Locher and Watts 2005 Relational Work
Locher and Watts 2005 Relational Work
Locher and Watts 2005 Relational Work
Abstract
In this paper we briefly revisit politeness research influenced by Brown and
Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. We argue that this research tradition
does not deal with politeness but with the mitigation of face-threatening
acts (FTAs) in general. In our understanding, politeness cannot just be
equated with FTA-mitigation because politeness is a discursive concept.
This means that what is polite (or impolite) should not be predicted by
analysts. Instead, researchers should focus on the discursive struggle in
which interactants engage. This reduces politeness to a much smaller part
of facework than was assumed until the present, and it allows for inter-
pretations that consider behavior to be merely appropriate and neither po-
lite nor impolite. We propose that relational work, the “work” individuals
invest in negotiating relationships with others, which includes impolite as
well as polite or merely appropriate behavior, is a useful concept to help
investigate the discursive struggle over politeness. We demonstrate this in
close readings of five examples from naturally occurring interactions.
1. Introduction
Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness (1978, 1987) has given scholars
an enormous amount of research mileage. Without it we would not be
in a position to consider the phenomenon of politeness as a fundamental
aspect of human socio-communicative verbal interaction in quite the
depth and variety that is now available to us. The Brown and Levinson
theory has towered above most others and has served as a guiding bea-
con for scholars interested in teasing out politeness phenomena from
examples of human interaction. It provides a breadth of insights into
human behavior which no other theory has yet offered, and it has served
as a touchstone for researchers who have felt the need to go beyond it.
Eelen (2001) places it on much the same level as other approaches to
politeness that have been suggested by researchers in the field, e. g.,
Blum-Kulka et al. (1985), Blum-Kulka (1987, 1990), Janney and Arndt
(1992), Ide (1989), Mao (1994), Gu (1990), Kasper (1990), Robin Lakoff
(1973), Fraser (1990). But it is clearly in a class of its own in terms of its
comprehensiveness, operationalizability, thoroughness and level of argu-
mentation.
Why, then, has it been so frequently challenged? Does it need to be
challenged at all if it provides such a solid basis for empirical research?
There have of course been innumerable answers to these two questions,
but we argue here that, solid and comprehensive as it is, Brown and
Levinson’s Politeness Theory is not in fact a theory of politeness, but
rather a theory of facework, dealing only with the mitigation of face-
threatening acts. The term “Politeness Theory” in itself is an over-exten-
sion of what participants themselves feel to be polite behavior. In addi-
tion, it does not account for those situations in which face-threat mitiga-
tion is not a priority, e. g., aggressive, abusive or rude behavior, nor does
it cover social behavior considered to be “appropriate”, “unmarked” or
“politic” but which would hardly ever be judged as “polite”. Brown and
Levinson’s framework can still be used, however, if we look at the strate-
gies they have proposed to be possible realizations of what we call rela-
tional work.
In this paper we wish to propose that politeness is only a relatively
small part of relational work and must be seen in relation to other types
of interpersonal meaning. To make this clear we will define relational
work in more detail and link it to Goffman’s notion of “face” before
looking at how other researchers have located politeness on a continuum
of different types of relational work. We will then define politeness itself
as a discursive concept arising out of interactants’ perceptions and judg-
ments of their own and others’ verbal behavior. Using conversational
data taken from situations in which we ourselves were participants, we
shall argue that such perceptions are set against individual normative
expectations of appropriate or politic behavior. They are in other words
“marked” for each individual speaker/hearer.
In indulging in social practice, they need not be aware of, and indeed
are frequently oblivious of, their reliance on others.
