polite.doc

8/14/2019 polite.doc

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Penelope Brown and Stephen C.

Levinson

POLITENESS: SOME UNIVERSALS IN LANGUAGE

USAGE

Assumptions: properties of interactants

We make the following assumptions: that all competent adult members of a society have (and knoweach other to have):

1 'Face', the public sellimage that every member wants to claim for

himself, consisting in two related aspects:

(a) negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves,

rights to nondistraction i !e! , to freedom of action and freedom

from imposition

(b) positive face: the positive consistent selfimage or 'personality'

(crucially including the desire that this sellimage be appreciated

and approved of) claimed by interactants!

" #ertain rational capacities, in particular consistent modes of reasoning

from ends to the means that will achieve those ends!

Face

$ur notion of 'lace' is derived from that of %offman (1& (see #hapter 1*+) and from the nglish folk

term, which ties lace up with notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or 'losing face'! -hus lace is

something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be

constantly attended to in interaction! .n general, people cooperate (and assume each other's cooperation)

in maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face! -hat is,

normally everyone's face depends on everyone else's being maintained, and since1 O

people can be e/pected to defend their faces if threatened, and in defending their own to threaten others'

faces, it is in general in every participant's best interest to maintain each other's face, that is to act in waysthat assure the other participants that the agent is heedful of the assumptions concerning face given

under ( 1 ) above! 0! ! !+

Furthermore, while the content of face will differ in different cultures (what the e/act limits are to

personal territories, and what the publicly relevant content of personality consists in), we are assuming

that the mutual knowledge of members' public selfimage or face, and the social necessity to orient

oneself to it in interaction, are universal!

Face as wants

0! ! !+ We treat the aspects of face as basic wants, which every member knows every other member desires,

and which in general it is in the interests of every member to partially satisfy! .n other words, we take in

Weberian terms the more strongly rational weckrational model of individual action, because the


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wertrational model (which would treat face respect as an un2uestionable value or norm) fails to account for

the fact that face respect is not an une2uivocal right! .n particular, a mere bow to face acts like a diplomatic

declaration of good intentions it is not in general re2uired that an actor fully satisfy another's face

wants! 3econd, lace can be, and routinely is, ignored, not 4ust in cases of social breakdown (affronterv)

but also in cases of urgent cooperation, or in the interests of efficiency!

-herefore, the components of face given above may be restated as follows! We define:

negative face: the want of everv 5competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded

by others

positive face: the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others!

6egative face, with its derivative politeness of nonimposition, is familiar as the formal politeness that

the notion 'politeness' immediately con4ures up! 7ut positive face, and its derivative forms of positive

politeness, are less obvious! -he reduction of a person's public self image or personality to a want that

one's wants be desirable to at least some others can be 4ustified in this way! -he most salient aspect

of a person's personality in interaction is what that personality re2uires of other interactants in

particular, it includes the desire to be ratified, understood, approved of, liked or admired! -he ne/t step

is to represent this desire as the want to have one's goals thought of as desirable! .n the special sense

of 'wanting' that we develop, we can then arrive at positive face as here defined! -o give this some

intuitive flesh, consider an e/ample! 8rs 7 is a fervent gardener! 8uch of her time and effort are

e/pended on her roses! 3he is proud of her roses, and she likes others to admire them! 3he is gratified

when visitors say 'What lovely roses . wish ours looked like that9 ow do you do i t ; ' , implying that they

want 4ust what she has wanted and achieved!

Rationality

We here define 'rationality' as the application of a specific mode of reasoning 0! ! !+ which guarantees

inferences from ends or goals to means that will satisfy those ends!


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(c) remindings (3 indicates that should remember to do some >)

(d) threats, warnings, dares (3 indicates that he or someone, or some

thing ? will instigate sanctions against unless he does >)

" -hose acts that predicate some positive future act of 3 toward , and in

so doing put some pressure on to accept or re4ect them, and possibly

to incur a debt:

(a) offers (3 indicates that he wants to commit himself to whetheror not he wants 3 to do some act for , with thereby incurring

a possible debt)

(b) promises (3 commits himself to a future act for 's benefit)

@ -hose acts that predicate some desire of 3 toward or 's goods,

giving reason to think that he may have to take action to protect the

ob4ect of 3's desire, or give it to 3:

(a) compliments, e/pressions of envy or admiration (3 indicates that

he likes or would like something of 's)

