In 1967, H. P. Grice, American philosopher and linguist, propod the Cooperative Principle (abbrev. CP) in William James lecture delivered at Harvard University. He thought that in order to make the conversation go on, we should obey some basic principles, especially “Cooperative Principle”. This new theory brings about a great development in the concept of conversational implicature, and has been attached great attention to in the linguistic circle. Some critics t such high value upon the notion that they regard it as a breakthrough in pragmatics. However, Geoffrey N. Leech, the famous British linguist, considered that “the CP in itlf is not sufficient to explain ‘(1) why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean; and (2) what is the relation between n and force when non-declarative types of ntences are being considered.’”[3] In 1983, Leech propod Politeness Principle (abbrev. PP) so as to rescue the CP from rious trouble. Leech believes the main reason that why people violate Cooperative Principle intently is the consideration of politeness.生活大爆炸第3季
the cooperative principle describes how people interact with one another. As phrad by Paul Grice, who introduced it, it states, "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpo or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." Though phrad as a prescriptive command, the principle is intended as a description of how people normally behave in conversation.
The cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims, called the Gricean maxims, Maxim of Quality
Be Truthful
•Do not say what you believe to be fal
•Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Quantity
Quantity of Information
•Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpos of the exchange).
•Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Maxim of Relation
Relevance
•Be relevant.:With respect to this maxim, Grice writes, "Though the maxim itlf is ter, its formulation conceals a number of problems that exerci me a good deal: questions
about what different kinds and focus of relevance there may be, how the shift in the
cour of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversations are
legitimately changed, and so on. I find the treatment of such questions exceedingly
difficult, and I hope to revert to them in later work." (Grice 1989:27)
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Maxim of Manner
Be Clear
•Avoid obscurity of expression.old woman在线观看
•Avoid ambiguity.
•Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
•Be orderly.
The politeness principle
Leech's maxims | Face and politeness strategies | Examples from Brown and Levinson |
The politeness principle is a ries of maxims, which Geoff Leech has propod as a way of explaining how politeness operates in conversational exchanges. Leech defines politeness as forms of behaviour that establish and maintain comity. That is the ability of participants in a social interaction to engage in interaction in an atmosphere of relative harmony. In stating his maxims Leech us his own terms for two kinds of illocutionary acts. He calls reprentatives “asrtives”, and calls directives“impositives”.
•Each maxim is accompanied by a sub-maxim (between square brackets), which is of less importance. The support the idea that negative politeness (avoidance of discord) is more important than positive politeness (eking concord).
•Not all of the maxims are equally important. For instance, tact influences what we say more powerfully than does generosity, while approbation is more important than modesty.
•Note also that speakers may adhere to more than one maxim of politeness at the same time. Often one maxim is on the forefront of the utterance, with a cond maxim being invoked by implication.
全球化的影响•If politeness is not communicated, we can assume that the politeness attitude is abnt.
Leech's maxims
•Tact maxim(in directives [impositives] and commissives): minimi cost to other;
[maximi benefit to other]
badland
•Generosity maxim (in directives and commissives): minimi benefit to lf; [maximi cost to lf]
•Approbation maxim(in expressives and reprentatives [asrtives]): minimi disprai of other; [maximi prai of other]
•Modesty maxim(in expressives and reprentatives): minimi prai of lf;
[maximi disprai of lf]
•Agreement maxim (in reprentatives): minimi disagreement between lf and other;
[maximi agreement between lf and other]
•Sympathy maxim(in reprentatives): minimi antipathy between lf and other;
[maximi sympathy between lf and other]
Face and politeness strategies
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•“Face”(as in “lo face”) refers to a speaker's n of linguistic and social identity. Any speech act may impo on this n, and is therefore face threatening. And speakers have strategies for lesning the threat. Positive politeness means being complimentary and gracious to the addre (but if this is overdone, the speaker may alienate the other party).
Negative politeness is found in ways of mitigating the imposition.
•Hedging: Er, could you, er, perhaps, clo the, um , window?
•Pessimism: I don't suppo you could clo the window, could you?
•Indicating deference:Excu me, sir, would you mind if I asked you to clo the window?
•Apologizing: I'm terribly sorry to put you out, but could you clo the window?
•Impersonalizing: The management requires all windows to be clod.
