Examples Of Politeness In English Language

British politeness strategies and etiquette –

Spoken/linguistic, social and pragmatic-

In terms of British politeness, I believe the way in which Chinese people alter the way they speak, and their behaviour differs from the British in the sense that the politeness strategies and values are rooted in the five thousand years of history and the heavy influence of Confucianism. However, the British do not have an equivalent to Confucius so the ways in which we decide what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate differs.

In the English language politeness can be viewed as deviation from the maximum efficiency of a conversation as the use of politeness strategies violate Grice’s (1975) rules of conversation, otherwise known as Grice’s maxims. Politeness is an action that allows a person to perform any action that may be deemed as sensitive in a non-confrontation or less threatening manner.

Politeness strategies within the constraints of the English language are used to avoid offense by inclusion of euphemisms, juxtaposing criticism with compliments, using jokes as a tool to soften a harsher sounding sentence. Nicknames, tag questions, discourse markers such as please and thank you also play an important role in British politeness culture.

Theorists Brown and Levinson created a list of ‘social variables’ that English speakers employ to aid in the decision of which degree of politeness they will use based on the threat of losing face：

• ‘(the social distance of the speaker