Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Lenka Janochovä
Indirect Requests in Politeness Theories
Bachelor's Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph. D.
2013
/ declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
Lenka Janochová
I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Jan
Chovanec, Ph.D. for his patient help and
constructive comments on the thesis topic.
Table of Contents
Introduction 6
Part I: General Concepts 8
1. Linguistic Politeness 8
1.1 Definitions of Politeness 9
1.2 Linguistic Politeness Through Time 11
1.3 Choosing a Method 14
2. Indirect Requests 16
2.1 Speech Acts IV
2.2 The Speech Act of Requesting 18
2.3 Indirect Requests in Politeness Research 21
Part II: Indirect Requests in Politeness Theories 23
3. Brown and Levinson 24
3.1 Theoretical Framework 24
3.2 Indirect Requests 27
4. Geoffrey Leech 31
4.1 Theoretical Framework 32
4.2 Indirect Requests 34
5. Richard Watts 37
5.1 Theoretical Framework 38
5.2 Indirect Requests 40
6. Marina Terkourafi 43
6.1 Theoretical Framework 44
6.2 Indirect Requests 46
7. Non-polite Indirect Requests 48
Conclusion 51
References 54
Summary 57
Resume 58
Introduction
"Politeness and indirectness have always been linked" (Marquez Reiter, 2000, p.
41). This truth has been valid in linguistics since the first politeness theories started to
appear. The speech act of requesting plays a significant role in these theories, as (at least
in English) indirectness is used in requests very often. According to the traditional view,
in this way the speaker shows he is being polite. However, as the views on the use of
politeness devices have been changing, the role of indirect requests have been changing
as well. The aim of this work is to examine the diversity of views on indirect requests in
four major theories of linguistic politeness and explain the reasons why these requests
are (or are not) seen as polite.
The thesis should also reflect the development of the research into linguistic
politeness from what Culpeper (201 lb) calls the "first-wave approaches to politeness"
(p. 397), which are based on the theory of speech acts and Grice's Cooperative
Principle, towards discursive approaches to politeness after the year 2000, where the
analyses are context-dependent. The linguistic theories representing the first wave in
this paper have been written by Brown and Levinson, and Geoffrey Leech. These
linguists perceived indirectness in requests primarily as means of conveying politeness.
On the other hand, Richard Watts and Marina Terkourafi supported the discursive
approach. Although their theories differed from each other, they both argued that the
indirect requests, as well as other spoken or written material, had to be analysed in
context. Only then it could be decided whether they were polite or not.
At the end of the thesis, a few cases where indirect requests are not connected
with politeness will be touched upon. These will not be described in detail, as they do
not cover instances of linguistic politeness and are not discussed deeply in the theories
6
chosen. However, judging from the observations, the use of indirectness in requests can
have more underlying reasons then those mentioned in the politeness theories.
7
Part I: General Concepts
In the areas of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, the indirect requests and
politeness have often been connected. The first part of this paper will cast light on these
two issues. Linguists have been concerned specifically with linguistic politeness, which
will be introduced in chapter 1, followed by a brief history of the research into linguistic
politeness. Also, the method chosen for this paper will be described.
Chapter 2 will define what exactly is meant by "indirect requests". For this
purpose, the speech act theory will be used. In the last section, the origins of the link
between indirectness and politeness will be described, mentioning the fact that this link
does not exist in every situation where an indirect request is used.
1. Linguistic Politeness
The phenomenon of linguistic politeness has been a part of the linguistic
research in western Europe and North America for more than thirty years and has
usually been placed in the area of pragmatics and sociolinguistics (Watts, 2003, p. 53).
The fundamental contribution to the theory was written by Brown and Levinson in 1978
and immediately drew attention of the linguistic community to the problem of the
linguistic politeness. Since then, a large number of researchers have contributed to the
topic.
The issue is somewhat complex as there is not yet a single theory on which all
the researchers would agree. There are more theories, all of which in some way rely on
the previous linguistic concepts (not necessarily those of politeness) and try to revise
them, build on them, or criticise them. There have been lots of attempts to provide a
definition of linguistic politeness and describe the process of its creation and perception.
Some of these attempts will be described in the present paper, following the research
8
into linguistic politeness from its beginnings to the latest concepts. Four major
politeness theories have been chosen in order to demonstrate the development in this
area and provide the basis for the thesis - that is the depiction of indirect requests in
politeness theories.
1.1 Definitions of Politeness
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definitions of the word
"polite":
1. Of language, the arts, or other intellectual pursuits: refined, elegant, scholarly;
exhibiting good or restrained taste.
2. Of a person, social group, etc.: refined; cultured, cultivated; (also) well-
regulated.
3. Courteous, behaving in a manner that is respectful or considerate of others;
well-mannered. (2013)
The notion of politeness may be derived from these definitions as an abstract word for
refined, elegant, cultured, cultivated, courteous, respectful or considerate behaviour.
However, it is important to recognise various ways of expressing politeness. A useful
classification is offered by Haverkate (as cited in Marquez Reiter, 2000, p. 4). The
primary distinction is between communicative and non-communicative politeness,
where non-communicative politeness is based on social norms and their performance,
such as offering a seat to an elderly person. The communicative politeness can be either
linguistic or non-linguistic. The non-linguistic politeness is expressed by means of
gestures, which may or may not be accompanied by a verbal utterance. Nevertheless,
researchers in the field of linguistics are not so much concerned with this type. It is the
linguistic politeness that people use so as to express politeness through words and that
9
has been explored by linguists (e.g. Watts, 2003, p. 10). Therefore, wherever the term
"politeness" is used in this paper, it stands for "linguistic politeness", i.e. politeness
expressed by means of using words.
The linguistic politeness has been defined in various ways. The definitions given
by the Oxford Dictionary suggest the idea that politeness has to be learned. Indeed,
Marquez Reiter (2000) says that "politeness is not something human beings are born
with but something which is acquired through a process of socialization" (p. 1). She
adds that "the act of behaving politely [...] is intrinsically a social one since it is socially
determined in the first place and it is geared towards the structuring of social
interaction" (p. 2). So far the theorists seem to agree. But the views on what exactly
politeness is differ significantly.
Early definitions from the period when linguists relied very much on Grice's
model of communication include those given by Leech and Brown and Levinson. Leech
defines politeness as "strategic conflict avoidance" (as cited in Watts, 2003, p. 50).
Brown and Levinson (1987) see politeness as the minimization of face risk (p. 91), in
other words politeness is employed so as to soften a face-threatening act. Later
definitions are by no means so simple. As Mills (2011) points out, with the shift towards
discursive approaches "politeness itself has become an intensely problematic term" (p.
36). In general, researchers taking the discursive approach share the view that
"politeness does not reside in utterances" (Mills, 2011, p. 35). According to Watts
(2003), polite behaviour is "linguistic behaviour which is perceived to be beyond what
is expectable, i.e. salient behaviour" (p. 19). On the other hand, Marina Terkourafi
(2005) uses a frame-based approach and argues that particular linguistic expressions
repeatedly used in particular types of context "are polite because they are regular" (p.
10
248). Taking all the previous definitions into account, it becomes clear that we cannot
state what exactly linguistic politeness is. As Locher says, "it lies in the nature of
politeness to be an elusive concept since it is inherently linked to judgements on norms
and those are constantly negotiated, are renegotiated and ultimately change over time in
every type of social interaction" (as cited in Mills, 2011, p. 37).
1.2 Linguistic Politeness Through Time
As has been already stated, the concept of linguistic politeness has become the
centre of the linguistic research in western Europe and North America fairly recently.
As Watts (2003) points out, "the major reason for the late appearance of politeness in
the west is [...] little or no theoretical basis to fall back on until speech act theory" (p.
53). The beginnings of the research are thus connected mainly to the speech act theory
developed by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), and the theory of conversational
implicature coined by Paul Grice in 1975 (Culpeper, 201 lb, p. 397). Last but not least,
the concepts of face and facework developed by sociologist Ervin Goffman in the
1950's and 1960's also provided essential background for the initial investigations of
linguistic politeness. All these theories inspired what Culpeper (201 lb) calls the "firstwave
approaches to politeness" (p. 397). The three most influential theories of this
period were constructed by Lakoff (1973, 1989), Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987),
and Leech (1983), "all of whom recognise that there is more to meaning of conversation
than can be encapsulated by the four maxims of Grice's Cooperative Principle"
(Grainger, 2011, p. 169). Culpeper (201 lb) describes the theories of Lakoff and Leech
as "maxim-based" (p. 397). Their contribution was to add a set of politeness maxims to
Grice's Cooperative Principle (CP). On the other hand, the theory of Brown and
1
The italics are original. Throughout this paper, all italics in citations are original.
11
Levinson is described by Culpeper as "face-based politeness" (p. 399) because their
notion of politeness is built on facework. Both these types of politeness will be
discussed more extensively in the second part of this paper.
However, all of these theories have faced a severe criticism since they were
published, mostly the work by Brown and Levinson (Grainger, 2011, p. 169). Culpeper
(201 lb) even says that "By the 2000s, the tide of criticism had reached the point where
the very foundations of Brown and Levinson's model were being challenged" (p. 409).
