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This paper aims to enhance our understanding of interactions between French/English Foreign Language Assistants (FLAs) and their school mentors (MEs), and, more specifically, of how ‘advice’ is sought, given and received. More generally, it will articulate a pragmatic approach (employing the notion of ‘activity type’) that can help achieve this aim. The paper draws on a sub-set of the data produced for the Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication (PIC) project, a project which deployed multiple and different methodologies, including, for example, not only transcriptions of live interactions, but also retrospective reflections on those interactions. We focus on the first non-casual meetings between FLAs and their MEs, a crucial part of which concerns ‘advice’. We argue that advice can be viewed as a ‘discourse type’, and show how it is deployed in the context of the activity types constituted by those meetings. We conduct a detailed qualitative analysis of one audio-recording of a meeting based in England, and then compare it with one based in France, our interpretations being informed by the participants' reflections, especially those of the FLA. We also deploy quantitative analysis and explore whether the patterns identified in our case studies can be generalised. Finally, we reflect on the implications of activity types and discourse types for pragmatics research, particularly politeness theory and cross-cultural pragmatics.

This paper explores the communication strategies employed by service providers in Nigeria banks to gain new and retain their old customers. This is done by looking at the discourse features inherent in banking interactions. The researcher was given the impetus to undertake this study because of the uniqueness exhibited in banking and business discourse. One could easily have drawn a conclusion that, as expected of every business interaction, the banking interaction would be without fuss because of the training employees receive on human relations, but these findings reveal that this is not always the case. However, the fact that employees have more successful interactions is one that cannot be denied, and this success can be attributed to the application of politeness strategies by bank staff. Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory serves as theoretical framework. Eleven texts from bank employee-customers interactions were purposively selected and subjected to content analysis in order to reveal linguistic strategies employed in them. It is realised that bank employees adopt features like inclusion, directness, informality, face saving features like avoidance of questions, politeness markers, hesitation and taciturnity when interacting with customers. It is also observed that bank employees use hesitation mostly to avoid making absolute statements which could affect customers’ negative face. Also, face saving strategies are the most used as employees do everything to save customer from embarrassment and make them feel good. Inclusion strategies by bank employees serve as vital retention device. This affects the choice of code and kinship terms used by bank employees when relating with customers. In the face of the heat with customers, bank employees resort to taciturnity as an avoidance strategy so that they are not held by their words. Politeness markers like ‘please’ are used even where they do not seem necessary and sorry is not commonly used. In all, bank employees’ attempt to treat their customers as kings in line with their training.

It has long been the contention of various scholars that Brown and Levinson's notion of face, in particular the concept of personal autonomy associated with negative face, is not appropriate for explaining politeness in Japanese. However, there has been little work on what might constitute a suitable alternative. In this paper, it is proposed that the concept of “place,” which has long occupied an important position in Japanese philosophy and language studies, is fundamental to instances of politeness in Japanese. It is suggested that Japanese politeness involves concern about both the “place one belongs” (inclusion) and the “place one stands” (distinction). Examples are then given to show how the concept of place can be useful in understanding politeness phenomena both cross-culturally and interculturally.

Politeness is considered to be important in the communication. When the people are communicating to one another, they are expected to keep the social relationship and do not violate another face or called as face threatening acts (FTAs). This research investigated the realization of politeness in a drama script entitled “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen. It aims to classify the drama conversation parts into some categorizations of politeness and to analyze why they differ in the context. In its nature, the research applied qualitative concepts. Two conversation parts in the first act of the script were chosen to be the objects of the research. These qualitative data were then analyzed and categorized using Goffman’s categorizations of Face Threatening Act (FTA): FTA off record and FTA on record (with sub-classes: FTA on-baldly, FTA on record-with negative politeness, and FTA on record-with positive politeness). From the analyses, it was concluded that there were some parts belonging to FTA off record and some belonging to the FTA on record with positive politeness. The first data analysis explained much about FTA off record. On the contrary, FTA on record with positive politeness was portrayed in the second analysis. It shows that people tend to save their inter-interlocutors’ face by using indirect request, off record, as far as they understand what the speakers want to. The on record will work if only the first one does not work. Keywords: Politeness, FTA off-record, FTA-on record

This article analyzes how employees in a global business organization talk about their colleagues in other countries. Employees were asked to discuss their work practices in focus group settings, and give examples of how they experience ‘the other’. Using Discursive Psychology and Politeness Theory as the analytic approaches, the article analyzes pieces of discourse to disclose social psychological phenomena such as group identity, intergroup differentiation, and stereotypes. The analyses show that talking about ‘the other’ is potentially face-threatening, and mitigating discourse features are used repeatedly to soften the criticism. We also see how uncovering stereotypes is a mutual accomplishment in the group, and how group members gradually move from relatively innocent to blatantly negative outgroup stereotypes. The analyses also show that participants engage in meta-reflections on the nature of stereotypes, which may serve as another mitigating device, and that talk about ‘the other’ is used to create intergroup differentiation. Finally, the article discusses the implications of these findings for cross-cultural communication and work practices in organizations.