One way of explaining our predisposition to act in specific ways in
specific situations is to invoke the notion of frame (cf. Bateson 1954;
Goffman 1974, 1981; Tannen 1993; Escandell-Vidal 1996; Schank and
Abelson 1977). Tannen defines a frame as “structures of expectation
based on past experience” (1993: 53), whereas Escandell-Vidal sees it as
“an organized set of specific knowledge” (1996: 629). The central concept
in Bourdieu’s (1990) Theory of Practice is the habitus, which refers to
“the set of predispositions to act in certain ways, which generates cogni-
tive and bodily practices in the individual” (Watts 2003: 149). We con-
sider both terms to account for the structuring, emergence, and contin-
ued existence of social norms which guide both verbal and non-verbal
instances of relational work. Structuring may involve us in the exploita-
tion of those norms and in forms of aggressive, conflictual behavior. We
are not therefore arguing that relational work is always oriented to the
maintenance of harmony, cooperation, and social equilibrium.
Looked at in this way, relational work comprises the entire continuum
of verbal behavior from direct, impolite, rude or aggressive interaction
through to polite interaction, encompassing both appropriate and inap-
propriate forms of social behavior (Locher 2004: 51). Impolite behavior
is thus just as significant in defining relationships as appropriate/politic
or polite behavior. In this sense relational work can be understood as
equivalent to Halliday’s (1978) interpersonal level of communication, in
which interpersonal rather than ideational meaning is negotiated.
Following Goffman we argue that any interpersonal interaction in-
volves the participants in the negotiation of face. The term “facework”,
therefore, should also span the entire breadth of interpersonal meaning.
This, however, is rarely the case in the literature. Especially in accor-
dance with Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory, “facework” has
been largely reserved to describe only appropriate and polite behavior
with a focus on face-threat mitigation, at the exclusion of rude, impolite
and inappropriate behavior. To avoid confusion and in favor of clarity
we adopt “relational work” as our preferred terminology and conceptu-
alize it in the form of the continuum in Figure 1.
In terms of individual participants’ perceptions of verbal interaction,
which is oriented to the norms established in previous interactions, a
great deal of the relational work carried out will be of an unmarked
nature and will go largely unnoticed (i. e., it will be politic/appropriate,
column 2). Marked behavior, conversely, can be noticed in three ways.
It will be perceived as negative if it is judged as impolite/non-politic/
inappropriate (column 1), or as over-polite/non-politic/inappropriate
(column 4). We hypothesize that addressees’ affective reactions to over-
12 Miriam A. Locher and Richard J. Watts
R E L A T I O N A L W O R K
Figure 1. Relational work and its polite (shaded) version (adapted from Locher 2004:
90).
on the context she finds herself in, performs in the role of a Prime Minis-
ter, a mother, a wife, a gardener, a cook, etc. Whether or not the per-
formance is accepted by other participants in the interaction will depend
on their assignment or non-assignment of face, i. e., the mask associated
with the performance.
Relational work thus comprises a more comprehensive notion of face
than is offered in Brown and Levinson. But it will also lead to a more
restricted view of politeness than is common in the literature. In order
to show this, we will briefly review some of the more commonly used
conceptualizations of politeness and then go on to outline what we
understand to be the discursive approach.
Researchers: Mentioned F A C E W O R K
sporadically
in the
literature.
(2001) and further developed in Watts (2003) and Locher (2002). By first
order politeness (politeness1) we understand how participants in verbal
interaction make explicit use of the terms “polite” and “politeness” to
refer to their own and others’ social behavior. Second order politeness
(politeness2) makes use of the terms “polite” and “politeness” as theoreti-
cal concepts in a top-down model to refer to forms of social behavior.
The rationale for making this distinction was that lay references to po-
liteness, i. e., forms of verbal behavior that non-linguists would com-
monly label “polite”, “courteous”, “refined”, “polished”, etc., rarely cor-
responded to definitions of politeness in most of the canonical literature
until the beginning of the 1990s.
Let us exemplify the dangers involved in focusing uniquely on polite-
ness2 by taking a closer look at one interpretation which takes it to
correlate with the degree of indirectness in speech acts. Consider exam-
ples (1) and (2):
(4) I wonder whether you would be so very kind as to lend me your pen?
of native speakers of English who would react negatively to (4) but still
classify it as “polite”, thus displaying a negative orientation towards po-
liteness.
From this brief consideration of the weaknesses arising from a correla-
tion of indirectness with politeness2, we can draw two conclusions.
