Politeness Essay

Polite behaviors and responses differ regionally and globally. Of course, this is no surprise. Whether you’re interacting with a cousin visiting from a different country or, as Meyerhoff describes in her book, with a waiter at a restaurant, there are highly variable perceptions of what is polite. Where an individual grew up, the values in which they were instilled, and the experiences they have had are all factors in determining what a person might consider polite. Since politeness is a subjective variable, linguistic researchers must apply a different approach when investigating this variable of speech. Quantitative data alone is insufficient in studying politeness. Meyerhoff explains what researchers investigating politeness as a variable

For example, Meyerhoff describes the use of an honorific form of a word as a demonstration of respect by the speaker towards the person with whom they are speaking (85). In order to collect data, researchers may analyze audio recordings, observe social interactions, or review transcriptions. Meyerhoff provides the example of a trascribed exchange in Japanese in which a student and a professor both elect to use the honorific forms in their conversation. When speaking in Japanese, “speakers have to be very discerning: they have to be sensitive to the social significance of the relationships and settings they find themselves in and be able to appropriately draw on the conventions for use of honorifics in those settings” (85). Although this is the specific methodology in Japanese politeness, other languages may hold an identical

In this context, face holds the same meaning as the metaphorical application of ‘saved my face,’ which would be applied to a situation in which an embarrassing situation is deftly avoided (88). However, the notion of ‘face’ in a metaphorical application finds its origins in word conducted by Erving Goffman. Based off of Goffman’s work, Brown and Levinson produced their politeness theory, which asserts: “The reason we are polite is that we are concerned with maintaining two distinct kinds of face: negative face [and] positive face” (88). Negative face means that one’s actions are unimpeded by others, and positive face means that one’s wants are desirable to at least some others (88). The notion of face, considered as a general term, is a widely accepted factor in the evaluation of politeness