In this case, "The landmark publication [...] is probably Gino Eelen's A Critique of
Politeness Theories (2001)" (p. 409). Culpeper then goes on to pinpoint the main
sources of criticism. These are:
• ignoring the lay person's conception of politeness
• claim for universality
• model biased towards the speaker and the production of language
• failing to articulate an adequate conception of context
• failure to adequately deal with impoliteness (p. 409)
Due to the still more obvious insufficiency of the classic theories the linguists were
forced to radically reassess their understanding of politeness. Mills (2011) explains,
"There has been a discursive turn in politeness research" (p. 26). Scholars started to be
more interested in the context of utterances and realized that politeness is not contained
in the speech acts themselves. Another step was made by Watts (2003), who
distinguished between first-order politeness (politenessi) and second-order politeness
(politeness2) and suggested that "A theory of politeness should concern itself with the
discursive struggle over politenessi, i.e. over the ways in which (im)polite behaviour is
evaluated and commented on by lay members" (p. 9). Coming back to the reasons for
the discursive shift, Culpeper (201 lb) argues that " A particular characteristic of
12
politenessi approaches is that notions of politeness are not taken as given, but are
assumed to be subject to dispute, to be negotiated - and indeed emerge - in interaction.
In other words, politeness is discursive" (p. 410).
These "second-wave approaches to politeness", as Culpeper (201 lb, p. 409)
called them, draw upon various linguistic concepts, for example Bourdieu's notion of
habitus, Wenger's community of practice, Relevance Theory, frame-based approaches
or conversation analysis (Mills, 2011, pp. 30-33). They generally share certain features,
which are described by Mills (2011) as follows:
• belief that "politeness does not reside in utterances"
• "discursive theorists [... ] do not consider that identity is pre-formed, and
they argue that politeness is constructed jointly within groups"
• "[discursive theorists] focus on the analysis of context", "analyse longer
stretches of interaction" and "focus on issues of judgement of politeness"
(p. 35)
The second wave is sometimes considered to be post-modern because of the seeming
lack of effort to create a brand-new theory - in fact, as Mills (2011) says, "it is in the
very nature of post-modern or discursive theory to explicitly not construct an
overarching theory" (p. 20). Linguists belonging to this wave include Eelen, Watts,
Locher, Mills, Terkourafi, Haugh, Christie, Bousfield and others. Their work usually
builds on one or more of the linguistic concepts mentioned above, which is
acknowledged by Mills (2011), saying "theorists are still trying to assemble theoretical
models by juxtaposing elements from different approaches and methodologies" (p. 20).
The result is, of course, that drawing on different models the linguists can come to
different conclusions about the nature of linguistic politeness (as an example may serve
theories by Watts and Terkourafi, which will be discussed later in this paper).
13
The research into politeness involves also a big number of cross-cultural studies.
Whether the linguists looked for similarities or for differences, they were aware of the
fact that the question of language and culture is a crucial one in the politeness research.
The classic work in this respect is Brown and Levinson's Politeness: Some Universals
in Language Usage (1987). Other significant studies are concerned with politeness in
cultures such as Japanese (Ide 1989) and Chinese (Lee-Wong 1999).2
But in fact, the
effort to investigate politeness has spread into many countries since its introduction and
these cross-cultural studies form now an important part of the research.
The last thing that should be mentioned here is the attitude towards linguistic
impoliteness. Mills (2011) argues that "Analysing politeness in isolation from
impoliteness is not justifiable, since politeness takes its meaning from the potentiality of
impoliteness" (p. 40). Strange as it may appear, researchers have started to pay serious
attention to impoliteness only recently, the most prominent contributions in the field
being those of Bousfield (2008)3
and Culpeper (2011).4
In any case, there is still enough
room for linguists to explore the area of impoliteness, as well as that of the linguistic
politeness.
1.3 Choosing a Method
The main concern of this paper are indirect requests and their depiction in the
major theories of linguistic politeness. For this purpose, four theories have been chosen;
two representing the first-wave approaches and two representing the second-wave
2
This fact is mentioned in Watts (2003, pp. 81-82).
3
Bousfield, Derek (2008). Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins B.V.
4
Culpeper, Jonathan (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
14
approaches. In order to demonstrate the variety of views on the indirect requests as
means of expressing (or not expressing) politeness, the theories are as diverse as
possible. Brown and Levinson created a model of face-based politeness. Geoffrey
Leech's model is maxim-based. Both of them belong to the first wave and out of the
linguists dealing with politeness in this period they gained most attention, for as Watts
(2003) explains, "only Leech and Brown and Levinson have elaborated their positions
in sufficient detail to allow them to be tested through application to real-language data"
(p. 63). The second wave is represented by Richard Watts, whose work Politeness
(2003) is a significant book-length contribution bringing a fresh view on linguistic
politeness. He rejects the previous theories based on facework and Gricean maxims and
argues for a new model built on the lay perception of politeness, i.e. politenessi. The
last linguist, Marina Terkourafi, uses a frame-based approach, therefore the outcome of
her theory is different from that of Watts'. In the first four chapters of part II, the main
points of the theories will be outlined, followed by the description of the various
perceptions of indirect requests.
One more aspect has to be clarified. As was already mentioned, many of the
studies investigate politeness across cultures, describing and comparing different
languages. However, the scope of this paper will not cover instances of indirect requests
in languages other than English. The reason is that the main works on linguistic
politeness retrieve their data primarily from English.5
This is in accordance with the
general course of the research into linguistic pragmatics, which focused on AngloSaxon
cultures, and consequently the English language became the principal object of
research (Held, 2005, p. 131). More recently, Kadar and Bargiela-Chiappini (2011)
5
Moreover, the focus here is on the British variety, which is quite relevant in the case of indirect requests,
as the British English seems to be more indirect than American English (Marquez Reiter, 2000, p. 44).
15
observe that "most of the discursive studies use English data, apart from a few
exceptions" (p. 5). To sum up, the English language so far seems to be the only
language suitable for comparing a single phenomenon such as indirect requests across
the most popular politeness theories.
2. Indirect Requests
In order to be able to carry out further research on the representation of indirect
requests in politeness theories, it is essential to define what exactly is meant by the term
"indirect request". For this purpose, the theory of speech acts will be used. Although
this theory did not prove to be an ideal model of communication, it is still widely used
in pragmatics because, as Mey points out, it provides " A kind of mini-scenario for what
is happening in language interaction and [speech acts] suggest a simple way of
explaining the more or less predictable sequences of conversation" (as cited in Marquez
Reiter, 2000, p. 34). With the case of indirect requests, the speech act theory forms a
good basis for the description of what they actually are.
After explaining the function of requests and perception of indirectness among
the linguists, it will be clear why indirect requests have usually been associated with
politeness. This connection appears to have been stronger in the past. Nevertheless, the
more recent politeness theories deal with this issue as well and thus acknowledge the
fact that requesting indirectly is an important means by which people can express
linguistic politeness. There have also been studies analysing cases where indirectness in
requests was used for another reasons than being polite, but these will be touched upon
only briefly.
16
2.1 Speech Acts
The theory of speech acts was first proposed by Austin (1962) and later
developed by Searle (1979). The core of the theory lies in the observation that in
producing an utterance one also performs an action (Yule, 1996, p. 47). This "speech
act" can be analysed on three different levels: the locutionary act is performed by means
of producing a meaningful linguistic expression; the illocutionary act represents the
function the speaker has in mind; and the perlocutionary act is the effect the utterance is
intended to have on the listener (Yule, 1996, p. 48). The speech acts are "in English [...]
commonly given more specific labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment,
invitation, promise, or request" (p. 47). They are produced within a wider context,
which is called a "speech event" and "it is the nature of the speech event that determines
the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act" (pp. 47-48).
When a speech act is to be successfully performed, certain felicity conditions have to be
met. Cutting (2002) uses Searle's classification and describes them as follows: "The
hearer must hear and understand the language, and that the speaker must not be
pretending or play acting" (general conditions); "the speaker must believe that it is
possible to carry out the action" (preparatory condition); "they are sincere about
wanting to do it" (sincerity condition); the content of an utterance is appropriate
(propositional content condition); and "the words count as the act" (essential condition)
(p. 18).
The illocutionary acts have attracted the largest amount of attention among the
linguists. The first classification of illocutionary speech acts was proposed by Austin
(1962), but later replaced by Searle (1979), who's criticism included points such as "a
persistent confusion between verbs and acts" and "no consistent principle of
classification" (p. 12). Searle's taxonomy consists of representatives ("commit the
17
speaker [...] to the truth of the expressed proposition"), directives ("attempts by the
speaker to get the hearer to do something"), commissives ("commit the speaker to some
future course of action"), expressives ("express the psychological state specified in the
sincerity condition") and declarations ("one brings a state of affairs into existence by
declaring it to exist") (pp. 12-17). On the basis of the illocutionary acts it is also
possible to distinguish between direct and indirect speech acts. According to the speech
act theory, "Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure (declarative,
interrogative, imperative) and a function (statement, question, command/request), we
have a direct speech act. Whenever there is an indirect relationship [...], we have an
indirect speech act" (Yule, 1996, pp. 54-55). Searle (1979) says that:
In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he
actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background
information, both linguistic and non-linguistic, together with the general powers
of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer, (pp. 31-32)
Yule (1996) describes this "additional conveyed meaning" as an implicature (p. 35) and
stresses that the inferences selected to understand the implicature "are those which will
preserve the assumption of cooperation" (p. 40). In this way it is probable that the
hearer will recognize the speech act of request when intended, even if it is expressed
indirectly.