In this article, I will explore some of the emotional and educational consequences of (im)politeness in teacher–student interaction (T–S interaction, henceforth) at higher education, with reference to their influence in motivation and learning. Politeness theory (Brown and Levinson in Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978, Politeness: some universals in language usage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987) will be extended to include a discursive approach to the management of interpersonal relations (Spencer-Oatey in Culturally speaking: managing rapport through talk across cultures, Continuum, London, 2008), and further developments towards the expression of impoliteness. (Im)politeness and rapport management will be analysed in combination with self-determination (Deci and Ryan in J Res Personal 19:109–134, 1985) and appraisal theories (Martin in Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction of discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000; Martin and White in The language of evaluation. Appraisal in English, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005; Hunston and Thompson in Evaluation in text. Authorial stance and the construction of discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000; Thompson and Alba-Juez in Evaluation in context, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2014) in order to examine the role of motivation and negative evaluative meanings in the construction of impoliteness in interaction. Data have been extracted from a corpus that is being compiled by the author. It contains classroom interaction, email exchanges and higher education students’ reports on their perception of (im)politeness and rapport in their academic lives. The data have been processed and analysed combining corpus linguistics, conversation analysis and systemic functional discourse analysis. Results show that the discourse of teaching typically contains many rapport sensitive discourse acts and that their face-aggravating potential increases when conveying negative evaluative language and when students present a challenging orientation to rapport due to different reasons, being lack of intrinsic motivation an important one. Other aspects which can result in face aggravation such as different expectations regarding sociality rights and obligations will be discussed. As T–S interaction has effects not only on the relations reated among teachers and students but also on the teaching–learning process, it seems essential that the involved parties become aware of the impact of rapport management and of the fact that learning is facilitated by good interpersonal rapport but can be seriously undermined by its absence.

This chapter examines Sophocles' plays in the light of face-threat politeness theory. It deals with the subject under the following headings: face-threat politeness theory, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record strategies, and politeness and characterization. Not applicable

This paper is a study of the register (a variety of a language used for a particular purpose for a particular setting) of various games commonly played by children in India. The study will take into account the language of six games (three played by girls and three by boys in teenage years) for linguistic analysis in the study. The registers of the games include rhyme-scheme for the specific game, and the words associated with the games. The two genders quite vary in their languages of games. The study will find out the reflection of their sexes in the registers employed by them. This socio-linguistic analysis will analyze the field data by examining speech practices associated with gender, and studying self-disclosure, and politeness theory in these games. The data will be observed in Hindi language (one of the official languages of India spoken in Northern India) and transcribed in International Phonetic Alphabets along with liner translation in English., Este trabajo es un estudio sobre el registro (una variedad de la lengua utilizada para un propósito particular en un contexto particular) utilizado en varios juegos jugados comúnmente por niños en la India.El estudio se analizará la lengua usada en seis juegos (tres jugados por niñas y tres por niños adolescentes). Los registros de los juegos incluyen el esquema rítmico para un juego específico y las palabras asociadas a los juegos. El género es una variable relevante en el estudio lingüístico de los juegos. Este estudio pretende describir cómo el género condiciona el registro utilizado en los juegos.Este análisis sociolingüístico analizará los datos obtenidos mediante el examen de muestras de habla asociadas con el género, y estudiará, en los juegos, los mecanismos de autorevelación personal y teoría de la cortesía que se usan. Los datos se han recogido en lengua hindi (una de las lenguas oficiales de la India hablada en el norte) y se transcribirán fonéticamente junto con la correspondiente traducción al inglés.

