Politeness is one of the major social constraints on human interaction regulating participants' communicative behavior by constantly reminding them to take into consideration the feelings of the others.
(He Zi'ran 2003)
Leech (1983) proposed the Politeness Principle which is formulated in a general way from 2 aspects:
1) to minimize the expression of impolite beliefs
2) to maximize the expression of polite beliefs
The Politeness Principle encompasses six maxims: Tact maxim, Generosity maxim, Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim, Agreement maxim and Sympathy maxim.
Apparently, as He Zi'ran mentioned, it is necessary to consider the hearer's feelings in order to establish a mutual rapport between the conversationers. Human is really a face-wanting animal (face is Goffman (1959)'s term originated from Chinese). According to Goffman, face is a sacred thing for every human being, an essential factor communicators have to pay attention to. Face wants are reciprocal, that is, if one wants her face cared for, she should care for other people's face.
The problem is that Leech naively (in an unoffensive way) believed that most people will stick to these six maxims in verbal interations, or even other human interations.
Here is my interrogation: how motivated is every human being in saving others' face? Honestly, I would say that I am not a highly motivated face-saving human being. And I guess that there must be a large amount of people who would agree with me. I think the truth is, most people are reluctant in saving others' face or considering others' feelings, because saving others' face may cost too much of their own face, which is contradictory to the claim that every human being wants her/ his face. Oh, this might look like a logical fallacy. But just suppose in particular contexts, for example, a guy just goes bankrupt and loses his girlfriend at the same day, how likely will he considering his friends' feelings when they (with the disasters unknown)are speaking in dispraise of his taste?
So, the most possible situations when the Politeness Principle is used would be those hypocritical situations where the speaker and the hearer both want something from each other (this sounds really evil, right?). But not all people use the PP for this double-dealing purpose. Or does this kind of purpose of being polite happen only among hypocritical people? Or do all kinds of people actually keep this purpose in their mind and pretend that they are polite to others?
People can cover themselves well under the politeness strategies they use. After all, this article is a summary of my daydreams that i had when attending pragmatics lectures.
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最近評論
molly：支持。
17：其實發生了很多事，每天都有各式各樣的事情發生，永遠沒有結局，就好象電視劇，壹個事情的結束也是另壹個事情的開始。
太多太多時候的想法太亂了，以致沒有辦法寫出來，不過這些在心裏都是壹個過程。
累吧？好好休息壹下吧。
adah：這期間碰到好多障礙，有客觀的有主觀的，自己心裏也很亂，再加上最近也很懶，也沒時間整理心情，可能要緩沖壹段時間我才寫得出比較好的文字吧。
susan：美女，自從拍拖後妳就不寫blog了
為什麽不寫寫戀愛中的感受呢？you are such a little girl.;)
牛牛：我以前讀過壹篇文章,Susan Bordo的The Male Body(重新發現男性身體的美),裏面很多論述如何重新定義男性身體和如今社會對身體的錯誤認識，很文化很女權主義的壹篇論述。可惜找不到中文版本的，在網上也很難找到關於這篇文章的資料。現在的男人也開始越來越擔心自己的身體了呢！
municative behavior by constantly reminding them to take into consideration the feelings of the others.
(He Zi'ran 2003)
Leech (1983) proposed the Politeness Principle which is formulated in a general way from 2 aspects:
1) to minimize the expression of impolite beliefs
2) to maximize the expression of polite beliefs
The Politeness Principle encompasses six maxims: Tact maxim, Generosity maxim, Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim, Agreement maxim and Sympathy maxim.
Apparently, as He Zi'ran mentioned, it is necessary to consider the hearer's feelings in order to establish a mutual rapport between the conversationers. Human is really a face-wanting animal (face is Goffman (1959)'s term originated from Chinese). According to Goffman, face is a sacred thing for every human being, an essential factor communicators have to pay attention to. Face wants are reciprocal, that is, if one wants her face cared for, she should care for other people's face.
The problem is that Leech naively (in an unoffensive way) believed that most people will stick to these six maxims in verbal interations, or even other human interations.
