Politeness and formulaicity: Evidence from Cypriot Greek

Abstract

In Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, the degree of indirectness of an utterance is presumed to be commensurate with the sum of the variables of Distance, Power and Ranking of an imposition. This claim was tested with reference to a corpus of spontaneous requests from Cypriot Greek. It emerged that, rather than motivating the choice of a ‘generic’ politeness strategy corresponding to a certain degree of indirectness, particular combinations of values of extra-linguistic variables (such as sex, age and social class of interlocutors, relationship between them, setting) tend to co-occur with particular combinations of the values of linguistic variables (type of verb, subjective modality, number/person). It is proposed that the latter combinations constitute formulae accessed during the production/interpretation of polite discourse in a holistic manner alongside perceivable features of the extra-linguistic context.

1820 Settler petitions in the Cape Colony

“…To Chaemsaithong (2012), choices of conventional forms over other available options may be interpreted as instances of politeness. Similarly, Terkourafi (2002) shows that polite discourse involves formulaic language to a significant extent. Both authors imply here the connection between conventionalisation and politeness directed at others.…”

The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education

“…It is particularly interesting to note that the strong presence of positive politeness strategies in Greek conversational narratives reflects Greek society's general orientation towards positive politeness, that is, the preference for building relations of camaraderie and familiarity in personal encounters (see among others, Sifianou, 1992;Pavlidou, 1994;Hirschon, 2001;Tzanne, 2001;Terkourafi, 2002;Makri-Tsilipakou, 2003). Hence, it seems that narrative in Greek society may be considered a conversational practice for cultivating social relations (see Archakis and Tzanne, 2009).…”

Communication, Cooperation and Conflict

“…"This finding is" as Terkourafi points out, "not new", since "[p]revious research has shown that hints (i.e. off-record indirectness) are not universally or uncontroversially perceived as polite" (Terkourafi 2011a: 2862, see Blum-Kulka 1987: 136, Holtgraves and Yang 1990: 724, Weizman 1993: 125, Turner 1996: 5-6, Marquez Reiter 2000and Terkourafi 2002. Sometimes people speak indirectly due to face concerns, which may or may not include considerations about ignorability of interpretation, while other times the venue of indirect speech are chosen because it enables the speaker to deny that he meant what he actually did mean.…”