2.2 The Speech Act of Requesting
The speech act of requesting belongs to the class of directives, which means that
by uttering a request the speaker attempts "to get the hearer to do something" (Searle,
1979, p. 13). There are also certain felicity conditions, which must be fulfilled so as to
produce a successful request. Apart from the general condition, Searle (1979) sets forth
18
the preparatory condition (hearer is able to perform A), the sincerity condition (speaker
wants hearer to do A), the propositional content condition (speaker predicates a future
act of hearer) and the essential condition (counts as an attempt by speaker to get hearer
to do A) (p. 44). Marquez Reiter (2000) defines requests as consisting of two parts:
The core request or head act and the peripheral elements. The former is the main
utterance which has the function of requesting and can stand by itself. [...] In
most cases, however, core requests are either followed and/or preceded by
peripheral elements, (p. 36)
The structure of the English requests can be imperative, interrogative (including
negative interrogatives) and declarative (Marquez Reiter, 2000, p. 36). As for
imperatives, Searle (1979) points out that "ordinary conversational requirements of
politeness normally make it awkward to issue flat imperative sentences [...] and we
therefore seek to find indirect means to our illocutionary ends" (p. 36). This assumption
leads to the use of indirect requests.
The indirect requests usually have interrogative or declarative structures, which
do not correspond with the function of the request, and so more is communicated than is
actually said. According to Marquez Reiter (2000), there are two ways of performing an
indirect request. One may use a conventionally indirect request (e.g. Would you mind
giving me a hand?) or a non-conventionally indirect request (e.g. This is so heavy!) (p.
42). This latter type is also called "off-record" (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and in this
case "conversational implicatures are needed in order to understand the intended
meaning" (Marquez Reiter, 2000, p. 43). For subsequent analysis, a more detailed
specification and demonstration of indirect requests will be helpful. For this purpose, I
will use Searl's (1979) list of sentences that are commonly used as indirect requests.
The list is by no means exhaustive, but it provides a clear and brief summary of the
19
most typical indirect requests. Searl divided them into six categories. In the following
list the categories are named and one or two sentences are given as an example of
requests belonging to the category (H, S and A are abbreviations for "hearer", "speaker"
and "action"):
Group 1: Sentences concerning H's ability to perform A
Can you pass the salt?
Group 2: Sentences concerning S's wish or want that H will do A
I would be most grateful if you could help us out.
Group 3: Sentences concerning H doing A
Officers will henceforth wear ties at dinner.
Aren't you going to eat your cereal?
Group 4: Sentences concerning H's desire or willingness to do A
Would you be willing to write a letter of recommendation for me?
Group 5: Sentences concerning reasons for doing A
Hadn't you better go now?
You're standing on my foot.
Group 6: Sentences embedding one of these elements inside another; also,
sentences embedding an explicit directive illocutionary verb inside one of these
contexts
Would you mind it awfully if I asked you if you could write me a letter
of recommendation?
(pp. 36-39)
These sentences are to illustrate what exactly is the main interest of this paper. All these
requests are expressed indirectly and they represent the most common types of indirect
requests in English.
20
2.3 Indirect Requests in Politeness Research
"Indirectness has been one of the central issues in politeness theory" (Marquez
Reiter, 2000, p. 41). Indeed, the association of politeness with indirectness has been
defended by most politeness theorists of the first wave, namely by Leech, Lakoff and
Brown and Levinson. This traditional association probably emerged due to the fact that
"most analyses of speech acts are based on the English language, where indirect speech
acts appear to constitute the vast majority of the conventionalised forms for polite
requesting" (Marquez Reiter, 2000, p. 41). Gudrun Held (2005) gives reasons for why
indirectness is often perceived to be polite:
• indirectness lowers the obligations of both partners in interaction and
thus relieves them of direct responsibility
• by appearing to put all the cards in the addressee's hand, indirectness
[encourages] the hearer to cooperate
• indirectness is an explanatory technique for maintaining face (p. 141)
The last point is directly related to the concept created by Brown and Levinson, who
placed emphasis on preserving hearer's face.
The link established between politeness and face-maintenance is not always
supported by linguists belonging to the second wave of politeness research. However,
they acknowledge the importance of indirectness for expressing politeness. Even if they
do not believe in some abstract universal theory, there are undeniable empirical data
that prove the indirect requests in English are more polite than direct requests. One such
research was conducted by Alexandra Kallia (2005). In her study, she came to
conclusion that "Direct forms like imperatives [...] were evaluated as impolite by
English speakers" (p. 229). Marquez Reiter (2000) gives an explanation of why the
speech act of requesting is so interesting for politeness research claiming that "Requests
21
are a good example of speech acts which imply an intrusion on the addressee's territory,
thus limiting his/her freedom of action" (p. 35). In view of this fact, it is necessary to
use some devices to reduce the risk of offending the hearer and increase the probability
of getting him to fulfil the speaker's wish. Indirectness is used in this case very often.
Recently the linguists have started to pay attention to the fact that not always
does indirectness in requests express politeness. Grainger (2011) argues that
"indirectness cannot effectively be understood as a politeness mechanism without
making reference to participants' intentions and interpretations" (p. 168). This statement
reflects the attitudes of the second-wave researchers. A request should always be treated
with regard to the context in which it was uttered. Taking the circumstances into
account, one may conclude that the indirectness was not used for the sake of politeness.
On the contrary, an indirect request could serve to convey irony, insult, or it could be
used for other non-polite purposes, as hinted by Pinker, Nowak and Lee (2008).
22
Part II: Indirect Requests in Politeness Theories
The second part of the paper will be devoted to the depiction of indirect requests
in four major politeness theories. Chapters 3 and 4 will deal with the first-wave
approaches to politeness and the works discussed here will be those by Brown and
Levinson and Geoffrey Leech respectively. In chapters 5 and 6 the indirect requests as
seen by linguists belonging to the second wave will be described. For this purpose, the
theories by Richard Watts and Marina Terkourafi have been chosen. Each of these
chapters will be divided into two parts. The first part will outline the main theoretical
concepts developed by the researchers, which is crucial for full comprehension of the
subsequent detailed analysis. The second part will show the perceptions of indirect
requests flowing from the theoretical concepts. The aim is to demonstrate that the
perceptions of indirect requests as means of expressing politeness are as diverse as the
theories themselves. In spite of the differences, all the researchers concerned with
linguistic politeness more or less deal with the problem of indirect requests, which
proves the importance of the issue in this area of research.
Chapter 7 will briefly outline some situations in which the indirect requests are
not polite. These include ironical usage, intentional impoliteness excluding irony and
other cases where indirectness may be beneficial. However, it is not the aim of this
paper to list all the reasons underlying the use of indirectness in requests, as they mostly
are not part of the politeness theories.
23
3. Brown and Levinson
Brown and Levinson's theory of linguistic politeness was first published in 1978
and then reissued in 1987 with some marginal corrections and a new introduction.6
The
theory is considered to be a milestone in the history of politeness research and indeed,
Watts (2003) argues that Brown and Levinson's model "has dominated all other
attempts to theorise about linguistic politeness" (p. 10). Although the theory has been
widely criticized, it remains an immensely valuable contribution and is still used in
many studies as the main source for defining politeness.
3.1 Theoretical Framework
As it has been already stated, for Brown and Levinson (1987) politeness means
minimization of face risk (p. 91). This suggests that the theory is based on facework. A
face is "the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself [... ] and
that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in
interaction" (p. 61). The face can be either positive, or negative. Every adult member of
society has a face, positive as well as negative, and desires his or her face to be
maintained. This can be done by fulfilling his or her positive or negative face wants. As
for the positive face, this means satisfying "the want [...] that his wants be desirable to
at least some others" (p. 61). In other words, the person wants to be appreciated and
approved of. The negative face can be maintained by fulfilling the want "that his actions
be unimpeded by others", which means giving the person "freedom of action and
freedom from imposition" (pp. 61-62). In the work of Brown and Levinson, the face is
6
All citations in 3.1 and 3.2 are taken from this later issue Politeness: Some Universals in Language
Usage (Brown & Levinson, 1987).
24
ascribed to a Model Person (MP), who is "a wilful speaker of a natural language" and in
addition to having a face, he is endowed with rationality, due to which he always
chooses means that will satisfy his ends (pp. 58-59).
The next assumption is that there are speech acts which intrinsically threaten
face. These are called "face-threatening acts" (FTAs) and because "it will in general be
to the mutual interest of two MPs to maintain each other's face", the speaker "will want
to minimize the face threat of the FTA" (p. 60). To reduce the risk of damaging hearer's
(H) face, the speaker (S) will use one of the following strategies:
5, Don't do the FTA
Figure 1. Possible strategies for doing FTAs (p. 69).
S chooses the strategy according to the seriousness of the FTA. The more serious S
assesses the FTA, the higher-numbered strategy he will use. This seriousness of
imposition is called weightiness (W) and Brown and Levinson believe it can be
calculated from three factors: 1. social distance (D); 2. relative power (P); and 3.
absolute ranking of imposition (R) in the particular culture (p. 74). The equation they
offer is W x = D(S,H) + P(H,S) + Rx , where x is the particular FTA (p. 76). Briefly, if S
and H are strangers, if the H's social status is much higher than S's and if the FTA is
perceived as a serious imposition in the given culture, the weightiness of the FTA will
1. without redressivs action, baldly
2, positive poultries
3. negative politeness
25
be extremely high and H will probably use strategy 5, which means he will avoid doing
the FTA altogether.