Here is my interrogation: how motivated is every human being in saving others' face? Honestly, I would say that I am not a highly motivated face-saving human being. And I guess that there must be a large amount of people who would agree with me. I think the truth is, most people are reluctant in saving others' face or considering others' feelings, because saving others' face may cost too much of their own face, which is contradictory to the claim that every human being wants her/ his face. Oh, this might look like a logical fallacy. But just suppose in particular contexts, for example, a guy just goes bankrupt and loses his girlfriend at the same day, how likely will he considering his friends' feelings when they (with the disasters unknown)are speaking in dispraise of his taste?
So, the most possible situations when the Politeness Principle is used would be those hypocritical situations where the speaker and the hearer both want something from each other (this sounds really evil, right?). But not all people use the PP for this double-dealing purpose. Or does this kind of purpose of being polite happen only among hypocritical people? Or do all kinds of people actually keep this purpose in their mind and pretend that they are polite to others?
People can cover themselves well under the politeness strategies they use. After all, this article is a summary of my daydreams that i had when attending pragmatics lectures.
/adah/archive/2005/05/26/398194.aspx
To avoid the possible confusion caused by the literal meaning of “implication”, Grice introduces the “implicature” and “conversational implicature”, which refers to “the implications which can be deduced from the form of an utterance, on the basis of certain co-operative principle which governs the efficiency and normal acceptability of conversations.” After mentioning the particular word “say” and conventional meaning of sentences, Grice emphasizes a whole system with four categories , which develops into nine specific maxims or sub-maxims:
(1) Maxim of Quantity
1 Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange).
2 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
(2) Maxim of Quality
Super-maxim: try to make your contribution one that is true.
1 Do not say what is you believe to be false.
2 Do not say what for which you lack adequate evidence.
(3) Maxim of Relation
Be relevant.
(4) Maxim of Manner
1 Avoid obscurity of expression.
2 Avoid ambiguity.
3 Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4 Be orderly.
Grice realizes some disputable elements in his system himself, and it turns to be some points of his theory of conversational implicature that are argued heartily by other linguists.
Since Grice’s theory of implicature was brought about, whose freshness and significance were recognized immediately by the linguists, most of whom valued highly of them. However, it seems apparent that certain redundancy and even contradiction exist in the theoretical structure, so there appears plenty of criticisms; for example, some linguistics scholars point out the inexactness of the formulations of conversational implicature and the quite doubtful real significance that is related to the inexactness. Some of the criticisms are reasonably based on profound study and deeply analysis of Grice and his theory of conversational implicature. Now, instead of presenting an endless list of sound or unfair criticisms, it is useful for us to look into some key modifications of Grice’s theory of conversational formulas proposed by several contemporary linguists.
Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson consider the Gricean maxim to be too redundant. Their view on the communication is that
“--- more psychological point of view, defining communication is not a primary concern. --- Our aim is to identify underlying mechanisms, rooted in human psychology, which explain how humans communicate with one another. A psychologically well-founded definition and typology of communication, if possible at all, should follow from a theoretical account of these underlying mechanisms.”
From this perspective, they point out the defect of Grice’s view on communication, “--- the main defect of Grice’s analysis is not that it defines communication too vaguely, but that it explains communication too poorly.” (ib, id) According to the theory of inference, communication refers to the audience trying to recognize the speaker’s informative intention. However, you cannot say that recognizing intentions is a formal feature of human cognition, and the awareness of that communication is not only a recognizing behavior. The recognition of informative intentions presents problems, which the recognition of other human intentions does not. Besides, Grice, talking only of verbal communication, argues,
“Our talk exchanges --- are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction --- at each stage, some possible conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected to observe, namely: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”
This is Grice’s co-operative principle, which is developed into nine maxims classified into four categories. This account of the general standards governing verbal communication makes it possible to explain how the utterance of a sentence, which provides only an incomplete and ambiguous representation of a thought, can nevertheless express a complete and unambiguous thought. Of the various thoughts, the audience need not consider any that are incompatible with the assumption, in which the speaker is obeying the co-operative principle and maxims. If only one thought is left, them the hearer can infer that it is this thought that the speaker is trying to communicate. Thus, to communicate efficiently, all speaker is has to do is utter a sentence only one interpretation of which is compatible with the assumption that he is obeying the co-operative principle and maxims. For example, lets see the following dialogue:
(1) A: Do you want some coffee?
B: Coffee would keep me awake.
(2) B does not want to stay awake.
(3) B does not want any coffee.