(b) e/pression of strong (negative) emotions toward e!g!, hatred,

anger, lust (3 indicates possible motivation for harming or 's

goods)

-hose acts that threaten the positiveface want, by indicating (potentially) that the speaker does not

care about the addressee's feelings, wants, etc! that in some important respect he doesn't want 's

wants include:

1 -hose that show that 3 has a negative evaluation of some aspect of 's positive face:

(a) e/pressions of disapproval, criticism, contempt or ridicule,

complaints and reprimands, accusations, insults (3 indicates that he

doesn't like=want one or more of 's wants, acts, personal char

acteristics, goods, beliefs or values)

(b) contradictions or disagreements, challenges (3 indicates that he

thinks is wrong or misguided or unreasonable about some issue,

such wrongness being associated with disapproval)

" -hose that show that 3 doesn't care about (or is indifferent to) 's positive face:

(a) e/pressions of violent (outofcontrol) emotions (3 gives possible

reason to fear him or be embarrassed by him)

(b) irreverence, mention of taboo topics, including those that are inap

propriate in the conte/t (3 indicates that he doesn't value 's values

and doesn't fear 's fears)

(c) bringing of bad news about , or good news (boasting) about 3 (3

indicates that he is willing to cause distress to , and=or doesn't

care about 's feelings)

(d) raising of dangerously emotional or divisive topics, e !g ! , politics,

race, religion, women's liberation (3 raises the possibility or likelihood of facethreatening acts (such as the above) occurring i!e!,

3 creates a dangeroustoface atmosphere)

(c) blatant noncooperation in an activity e!g!, disruptively interrupting 's talk, making non

se2uiturs or showing nonattention (3 indicates that he doesn't care about 's negative or

positiveface wants)

(f) use of address terms and other statusmarked identifications in initial encounters (3 may

misidentify in an offensive or embarrassing way, intentionally or accidentally)

6ote that there is an overlap in this classification of F->s, because some F- >s intrinsically threaten

both negative and positive face (e!g!, complaints, interruptions, threats, strong e/pressions of emotion,

re2uests for personal information)!


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Second distinction: threats to H's face versus threats to S's

3econd, we may distinguish between acts that primarily threaten H's face (as in the above list) and those

that threaten primarily S's face! -o the e/tent that 3 and are cooperating to maintain face, the latter

F->s also potentially threaten 's face! F->s that are threatening to 3 include:

1 -hose that offend 3's negative face:(a) e/pressing thanks (3 accepts a debt, humbles his own face)

(b) acceptance of 's thanks or 's apology (3 may feel constrained

to minimie 's debt or transgression, as in ' .t was nothing, don't

mention it!')

e/cuses (3 indicates that he thinks he had good reason to do, orfail to do, an act which has 4ust criticied this may constitute in turn a criticism of , or atleast cause a confrontation between 's view of things and 3's view)

(d) acceptance of offers (3 is constrained to accept a debt, and to

encroach upon 's negative face)

(e) responses to 'sfaux pax ( i f 3 visibly notices a priorfaux pas, he

may cause embarrassment to if he pretends not to, he may be

discomfited himself)

(f) unwilling promises and offers (3 commits himself to some future

action although he doesn't want to therefore, if his unwillingness

shows, he may also offend 's positive face)

" -hose that directly damage 3's positive face:

(a) apologies (3 indicates that he regrets doing a prior F->, thereby

damaging his own face to some degree especially if the apology

is at the same time a confession with learning about the trans

gression through it, and the F-> thus conveys bad news)

(b) acceptance of a compliment (3 may feel constrained to denigrate

the ob4ect of 's prior compliment, thus damaging his own face

or he may feel constrained to compliment in turn)

(c) breakdown of physical control over body, bodily leakage, stum

bling or falling clown, etc!

(d) selfhumiliation, shuffling or cowering, acting stupid, selfcontra

dicting

(e) confessions, admissions of guilt or responsibility e!g!, for having

done or not done an act, or for ignorance of something that 3 is

e/pected to know

( t ) emotion leakage, noncontrol of laughter or tears

-hese two ways of classifying F->s (by whether 3's face or 's face is mainly threatened, or by whether it is

mainly positive face or negative face that is at stake) give rise to a fourway grid which offers the

possibility of crossclassifying at least some of the above F->s! owever, such a crossclassification has a

comple/ relation to the ways in which F->s are handled!