Coming back to the strategies in Figure 1, FTAs can be done either on record or
off record. If S goes on record, "there is just one unambiguously attributable intention"
in the speech act (p. 69). Doing an FTA baldly on record means expressing it "in the
most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way possible" (p. 69). Brown and
Levinson also define this strategy as being in accordance with Grice's maxims, which
"are an intuitive characterization of conversational principles" (p. 94). These maxims
will be further described in chapter 4; it is sufficient to stress here that Brown and
Levinson obviously take them for granted. Saying FTA baldly on record poses the
greatest risk of damaging H's face. In view of this, some kind of redressive action is
often employed. Positive politeness is "redress directed to the addressee's positive face"
and there are 15 strategies for using this method (pp. 101-102). Negative politeness is
"redressive action addressed to the addressee's negative face" and in this case S may
use one of the ten strategies presented (pp. 129-131). When S wants to avoid
responsibility for doing FTA, he does it off record, using one of the 15 strategies
suggested. This means he will violate one or more of Grice's maxims and " H must
make some inference to recover what was in fact intended" (p. 211). The fifth option is
to avoid the FTA completely, but in this case S will not satisfy his wishes.
Brown and Levinson use three different languages to support their argument:
English, Tzeltal and South Indian Tamil (p. 59). However, for the purpose of this paper
only English examples will be used, for as it has been said earlier, the indirect requests
covered here will be only the English ones.
26
3.2 Indirect Requests
Brown and Levinson classify the indirect requests as speech acts which are
either off record, or on record with redressive action, which can be positive or negative.
Indirectness is mostly associated with negative politeness and the strategy of
conventional indirectness is described in great detail. Indirect requests form an
important part of this strategy, although it is not the only method that is employed when
requesting indirectly. Other strategies, which apply to H's negative or positive face,
might be used as well. The last option is to go off record. This happens when there can
be more interpretations of what was actually said.
When S wants to deliver his message clearly and unambiguously, but there is a
need for negative-face redress (S does not want to coerce H or the etiquette prevents
him from being direct), he uses strategy 1: Be conventionally indirect (p. 130). It is the
first strategy of negative politeness and it aims to show respect towards H. Brown and
Levinson try to deal with indirect speech acts as a whole, but indirect requests seem to
constitute most of their argument. The indirect speech acts belonging to this group are
in certain contexts "conventionalized to the extent that there can be no doubt about what
is meant" (p. 133). Sometimes they can be syntactically marked, which can be done by
inserting "please" (Can you please pass the salt?), deleting auxiliary and tense markers
(Why not lend me your car?), or inserting exclamatory expressions (Will you for God's
sake stop shouting?!) (p. 133). Even when there is no such indication of the
indirectness, the utterance may be so unambiguous in given context that it is an onrecord
request, such as "I need a comb" said to a shop assistant (p. 134).
According to Brown and Levinson, indirect requests may be in general also
conveyed by questioning or asserting felicity conditions. In order to use this method
successfully, S must follow one of these schemata:
27
(1) felicity condition + question ± subjunctive ± possibility operator ± please
(2) felicity condition + assertion + negation ± subjunctive ± possibility operator
± tag ± please (p. 135)
This is why, according to (1), "Could you pass the salt?" is polite, but "Couldn't you
pass the salt?" would be perceived rude. Similarly, following (2), "You can pass the
salt." is likely to sound impolite, whereas "You couldn't possibly pass the salt, could
you?" is a form of polite request (pp. 135-136). The reason for why these schemata
work is connected with strategies 2 (Question, hedge) and 3 (Be pessimistic), which are
another strategies used for expressing negative politeness. When being conventionally
indirect, S either "wants to definitely convey the assumption that H is unlikely to do the
act A, and so he asserts it, or he wants to convey that he is unsure whether H can do A,
and so he questions it" (p. 136). The felicity conditions questioned/asserted might be (a)
propositional content condition, e.g. "Will you shut the door?"; (b) preparatory
condition, e.g. "Can you shut the door?"; (c) sincerity condition, e.g. "I want you to shut
the door." (p. 137). This division based on Searle clearly demonstrates Brown and
Levinson's reliance on the theory of speech acts.
Prior to making a request, H first has to consider the P, D and R variables. After
calculating the weightiness, he may choose how much politeness his utterance will
express. There are two principles that determine the degree of politeness:
1. The more effort a speaker expends in face-preserving work, the more he
will be seen as trying to satisfy H's face wants
2. Those strategic choices which most satisfy the end or want [... ] will be
preferred (p. 143).
Consequently, if S judges he will succeed by being maximally negatively polite and
asks "There wouldn't I suppose be any chance of your being able to lend me your car
28
for just a few minutes, would there?", he is more likely to succeed than when he asks
"May I borrow your car?" (pp. 142-143). This is also connected with another
motivation, "don't coerce H " (p. 145), which leads to other strategies.
S may express negative politeness also by means of other strategies. To soften
the impact of an FTA the S can use an "if-clause", which belongs to strategy 2
(Question, hedge), like in the sentence "Would you close the window, if I may ask
you?" (p. 163). Strategy 3 (Be pessimistic) has already been mentioned, too; this is a
common strategy used in indirect requests and has three possible realizations: "the use
of the negative (with a tag), the use of subjunctive, and the use of remote-possibility
marker" (p. 175). It can be seen in utterances beginning "I don't suppose there'd be any
chance of you..." and the like (p. 174). Inserting expressions such as "just" or "a tiny
bit o f is part of strategy 4 (Minimize the imposition) (p. 176). Strategy 6 (Apologise) is
employed when S admits the impingement ("I'm sure you must be very busy, but..."),
indicates reluctance ("I don't want to bother you, but..."), gives reasons ("I simply can't
manage to...") or begs forgiveness ("Excuse me, but...") (pp. 188-189). When a passive
voice is used, it is an example of strategy 7 (Impersonalize S and H), as well as "pointof-view
distancing" ("I was wondering whether you could...") (p. 204). Next, S may
"State the FTA as a general rule", which belongs to strategy 8 (p. 206). And last, S can
speak such as indebting himself, therefore using strategy 10, like in "I'd be eternally
grateful if you would..." (p. 210). All these strategies do not primarily involve
indirectness in the requests. But because they are perceived to increase negative
politeness, they are usually followed by an indirect request (and not by a direct one).
Therefore they form a part of the speech act of requesting and it is important to mention
them.
29
Positive politeness strategies might be employed as well, although it is not so
common, as they suggest friendliness and common ground, features not usually
achieved by means of indirectness. However, Brown and Levinson believe indirect
requests sometimes do make use of positive politeness strategies. Two examples may be
found in strategy 4 (Use in-group identity markers), which include insertion of a
familiar address form (p. 107) and the use of ellipsis (Got a cigarette, mate?) (p. 111). S
may turn the indirect request into a joke by using strategy 8 (p. 124), or give (or ask for)
reasons (strategy 13) like in "Why not lend me your cottage for the weekend?" (p. 128).
Finally, strategy 11 (Be optimistic) is often used in indirect requests, like when S asserts
"Look, I'm sure you won't mind if I remind you to do the dishes tonight" believing that
his request will be granted (p. 126). Even more positive politeness strategies may be
used before doing the actual FTA, but these are not part of the act of requesting, so there
is no need to deal with them here.
If S decides that going on record would not be polite enough in given
circumstances, he may choose an off-record strategy. In this case, "he cannot be held to
have committed himself to just one particular interpretation of this act" (p. 211) and
hopes that H will understand the meaning implied by means of conversational
implicature. In such situations, S is likely to use strategy 1 (Give hints), so for example
when he asks H to close the window, he can use assertion "It's cold in here" (p. 215). In
this way S violates Grice's maxim of relevance, which means his utterance appears to
be irrelevant to what S actually wants to communicate. When requesting, S can also try
to give association clues (strategy 2) and hope H will figure out S's intention (p. 215).
Another option is to over-generalize (strategy 13) like in "The lawn has got to be
mown" (p. 226) and one might also successfully use ellipsis in order to make a request
(strategy 15) and produce a half undone sentence (p. 227). All in all, the off-record
30
strategies provide endless possibilities, by means of which S is able to ask H to do
something without actually mentioning the subject of the request.
This chapter summarized the ways in which Brown and Levinson treated
indirect requests. As requests are often FTAs, there is a need to soften the threat. For
this purpose, indirectness is a good option. Conventional indirectness is the most
common strategy and even when it belongs to negative politeness, it is widely used
among the family and friends, too. S may be conventionally indirect by questioning or
asserting felicity conditions and he may choose the degree of politeness needed for a
successful performance. There are also other on-record strategies used when requesting
indirectly, either paying attention to H's positive face wants, or to his negative face
wants. And if S wants to impose even less, he goes off record, when he violates some of
Grice's maxims. The theory Brown and Levinson developed is really sophisticated and
the strategies a model person has at his disposal are quite numerous. In their extensive
work Brown and Levinson discussed various ways of formulating indirect requests
where the primary motivation was politeness, and therefore the speech act of requesting
indirectly constituted a significant part of their theory.
4. Geoffrey Leech
The Leech's theory of politeness is included in Principles of Pragmatics
(1983)7
, where he paid attention to various aspects of pragmatics. For Leech, however,
politeness was a very important subject, to which he devoted two chapters, introducing
the Politeness Principle as an extension of Grice's Cooperative Principle. The theory is
said to be too classificatory, but is still respected among the linguistic community.
7
All citations in chapter 4 are taken from this book.
31
4.1 Theoretical Framework
Geoffrey Leech built his theory on the work of Paul Grice and John Searle. The
problem of politeness belongs to the area of interpersonal rhetoric (this has to be
distinguished from textual rhetoric). By interpersonal rhetoric it is meant "the effective
use of language in its most general sense, applying it primarily to everyday
conversation" (p. 15). In creating his theory, Leech used Grice's concept of Cooperative
Principle (CP), which he took for granted (p. 79), and added Politeness Principle (PP)
and Irony Principle (IP) as new principles necessary for understanding the rules that
govern everyday speech. The CP "enables one participant in a conversation to
communicate on the assumption that the other participant is being cooperative" (p. 82)
and consists of the following maxims:
1. Quantity: Give the right amount of information.
2. Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true.