Suppose that A is aware of (1). Then from the assumption expressed by B’s answer, add it to the assumption (2), he could infer conclusion (3). Grice seems to think that the hearer uses the assumption that the speaker has observed the maxims as a premise in inference. Others have tried to reinterpret the maxim as code-like rules, and yield pragmatic representations of utterances as output (Gazdar 1979). Let’s see Gazdar’s proposal from the following remarks:
“The tactic adopted here is to examine some of the data that would, or should be, covered by Grice’s quantity maxim and then propose a relatively simple formal solution to the problem of describing the behavior of that data. This solution may be seen as a special case of Grice’s quantity maxim, or as an alternative to it, or as merely a conventional rule for assigning one class of conversational meanings to one class of utterance.”
Grice’s view on implicature raises many basic questions. What is the rationale behind the co-operative principle and maxims? Are there just the nine maxims Grice mentioned, or might others be needed, as he suggests himself? Now lets analyze the last part of Grice’s principle of Quality, which is widely argued ever since it appeared. In his essay “Logic and Conversation”, Grice puts two maxims under the principle of Quantity:
1 Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange).
2 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. (Grice, 1975)
Grice himself admits in the paper that it is disputable whether the second maxim of the principle of Quantity is needed or not because of that: on the one hand, over-informative is merely a waste of time, but providing more information is not transgression of the Co-operative Principle; on the other hand, it is possible that such over-informativeness may be confusing, and it is likely to raise misunderstandings or aside issues; To prevent this kind of inefficiency of conversation, we prefer obeying the Principle of Relation to the second maxim of Quantity. As to the Principle of Relation, Grice recognizes many problems existing in its formulation, “Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversation are legitimately changed, and so on.” However, he considers that those problems are so difficult that he could only leave them to his latter research. Grice’s uncertainty of the Principle of Relation leaves large room for later linguists to rearrange the maxims by their own theory.
As an example, Sperber and Wilson put the second maxim of Quantity under a principle of relevance ---- as Grice predicts at the very beginning of his article on Conversational Implicature comes out in public someone may do this. Sperber and Wilson seem to be a little too enthusiastic about the possible overlap in Grice’s theory to notice the complication of conversation, and consequently over-simplify Grice’s principle of Quantity. Laurence Horn recognizes that language in use cannot be that simple; he tries to replace all the Grice’s maxims of conversation by his Q-principle and I-principle, but he is unable to explain the principle of Quality. Horn’s Q-principle and I-principle shows us that he thinks in a typical two-side way. In this aspect, Horn differs from Sperber and Wilson’s single-mindedly focus on Relevance, which is too extreme. However, the balance kept by Horn is still far from the intricateness of real conversation. Both the extreme “Relevance” of Sperber and Wilson and Horn’s two-sided theory of Q-principle and I-principle are simple enough to fit into a clearly organized structure, but how can the real meaning and utility remain in an over-simplified theory? Unlike Sperber, Wilson and Horn, Levinson treats Grice’s theory of Co-operative principle much more correctly; he comparatively has a more serious attitude and constructs a more complex system of maxims. He sets the second maxim of Grice’s principle of quantity as a separate principle, and calls it “Principle of Informativeness”. He is adequately meticulous when he separates the system of three principles; for example, he tries to restrict the scope of the Q-principle to prevent overlap between the Q-principle and I-principle. It may be his over-confidence in his own study on the various theories of communication, Levinson revises Grice’s Co-operative principle, esp. the principle of manner in a new way but he pays too little attention to the principle of Quality; he at least faces squarely the complication of conversation in real life; if his theory is not convincing enough, he has to make a lot of efforts to attempt to account for it in a reasonable way.
In conclusion, we should admit that Grice’s theory of Conversational Inplicature contributes a lot to the development of pragmatics as a fresh, creative and independent branch of linguistics; it is esp. remarkable that the theory shows how, in the event of an apparent violation of the co-operative principle and maxims, hearers are expected to make any assumptions needed to dispose of the violation. The theory of conversational imlicature is “redundant”, even “self-conflicting and overlapping”, and to some extent it is too idealized and far from perfect, but the most serious problems in Grice’s theory are those he discovers himself. Grice’s innovative endeavor to create a general philosophical theory of language is meaningful. The significance and the utility are far more important than the issues from many commentators.
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