spanish. Pragmatics, 18(4), 775–802.
  • Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.
  • Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood: Ablex Publishing.
  • Blum-Kulka, S., & Levenston, E. A. (1987). Lexical-grammatical pragmatic indicators. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9(2), 155-170.
  • Bousfield, D. (2008). Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Bousfield, D., & Locher, M. A. (Eds.). (2008). Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness (pp. 56-310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brownell, H., & Stringfellow, A. (1999). Making requests: illustrations of how right-hemisphere brain damage can affect discourse production. Brain and Language, 68, 442- 465.
  • Chilton, P. (1990). Politeness, politics, and diplomacy. Discourse and Society, 1(2), 201-224.
  • Culpeper, J. (2005). Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The weakest link. Journal of Politeness Research, 1, 35-72.
  • Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Culpeper, J., Haugh, M., & Kádár, D. Z. (Eds.). (2017). The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Dalton-Puffer, Ch. (2005). Negotiating interpersonal meanings in naturalistic classroom discourse: Directives in content-and-language-integrated classrooms. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 1275-1293.
  • De Felice, R., & Murphy, M. L. (2015). The politics of please in British and American English: a corpus pragmatics approach. Abstract Book of the 8th International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CL2015), Lancaster University 21-24 July.
  • Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2005). Yes, tell me please, what time is the midday flight from Athens arriving?: Telephone service encounters and politeness. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2, 253-273.
  • Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2001). Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter-and intra-national differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 869-885.
  • Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 169- 200.
  • Eelen, G. (2001). A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St Jerome.
  • Ervin-Tripp, S. (1982). Ask and it shall be given to you: Children’s requests. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Contemporary perceptions of language (pp. 235-243). Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C.
  • Faerch, K., & Kasper, G. (1989). Internal and external modification in interlanguage request realization. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 221-247). Norwood: Ablex.
  • Fraser, B. (1996). Pragmatic markers. Pragmatics, 6(2), 167-190.
  • Fukushima, S. (1990). Offers and requests: Performance by Japanese learners of English. World Englishes, 9(3), 317-325.
  • Gleason, J., Perlmann, R., & Greif, E. (1984). What’s the magic word: Learning language through routines. Discourse Processes, 6, 493-502.
  • Grainger, K. (2018). “We’re not in a club now”: a neo-Brown and Levinson approach to analyzing courtroom data. Journal of Politeness Research, 14(1), 19-38.
  • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41-58). London and New York: Academic Press.
  • Gyasi Obeng, S. (1997). Language and politics: Indirectness in political discourse. Discourse and Society, 8(1), 49-83.
  • Hallgren, K. A. (2012). Computing inter-rater reliability for observational data: An overview and tutorial. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 8(1), 23-34.
  • Haugh, M. (2007). The co-construction of politeness implicature in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(1), 84-110.
  • Haugh, M. (2011). Humour, face and im/politeness in getting acquainted. In B. Davies, M. Haugh, & A. J. Merrison (Eds.), Situated politeness (pp. 165-184). London: Continuum.
  • Haugh M., & Bousfield, D. (2012). Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1099-1114.
  • Hill, T. (1997). The development of pragmatic competence in an EFL context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Temple University, Tokyo.
  • Holmes, J., & Stubbe, M. (2005). Power and politeness in the workplace: A sociolinguistic analysis of talk at work. London: Longman.
