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

5. Cognitive Semantic Aspects of Politeness For the past twenty-five years several phenomena in language use have been referred to as a matter of politeness, and to approach it from the other end: politeness has been investigated from many different aspects. In philosophical linguistics indirect speech acts have been accounted for as acts motiveted by politeness (Searle, 1975:74). Sociolinguists have investigated various aspects of the phenomenon. Goffman puts focus on the ritual character of politeness (see Goffman, 1967, 1971, 1981 e.g.). Gordon D. and Lakoff, G. (1971), or Brown and Levinson, (1978) consider politeness as strategic avoidance of conflicts, of which conventional indirectness in social encounters is a major strategy. To reach their goals the participants use various tactics in the 'game'

. The linguistic forms they choose can be definite and straightforward, as in the case of a question interrogative in form: 3. What problems did you have yesterday coming back into the country? Quite often, however, the initiating utterance is not interrogative, yet it shows the speaker's aim to elicit a response: 4. As far as I know you had some problems yesterday coming back into the country. 5.1 gather you've just been made redundant. My assumption is that hypothetical statements eliciting a reply - such as l.,2., 4. and 5. above - are a politeness phenomenon. The question arises: what is it that makes them so tactful, i.e. how does politeness come about in these utterances? In this section I will make an attempt to explore some cognitive aspects of politeness by using relevant concepts and theories. 94