Strategies for doing FTAs

.n the conte/t of the mutual vulnerability of face, any rational agent will seek to avoid these face

threatening acts, or will employ certain strategies to minimie the threat! .n other words, he will take

into consideration the relative weightings of (at least) three wants: (a) the want to communicate the

content of the F->, (b) the want to be efficient or urgent, and (c) the want to maintain 's face to any

degree! Anless (b) is greater than (c), 3 will want to minimie the threat of his F->!

-he possible sets of strategies may be schematied e/haustively as in Figure 1&! in this schema,

we have in mind the following definitions!

>n actor goes on record in doing an act > if it is clear to participants what communicative intentionled the actor to do > (i!e!, there is 4ust one unambiguously attributable intention with which witnesses


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would concur)! For instance, if 1 say '. (hereby) promise to come tomorrow' and if participants would

concur that, in saying that, . did unambiguously e/press the intention of committing myself to that

future act, then in our terminology . went 'on record' as promising to do so!

.n contrast, if an actor goes off record in doing >, then there is more than one unambiguously

attributable intention so that the actor cannot be held to have committed himself to one particular

intent! 3o, for instance, it . say 'Bamn, . 'm out of cash, . forgot to go to the bank today', . may be

intending to get you to lend me some cash, but . cannot be held to have committed myself to that intent(as you would discover were you to challenge me with '-his is the seventeenth time you've asked me

to lend you money')! Cinguistic realiations of offrecord strategies include metaphor and irony,

rhetorical 2uestions, understatement, tautologies, all kinds of hints as to what a speaker wants or means

to communicate, without doing so directly, so that the meaning is to some degree negotiable!

Boing an act aldly! without redress! invokes doing it in the most direct, clear, unambiguous

and concise way possible (for e/ample, for a re2uest, saying 'Bo D9 ') ! -his we shall identify roughly

with following the specifications of %rice's ma/ims of cooperation 0#hapter @+, 6ormally, an F->

will be done in this wav only if the speaker does not fear retribution from the addressee, for e/ample

in circumstances where (a) 3 and both

1. without redressive actio! "a#d#$

o record %. &ositive &o#iteess

'o the (TA with redressive actio

). o** record

+. e,ative &o#iteess

-. 'ot do the (TA

Figure Possi"#e strate,ies *or doi, (TA

tacitly agree that the relevance of face demands may be suspended in the interests of urgency or

efficiency (b) where the danger to 's face is very small, as in offers, re2uests, suggestions that are

clearly in 's interest and do not re2uire great sacrifices of 3 (e!g!, '#ome in' or 'Bo sit down') and

(c) where 3 is vastly superior in power , or can enlist audience support to destroy 's face without losing

his own!

"y redressive action we mean action that 'gives face' to the addressee, that is, that attempts to

counteract the potential face damage of the F-> by doing it in such a way, or with such modifications or

additions, that indicate clearly that no such face threat is intended or desired, and that 3 in general

recognies 's face wants and himself wants them to be achieved! 3uch redressive action takes one of two

forms, depending on which aspect of face (negative or positive) is being stressed!

#ositive politeness is orientated toward the positive face of , the positive selfimage that he

claims for himself! Eositive politeness is approachbased it 'anoints' the face of the addressee by indicating

that in some respects, 3 wants 's wants ( e !g ! , by treating him as a member of an ingroup, a friend, a

person whose wants and personality traits are known and liked)! -he potential face threat of an act is

minimied in this case by the assurance that in general 3 wants at least some of 's wants for

e/ample, that 3 considers to be in important respects, 'the same' as he, with ingroup rights and

duties and e/pectations of reciprocity, or by the implication that 3 likes so that the F-> doesn't

mean a negative evaluation in general of 's face!

$egative politeness! on the other hand, is orientated mainly toward partially satisfying (redressing)

's negative face, his basic want to maintain claims of territory and selfdetermination! 6egative

politeness, thus, is essentially avoidance based, and realiations of negative politeness strategies consist in

assurances that the speaker recognies and respects the addressee's negative face wants and will not (or

will only minimally) interfere with the addressee's freedom of action! ence negative politeness is

characteried by selfeffacement, formality and restraint, with attention to very restricted aspects of 's


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selfimage, centring on his want to be unimpeded! Facethreatening acts are redressed with apologies for

interfering or transgressing, with linguistic and nonlinguistic deference, with hedges on the illocutionarv

force of the act, with impersonaliing mechanisms (such as passives) that distance 3 and from the act,

and with other softening mechanisms that give the addressee an 'out', a facesaving line of escape,

permitting him to feel that his response is not coerced!