  • Holmes, J., Marra, M., & Vine, B. (2012). Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties of New Zealand English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1063–1076.
  • House, J. (1989). Politeness in English and German: The functions of Please and Bitte. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 96-119). Norwood: Ablex.
  • House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech (pp. 157-185). The Hague: Mouton.
  • Keating, E. (2009). Power and pragmatics. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3(4), 996-1009.
  • Kecskes, I. (2017). Context-dependency and impoliteness in intercultural communication. Journal of Politeness Research, 13(1), 7-31.
  • Kienpointner, M. (1997). Varieties of rudeness: Types and functions of impolite utterances. Functions of Language, 4(2), 251-287.
  • LeBaron, M. (2003). Bridging cultural conflict: A new approach for a changing world. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
  • Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
  • Leech, G. (2007). Politeness: Is there an East-West divide? Journal of Politeness Research, 3, 167-206.
  • Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1975). A communicative grammar of English. London: Longman.
  • Lee-Wong, S. (1994). Qing/please: A polite or requestive marker? Observations from Chinese. Multilingua, 13, 343-360.
  • Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness; or minding your p’s and q’s. Chicago Linguistic Society, 9, 292-305.
  • Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman’s place. Language in Society, 2(1), 45-80.
  • Lwanga-Lumu, C. (2002). Internal request modification by first and second language speakers. Journal for Language Teaching, 36, 289-304.
  • Markkanen, R. (1985). Cross-language studies in pragmatics. Jyväskylä Cross-Language Studies, 11, 65-83.
  • Martínez-Flor, A. (2009). The use and function of ‘please’ in learners’ oral requestive behavior: A pragmatic analysis. Journal of English Studies, 7, 35-54.
  • Mullany, L. (2006). “Girls on tour”: politeness, small talk, and gender in managerial business meetings. Journal of Politeness Research, 2(1), 55-77.
  • Níkleva, D. G. (2018). Markers of politeness and impoliteness in student-teacher interaction in the discourse genre of emails. Revista Signos. Estudios de Lingüística, 51(97), 214-235.
  • Pavlidou, T. S. (2000). Between politeness and impoliteness: boys and girls in classroom interaction. Studies in Greek Linguistics, 20, 437-448.
  • Reiter, R. M. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam /Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing
  • Rogers, P. S., & Lee-Wong, S. M. (2003). Reconceptualizing politeness to accommodate dynamic tensions in subordinate-to-superior reporting. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 17(4), 379-412.
  • Sato, S. (2008). Use of “please” in American and New Zealand English. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(7), 1249-1278.
  • Stubbs, M. (1983). Discourse analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural language and culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2011). Requests and orders: A cross-linguistic study of their organization in the broader social and cultural context. In K. Aijmer & G. Anderson (Eds.), Pragmatics of society. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Tracy, K., & Tracy, S. J. (1998). Rudeness at 911: Reconceptualizing face and face attack. Human Communication Research, 25(2), 225-251.
  • Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Van der Bom, I., & Mills, S. (2015). A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data. Journal of Politeness Research, 11(2), 179-206.
  • Watts, R. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Wichmann, A. (2005). Please – from courtesy to appeal: The role of intonation in the expression of attitudinal meaning. English Language and Linguistics, 9, 229-253.
  • Wichmann, A. (2004). The intonation of please-requests: A corpus-based study. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1521-1549.
  • Yamazaki, T. (2002). Learning speech acts in English: an investigation of requests made by Japanese learners of English. Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 6, 123-137.