Examples from Brown and Levinson
Perhaps the most thorough treatment of the concept of politeness is that of Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, which was first published in 1978 and then reissued, with a long introduction, in 1987. In their model, politeness is defined as redressive action taken to counter-balance the disruptive effect of face-threatening acts (FTAs).
In their theory, communication is en as potentially dangerous and antagonistic. A strength of their approach over that of Geoff Leech is that they explain politeness by deriving it from more fundamental notions of what it is to be a human being. The basic notion of their model is “face”.
This is defined as “the public lf-image that every member (of society) wants to claim for himlf”. In their framework, face consists of two related aspects.
•One is negative face, or the rights to territories, freedom of action and freedom from imposition - wanting your actions not to be constrained or inhibited by others.
•The other is positive face, the positive consistent lf-image that people have and their desire to be appreciated and approved of by at least some other people
The rational actions people take to prerve both kinds of face, for themlves and the people they interact with, add up to politeness. Brown and Levinson also argue that in human communication, either spoken or written, people tend to maintain one another's face continuously.
In everyday conversation, we adapt our conversation to different situations. Among friends we take liberties or say things that would em discourteous among strangers. And we avoid over-formality with friends. In both situations we try to avoid making the hearer embarrasd or uncomfortable. Face-threatening acts (FTAs) are acts that infringe on the hearers' need to maintain his/her lf-esteem, and be respected. Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpo of dealing with the FTAs
Brown and Levinson sum up human politeness behaviour in four strategies, which correspond to the examples: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record-indirect strategy.
ready to go•The bald on-record strategy does nothing to minimize threats to the hearer's “face”
季羡林在德国>你是我的唯一用英语怎么说•The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize that your hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and express group reciprocity.
•The negative politeness strategy also recognizes the hearer's face. But it also recognizes that you are in some way imposing on them. Some other examples would be to say, “I don't want to bother ” or “I was ”
•Off-record indirect strategies take some of the pressure off of you. You are trying to avoid the direct FTA of asking for a beer. Instead you would rather it be offered to you once your hearer es that you want one.
The strategies are not universal - they are ud more or less frequently in other cultures. For example, in some eastern societies the off-record-indirect strategy will place on your hearer a social obligation to give you anything you admire. So speakers learn not to express admiration for expensive and valuable things in homes that they visit.
Bald on-record
•An emergency: Help!
•Task oriented: Give me tho!
•Request: Put your jacket away.
•Alerting: Turn your lights on! (while driving)
Positive Politeness
•Attend to the hearer: You must be hungry, it's a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch?
•Avoid disagreement: A: What is she, small? B: Yes, yes, she's small, smallish, um, not really small but certainly not very big.
•Assume agreement: So when are you coming to e us?
•Hedge opinion: You really should sort of try harder
Negative Politeness
•Be indirect: I'm looking for a pen.
•Request forgiveness: You must forgive
•Minimize imposition: I just want to ask you if I could u your computer?
•Pluralize the person responsible:We forgot to tell you that you needed to by your plane ticket by yesterday
Off-record (indirect)
•Give hints: It's a bit cold in here.
•Be vague: Perhaps someone should have been more responsible.
•Be sarcastic, or joking: Yeah, he's a real Einstein (rocket scientist, Stephen Hawking, genius and so on)!
Pragmatic failure
The study of pragmatic failure begins with Jenny Thomas. She first propos the notion of pragmatic failure in her Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure in 1983.She classified pragmatic failure into pragmalinguistic failure(语言语用失误) and sociopragmatic failure（社交语用失误）.
Pragmalinguistic failure（语言语用失误）occurs when the pragmatic force mapped by the speakers onto a given utterance is systematically different from the force most frequently assigned to it by nati好听的花名
ve speakers of the target language, or when speech act strategies are inappropriately tra nsferred from L1 to L2.’(Thomas 1983, 99) Pragmalinguistic failure is cloly linked with language itlf, referring to the ca that learners unconsciously transfer native expression_rs into English ignoring their pragmatic meaning, or u other inappropriate expression_rs of the target language.
Sociopragmatic failure（社交语用失误）in contrast, is cloly related to cultures defined by Thomas (1983:99) as '…social conditions placed on language u’ stemming
