1

Aric Reyna

5 May 2020

                              Does politeness really affect the outcome of a situation?

Introduction

            The following compiled sources contain evidence about the theory of pragmatics and
politeness.  In relation to sociolinguistics, politeness is considered a speech act that preserves a
person’s face identity.  We use politeness as a strategy to make requests in a way that does not
appear to be imposing, although we recognize that it is.  As a speaker, it is considered polite to
let your listener know we are aware that we are asking them to go out of their way to do
something that is beneficial for ourselves.  The most commonly used device of politeness is
indirectness.  Speakers are often indirect because they have become aware that they are imposing
on another person’s desire not to be bothered.  In reality, indirectness is not always the most
effective strategy because there is an apparent lack of clarity on the part of the speaker.  The
gathered evidence presented in this research proposal contributes to my argument of how
politeness can alternatively affect the outcome of a situation.

            Politeness can be seen in a variety of cultures.  For the sake of my research, other cultures
may be present, but the majority of my focus will be drawn from data taken only by native
speakers of English.  In English, there are two reasons why use politeness strategies; people
possess the desire to be liked by our listener and we would not like to be viewed as imposing on
our listener.  It also makes for a peaceful encounter that lets our listener know that we have good
intentions within the conversation.  Chiravate Boonheera, author of “Perception of Politeness in
English Requests by Thai EFL learners” questions if native speakers of English use more
politeness strategies than the non-native speakers.  The author bases their theory on the previous
research of Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1978, revised in 1987.)  The article states
that Leech presented a set of Maxims that constrained people in conversation.  The set explains
that tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy in the form of imposition,
power, and familiarity assist the speaker in lessening the appearance of an imposing speech act. 
The article presents examples of how the levels of politeness increases as the levels of directness
decreases.  In other words, the politest way to make a request is the least direct way of making
the request.  The problem with this method is that we are sacrificing clarity for the sake of
politeness, and it could be difficult to make our point understood.  As a result, the L2 speakers of
English in the author’s study implied a more direct strategy while the native English speakers
implied a more polite strategy, possibly to save face.  A notion that we, as people, consistently
apply.

            So what does it mean when we save face?  Personally, I feel like the concept of positive
and negative face plays a significant role in the research question that I have proposed. 
Specifically, we use our speech as a means to either protect or threaten our social face.  Our face
is the social value that people we interact with places on us as a judgement of our character.  The
ideas presented in Bulm-Kulka’s “Indirectness and Politeness in Requests: Same or Different?”
suggests that we save or protect our face in two different types of measures: conventional and
 2

non-conventional.  They elaborate on their point by stating that politeness and indirectness are
known to be linked to conventional indirectness, but not always non-conventional indirectness. 
The researcher carried out two studies, one of the perception of politeness and the other for the
perception of indirectness.  The author also mentions that the use of “please” in an indirect quest
further increases the level of directness.  Utterances, such as ‘please’ and ‘would you mind’ play
into our listener’s negative face, which is the desire not to be bothered.  We use these simple
phrases as a way to employ a politeness strategy to our listener, but it also forces them into a
spontaneous decision.  The outcome of a request is diverse because the speaker is never
completely sure that they are going to have their request granted until the listener replies.  In
relevance to my research, people have a natural intuition that if they apply enough positive or
negative face strategies, it could potentially change the outcome of a situation in their favor.

            The theory of pragmatics exemplifies how our choices in language alters the perception
that people have towards us.  Politeness is important to pragmatics because it emphasizes the
way we alter our speech to the preference of our listener.  Before making a request, we quickly
internally process how we think the listener would like to be spoken to, and how we can commit
our speech act without threatening our personal value of face.  According to Saadatmandi,
Marzieh, author of “Teaching English pragmatic features in EFL context: A focus on request
speech acts”, strategies of politeness are encoded within the structure of our first language, and it
can be understood that indirect acts of politeness is a self-assured strategy to show respect, but
also to save face.  The article presents a request as an illocutionary act that is dependent on the
‘impositives’ of the speaker.  In other words, we often try to soften up our request by increasing
our use of politeness strategies, multiple of them can be uttered within the same phrase.  In this
situation, we are addressing somebody’s positive face because we would like our listener to feel
good about themselves in order to make the request seem less imposing.  We understand the idea
that people are more likely willing to help with a request if they are being approached in a
manner that makes them feel respected.  I can use this strategy to explore my research question
by providing different levels of politeness for the same request.  It is possible to ask my listeners
the same questions in multiple formats of politeness.  In addition to this task, I could also cater to
their desire to be liked by throwing in a few compliments that will give them confidence in
assisting me.  The relative idea that is presented in this article is that employing politeness
strategies gives the speaker the advantage over the listener’s perception of the request and the
person’s perceived ‘face’.  I feel like if the speaker makes the listener feel good about carrying
out the request, then they would be more inclined to offer their assistance.  
         
            Aspects of politeness does not always have to be a complicated tasks of displaying an
underlying message.  Politeness can be as simple as a pattern that all people imply in naturally
occurring situations.  Most people are accustomed to being polite, and therefore the theory of
pragmatics and face does not even come to mind.  Although we instinctively apply these
politeness strategies, we have learned as a society that they are the most useful way of requesting
an action.  This idea is parallel to the thoughts of Eleanor Dickey, author of “Politeness in
ancient Rome: Can it help us evaluate modern politeness theories?”  In the article, Dickey
compares the standard English template of politeness to the Roman author Cicero.  Specifically,
my research is comparative to the question asked by the author about whether these politeness
strategies are genuinely the most useful way of constructing requests.  The objective of this
article is to compare different theories of politeness from previous studies and observe which
 3

structure of politeness is more useful.  I can take this theory and collectively find different forms
of my research questions for different situations.  Because this is a critical essay, the author
addresses the previous theories of politeness and expresses how this relates to modern
politeness.  With that being said, modern politeness is the specific form of politeness that I am
going to be observing.  It can be said that politeness strategies may have changed over time. 
Many of the ideas that are presented in the sources emphasize previous studies that are quite
dated, but this article could assist my research in conveying a modern theory of understood
politeness.  Although this source does compare modern ideologies with ancient Roman
ideologies, it presents an idea that politeness, generally, is demonstrated through applying
multiple variations of request ‘templates’.  I can relate this article with the previous idea in this
essay about the levels of politeness and figure out which template belongs to which level.    
   
