Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Ágnes Deli: Cognition and politeness

Summary The aim of this paper was to make a tentative suggestion of how politeness arises in those cases when the speaker uses non-interrogative forms to ask questions, and how this phenomenon is related to some cognitive semantic aspects of interpersonal communication. It was suggested that politeness is related to the basic concept of DISTANCE as a physical experience, and that the more unstraightforward an utterance the longer distance it implies. The longer the distance the less the FORCE. When being unstraightforward the speaker ventures his intentions not to be grasped exactly by the listener, yet he often takes the risk in order to prevent the addressee from the feeling of being stressed and forced to collaborate. It is very likely that it is the respect for the partner's face that motivates the speaker to use a declarative utterance to ask a question instead of a more forceful interrogative one. References Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1978. Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. In Goody, E. (ed.) Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction, pp. 56-311. Cambridge: CUP Brown, P. and Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge:CUP Dirven, R. 1985. Metaphor as a basic means for extending the lexicon. In Paprotté, W. and Dirven, R. (eds.) The Ubiquity of Metaphor, pp. 85-119 Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction ritual. New York: Achor Books Goffman, E. 1971. Relations in Public. Harmondson: Penguin Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press Gordon, D. and Lakoff, G. 1971. Conversational postulates. In Papers from the seventeenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 99