3. Relation: Be relevant.
4. Manner: Be perspicuous,
(cited in Leech, 1983, p. 8)
These maxims further consist of "sub-maxims", as Leech calls them (p. 15), giving
narrower definitions of the maxims.
However, there are cases where the CP is insufficient for explaining the
mechanism of conversation. Leech gives an example of an extract from a dialogue:
A: We'll all miss Bill and Agatha, won't we?
B: Well, we'll all miss BILL. (p. 80)
32
Here B intentionally violates the Maxim of Quantity to avoid being impolite to a third
party.8
This is the reason why Leech decided to introduce the PP necessary "to maintain
the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our
interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place" (p. 82). The type of politeness it is
dealt with is called "absolute politeness" and is the opposite of "relative politeness",
which is context-dependent (p. 83). In terms of absolute politeness, Leech claimed that
"some illocutions (eg orders) are inherently impolite, and others (eg offers) are
inherently polite" (p. 83). On the basis of this assumption, he defined negative
politeness as "minimizing the impoliteness of impolite illocutions" and positive
politeness as "maximizing the politeness of polite illocutions" (pp. 83-84). The six
maxims of the PP are:
1. Tact Maxim
2. Generosity Maxim
3. Approbation Maxim
4. Modesty Maxim
5. Agreement Maxim
6. Sympathy Maxim (p. 132)
If these are observed, they contribute to a conflict-free conversation and maintenance of
a good relationship.
The last point that should be mentioned here is the concept of Hinting Strategy
and anticipatory illocutions. In polite requests, when asking about the willingness or
ability of the other person to do a certain action, the speaker actually gives a hint that it
is his wish the other person performs the action (p. 97). The utterance such as "Can you
8
In Leech's concept, "speakers also show politeness to third parties, who may or may not be present in
the speech situation" (p. 131).
33
answer the phone?" is then called an anticipatory illocution and "prepares the way for
subsequent illocution", which would be a direct request, not needed when the other
person is being cooperative. The Hinting Strategy is thus used in requests fairly often.
4.2 Indirect Requests
Requests belong, according to Leech, to the class of competitives. These are
speech acts where "the illocutionary goal competes with the social goal" (p. 104). When
someone wants to use a speech act with a competitive illocutionary function, he or she
usually needs to "reduce the discord implicit in the competition between what [speaker]
wants to achieve, and what is 'good manners'" (p. 105). This is usually achieved by
means of negative politeness. For further classification, Searle's taxonomy of
illocutionary acts is used (as mentioned in 2.1). According to this concept, requests
belong to the class of directives, the only difference being that Leech chooses to call the
competitive illocutions in this class "impositives" (p. 106).
In order to describe why some utterances are more polite than others, Leech
introduces five pragmatic scales. These are (a) the cost-benefit scale; (b) the optionality
scale; (c) the indirectness scale; (d) the authority scale; and (e) the social distance scale
(pp. 123-126). To demonstrate the function of the scales in linguistic politeness, Leech
gives the following summary (A stands for action, h for hearer and s for speaker):
The greater the cost of A to h,
the greater the horizontal social distance of h from s,
the greater the authoritative status of h with respect to s,
the greater will be the need for optionality, and correspondingly for indirectness,
in the expression of an impositive, if s is to observe the Tact Maxim, (p. 127)
34
These pragmatic scales are the key factors when talking about impositives and Leech
describes them in connection with the Tact Maxim, the goal of which is to "minimize
cost to other, maximize benefit to other" (p. 132). The Tact Maxim is employed mostly
in impositives and commissives and its observance is of a considerable importance for
the English-speaking society (p. 107).
For the purpose of this paper, indirectness scale is the most relevant one. When
the propositional content is held the same, it is possible to increase the politeness by
being more indirect. According to Leech, "Indirect illocutions tend to be more polite (a)
because they increase the degree of optionality, and (b) because the more indirect an
illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be" (p. 108). The
following examples taken from Leech show how gradual application of indirectness
increases the politeness of requests:
indirectness less polite
(1) Take me home.
(2) I want you to take me home.
(3) Will you/are you willing to take me home?
(4) Can you/are you able to take me home?
(5) Would/could you take me home?
(6) Could you possibly take me home?
(pp. 119-121) more polite
The imperative (1) is the most impolite because it expresses a belief h will do the
requested action - there is no choice left (p. 109). The implicature here is simple: "s
intends h to take s home" (p. 119). Example (2) is more polite as it does not "require
any direct action as its most direct response" (p. 119), but there is another problem: if h
wants to observe the Tact Maxim as well, there is in fact no other choice that to take s
35
home. This represents violation of what Leech calls "meta-maxim" and defines it, "Do
not put h in a position where either s or h has to break the Tact Maxim" (p. 119).
Request (3) is in a question form, which is perceived to be more tactful because it gives
h the chance to give a negative response. This is in accordance with the way
indirectness functions, for according to Leech, "the point of the strategy of indirectness
is to bias the impositive more and more towards the negative choice, so that it becomes
progressively easier for h to say no" (p. 109). In this respect, request (4) is even more
polite than (3), as it does not question h's willingness (which is rather impolite to deny),
but asks about h's ability to take s home (in which case h might lack the power to
influence the circumstances) (p. 120). In (5) the politeness is increased by unreal forms
of the modal verbs, implying the action is only hypothetical and by answering h does
not commit himself to anything in the real world (p. 121). The utterance in (6) is made
the most polite by adding the politeness marker "possibly".
As for indirect requests in the form of declarative sentences, they are perceived
less polite than their question counterparts because they state h has the ability to
perform the action (p. 121). The indirectness scale here works similarly: "You will take
me home" is less polite than "You can take me home", which is less polite than "You
could/might take me home" (p. 121). "You will" expresses a confident belief, whereas
"you can" implies h does not have to take s home. The last utterance again creates the
sense the action is only hypothetical.
Apart from the Tact Maxim, s may also express politeness in indirect requests by
observing the Generosity Maxim. In this case, s should "minimize benefit to self;
maximize cost to self (p. 132). In practice it means that utterance like "Is there some
more cake?" is slightly more polite than "Can I have some more cake?" because in the
first utterance s does not mention his own benefit from the action.
36
The last issue Leech mentions in connection with indirect requests is the use of
hedged performatives. These are metalinguistic devices referring to the illocutions of
the current conversation (p. 139) and appear in utterances such as "May I ask you to
close the door?". This strategy is another option how to avoid using a direct request - by
means of the Hinting Strategy s tries to obtain h's cooperation, which is necessary for
fulfilling s's wish (p. 140). The use of a hedged performative may also indicate that s
does not feel entitled to ask the question about the requested action (p. 141). Anyway,
this kind of expressing politeness is used fairly often and successfully softens the
impositive effect of indirect requests.
This chapter demonstrated indirect requests as seen by Geoffrey Leech.
According to him, the more indirect a request is, the more politeness is conveyed, as the
speaker increasingly offers the hearer the possibility of refusal without himself being
impolite. The most important maxim to observe is the Tact Maxim. The Generosity
Maxim can be employed, too, and politeness can be also expressed through the usage of
a hedged performative. In all cases negative politeness is used, for the speech act of
requesting is considered to be impolite, and so the impoliteness has to be minimized.
For this purpose, indirectness proved to be a good solution.
5. Richard Watts
The second-wave approaches to politeness research, placing emphasis on the
context of speech events, started to gain ground after the year 2000. Richard Watts was
one of the first linguists to come up with a detailed work on linguistic politeness, where
he argued for the rejection of the first-wave approaches. He freed himself from Grice
and Searle, and decided to use more recent linguistic theories instead so as to provide
the background for his argument.
37
5.1 Theoretical Framework
Watts distinguishes between two types of politeness. The first-order
(im)politeness (or (im)politenessi) are the 'lay' or 'folk' interpretations of
(im)politeness, whereas the second-order (im)politeness (or (im)politeness2) is "a
concept in a sociolinguistic theory of (im)politeness" (Watts, 2003, p. 4).9
Watts sees all
the previous politeness theories as theories of politeness2, "a concept which has been
lifted out of the realm of lay conceptualizations" (p. 11), and argues that linguists
should concern themselves rather with politenessi, i.e. "the ways in which (im)polite
behaviour is evaluated and commented on by lay members" (p. 9).
Not only does Watts suggest radical rejection of politeness2 (p. 11), but he also
rejects the principles on which the previous theories were based. First, he refuses to use
Gricean theory as a universal model of communication. For him, "Gricean CP is simply
too static" (p. 207) and as Watts perceives conversation fluid, the model does not suit
him. Instead, he uses the Relevance Theory, which has been "much underrated as an
instrument of micro-level analysis of verbal interaction" (p. 212). In this theory, it is
important that the hearer infers the most relevant information in order to gain the new
knowledge he is meant to gain (p. 209). The advantage lies in the fact that the relevance
of an utterance is more context-dependent, it can be "negotiated from one
conversational turn to the next", and so Watts considers it an appropriate substitution
for Gricean maxims. The second point that is different from the earlier theories is the
notion of face, which is "the mutual respect for the feeling of others" (p. 118). Watts
disagrees with Brown and Levinson's concept of positive and negative face, which need
to be paid attention to. He argues that face is "not a permanent aspect of our
construction of the self, but is rather "dependent on the interpretation of the other
9
All citations in chapter 5 are taken from Watts (2003): Politeness.