Firstly, native speaker reactions to what is commonly thought of in the
literature as realizations of politeness are likely to vary across the whole
range of options within relational work given in Figure 1. It is quite
conceivable that individual reactions may vary even when the social
context in which the “polite” utterance occurs is kept constant6. Sec-
ondly, and as a consequence of the first point, no linguistic expression
can be taken to be inherently polite (e. g., Holmes 1995; Mills 2003;
Watts 2003; Locher 2004).
We therefore see little point in maintaining a universal theoretical no-
tion of politeness when there is discursive dispute about what is consid-
ered “rude”, “impolite”, “normal”, “appropriate”, “politic”, “polite” or
“over-polite” behavior in the various communities of practice in which
these terms are actually used. We consider it important to take native
speaker assessments of politeness seriously and to make them the basis
of a discursive, data-driven, bottom-up approach to politeness. The dis-
cursive dispute over such terms in instances of social practice should
represent the locus of attention for politeness research. By discursive
dispute we do not mean real instances of disagreement amongst members
of a community of practice over the terms “polite”, “impolite”, etc. but
rather the discursive structuring and reproduction of forms of behavior
and their potential assessments along the kind of scale given in Figure 1
by individual participants. As we pointed out above, there may be a
great deal of variation in these assessments.
For this reason, it is necessary to focus on the entire range of relational
work, much of which will consist of forms of verbal behavior produced
by the participants in accordance with what they feel ⫺ individually ⫺
to be appropriate to the social interaction in which they are involved.
Much of the time ⫺ but by no means always ⫺ they will be unconscious
of an orientation towards social frames, social norms, social expecta-
tions, etc. They will be reproducing forms of behavior in social practice
in accordance with the predispositions of their habitus (Bourdieu 1990)
and will thus be using what Bourdieu calls their “feel for the game”.
We have called this unmarked, socially appropriate behavior “politic
behavior”, which may or may not be strategic.
In the following section we will tease out what we, as participants in
the social interaction analyzed, felt to be co-participants’ perceptions of
the kind of relational work being carried out. This will necessitate a close
focus on salient verbal behavior of various kinds which participants may
Politeness theory and relational work 17
have perceived as “more than politic” or “less than politic”, i. e., as “po-
lite”, “over-polite” or “impolite”, even though they may not use these
terms explicitly. We prefer to use an interpretive approach towards in-
stances of verbal interaction rather than to ask the participants them-
selves how they felt about what they were doing. This latter method
of accessing participants’ perceptions of politeness, like those in which
informants are asked to react to real or intuited examples of interaction,
is flawed precisely because they are being asked to evaluate consciously
along a “polite-impolite” parameter which might not correspond to what
they perceived at the time.
with her daughter. At age 59, D was one year away from retirement
from the Civil Service, for which he had been working for approximately
15 years. Since he had lost his pension from earlier employment at a
bank in London, D was expecting a very low pension indeed, which
would have meant either applying for Supplementary Benefit or starting
up his own business.
B’s strategic goal, her line in the interaction, is to persuade D to con-
sider emigrating to Australia. Although this is never mentioned explicitly
throughout the entire conversation, it is known to all the participants.
The intonation patterns produced by B in (5) and her general tone of
voice indicate that she has taken on the role of the worried wife, dis-
turbed by the prospect of a considerable cut in their overall income and
the possibility of needing to avoid poverty by applying for Supplemen-
tary Benefit. She can also be expected to challenge D’s proposed solu-
tions on the basis of what she considers to be the panacea for all their
problems ⫺ emigration to Australia.
The relational work is particularly delicate and fraught with potential
conflict, with D wanting to stay in Britain but not knowing how to
retain their standard of living after age 60 and B wanting to put a case
for considering the other option of a move to Australia, but not daring
to mention this openly. R and A are aware of these two conflicting lines
and are equally aware of the potential for conflict involved. Although
this is not evident in (5), R’s line can be defined as giving D and B an
opportunity to air this problem and, wherever possible, to make alterna-
tive solutions or evaluate those made by B and D. A’s line is similar to
R’s except that, as a stranger to the British welfare system, she acts more
as a sympathetic, supportive listener:
(5) 1 D: so I’ve been thinking of ways and means of how I can earn
a crust of bread at age ∧sixty.
