Politeness Phenomena in British English and Uruguayan Spanish: The Case of Requests
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.199711291Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the realisation patterns of requests in British English and Uruguayan Spanish, establishing the similarities and differences between the conceptualisation of politeness by native speakers of both languages. The results obtained, based on the analysis of a discourse completion test administered to 30 native speakers of British English and 30 native speakers of Uruguayan Spanish, show that the major difference between British and Uruguayan requests is a matter of orientation. The British appear to be more inclined towards "negative" politeness, thus attaching more significance to negative aspects of "face" such as non~imposition and detachment. On the other hand, Uruguayans appear to be more inclined towards "positive" politeness thus attaching more importance to the positive aspects of "face" such as approval and involvement.
Downloads
References
BEHARES, L. E. 1981. 'Estudio sociodialectológico de las formas verbales de segunda persona en el español de Montevideo." In Estudios sobre el españoi del Uruguay, Ed. A. Elizaincín.
---. 1981. Montevideo: Dirección General de Extensión Universitaria, División Publicaciones y Ediciones.
BLUM-KULKA, S. 1987. "Indirectness and Politeness in Requests: Same or Different?' Journal of Pragmatics 11.2: 131-146.
BLUM-KULKA, S., J. HOUSE AND G. KASPER. 1989. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood (NJ: Ablex.
BROWN, P., and S. LEVINSON, 1987. Politeness: Some Universals In Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
FRASER, B. and W. NOLEN. 1981. 'The Association of Deference with Linguistic Form." International Journal of the Sociology of Language 27: 93-109.
GOFFMAN, E, 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Garden City (NY): Doubleday.
GU, Y. 1990. "Politeness Phenomena in Modern Chinese." Journal of Pragmatics 14: 237-257.
GUDYKUNST, W., and S. TING-ToOMEY. 1988. Culture and Interpersonal Communication. Newbury Park: Sage.
HALL, E. 1976. Beyond Culture. New York: Doubleday.
HICKEY, L. 1991. "Comparatively Polite People in Spain and Britain." Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies 4.2: 2-7.
HICKEY, L. and I. VAzQUEz ORTA. 1996. 'Politeness as Deference: A Pragmatic View." Pragmalingüística 2: 267-286.
LAKOFF, R. 1973. "The Logic of Politeness: Or Minding your P's and Q's." Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago UP.
LAVANDERA, B. 1987. "The Social Pragmatics of Politeness Forms." In Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, Vol i. Ed. U. Ammon and N. Dittmar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
LBECH, G. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman.
LYONS, J. 1968. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
MÁRQUEZ REITER, R. 1995. "Politeness Phenonema: The case of Requests in British English and Uruguayan Spanish." Unpublished MA dissertation. Twickenham: St Mary's University College, University of Surrey.
MATSUMOTO, Y. 1989. "Politeness and Conversational Universals: Observations from Japanese." Multilingua 8: 207-221.
PEDRETTI DE BOLON, A. 1983. El idioma de los uruguayos. Unidad y diversidad. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental (Temas del Sigio XX).
SIFIANOU, M. 1992, Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece: A Cross-cultural Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
VÁZQUEZ ORTA, I. 1995. A Contrastive Study if Politeness Phenomena in England and Spain. Duisburg: LAUD.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