This chapter discusses the dialogue between Athena and Poseidon (Euripides, Troades 48-97) in the light of face-threat politeness theory. Not applicable

Während die Forschung in Äußerungslinguistik seit Benveniste (1966 : 260) der zweiten Person, die als prototypisches Anredepronomen angesehen wird, eine zentrale Rolle beimisst, untersucht dieser Artikel die Möglichkeit, dass die grammatikalische Kategorie der dritten Person im Diskurs nicht zu einem Zustand außerhalb der Interkation führt, sondern eine Art Milderung der Anrede darstellt. Die dritte Person funktioniert nämlich als Vermeidungsstrategie oder Softener, damit das „Gesicht“ (face) des Sprechers und der Adressaten nicht verletzt wird und Face Threatening Acts (FTA, Brown/Levinson 1978, 1987) vermieden werden. Anhand eines Korpus deutscher und britischer politischer Reden von Angela Merkel und David Cameron nimmt der Artikel Beispiele in den Fokus, in denen die dritte Person in ihrer heterogenen Erscheinungen (Indefinitpronomen wie 'man', Universalquantifikatoren wie 'jeder' oder 'everyone', 'keiner'/'no one', partielle Quantifikatoren 'manch-'/'some', Nominalphrasen) die EmpfängerInnen des Diskurses einbezieht. Der Gebrauch der dritten Person im politischen Diskurs kann als „verbale Indirektheit“ (verbal indirection, Obeng 1997 : 80) betrachtet werden und lädt dazu ein, zwischen dem grammatikalischen und dem enunziativen Status der Person sowohl als zwischen Adressaten (allocutaires) und EmpfängerInnen (destinataires) des Diskurses zu unterscheiden., Whereas research in enunciative linguistics since Benveniste (1966 : 260) mainly focuses on the second person (you) in the study of address strategies, this article raises the possibility that the grammatical category of the third person does not only correspond to the absent(s) in discourse, but is also a way to avoid or soften direct address in order to preserve the face of the speaker and the hearers and to limit Face Threatening Acts (FTA, Brown/Levinson 1978, 1987). The analysis is based on a corpus of British and German political speeches of David Cameron and Angela Merkel. This paper examines examples where the third person, notably in the form of indefinite pronouns such as German 'man' ('one'), universal quantifiers such as 'jeder'/'everyone' or 'keiner'/'no one', partial quantifiers such as 'manch-'/'some' or NPs, involves the recipients of the discourse. The use of the third person can therefore be seen as a marker of “verbal indirection” (Obeng 1997 : 80) and invites us to pay closer attention to the distinction between grammatical and enunciative status of the category of person on the one hand, and to the distinction between addressees (allocutaires) and recipients (destinataires) of political discourse on the other hand., Tandis que les travaux en linguistique énonciative accordent, depuis Benveniste (1966 : 260), une place centrale à la deuxième personne, considérée comme le pronom prototypique de l’adresse, cet article interroge la possibilité que la catégorie grammaticale de la troisième personne (P3) ne corresponde pas, en discours, à un rejet hors de l’allocution, mais soit au contraire une forme de contournement de l’adresse : une stratégie d’évitement ou adoucisseur (softener) afin de ne pas heurter la face du locuteur et des allocutaires, de limiter les Face Threatening Acts (FTA, Brown/Levinson 1978, 1987). À partir d’un corpus de discours politiques allemands et britanniques d’Angela Merkel et David Cameron, l’article explore les cas où la personne délocutée (P3), sous ses multiples apparitions (pronoms indéfinis comme le 'man' allemand ('on'), quantifieurs universels pleins comme 'jeder' ('chaque') et 'everyone' ('tout un chacun') et 'keiner'/'no one' ('personne'), quantifieurs partiels : 'manch-' et 'some' ('quelques'), syntagmes nominaux), implique les destinataires du discours. L’usage de la troisième personne dans le discours politique peut dès lors être considérée comme un marqueur de « détournement verbal » (verbal indirection, Obeng 1997 : 80) et invite à différencier statut grammatical et statut énonciatif de la personne, mais aussi allocutaire et destinataire du discours.

A number of researchers have recently argued that politeness is not always inferred in the form of an implicature as claimed by Brown and Levinson (1987), but rather can be anticipated by addressees when it involves expected behaviour. The distinction between anticipated and inferred politeness is thus an important area for further development of politeness theory. In this paper, the way in which the notion of 'expectations' is related to politeness is first considered, before outlining the distinction between anticipated and inferred politeness in some detail. It is then argued that discourse politeness theory (Usami, 1998, 2001a, b, 2002) shows greater promise for deepening our understanding of this distinction than the proposals made thus far by relevance theorists. It is concluded that any investigation of the distinction between anticipating and inferring politeness must ultimately be grounded in empirical studies of politeness phenomena.