J 2 (7.5)
3 R: it’s ∧crazy.
J 4 B: and what ideas have you got?
5 I mean ⫺
6 D: I ∧told you.
7 I told you what ideas I got.
J 8 (2.0)
J 9 B: they don’t seem feasible to ∧me.
10 D: alright,
11 well they ∧don’t.
12 we’ll have to wait and ∧see.
J 13 (1.7)
J 14 B: well it’s- it’s- it’s- it’s ⫺
Politeness theory and relational work 19
15 to ∧my mind saying <Q Well we’ll have to wait and see Q>
16 is- is rather- is- is rather negative and leaving it rather late.
17 (1.0) I mean ⫺
J 17 (4.2)
18 D: brr a ha ha haa ((IRONIC IMITATION OF LAUGH-
TER))
J 19 (4.5)
J 20 D: well got any ’ideas?
21 R: <Xxx[xxX>
22 B: [well it’s just a/ I mean, (2.9)
23 I don’t know.
24 I mean, (0.7) what- what can- what can you do?
25 (0.6) you’re not likely to get anybody to ∧employ you.
26 (1.0)
27 D: true.
28 (0.6)
29 B: and it’s ∧very ∧very difficult to set up (.) a business on your
own without :er: a fair amount of capital behind you.
30 look how many (.) one-man businesses go down the drain.
31 D: yes I would know that in ∧my job.⫽
J 32 B: ⫽of ∧course y[ou do.
33 R: [I see.
34 B: so (0.6) :erm: what are you being optimistic about?
. [and saying that we’ll wait and see because ⫺
35 D: [I’ve never been ⫺
36 D: I’ve never been a ∧pessimist.
The purpose of the overall interaction from which (5) has been taken
is to openly air problems and invite different positions with respect to
them. There is thus an orientation towards a conflict frame in which we
can expect, at least in the contributions by D and B, open criticism,
accusation, recrimination, indignation, etc. This is the kind of politic
behavior that all the participants expect. It will allow them to attack one
another, which entails the notion of face-threatening. Extract (5) is taken
from a section of the overall interaction in which the tension between D
and B becomes very clear. This is indicated by the long silences between
turns at lines 2, 8, 13, 17, and 19. Either R or A could have intervened,
particularly at lines 2, 17, and 19. But the conflict is between D and B,
and even though the lines taken by R and A would have ratified some
form of intervention, they choose to let D and B continue. Silence thus
becomes a salient and very meaningful mode of communication in (5)
(cf. Watts 1997). We argue that it is precisely these silences that charac-
terize the conflictual politic behavior typical for this family.
So what is going on here? We would like to argue that what we are
witnessing is a struggle between D and B to convince the other of the
strength of their respective positions, even though B’s position is not
made explicitly clear in the whole interaction. Let us focus on lines
29⫺36:
(6) 29 B: and it’s ∧very ∧very difficult to set up (.) a business on your
own without :er: a fair amount of capital behind you.
30 look how many (.) one-man businesses go down the drain.
31 D: yes I would know that in ∧my job.⫽
J 32 B: ⫽of ∧course y[ou do.
33 R: [I see.
34 B: so (0.6) :erm: what are you being optimistic about?
. [and saying that we’ll wait and see because ⫺
35 D: [I’ve never been ⫺
36 D: I’ve never been a ∧pessimist.
In line 29 B begins to develop a position from which she will argue that
the idea of staying in Britain is weaker than that of emigrating. She
immediately supports this position in line 30. D actually confirms her
argument by referring to his own work experience as a civil servant re-
sponsible for assessing claims for Supplementary Benefit and family sup-
port, implying that, if he did start up in business, he would be well aware
of these dangers. B immediately latches her utterance of course you do in
line 32 onto his and then proceeds in line 34 to challenge his argument.
