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

'threatening' linguistic realizations by choosing the declarative form instead of the interrogative. For an explanation why questions can be considered FTA's let us turn to a cognition theory again. Johnson's (1987) proposal about the force dynamics of speech acts, viz. the "illocutionary force", which determines whether the hearer will interpret the utterance as a question, assertion, command, or some other type of illocutionary act provides a sensible starting point: "...statements are typically presented by speakers to force the hearers to add some belief to their belief system. Questions force the hearer to supply a certain relevant content to fill a gap in some informational structure. Directives exert force to compel the hearer to realize some state of affairs. And performatives (Searle's "declaratives") constitute forceful changes of the state of the world" (1987:59). Although all utterances act upon the hearer with a particular force some force is stonger than another. Demanding acts, i.e. commands and questions, obviously, represent a stronger force than giving acts, i.e. assertions/statements. To be less forceful and intrusive, i.e. to save the addressee's face the speaker has the option of avoiding linguistic items that represent a 'problem' explicitly, and as such, demand immediate solution "removal of the blockage" - by using less straightforward language. Johson (1987:59) refers to "the force that acts on the sentence container", which determines the shape of the utterance, i.e. " of the speech-act container". I assume that in conversation the utterance form, i.e. the "sentencecontainer" carries the force of the utterance in inverse ratio to straightforwardness

. The realizations of demanding acts can be arranged along a scale of straightforwardness as follows: 96