38
participants" (pp. 124-125). Watts uses facework to help him describe the process of
conversation, but as for the connection of facework and politeness, he is convinced that
these two entities cannot be equated. He goes even further and claims that "most of the
linguistic structures used in the negotiation of facework [...] are not usually felt by
participants in verbal interaction to be polite" (p. 119).
For his definition of politeness 1, Watts introduces a new term "politic
behaviour", which is "that linguistic behaviour [...] perceived to be appropriate to the
social constraints of the ongoing interaction" (p. 19). In other words, people show
politic behaviour when they behave in a way that is expected. Polite behaviour is then
"beyond what is perceived to be appropriate" (p. 21). The same may be said of impolite
behaviour, only in the negative sense. The mechanism of deciding on the nature of a
conversation has then two phases: "(a) whether or not s participant's behaviour is
'polite' or 'impolite' [and] (b) whether the 'polite' behaviour is evaluated positively or
negatively" (p. 3). This means politeness is context-dependent and it is up to the
participants whether they will understand their speaking partner is being polite or not.
There are a few concepts which Watts believe to form the basis for evaluating
politeness. First, it is the notion of habitus, as defined by Bourdieu. Habitus is a set of
rules of what is appropriate for a particular situation, learned by every person through
repetition of the situation (p. 149). The habitus unconsciously navigates our behaviour
during a social practice, which is "the ongoing behaviour of individuals involved in
social interaction" (p. 277). During a conversation, the social links between the
participants are established, reestablished and reproduced. These social links emerging
during an interaction Watts calls "emergent networks" (p. 154) and the participants
often try to establish equilibrium in their relationship by means of relational work,
39
trying "to be as considerate towards one another as possible" (p. 277). In some cases,
politic behaviour is sufficient, in other cases it is preferable to try to express politeness.
5.2 Indirect Requests
During the development of the English language, two important processes took
place: grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation. The grammaticalisation caused
certain elements to become part of the grammar. Nevertheless, it is the second process
that Watts is interested in. Pragmaticalisation can "bleach the propositional content of
linguistic expressions [...] that they no longer function as expressions contributing to
the truth value of a proposition" (pp. 176-177). Instead of expressing a proposition
themselves, they rather "indicate sets of procedures through which propositional
meaning can be derived" (p. 174). Watts calls this type of meaning "procedural
meaning" (p. 174) and the pragmaticalised linguistic expressions signalling the
procedural meaning he calls "expressions of procedural meaning (EPMs)" (p. 180).
Watts distinguishes between two types of utterances, where these EPMs can
often be found. First, there are "formulaic, ritualised utterances", defined as "highly
conventionalised utterances [that] have been reduced from fully grammatical structures
to the status of extra-sentential markers of politic behaviour" (p. 168). These utterances
include for example "bye bye" used when someone is leaving. The second type are
"semi-formulaic utterances", which are "conventionalised utterances containing
linguistic expressions that carry out indirect speech acts appropriate to the politic
behaviour of a social situation" (p. 169). Neither of these types of structures express
politeness automatically, but some instances may be interpreted as polite. On the other
hand, when missing, the speaker may be considered impolite (p. 168). In accordance
40
with this distinction, there exist formulaic EPMs and semi-formulaic EPMs. According
to Watts, the indirect requests belong to the latter category.
For the sake of his theory, Watts adopts the concept of speech acts. He defines
an indirect speech act as the one "in which the illocutionary force of the speaker's
utterance does not correspond in a one-to-one fashion with the illocutionary act" (p.
190). Here, the term "illocutionary force" is equivalent to Yule's "illocutionary act" or
"function", and Watts' "illocutionary act" corresponds with Yule's "structure"
(definitions given in chapter 2.1). Regardless of the terminology, the concept remains
the same.
Watts identifies 14 structural types of indirect speech acts, which have the
illocutionary force that of a request.10
Using one example sentence for each structural
type, he tries to prove that automatic attribution of politeness to the structures is
misleading because "what is or is not taken to be a polite utterance depends entirely on
the moment of utterance in linguistic practice and relies on the participants' habitus in
the verbal interaction" (p. 200). The structural types are:
(7) Do X, will you?
(8) Do X, would you?
(9) Would you be so kind as to do X?
(10) Could I do X?
(11) Can I do X?
(12) May I remind you that X?/May I remind you to do/not to do X?
(13) I couldn't do X, could I?
(14) I was wondering whether I could do X .
1 0
The illocutionary force might also be that of an order or an enquiry, depending on the context, but these
cases are rare in Watts' analysis and it would be redundant to discuss them in this paper.
41
(15) I should like to ask you not to do X .
(16) You couldn't do me a favour and do X, could you?
(17) I want you to do X .
(18) Might I do X?
(19) Let me do X.
(20) Allow/permit me to do X. (pp. 190-191)
In order to interpret the structures correctly, one must assume that "addressees will
process utterances so as to produce what appears to them to be maximally relevant
propositional assumption" (p. 191). Also the speaker's utterance should be maximally
relevant (this being in accordance with the Relevance Theory). When considering the
structures, the first observation is that all of them contain modal verbs or quasi-modal
structures "expressing the deontic modalities of 'will', 'permition' and 'desire'" (p.
191). Examples (7) and (8) have an imperative form and a tag question added to the
end. The tag is the only indicator of potential politeness, and so the requests are not too
much polite. However, Watts argues that "the tag questions attached to bald on-record
requests are formulaic and are almost automatically associated with the politic
behaviour", therefore they are "a form of EPM" and not polite (p. 192). Examples (10)
and (11) have two possible interpretations - the speaker is either requesting whether the
addressee allows him to do X, or he is genuinely asking whether he would be able to do
X. This means these structures cannot be inherently polite (p. 193). Watts admits that
the interpretation as a request is much more common, but this also seems to support his
argument and he says that "they are by now the unmarked forms within the scope of
politic behaviour [and] no one would automatically classify them as 'polite'" (p. 193).
Example (9) "is almost always interpretable today as a form of extra payment, i.e. as
'polite'" (p. 194), but this means it can be evaluated negatively, i.e. as insincere or
42
ironic, which is nowadays often the case (p. 199). The same can be said of (12). The
point here is that "greater formulaic nature of the structure leads to its interpretation as
unnecessary or ironic politeness" (p. 195). Structures (13) - (18) are all semi-formulaic
EPMs, which adhere to the politic behaviour suitable for the particular situation.
Structures (19) and (20) can be interpreted either as genuine requests, or as polite offers,
depending on the intonation of the speaker (p. 198). A similar example where intonation
plays a major role can be seen in the utterance "Would you mind answering the
phone?", which either indicates that it should be processed as a yes-no question (with
the stress on "mind" and "phone"), or it suggests the speaker is trying to be polite (with
low pitch, fast tempo and stress on "phone") (p. 181). Watts argues that in such
utterances the prosody is also EPM, "since it is focused on instructing the addressee
how to process the propositional content of the utterance" (p. 181).
By means of detailed analysis of different types of indirect requests Watts made
an attempt to prove that they do not automatically express politeness. Usually, these
semi-formulaic expressions of procedural meaning are examples of politic behaviour.
Sometimes they can be perceived to go beyond what is expected in the social practice.
If this is the case, "they are open to interpretation as politenessi" (p. 200). This means
they can be evaluated positively as well as negatively, depending on the context and
habitus. This leads to the conclusion that "there can be no inherent structures of
linguistic politeness" (p. 200).
6. Marina Terkourafi
A very different approach towards politeness was suggested by Marina
Terkourafi. This Greek linguist came up with a frame-based approach, drawing on
empirical data from her own corpus of spontaneous conversations. Her conclusions
43
spring mainly from the collection of Cypriot Greek data, however, she applies her
theory to all languages. Thus her findings are valuable for the English language as well,
and her contribution is a bridge connecting the older theories with the newer
approaches, placing the biggest emphasis on the context of the situation.
6.1 Theoretical Framework
Unlike Watts, Terkourafi does not reject the previous linguistic theories. On the
contrary, she takes some older concepts (even when sometimes slightly altered) and
uses them for her own description of politeness. Most importantly, the function of
rationality is stressed. Following Brown and Levinson, Terkourafi expects that every
adult person behaves rationally, but on the basis of this assumption she comes to
different conclusions. She states that if a person behaves rationally, he or she will try to
go through an interaction with minimal effort (Terkourafi, 2005b, p. 248). And because
"interaction under conditions of hostility and distrust is costly" (p. 248), Terkourafi
(2005b) assumes "underlying agreement" in interaction, "until evidence of
disagreement is provided" (p. 244). To maintain the agreement with the participant, one
tries to be polite; this means that to express politeness is to behave rationally, because in
this way it is possible to achieve greater effects at a lower cost (Terkourafi, 2005a, p.
109). For Terkourafi (2005a), "Politeness is then expected because it is rational; as such
it constitutes the unmarked way of speaking in a community" (p. 109).