-here is a natural tension in negative politeness, however, between (a)$ 1 '

the desire to go on record as a prere2uisite to being seen to pay face, and (b) the desire to go off

record to avoid imposing! > compromise is reached in conventionali%ed indirectness! for whatever

the indirect mechanism used to do an F->, once fully conventionalied as a way of doing that F-> itis no longer off record! -hus many indirect re2uests, for e/ample, are fully conventionalied in

nglish so that they are on record (e!g!, '#an you pass the salt;' would be read as a re2uest by allparticipants there is no longer a viable al ternative interpretat ion of the utterance e/cept in very

special circumstances)! >nd between any two (or more) individuals, any utterance may becomeconventionalied and therefore on record, as is the case with passwords and codes!

> purely conventional 'out' works as redressive action in negative politeness because it pays a token

bow to the negativeface wants of the addressee! -hat is, the fact that the speaker bothers to phrase his F-> in

a conventionally indirect way shows that he is aware of and honours the negativeface wants of !

Factors influencing the choice of strategies

0! ! !+ .n this section we argue that any rational agent will tend to choose the same genus of strategy under

the same conditions that is, make the same moves as any other would make under the circumstances!

-his is by virtue of the fact that the particular strategies intrinsically afford certain payoffs or advantages,

and the relevant circumstances are those in which one of these payoffs would be more advantageous than

any other!

We consider these in turn ? first the intrinsic payoffs and then the relevant circumstances and

then relate the two!

The payoffs: a priori considerations

ere we present a fairly complete list of the payoffs associated with each of the strategies, derived on a

priori grounds!

7y going on record, a speaker can potentially get any of the following advantages: he can enlist public

pressure against the addressee or in support of himself he can get credit for honesty, for indicat ing that

he trusts the addressee he can get credit for outspokenness, avoiding the danger of being seen to be a

manipulator he can avoid the danger of being misunderstood and he can have the opportunity to pay back

in face whatever he potentially takes away by the F->!

7y going off record, on the other hand, a speaker can profit in the following ways: he can get credit for

being tactful, noncoercive he can run less risk of his act entering the 'gossip biography' that others

keep of him and he can avoid responsibilitv for the potentially facedamaging interpretation!

Furthermore, he can give (nonovertlv) the addressee an opportunity to be seen to care for 3 (and thushe can test 's feelings towards him)! .n this latter case, if chooses to pick up and respond to the

potentially threatening interpretation of the act, he can give a 'gift' to the original speaker! -hus, if .

say '.t's hot in here' and you say '$h, . ' l l open the window then9', you may get credit for being generous

and cooperative, and . avoid the potential threat of ordering you around!

For going on record withpositive politeness, a speaker can minimie the facethreatening aspects of an

act by assuring the addressee that 3 considers himself to be 'of the same kind', that he likes him and wants

his wants! -hus a criticism, with the assertion of mutual friendship, may lose much of its sting

indeed, in the assumption of a friendly conte/t it often becomes a game and possibly even a

compliment (as between oppositese/ed teenagers)! >nother possible payoff is that 3 can avoid or

minimie the debt implications of F->s such as re2uests and offers, either by referring (indirectly) to the

reciprocity and ongoing relationship between the addressee and himself (as in the reference to a

pseudo prior agreement with then in 'ow about a cookie, then') or by including the addressee and himselfe2ually as participants in or as benefitors from the re2uest or offer (for e/ample, with an inclusive

'we', as in 'Cet's get on with dinner' from the husband glued to the -)!


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For going on record with negative politeness, a speaker can benefit in the following ways: he can pay

respect, deference, to the addressee in return for the F->, and can thereby avoid incurring (or can

thereby lessen) a future debt he can maintain social distance, and avoid the threat (or the potential

face loss) of advancing familiarity towards the addressee he can give a real 'out' to the addressee

(for e/ample, with a re2uest or an offer, by making it clear that he doesn't reallv e/pect to

say 'Ges' unless he wants to, thereby minimiing the mutual face loss incurred if has to say

'6o') and he can give conventional 'outs' to the addressee as opposed to real 'outs', that is, pretendto offer an escape route without really doing so, thereby indicating that he has the other person's

face wants in mind!

