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

utterances to elicit a reply while taking the risk of being misunderstood or getting an unsatisfactory reply. It seems sensible to think that the reason for such a choice on the part of the interviewer may not only be to avoid the monotony of the default question-answer pattern of such encounters, but also to show compromise in terms of how much the addresse is willing to contribute, i.e. to be less intrusive, in other words, to be polite. The extracts provided below are examples of a variety of the techiques a speaker can use to elicit a reply from his partner. The addressees' responses to the declarative elicitations are here to show that the declaratives of the first speaker are not necessarily interpreted as a hypothetical statement requiring affirmation, but often they are interpreted similarly to interrogatives. 1. A: So it's the hours of your time, which is a crutial matter. B: That's right. We are creatures of the hour, creatures of time. We are a little bit like parking meters, really. The clock continues to click. The second speaker could have given the simplest reply to the elicitation by saying 'Yes

', but he came up with a longer response instead. His explanation implies that he thought he was expected not only to confirm the first speaker's hypothetical statement, but also to provide the reasons for it. In extract 2. a simple confirmation - Wo' - would not have safisfied the interviewer: 2. A: / don't imagine that you just write straight on the page. B: No. The whole art of easy writing , of course, is to make it look as if it were dashed off, as if it were knocked off. But you can write a sentence five times and then it reads as if it's been just knocked off. The interviewee interpreted the speaker's declarative as " How does good writing come about?" or "So what do you do?". The following sections seek an answer to the question how politeness comes about in the case of non-interrogative questions. 93