Politeness theory and relational work 21
In lines 10⫺20 Kate has relinquished the floor and everybody voices his
or her appreciation of the dessert that is being served. However, in the
continuation of this episode, Kate attempts to take up the thread of her
narrative again (l. 21 in (8) below). She marks this by saying anyway.
This move is not successful because Anne sees the need to interrupt Kate:
she has not quite finished her duties as hostess yet, which require that
she find out who would like coffee or tea with the dessert. Anne first
says [uh a 1question] before you, (l. 23) and then explicitly asks for permis-
sion to interrupt (1may I interrupt; l. 25). Both times Kate gives Anne
permission to fulfill her duties as hostess by saying yes (ll. 24, 26):
35 coffee?
36 Roy: 1thank you ∧no.
37 Anne: tea?
∧
38 tea ∧tea?
39 no coffee people ∧tea?
40 Kate: [no thank you.]
41 Miriam: [am I the] only ∧one?
42 Anne: ∧no,
43 I am [the other one.]
44 John: [I would like coffee.]
45 Anne: 1coffee.
46 Kate: coffee?
47 coffee [coffee?]
48 Anne: [coffee?]
49 Steven: thank you.
50 Anne: no?
51 ....
J 52 John: 1so,
53 [you think] they,
54 Kate: [∧so.]
J 55 John: 1got out of the baby business because of these anti-
abortion,
56 activities?
After Anne gets the okay from Kate to proceed, she addresses every-
body in turn with the offer of coffee or tea. Notice that Kate even partici-
pates in this round of questions (ll. 32⫺33, 46⫺47). Once the round is
completed, there is a brief silence before John leads the way back to
Kate’s narrative with a question addressed to her (l. 52). This confirms
her once again as the main narrator.
This brief episode shows that the appropriate level of relational work
is important for smooth interaction. Anne has taken care to indicate to
Kate that the interruption is not meant to be offensive but that the
interactional framework, her duties as hostess, require her to interrupt.
Kate, in turn, has acknowledged the importance of Anne’s role, and they
have therefore mutually confirmed their respective roles as narrator and
hostess. In a non-aggressive framework of interaction such as the pres-
ent, the level of relational work invested seems to be politic and appro-
priate. Despite the fact that we even have a question with a modal asking
for permission to interrupt, we cannot claim that this constituted polite-
ness in itself. Nevertheless, the smooth transitions from orientation to a
narrative framework to a serving framework and back show that care is
taken to take each other’s face into consideration to an extent that al-
24 Miriam A. Locher and Richard J. Watts
lows us to make the assumption that this display of politic behavior may
be judged as more than just politic, i. e., is open to a polite interpretation.
The following two extracts ([9] and [10]) are focused on the speech
event of complimenting, which is often defined in the literature as inher-
ently polite. The compliments in (9) are delivered at the end of the din-
ner. The group had been talking about each other’s preferences for cer-
tain spices, when Kate compliments Steven on his cooking (l. 1). This is
met with a downtoner from Steve (nah, l. 2) and a confirmation from
Roy (yeah, l. 3). In lines 5⫺18, the compliments are addressed to Anne,
who is the cook of the present dinner, and it is these that we shall focus
on here:
Roy, Steven, Kate and Miriam all compliment and thank Anne, who
first rejects the praise (Kate ∧please for heavens sake <@ come on Kate
@>. ∧just a ∧bird. ll. 9⫺10) and then accepts (well ∧thank ∧you. l. 13). In
Politeness theory and relational work 25
23 that ∧you were 1expecting a call from ∧her and you said
her name because I,
In line 3, Roy greets Debbie as the last person in the round. He empha-
sizes his happiness to see her by repeating 1nice to ∧see you with a salient
stress on see you. This shifts Kate’s attention once again to Debbie. In
the ensuing turns she compliments Debbie on her beauty several times
using an exaggerated, hence marked stress pattern. The compliments are
greeted by laughing acceptance on Debbie’s side (thank you @@, ll. 16⫺
17, 19). In this passage they function as strategies for relational work
that aim at making a participant feel good (Lakoff 1973), i. e., in this
case to show Debbie that her presence is valued. Roy marks this by
repeating and emphasizing his utterance. Kate makes sure that her com-
pliments are heard by repeating them and intensifying them (ll. 9⫺12,
14⫺15; it ∧doesn’t ∧stop, l. 18; she 1looks absolutely ∧gorgeous, l. 20). The
humor in Kate’s contributions also makes it easier for Debbie to accept
the compliments.