            Some researchers have disagreed with the ideas of Leech’s and other mainstream theories
about politeness and instead view politeness from a critical point of view.  “A Critical Review of
Prominent Theories of Politeness” written by Hutheifa Al-Duleimi evaluates and makes critical
analysis of widely used previous studies composed by Brown and Levinson’s (1987) and
Leech’s (1983, 2005).  Al-Duleimi defines politeness as a contemplation of the listener’s desires
and feelings when speaking to them.  It is used as a means to avoid friction within the
conversation.  The author argues that these concepts were only suitable for Western culture, it
could not define people as a whole.  The author does agree that levels of politeness are not
consistent in a variety of conversations because it can vary when the interlocutor varies.  With
that being said, there is a universal agreement that people use different levels of politeness when
they have a different listener.  This statement contributes to my declaration of politeness
changing the outcome of a situation because it provides a platform for a variety of possibilities of
which level of politeness is going to be implied.  Simply put, I feel like the author is saying that
we do not know which level we are going to be using at which moment in time.  This idea is a
reflection of how conversation is spontaneous and formatted to the preference of the audience To
a degree, this theory allows the speaker to alter the outcome of their situation by analyzing the
audience and preparation of polite speech strategies. 
         
Proposed Methodology

            I really liked the act of random anonymous surveying because it displays real time results
of spontaneous speech acts committed by people who have no familiarity between each other.  I
could possibly use the idea of directness/indirectness to measure the response based on
politeness.  I could randomly ask people for a request in a more direct or polite manner and
record their reactions.  For example, if I wanted to execute this study in a grocery store, I could
bluntly ask somebody “Hand me that milk” or I could say “Excuse me, would you mind handing
me that jug of milk?”  Based on the implication of politeness, I would be able to observe my
speaker’s reaction and willingness to assist in the outcome of the situation.  An important
altering aspect could be a person’s identity; age, gender, ethnicity, etc. and consider whether
there was a speech group more polite than the other.  

            Since I would have to accumulate data in abundance, this data can be considered as
quantitively collected.  Assuming this data was collected from a diverse group of people, there
are a lot of observable aspects that this study can take into account.  I would start with age
 4

because it can be divided into two simple speech groups; male and female.  Then, I could further
break down my speech groups by dividing them up by age groups such as 18-35, 36-55, and 55+,
65+.  I could also apply gender to these age groups to further specify a variety of speech groups,
like males 36-55 or females 18-35, to give an example.  It would be difficult to assume the
ethnicity unless I outright ask my participants, but that’s not how RAS works, so for the sake of
my study let’s just assume that I only take age and gender into account because they are the most
apparent.     

Hypothesized Results

            I would assume that most people would not like to perform the direct request because it
sounds more like a demand rather than a request.  I believe that the polite request would be
welcomed with a much more effective response from the listener.  In hindsight, it is considered
impolite to demand people to do anything against their free-will.  Socially, it puts a restrain on
our personal “face” because we are now labeled as having difficult personality.  This is the type
of conflictions that we try to avoid with politeness.  Being polite does affect the outcome of a
situation because if we perform too many acts that is going to negatively affect our face, then
people are most likely not going to want to help with a request in the future.

Foreseeable Limitations

            I would find it problematic that my research solely to Western culture, and even more
specifically, my regional culture.  The main limitation would be that I have not been exposed to
any other culture other than Western culture, it makes my research difficult because I don’t have
a full understanding of how things are done in other cultures.  This constraint would limit my
research to only native speakers of English and renders other speech groups non-existent.  Even
at that, it is almost impossible to have people of other cultures all in one place at a time,
especially if my research is restrained to one particular city or region.  Otherwise speaking, my
research is simply limited to the population of the city that the research is taking place. 

 
References

Al-Duleimi, H., Rashid, S. M., & Ain, N. A. (2016). “A critical review of prominent theories of
politeness”. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 7(6), 262-270. Retrieved
from https://manowar.tamucc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2188085834?
accountid=7084
 
Blum-Kulka, S. (1987). “Indirectness and Politeness in Requests: Same or Different?” Journal
of Pragmatics., 11(2). https://doi-org.manowar.tamucc.edu/info:doi/
 
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Studies in interactional sociolinguistics, 4. Politeness:
Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
 
Chiravate, B. (2011). “Perception of politeness in English requests by Thai EFL learners”. 3L,
Language, Linguistics, Literature, 17(2) Retrieved from https://manowar.tamucc.edu/login?
 5

url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2257712675?accountid=7084
 
Dickey, E. (2016). Politeness in ancient rome: Can it help us evaluate modern politeness
theories.  Journal of Politeness Research, 12(2), 197-220. 
 
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
 
Saadatmandi, M., Khiabani, S. M., & Pourdana, N. (2018). “Teaching English pragmatic features
in EFL context: A focus on request speech acts”. Theory and Practice in Language
Studies, 8(7), 829-835.