If we accept Brown and Levinson’s distinction between positive and negative politeness, it would seem justifiable to accept also that Britain tends to be a negative-politeness society whereas Spain tends towards positive politeness. The paper asks how positive-politeness readers (Spaniards) react to examples of negative (or English) politeness when translated literally. It reports on a smallscale experiment carried out to see how such readers reacted to translations from English of samples of negative politeness and poses the question whether translators (continue to) translate the locutionary dimension (the words) of such texts rather than attempt to convey the illocutionary force (the acts of politeness being performed).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.