Contrary to the previous example, if we imagine Kate not having ut-
tered the compliments at all, the ongoing interaction would not have
been any the worse for it. It is not that this imagined absence would
have turned the interaction into impolite or rude behavior. Kate’s contri-
bution, however, especially in its emphatic and enthusiastic form seems
to be a marked case of relational work. Whether the participants see the
compliments as realizations of politeness remains debatable, but it is
clearly open to a polite interpretation by the participants concerned.
The analysis of (9) and (10) indicates that compliments as such are not
inherently politeness markers.
In extract (11) we have one of the rare instances in our data in which
interactants actually engage in a discussion of the concept of (im)polite-
ness. After Roy talks about his colleague’s greatest compliment being I
∧
can’t find anything 1wrong with it [⫽ our work] yet (l. 3), Anne tells the
story of a customer’s husband who did not behave according to her
expectations. While she expected a clear confirmation that her work as
a graphic designer meets the requirements, she only received silence,
which the customer’s husband interpreted as agreement (did I say I didn’t
like it? l. 18).
What is interesting in (11) for our discussion is Anne’s comment that she
met the customer’s silence with what she labels “polite” behavior, which
in turn is silence before she verbalizes her concern (I wait 1politely wait
1politely 1nothing is coming out so I say <@ finally, l. 17)9. Comments
like these must have been what Fraser (1990) had in mind when he said
that people notice the absence of politeness rather than its presence. The
continuation of (11) in (12) shows, however, that people are aware of
the discursive nature of the norms against which they judge behavior:
(12) 21 Anne: @@ <@ so apparently that was <X him XX X> @>.
22 Miriam: [@@]
J 23 Anne: [but] you have to 1translate those things right?
24 Miriam: uh-hu.
J 25 Kate: you you learn to uh,
26 to 1try and read other people’s,
27 how would I say 1temperature of 1enthusiasm.
28 Anne: yeah 1exactly.
29 Kate: you see ∧mine is b ⫺
∧
30 my thing goes like 1this.
31 Anne: oh Kate 1we know 1yours.
32 Kate: you know 1mine ⫺
33 [and this ⫺]
34 Roy: [yours doesn’t] go like that yours is just always ∧pit/
∧
bumm\.
28 Miriam A. Locher and Richard J. Watts
35 Anne: @@@@@
36 X, male: <X XXXX X
37 Roy: @@@@@
38 Kate: @@
39 .. it’s so 1interesting though you know,
∧
40 Roy is good about that sometimes Roy says he ⫺
41 1people give 1seminars and 1nobody 1says anything.
42 if 1somebody does a good job ∧I 1compliment them I’m
thrilled you know?
43 1some people are just so uh,
44 .. aren’t they blasé?
45 Steven: yeah.
46 Roy: .. well ∧I don’t think they’re 1blasé they’re just,
J 47 there’s a culture out these days to think that it’s not,
48 it’s not 1cool to tell somebody it was good.
6. Conclusion
In the present paper we have chosen to take a discursive perspective on
polite behavior by seeing it as part of the relational work inherent in all
human social interaction. We use the term “relational work” rather than
“facework” because human beings do not restrict themselves to forms
of cooperative communication in which face-threatening is mitigated.
Displays of aggression, the negotiation of conflict, the management of
formal situations in which linguistic etiquette is required, friendly banter,
teasing, etc. are all aspects of relational work. If we follow Goffman,
individuals’ faces will be assigned in accordance with the lines they are
assumed to have taken in verbal interaction, implying that any individ-
ual may be allotted any number of different faces. Some forms of rela-
Politeness theory and relational work 29
Notes
1. We would like to express our thanks to Francesca Bargiela and Karen Grainger
for their perceptive comments on this paper.