Finally, the payoff for the fifth strategic choice, 'Bon't do the F->', is simply that 3 avoids

offending at all with this particular F->! $f course 3 also fails to achieve his desired communication,

and as there are naturally no interesting linguistic refle/es of this lastditch strategy, we will ignore it in

our discussion henceforth!

For our purpose, these payoffs may be simplified to the following summary

$nrecord payoffs:

(a) clarity, perspicuousness

(b) demonstrable nonmanipulativeness

7aldonrecord (nonredressed) payoff:

efficiency (3 can claim that other things are more important than face, or that the act is not an

F-> at all)

Elusredress payoff: 3 has the opportunity to give face

(a) positive politeness to satisfy 's positive face, in some respect

(b) negative politeness to satisfy 's negative face, to some degree

$ffrecord payoffs:

(a) 3 can satisfy negative face to a degree greater than that afforded by the

negativepoliteness strategy

(b) 3 can avoid the inescapable accountability, the responsibility for his

action, that onrecord strategies entail!

The circumstances: sociological variales

.n this section we argue that the assessment of the seriousness of an F-> (that is, the calculations that

members actually seem to make) involves the following factors in many and perhaps all cultures:

1 -he 'social distance' (B) of 3 and (a symmetric relation)!

" -he relative 'power' (F) of 3 and (an asymmetric relation)!

@ -he absolute ranking (H) of impositions in the particular culture!

>n immediate clarification is in order! We are interested in B, E, and H only to the e/tent that the

actors think it is mutual knowledge between them that these variables have some particular values! -hus

these are not intended associologists' ratings of actualpower, distance, etc!, but only as actors' assumptions of

such ratings, assumed to be mutually assumed, at least within certain limits! $ur argument here has an

empirical basis, and we make the argument in as strong a form as our ethnographic data will allow!


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Computing the weightiness of an FTA

For each F->, the seriousness or weightiness of a particular F-> x is compounded of both risk to 3's

face and risk to 's lace, in a proportion relative to the nature of the F->! -hus apologies and

confessions are essen tially threats to 3's face (as we have seen), and advice and orders are basically threa ts to

's face, while re2uests and offers are likely to thr eaten the face of both participants! owever, the way

in which the seriousness of a particular F - > is weighed seems to be neutral as to whether it is 3's or

's face that is threatened, or in what proportion! 3o let us say that the weightiness of an F-> is

calculated thus:

WvI B(3,) J E(,3) J Hv

where WG is the numerical value that measures the weightiness of the F-> >, B(3,) is the value that

measures the social distance between 3 and , E(,3) is a measure of the power that has over 3, and Hv

is a value that measures the degree to which the F-> > is rated an imposition in that culture! We assume

that each of these values can be measured on a scale of 1 to n, where n is some small number! $ur

formula assumes that the function that assigns a value to W von the basis of the three social parameters

does so on a simple summative basis! 3uch an assumption seems to work surprisingly well, but we

allow that in fact some more comple/ composition of values may be involved! .n any case, the

function must capture the fact that all three dimensions F, B, and H contribute to the seriousness of anF->, and thus to a determination of the level of politeness with which, other things being e2ual, an

F-> will be communicated!

First, we must clarify our intent! 7y B and E we intend very general pancultural social dimensions

which nevertheless probably have 'emic' correlates! We are not here interested in what factors are

compounded to estimate these comple/ parameters such factors are certainly culturespecific! For

instance, E(,3) rnay be assessed as being great because is elo2uent and influential, or is a prince, a

witch, a thug, or a priest B(3,) as great because speaks another dialect or language, or lives in the ne/t

valley, or is not a kinsman! 8ore specifically, we can describe these factors as follows!

B is a symmetric social dimension of similarity=difference within which 3 and stand for the

purposes of this act ! .n many cases (but not all ), it is based on an assessment of the fre2uency of

interaction and the k inds of material or nonmaterial goods (including face) e/changed between 3 and

(or parties representing 3 or , or for whom 3 and are representatives)! >n important part of theassessment of B will usually be measures of social distance based on stable social attributes! -he refle/ of

social closeness is, generally, the reciprocal giving and receiving of positive face!