Terkourafi (2005b) distinguishes two types of rationality - individual and
societal. The individual rationality is limited by the societal rationality "which has precast
[...] the universe of possibilities into a range of concrete choices" (p. 249). These
choices then depend on the frame of the particular situation. The notion of frame is
crucial for Terkourafi (2005a), who defines it as follows:
44
Frames are acquired in the course of socialization. [...] They combine, as
separate components, information about a situation (who is talking to whom,
when and where) with information about the appropriate use of language therein
(Escandell-Vidal 1998:48) and are stored in long-term memory with default
values filling in particular component-slots, (p. I l l )
Every person has these "frames" in mind, in other words he possesses the knowledge of
what certain situations should look like. According to this knowledge, one then judges
whether the speaker's behaviour is polite in the current situation, or not. And when he
or she evaluates the participant's behaviour as polite, it is because the behaviour is in
accordance with his expectations, which are based on the experience of a similar
situation(s) in the past. Terkourafi (2005b) puts emphasis on the regularity of
expressions appearing in the same situations and argues that "they are polite because
they are regular. It is the regular co-occurrence of particular types of contexts and
particular linguistic expressions as unchallenged realizations of particular acts that
creates the perception of politeness" (p. 248). This again proves the fact that politeness
is unmarked and expected in everyday situations.
Although Terkourafi mainly uses evidence from Cypriot Greek to support her
theory, she argues that "frames provide basis for a truly universalising approach"
(Terkourafi, 2005a, p. 99). This is because the frames depend purely on the cultures and
communities within which they are created. In order to engage in a successful
interaction, one must know "what is usual or expected in a certain situation within a
community" (Terkourafi, 2005a, p. 110). Thus, for each situation there is a different
frame, in which a certain type of behaviour stands for polite.
45
6.2 Indirect Requests
The frame-based view, as Terkourafi (2005b) calls her theory, is "data driven"
(p. 246). This means that prior to drawing any conclusions, a large corpus of
approximately 60,000 words was created, recording spontaneous conversations of
native speakers of Cypriot Greek (p. 246). These data were then processed and using a
method combining the speech act theory and conversation analysis "utterance sequences
realizing offers or requests were subsequently identified" (p. 247). During the
classification, the role of the hearer was crucial, for the type of speech act depended on
the hearer's reaction, i.e. "if the expression has been responded to as a request [...], then
it is classified as a request" (p. 248). Subsequently, these "were analysed quantitatively
seeking to establish regularities of co-occurrence between linguistic expressions and
their extra-linguistic contexts of use" (p. 247). In this way, the existence of different
frames could be observed.
Marina Terkourafi paid a lot of attention to the issue of indirect requests in her
research. To demonstrate her theory is valid for other cultures than Greek, she uses the
example of an English indirect request typical for English speaking cultures: "Can you
pass me the salt?" (Terkourafi, 2005a, p. 112). If this request is uttered at a table when
the participants are having dinner, it "meets the addressee's general expectations about
how language is used" in the given situation (p. 112). The other participant usually
complies with the request and passes the salt (if there is no obstacle and if he or she has
no intention of being impolite). By complying with the request the addressee
acknowledges he understands the request to be a polite one. Terkourafi (2005a) explains
that in this case "politeness is achieved as a perlocutionary effect" (p. 112), manifested
by addressee's recognition of the suitability of the utterance and subsequently passing
the salt. The indirect request "Can you pass (me) the salt (please)?" is thus part of the
46
frame typical for the "dinner-table" situation and when uttered in any similar situation,
it is likely to be perceived as polite by the English speakers. If, on the other hand, the
request was produced under circumstances where it was not expected, or if the form of
the utterance was such that the addressee would not recognise it as a polite request for
passing the salt, the utterance would be marked and therefore not likely to be seen as
polite (p. 112). All this evidence is in accordance with Terkourafi's (2005a) argument
that "politeness constitutes the unmarked way of speaking in a community" (p. 113).
The empirical research into the use of indirectness conducted by Terkourafi was
extensive. In her study from 2002 she used 1,486 realisations of requests in Cypriot
Greek in various settings (Terkourafi, 2002, p. 181). The findings of this study will not
be discussed in the present paper, as they are not taken from the English language. The
conclusions drawn on the basis of the research have been discussed above. However,
the study is worth mentioning, as Terkourafi stresses the importance of using formulaic
language in producing polite requests. The point is that when a formula - in this case
the "preferred realization of requests" (p. 180) - is used, the addressee will more readily
understand the message and the conversation will proceed more fluently (p. 196).
Therefore, "that a large proportion [...] of polite discourse should consist in using
formulaic speech is hardly surprising" (p. 196). Considering the indirect requests, it is
not only the indirectness itself that would make a request polite, but also the choice of
concrete linguistic items suitable for the context. This is clearly demonstrated in the
study, where Terkourafi states that "speakers' choice between 'equally' indirect forms
[...] is not random but constrained by their differing domains of application" (p. 193).
Even when Terkourafi gives no English example, it is fairly easy to imagine one coming
back to the "dinner-table" scene, it is much more likely to hear "Can you pass
47
the salt?" than "I would like you to pass me the salt", which is indirect as well, but
rather unusual in this situation.
When politeness is expressed, it is usually unmarked and goes unnoticed; "it is
no longer seen as an additional layer of meaning" (Terkourafi, 2005a, p. 113). The
indirect requests are polite when they are used in situations where they occur regularly.
To embrace all the information of the situation, Terkourafi adopts the notion of frame,
which serves as a guide for deciding whether the utterance is common for the particular
situation, and therefore polite, or whether it is not.
7. Non-polite Indirect Requests
Although the indirect requests have been traditionally investigated in connection
with politeness, there are cases where politeness is not intended or achieved. Sometimes
indirect requests are even impolite or rude. Impoliteness occurs when the speaker
intends to be impolite, or the hearer perceives the speaker's behaviour as impolite, or
when both these facts are true (Culpeper, 2005, p. 38). In this last chapter, examples of
indirect requests in non-polite contexts will be outlined.
In everyday speech, it is common that the indirectness in a request is used to
indicate irony. According to Attardo (2000), "irony may be defined as 'saying
something while meaning something else' or more formally, if S[peaker] utters a
sentence whose (literal) meaning is M , he/she intends to communicate non-M, i.e. the
complementary meaning" (p. 797). Leech (1983) mentions the issue in connection with
his Tact Maxim, pointing out that "There are some impositives where indirectness does
not contribute to tact" (p. 127). He then gives an example of an indirect request "Must
you make all that noise?", which is in most circumstances interpreted ironically (p.
127). Watts (2003) also pays attention to the ironic usage of indirect requests,
48
explaining that "certain utterances which went so far beyond what in any reasonable
circumstances can be expected of the appropriate politic behaviour [...] tend to be
highly stylised and heavily laden with ironic intent" (p. 199). Also, the prosody of an
utterance may indicate irony, as suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 222) and
later elaborated on by Culpeper (201 la). In his article, Culpeper stresses the importance
of prosodic features and argues that "they can over-rule conventional meanings
associated with linguistic forms", and so create ironic effect (p. 57).
Even when the indirect requests are not ironic, there are cases in which they
might be perceived as impolite or rude. This is again mentioned by Leech, as well as
Watts. Leech (1983) explains that the sentence "Can't you be quiet?" is less tactful,
"since it reduces the amount of choice implied" (p. 127). Watts (2003) writes about
cases where the impoliteness is a result of "excessive politeness", such as in "May I
remind you that I'd like another piece of cake?" (p. 199). Another point of view is given
by Blum-Kulka (1987), who distinguishes between conventional and non-conventional
indirectness in requests. According to her, the non-conventional indirect requests do not
always imply politeness because they lack the pragmatic clarity of conventional
requests, thus making it more difficult for the hearer to decode the message (p. 144).
Finally, sometimes the indirectness in requests does not indicate politeness or
impoliteness, but is used for a completely different goal. This was suggested by Pinker,
Nowak and Lee (2008), who identified three kinds of situations where off-record
indirectness was beneficial. These are (a) when "plausible deniability" is desirable, i.e.
the speaker can easily deny his intention; (b) when "relationship negotiation" takes
place, i.e. one participant wants to change the relationship, but does not know whether
the other participant would agree; and (c) when language is perceived as a "digital
medium", i.e. it consists of discrete items, which when put together in a certain way,
49
carry certain truth value. If a message is put indirectly, it is always possible to deny the
truth value in the future (pp. 834-836).
All the cases discussed above demonstrate the use of indirect requests in nonpolite
contexts, either with the intention of causing offence, or without it. This area has
not been much researched by linguists. Nevertheless, Lee and Pinker (2010) present the
idea that indirectness may be used strategically "to keep certain problematic facts out of
common knowledge", which could then "explain a variety of emotionally fraught social
phenomena, including hypocrisy, taboo, tact, euphemism, piety, mock outrage,
ostensible invitations, political correctness, and other examples" (p. 802). This claim
suggests the underlying reasons for the use of indirectness might considerably exceed
the area of politeness, and allows possibilities for the indirect requests to be examined
from different points of view as well.
50
Conclusion
The thesis explored English indirect requests as they were perceived in four
major politeness theories. The aim was to depict the diversity of the views on
indirectness in requests and trace the development of those views. For this purpose, the
theories presented by Brown and Levinson, Geoffrey Leech, Richard Watts and Marina
Terkourafi were chosen.
To provide background for the thesis, part I offered some definitions of
politeness, as well as a brief history of the research into linguistic politeness. This was
divided into two phases. The first-wave approaches were based on the speech act theory
and Grice's Cooperative Principle. In the paper these approaches were represented by
Brown and Levinson and Leech. The second-wave approaches emphasized the role of
context and in the paper were represented by Watts and Terkourafi. As for the
definitions of indirect requests, the speech act theory was used to explain the terms
"indirect" and "request". Finally, the reasons why linguists investigating politeness paid
so much attention to the issue of indirect requests were given.