2. The degree to which the reactions coincide is an issue which still needs to be
investigated empirically, but it is almost certain that they will both be negative.
If this were the case, reactions to impoliteness and overpoliteness might tend to
converge. Within behavior which is not perceived as politic/appropriate alterna-
tive terms might be used to qualify that behavior, e. g., “rude”, “sarcastic”,
“brash”, “snide”, “standoffish”, etc., which, as we shall see later, are also discur-
sively negotiated.
3. Line is defined as “a pattern of verbal and non-verbal acts by which [a participant]
expresses [her/his] view of the situation and through this [her/his] evaluation of
the participants” (Goffman 1967: 5).
4. See Watts (2003) and Locher (2004) for a discussion.
5. The topic of “impoliteness” has received some attention in its own right (e. g.,
Beebe [1995], Culpeper [1996] and Culpeper et al. [2003])
6. There is also no guarantee that the level of relational work that a speaker invests
in her/his utterance will be taken up in precisely that way by the addressee (cf.
the distinction between speaker- and hearer-understanding of politeness in Locher
2004: 91).
7. Our analysis is based on CA, but shares none of the skepticism with respect to
cognitive, interpretative categories or sociolinguistic categories like social class,
gender, ethnicity, etc., which are anathema to classical conversational analysts.
We believe that a close analysis of verbal interaction is the only way to get to
grips with how interactants communicate.
8. We are aware of the fact that the participants in the dinner party come from very
different cultural backgrounds (for a discussion see Locher 2004: 106).
9. It is interesting that silence in extract (11) is first interpreted as impolite and then
as polite by the same participant, whereas in extract (5) it is part of the expected
politic behavior in this conflictual situation. This shows how multifunctional si-
Politeness theory and relational work 31
lence is in verbal interaction (cf. Jaworski 1997; Tannen and Saville-Troike 1985;
Scollon and Scollon 1990).
10. Here we are thinking of the current form of public political interview (cf. Watts’
analysis of an interview between David Dimbleby and Tony Blair immediately
prior to the 1997 General Election [2003]), and radio or television programs in
which members of the public expose themselves knowingly to outright insults.
References
Bateson, Gregory (1954). A Theory of Play and Fantasy. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
New York: Ballantine.
Beebe, Leslie M. (1995). Polite fictions: Instrumental rudeness as pragmatic compe-
tence. Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1995:
154⫺168.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1987). Indirectness and politeness in requests: Same or dif-
ferent? Journal of Pragmatics 11: 131⫺146.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1990). “You don’t touch lettuce with your fingers”: Parental
politeness in family discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 14: 259⫺288.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Brenda Danet, and Rimona Gherson (1985). The language
of requesting in Israeli society. In Language and Social Situations, Joseph P. Forgas
(ed.), 113⫺139. New York: Springer Verlag.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1990). The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson (1978). Universals in language usage: Polite-
ness phenomena. In Questions and Politeness, Esther N. Goody (ed.), 56⫺289.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson (1987). Politeness. Some Universals in Lan-
guage Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, Jonathan (1996). Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmat-
ics 25 (3): 349⫺367.
Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield, and Anne Wichmann (2003). Impoliteness re-
visited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Prag-
matics 35 (10⫺11): 1545⫺1579.
Du Bois, John W., Susanna Cumming, Stephan Schütze-Coburn, and Danae Padino
(eds.) (1992). Discourse Transcription. Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics (Vol.
4), Santa Barbara: University of California.
Durkheim, Emile (1915). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, London: G.
Allen and Unwin.
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet (1992). Think practically and act locally:
Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropol-
ogy 21: 461⫺490.
Eelen, Gino (2001). A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome Pub-
lishing.
Escandell-Vidal, Victoria (1996). Towards a cognitive approach to politeness. Lan-
guage Sciences 18 (3⫺4): 629⫺650.
Fraser, Bruce (1975). The concept of politeness. Paper Presented at the 1975 NWAVE
Meeting, Georgetown University.