E is an asymmetric social dimension of relative power, roughly in Weber's sense! -hat is, E(,3) is the

degree to which can impose his own plans and his own selfevaluation (face) at the e/pense of 3's plans

and selfevaluation! .n general there are two sources of E, either of which may be authoried or unauthoried

? material control (over economic distribution and physical force) and metaphysical control (over the

actions of others, by virtue of metaphysical forces subscribed to by those others)! .n most cases an

individual's power is drawn from both these sources, or is thought to overlap them! -he refle/ of a great E

differential is perhaps archetypally 'deference', as discussed below!

H is a culturally and situationally defined ranking of impositions by the degree to which they are

considered to interfere with an agent's wants of selfdetermination or of approval (his negative and

positiveface wants)! .n general there are probably two such scales or ranks that are emically iden tifiablefor negativeface F->s: a ranking of impositions in proportion to the e/penditure (a) of services (including

the provision of time) and (b) of goods (including nonmaterial goods like information, as well as the

e/pression of regard and other face payments)! -hese intraculturally defined costings of impositions on an

individual's preserve are in general constant only in their rank order from one situation to another!

owever, even the rank order is sub4ect to a set of operations that shuffles the impositions according to

whether actors have specific rights or obligations to perform the act, whether they have specific reasons

(ritual or physical) for not performing them, and whether actors are known to actually enjoy being

imposed upon in some way!

3o an outline of the rankings of negativeface impositions for a particular domain of F->s in a

particular culture invokes a comple/ description like the following:

1 (a) rank order of impositions re2uiring services

(b) rank order of impositions re2uiring goods


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" Functions on (1):

(a) the lessening of certain impositions on a given actor determined

by the obligation (legally, morally, by virtue of employment, etc!)

to do the act > and also by the en4oyment that the actor gets out

of performing the re2uired act

(b) the increasing of certain impositions determined by reasons why

the actorshouldn't do them, and reasons why the actor couldn't(easily) do them

For F->s against positive face, the ranking involves an assessment of the amount of 'pain' given to 's

face, based on the discrepancy between 's own desired selfimage and that presented (blatantly or

tacitly) in the F->! -here will be cultural rankings of aspects of positive face (for e/ample, 'success',

'niceness', 'beauty', 'generosity') , which can be reranked in particular circumstances, 4ust as can negative

face rankings! >nd there are personal (idiosyncratic) functions on these rankings some people ob4ect to

certain kinds of F->s more than others! > person who is skilled at assessing such rankings, and the

circumstances in which they vary, is considered to be graced with 'tact ', 'charm', or 'poise' !

We associate with each of these variables B, F, and H, a value from 1 to n assigned by an actor in

particular circumstances! 6o special substantial claim is intended the valuation simply represents theway in which (for instance) as 3's power over increases, the weightiness of the F-> diminishes! $ne

interesting side effect of this numerical representation is that it can describe these intuitive facts: the

threshold value of risk which triggers the choice of another strategy is a constant, independent of the way

in which the value is composed and assessed! -hus one goes off record where an imposition is small but

relative 3 distance and 's power are great, and also where is an intimate e2ual of 3's but the

imposition is very great!

&ditors' appendi: list of politeness strategies Eositive politeness

strategies:

6otice, attend to F. (his=her interests , wants, needs, goods)

/aggerate (interest, approval, svmpathy with )

.ntensify interest to

Ase ingroup identity markers

3eek agreement

>void disagreement

Eresuppose=raise=assert common ground

ssert or presuppose 3's knowledge of and concern for 's wants

$ffer, promise

7e optimistic.nclude both 3 and in the activity

%ive (or ask for) reasons

>ssume or assert reciprocity

%ive gifts to Fl (goods, svmpathy, understanding, cooperation)

$egative politeness strategies:

7e direct=conventionally indirect

Kuestion, hedge

7e pessimistic

8inimise the sie of imposition on ..

%ive deference


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>pologise

.mpersonalise 3 and A: avoid pronouns - and 'you'

3tate the F 1 > as a general rule

6ominalise

%o on record as incurring) a debt, or as not indebting

(ff)record strategies:

-hose violating %rice's (conversational ma/ims, see #hapter @!

iolate maxim of !elevance %ive hints=clues %ive

association clues Eresuppose

iolate maxim of "uality

Anderstate

$verstate

Ase tautologies

Ase contradictions

7e ironic

Ase metaphors

Ase rhetorical 2uestions

iolate maxim of #anner

7e ambiguous

7e vague

$vergeneralise

Bisplace

7e incomplete, use ellipsis

Reference

%offman, ! (1&) $n teraction !itual , 6ew Gork: >nchor 7ook s!

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