‘Please’ as an impoliteness marker in English discourse

Year 2020, , 243 - 263, 31.07.2020
https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.775805

Abstract

This study explored how Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers conceptualized the impolite use of please in interaction. Moreover, attempts were made to examine whether Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers differ in using the impolite version of please in their communications. To this end, informal conversations of 20 Iranian EFL learners in pairs and small groups were recorded and transcribed. The impolite version of please in these conversations was compared with similar data from the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT). According to results, several functions of the ‘impolite’ please were found among Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers. Firstly, please was used to establish or confirm harmonious relationships between the speakers; it was used as rapport-strengthening impoliteness marker. Secondly, ‘mock impoliteness’ was conceptualized to bear positive meaning since it was interpreted as an amusing or entertaining remark. In teenagers’ circles, entertainment skills whereby impolite please was employed were highly valued. Thirdly, participants adhered to ‘repetition’, ‘reformulation’, and ‘escalation’ in their interactions to show their creative impoliteness. Finally, it was concluded that certain functions of the impolite please were shared between the Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers, while some functions were not shared between these two groups.

References

  • Aijmer, K. (2009). Please: A politeness formula viewed in a translation perspective. Brno Studies in English, 35(2), 63-77.
  • Aijmer, K. (2015). Will you fuck off please? The use of please by London teenagers. Soprag, 3(2), 127-149.
  • Andersen, G. (2001). Pragmatic markers and sociolinguistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. The Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452-471.
  • Arundale, R. B. (2006). Face as relational and interactional: a communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 2(2), 193-216.
  • Barron, A. (2000). Acquiring ‘different strokes’: A longitudinal study of the development of L2 pragmatic competence. German as a Foreign Language Journal (GFL Journal), 2, 1-29.
  • Barron, A. (2003). Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics: Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Bernal, M. (2008). Do insults always insult? Genuine politeness versus non-genuine politeness in colloquial Spanish. Pragmatics, 18(4), 775–802.
  • Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.
  • Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood: Ablex Publishing.
  • Blum-Kulka, S., & Levenston, E. A. (1987). Lexical-grammatical pragmatic indicators. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9(2), 155-170.
  • Bousfield, D. (2008). Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Bousfield, D., & Locher, M. A. (Eds.). (2008). Impoliteness in language: Studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness (pp. 56-310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brownell, H., & Stringfellow, A. (1999). Making requests: illustrations of how right-hemisphere brain damage can affect discourse production. Brain and Language, 68, 442- 465.
  • Chilton, P. (1990). Politeness, politics, and diplomacy. Discourse and Society, 1(2), 201-224.
  • Culpeper, J. (2005). Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The weakest link. Journal of Politeness Research, 1, 35-72.
  • Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Culpeper, J., Haugh, M., & Kádár, D. Z. (Eds.). (2017). The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Dalton-Puffer, Ch. (2005). Negotiating interpersonal meanings in naturalistic classroom discourse: Directives in content-and-language-integrated classrooms. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 1275-1293.
  • De Felice, R., & Murphy, M. L. (2015). The politics of please in British and American English: a corpus pragmatics approach. Abstract Book of the 8th International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CL2015), Lancaster University 21-24 July.
  • Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2005). Yes, tell me please, what time is the midday flight from Athens arriving?: Telephone service encounters and politeness. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2, 253-273.
  • Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2001). Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter-and intra-national differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 869-885.
  • Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 169- 200.
  • Eelen, G. (2001). A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St Jerome.
  • Ervin-Tripp, S. (1982). Ask and it shall be given to you: Children’s requests. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Contemporary perceptions of language (pp. 235-243). Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C.
  • Faerch, K., & Kasper, G. (1989). Internal and external modification in interlanguage request realization. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 221-247). Norwood: Ablex.
  • Fraser, B. (1996). Pragmatic markers. Pragmatics, 6(2), 167-190.
  • Fukushima, S. (1990). Offers and requests: Performance by Japanese learners of English. World Englishes, 9(3), 317-325.
  • Gleason, J., Perlmann, R., & Greif, E. (1984). What’s the magic word: Learning language through routines. Discourse Processes, 6, 493-502.
  • Grainger, K. (2018). “We’re not in a club now”: a neo-Brown and Levinson approach to analyzing courtroom data. Journal of Politeness Research, 14(1), 19-38.
  • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41-58). London and New York: Academic Press.