Fraser, Bruce (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2): 219⫺
236.
Fraser, Bruce and William Nolen (1981). The association of deference with linguistic
form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 27: 93⫺109.
32 Miriam A. Locher and Richard J. Watts
Goffman, Erving (1955). On face work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interac-
tion. Psychiatry 18: 213⫺231, reprinted in Goffman 1967.
Goffman, Erving (1967). Interactional Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behavior. Garden
City, NY: Anchor Books.
Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goffman, Erving (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Grice, H. Paul (1975). Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics (Vol. 3), Peter
Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), 41⫺58. New York: Academic Press.
Gu, Yuego (1990). Politeness phenomena in Modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics
14: 237⫺257.
Halliday, Michael A. K. (1978). Language as a Social Semiotic: The Social Interpreta-
tion of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Held, Gudrun (1995). Verbale Höflichkeit. Studien zur linguistischen Theoriebildung
und empirischen Untersuchung zum Sprachverhalten französischer und italienischer
Jugendlicher in Bitt- und Dankessituationen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Holmes, Janet (1995). Women, Men and Politeness. London/New York: Longman.
Ide, Sachiko (1989). Formal forms of discernment: Neglected aspects of linguistic po-
liteness. Multilingua 8 (2): 223⫺248.
Janney, Richard W. and Horst Arndt (1992). Intracultural versus intercultural tact. In
Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice, Richard J
Watts, Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich (eds.), 21⫺41. Berlin/New York: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Jaworski, Adam (ed.). (1997). Silence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Kasper, Gabriele (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of
Pragmatics 14 (2): 193⫺218.
Lakoff, Robin Talmach (1973). The logic of politeness, or minding your p’s and q’s.
Chicago Linguistics Society 9: 292⫺305.
Leech, Geoffrey (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman.
Locher, Miriam A. (2002). Markedness in politeness research. Paper presented at the
Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 (SS14), Ghent, Belgium.
Locher, Miriam A. (2004). Power and Politeness in Action: Disagreements in Oral Com-
munication. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Mao, LuMing Robert (1994). Beyond politeness theory: “Face” revisited and renewed.
Journal of Pragmatics 21 (5): 451⫺486.
Meier, A. J. (1995a). Defining politeness: Universality in appropriateness. Language
Sciences 17 (4): 345⫺356.
Meier, A. J. (1995b). Passages of politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 24 (4): 381⫺392.
Mills, Sara (2003). Gender and Politeness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mills, Sara (2004). Class, gender and politeness. Multilingua 23 (1/2): 171⫺190.
Schank, Roger C. and Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understand-
ing: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Scollon, Ron and Suzanne Wong Scollon (1990). Athabaskan⫺English interethnic
communication. In Cultural Communication and Interactional Contact, Donal C.
Carbaugh (ed.), 261⫺290. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Sifianou, Maria (1992). Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece. Oxford: Claren-
don Press.
Tannen, Deborah (1993). What’s in a frame?: Surface evidence for underlying expecta-
tions, In Framing in Discourse, Deborah Tannen (ed.), 14⫺56. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Politeness theory and relational work 33
Tannen, Deborah and Muriel Saville-Troike (eds.) (1985). Perspectives on Silence. Nor-
wood: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Watts, Richard J. (1989). Relevance and relational work: Linguistic politeness as poli-
tic behavior. Multilingua 8 (2⫺3): 131⫺166.
Watts, Richard J. (1991). Power in Family Discourse. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Watts, Richard J. (1992). Linguistic politeness and politic verbal behavior: Reconsider-
ing claims for universality. In Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory
and Practice, Richard J. Watts, Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich (eds.), 43⫺69.
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Watts, Richard J. (1997). Silence and the acquisition of status in verbal interaction.
In Silence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Adam Jaworski (ed.), 87⫺115. Berlin/
New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Watts, Richard J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Watts, Richard J., Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich (1992). Introduction. In Politeness
in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice, Richard J Watts, Sachiko
Ide, and Konrad Ehlich (eds.), 1⫺17. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.