Part II offered a closer look at each of the four theories separately. Every chapter
was divided into two parts. The first part explained the main points of the theory in
question. This was crucial for full comprehension of the second part, which was devoted
to a detailed analysis of the indirect requests. It has been proved that because each
linguist base his theory of politeness on different assumptions, he or she perceive the
role of indirect requests differently.
Brown and Levinson assume that requests are face-threatening acts and a
politeness strategy should be used in order to reduce the risk of damaging hearer's face.
Indirectness is one of the options the speaker may choose for expressing the request on
record or off record. When the speaker wants to express negative politeness, he is most
51
likely to be conventionally indirect. He may also use other strategies to soften the
impact of the FTA - talking about indirect requests, these are mainly negatively polite,
but they might be positively polite, too. The speaker has to judge the weightiness of the
FTA. If he concludes that negative politeness is insufficient, he goes off record, which
is a higher strategy, and so in Brown and Levinson's view conveys a higher degree of
politeness. This also means the speaker violates one or more of Grice's maxims, which
shows the theory relies on the Cooperative Principle.
Leech's theory is based on Grice even more firmly. Building on the Cooperative
Principle, Leech adds the Politeness Principle and invents six maxims that should be
observed in communication. For requests, the most important maxim is the Tact Maxim.
Here Leech introduces the indirectness scale and states the crucial point of his theory that
the more indirect a request is, the more politeness is expressed.
Watts argues for a radical rejection of the previous linguistic theories, seeing
them as abstract concepts excluding the folk conceptualizations of politeness. He
introduces the term "politic behaviour", which is expected and unmarked, contrary to
"polite behaviour", which exceeds the expectations. The structures used for indirect
requests are then classified as semi-formulaic expressions of procedural meaning. These
may sometimes convey politeness, but usually they are part of the politic behaviour.
This behaviour is considered correct, not polite. But even the polite behaviour can be
evaluated negatively, depending on the habitus and the context of the situation.
Terkourafi takes a very different approach and, contrary to Watts, assumes that
politeness is expected in everyday interaction. For each situation there exists a frame,
which determines whether the behaviour is polite or not. Thus, the indirect requests are
polite in such situations where they occur regularly. And because in English there is a
52
higher number of situations where an indirect request would be more appropriate than a
direct one, it is more often perceived as polite.
The analysis has shown that as has the perception of linguistic politeness
changed since the first theories, the perception of indirect requests has changed as well.
First, uttering a request meant running a risk of offending the hearer and the indirectness
in this case nearly always conveyed politeness, contributing to smoother interaction.
With the discursive turn in politeness theories, the indirect requests started to be
analysed in context and their association with politeness was weakened. The automatic
attribution of politeness to the requests uttered indirectly ceased to exist and the indirect
requests started to be seen as polite only when the context of the particular situation
allowed it.
Finally, in some situations the indirectness in requests is used in order to be
ironic, impolite, rude or to achieve other goals without the intention of being polite. It
was suggested that there exist even more reasons for the use of indirectness in requests
that those metioned, which opens possibilities for further research into this problem,
together with further research into linguistic politeness.
53
References
Attardo, Salvatore (2000). Irony as relevant inappropriateness. Journal of Pragmatics,
52(6), pp. 793-826.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1987). Indirectness and politeness in requests: Same or
different? Journal of Pragmatics, 11(2), pp. 131-146.
Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in
language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, Jonathan (2005). Impoliteness and 'The Weakest Link'. Journal of Politeness
Research, 7(1), 35-72.
Culpeper, Jonathan (201 la). "It's not what you said, it's how you said it!": Prosody and
impoliteness. In Linguistic Politeness Research Group (Eds.), Discursive
approaches to politeness (pp. 57-83). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
Culpeper, Jonathan (201 lb). Politeness and impoliteness. In G. Andersen & K. Aijmer
(Eds.), Pragmatics of society (pp. 393-438). Berlin, Germany: Walter de
Gruyter.
Cutting, Joan (2002). Pragmatics and discourse. London, England: Routledge.
Grainger, Karen (2011). First order and second order politeness: Institutional and
intercultural contexts. In Linguistic Politeness Research Group (Eds.),
Discursive approaches to politeness (pp. 167-188). Berlin, Germany: Walter de
Gruyter.
Held, Gudrun (2005). Politeness in linguistic research. In R. Watts, S. Ide & K. Ehlich
(Eds.), Politeness in language: Studies in its history, theory and practice (2nd
ed.) (pp. 131-153). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
54
Kadar, Daniel Z. & Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca (2011). Introduction: Politeness
research in and across cultures. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini & D. Z. Kadar,
Politeness across cultures (pp. 1-14). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Kallia, Alexandra (2005). Directness as a source of misunderstanding. In R. T. Lakoff
& S. Ide (Eds.), Brodening the horizon of linguistic politeness (pp. 217-234).
Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Lee, James J. & Pinker, Steven (2010). Rationales for indirect speech: The theory of the
strategic speaker. Psychological Review, 117(3), 785-807. Retrieved from
http://stevenpinker.com/publications/year/2010
Leech, Geoffrey N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
Marquez Reiter, Rosina (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A
contrastive study of requests and apologies. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
Mills, Sara (2011). Discursive approaches to politeness and impoliteness. In Linguistic
Politeness Research Group (Eds.), Discursive approaches to politeness (pp. 19-
56). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
Pinker, S., Nowak, M . A. & Lee, J. J. (2008). The logic of indirect speech. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), pp. 833-838. Retrieved from
http://stevenpinker.com/publications/year/2008
Polite, adj. and n. (2013). In Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved from
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/146878?rskey=GF8nZi&result=l&isAdvanced
=false
Searle, John (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
55
Terkourafi, Marina (2002). Politeness and formulaicity. Journal of Greek Linguistics, 3,
pp. 179-201.
Terkourafi, Marina (2005a). An argument for a frame-based approach to politeness. In
R. T. Lakoff & S. Ide (Eds.), Brodening the horizon of linguistic politeness (pp.
99-116). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Terkourafi, Marina (2005b). Beyond the micro-level in politeness research. Journal of
Politeness Research, 7(2), 237-262.
Watts, Richard (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yule, George (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
56
Summary
The aim of this paper is to show how indirect requests have been perceived in
the major theories of linguistic politeness. Indirectness have often been associated with
politeness, and so the question of indirect requests have been treated by a large number
of linguists dealing with politeness. As the views on politeness have beech changing,
the role of indirect requests in the theories have been changing as well. The thesis
should reflect both the development of the politeness theories over the last thirty years
and the approach to indirect requests as depicted in the major theories.
The paper has been divided into two parts. In the first part, the main theoretical
concepts are clarified, namely the terms "linguistic politeness" and "indirect request".
The second part is devoted to detailed analysis of indirect requests in the major
politeness theories. For this purpose, four theories have been chosen - those written by
Brown and Levinson, Leech, Watts and Terkourafi. The first two concepts represent the
first-wave approaches to linguistic politeness, based on the speech act theory and
Grice's Cooperative Principle. Brown and Levinson and Leech argue that in most cases,
the more indirect a request is, the more politeness is conveyed. On the other hand, Watts
and Terkourafi take the discursive approach and place emphasis on the context of a
situation. According to them, politeness does not reside in the indirect requests
themselves, but it depends purely on the participants and the situation, whether a request
is perceived as polite or not.
Finally, a few cases where the indirect requests are not polite are mentioned.
These have not been discussed in the politeness theories in detail, and so will be
touched upon only briefly to show that there also exist other reasons for using
indirectness in requests.
57
Resumé
Cílem této práce je ukázat, jak byla ve významných zdvořilostních teoriích
vnímána problematika nepřímých žádostí. Vzhledem k tomu, že požádání nepřímým
způsobem je často spojováno se zdvořilostí, mnoho lingvistů zabývajících se zdvořilostí
se věnovalo otázce nepřímých žádostí. S tím, jak se postupně měnil náhled na zdvořilost
samotnou, měnila se i role nepřímých žádostí v teoriích zdvořilosti. Tato práce by měla
odrážet jak vývoj zdvořilostních teorií během posledních třiceti let, tak i pojetí
problematiky nepřímých žádostí v některých významných teoriích.
Práce je rozdělena na dvě části. V první části jsou vysvětleny hlavní teoretické
koncepty, především pojmy „lingvistická zdvořilost" a „nepřímá žádost". Druhá část se
věnuje detailní analýze nepřímých žádostí ve významných zdvořilostních teoriích. K
tomuto účelu byly vybrány čtyři teorie, jejichž autory jsou Brownová a Levinson,
Leech, Watts a Terkourafi. První dvě koncepce jsou příklady z první vlny teorií o
lingvistické zdvořilosti, které byly založeny na teorii řečových aktů a Griceově
Kooperačním Principu. Brownová a Levinson a Leech zastávají názor, že čím víc
nepřímo člověk svou žádost podá, tím více zdvořilosti projeví. Naopak Watts a
Terkourafi zaujímají diskurzivní postoj a zdůrazňují roli kontextu v dané situaci. Podle
jejich názoru se zdvořilost nenachází v samotných nepřímých žádostech, ale to, zda
bude žádost vyhodnocena jako zdvořilá, záleží čistě na situaci a účastnících konverzace.
Na konci práce je zmíněno několik případů, kdy nepřímé žádosti nejsou
vnímány jako zdvořilé. Vzhledem k tomu, že se vybrané zdvořilostní teorie těmito
případy podrobně nezabývaly, budu se jim zde věnovat jen stručně, abych ukázala, že
kromě zdvořilosti existují i jiné důvody, které motivují podání žádosti nepřímým
způsobem.
58