  • Gyasi Obeng, S. (1997). Language and politics: Indirectness in political discourse. Discourse and Society, 8(1), 49-83.
  • Hallgren, K. A. (2012). Computing inter-rater reliability for observational data: An overview and tutorial. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 8(1), 23-34.
  • Haugh, M. (2007). The co-construction of politeness implicature in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(1), 84-110.
  • Haugh, M. (2011). Humour, face and im/politeness in getting acquainted. In B. Davies, M. Haugh, & A. J. Merrison (Eds.), Situated politeness (pp. 165-184). London: Continuum.
  • Haugh M., & Bousfield, D. (2012). Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1099-1114.
  • Hill, T. (1997). The development of pragmatic competence in an EFL context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Temple University, Tokyo.
  • Holmes, J., & Stubbe, M. (2005). Power and politeness in the workplace: A sociolinguistic analysis of talk at work. London: Longman.
  • Holmes, J., Marra, M., & Vine, B. (2012). Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties of New Zealand English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1063–1076.
  • House, J. (1989). Politeness in English and German: The functions of Please and Bitte. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 96-119). Norwood: Ablex.
  • House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech (pp. 157-185). The Hague: Mouton.
  • Keating, E. (2009). Power and pragmatics. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3(4), 996-1009.
  • Kecskes, I. (2017). Context-dependency and impoliteness in intercultural communication. Journal of Politeness Research, 13(1), 7-31.
  • Kienpointner, M. (1997). Varieties of rudeness: Types and functions of impolite utterances. Functions of Language, 4(2), 251-287.
  • LeBaron, M. (2003). Bridging cultural conflict: A new approach for a changing world. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
  • Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
  • Leech, G. (2007). Politeness: Is there an East-West divide? Journal of Politeness Research, 3, 167-206.
  • Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1975). A communicative grammar of English. London: Longman.
  • Lee-Wong, S. (1994). Qing/please: A polite or requestive marker? Observations from Chinese. Multilingua, 13, 343-360.
  • Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness; or minding your p’s and q’s. Chicago Linguistic Society, 9, 292-305.
  • Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman’s place. Language in Society, 2(1), 45-80.
  • Lwanga-Lumu, C. (2002). Internal request modification by first and second language speakers. Journal for Language Teaching, 36, 289-304.
  • Markkanen, R. (1985). Cross-language studies in pragmatics. Jyväskylä Cross-Language Studies, 11, 65-83.
  • Martínez-Flor, A. (2009). The use and function of ‘please’ in learners’ oral requestive behavior: A pragmatic analysis. Journal of English Studies, 7, 35-54.
  • Mullany, L. (2006). “Girls on tour”: politeness, small talk, and gender in managerial business meetings. Journal of Politeness Research, 2(1), 55-77.
  • Níkleva, D. G. (2018). Markers of politeness and impoliteness in student-teacher interaction in the discourse genre of emails. Revista Signos. Estudios de Lingüística, 51(97), 214-235.
  • Pavlidou, T. S. (2000). Between politeness and impoliteness: boys and girls in classroom interaction. Studies in Greek Linguistics, 20, 437-448.
  • Reiter, R. M. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam /Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing
  • Rogers, P. S., & Lee-Wong, S. M. (2003). Reconceptualizing politeness to accommodate dynamic tensions in subordinate-to-superior reporting. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 17(4), 379-412.
  • Sato, S. (2008). Use of “please” in American and New Zealand English. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(7), 1249-1278.
  • Stubbs, M. (1983). Discourse analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural language and culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2011). Requests and orders: A cross-linguistic study of their organization in the broader social and cultural context. In K. Aijmer & G. Anderson (Eds.), Pragmatics of society. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Tracy, K., & Tracy, S. J. (1998). Rudeness at 911: Reconceptualizing face and face attack. Human Communication Research, 25(2), 225-251.
  • Trosborg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints and apologies. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Van der Bom, I., & Mills, S. (2015). A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data. Journal of Politeness Research, 11(2), 179-206.
  • Watts, R. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Wichmann, A. (2005). Please – from courtesy to appeal: The role of intonation in the expression of attitudinal meaning. English Language and Linguistics, 9, 229-253.
  • Wichmann, A. (2004). The intonation of please-requests: A corpus-based study. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1521-1549.
  • Yamazaki, T. (2002). Learning speech acts in English: an investigation of requests made by Japanese learners of English. Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 6, 123-137.
There are 72 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Linguistics
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Laya Heidari Darani This is me 0000-0001-6341-5308

Mostafa Morady Moghaddam This is me 0000-0002-7939-7105

Publication Date July 31, 2020
Published in Issue Year 2020

Cite

APA Heidari Darani, L., & Moghaddam, M. M. (2020). ‘Please’ as an impoliteness marker in English discourse. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6(2), 243-263. https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.775805