POLITENESS THEORY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS BS ENGLISH, 7 TH

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Lakoff (1973): P’s and Q’s of Politeness

Robin Lakoff’s (1973) politeness framework is not commonly cited as a major model,
at least compared to those of Brown and Levinson and Leech. Lakoff is probably more
widely recognized for her contribution to the language-and-gender issue. Yet, her insights on
the issue, described by some as “potentially revolutionary” (West et al., 1997, p. 128), and
based on her personal observations in a white middle class environment, are quite relevant to
the study of politeness, because one of the central questions in her work is whether or not and
how women are more polite than men. She is seen by some as the ‘mother of modern
politeness theory” as she was the first to capitalize on the work of Grice and to look at
politeness from a “decidedly pragmatic” perspective (Eelen, 1999, p. 10).
Defining politeness as “saying the socially correct thing” (1975, p. 53), Lakoff concludes that
women are more polite than men, in the sense of being more tentative and indirect. Women
hedge: using phrases like “sort of,” “kind of,” “it seems like,” and so on; use polite forms:
“Would you mind...,” “I'd appreciate it if...,” “...if you don't mind”; use tag questions, which
facilitate interaction and generate small talk: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”; speak in
italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words – “so,” “very,” “quite”; use empty
adjectives: “divine,” ‘lovely,” “adorable,” and so on; use hypercorrect grammar and
pronunciation; use direct quotation; overuse qualifiers: (for example, “I Think that...”);
apologize more: (for instance, “I'm sorry, but I think that...”); use modal constructions:
“Should we turn up the heat?”); avoid coarse language or expletives; use indirect commands
and requests: (for example, “My, isn't it cold in here?”; use more intensifiers (for instance, “I
am so glad you came!”); do not tell jokes well (pp. 16ff; for another formulation of more or
less similar conclusions, see Holmes, 1995, p. 222). Many of these findings sound like
truisms, but some of them are still debatable. Holmes (1995) makes a very important
qualification on her, as well as, Lakoff’s statements: “I am not even suggesting that most
women are 'talented, kind, responsible and misunderstood, and are waiting to use their subtle
skills for the good of the world' … Nor that all men are unresponsive and taciturn in private,
and combative and aggressive in public. There are plenty of individual counter-examples. But
the overall patterns are compelling” (p. 227).
In propounding her politeness framework, Lakoff (1973a) suggests that in any conversational
situation there are "rules of Pragmatic Competence" at play. Two simple rules of pragmatic
competence are proposed: be clear and be polite. “If one’s principal aim in speaking is
communication, one will attempt to be clear … if the speaker’s principal aim is to navigate
somehow … among the respective statuses of the participants in the discourse indicating
where each stands in the speaker’s estimate, his aim will be less the achievement of clarity
than an expression of politeness” (p. 296). Being polite appears to be extremely important in
most situations. The reason for this is the overriding importance of "reaffirming and
strengthening relationships" when we are engaged in social discourse. We use the rules of
politeness to make an addressee think well of us: "1) Don't impose (Principle of Distance or
Formality); 2) Give options Principle of Deference or Hesitancy; 3) Make A feel good - be
friendly (Principle of Camaraderie) (p. 298)." Lakoff emphasizes that, in Western society,
Rule 3 (manifested by phatic communication) is gaining ground continually at the expense of
Rule 1 (which is best represented by silence). The argument is that when friendliness and

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sociability are threatened by silence, Rule 3 (polite talk) will win out. It is important to notice
the similarity between this overall gradual shift and the
shift in at the micro-level of pronoun usage identified by Brown and Gilman as discussed in
Section 3.1 above. (See also note 8.)
The Don’t-impose Rule is often used in power-marked interactions, where formality,
mitigation, avoidance, asking permission and the absence of affect and subjectivity are the
default choices. The Make-A-feel-good option is used between intimates and close friends.
Nicknames, endearments, rough words, personal topics and expressions of emotion are
tolerated and mitigation is not necessary, e.g., “You must have some of this fruitcake” as
opposed to “Would you care for some fruitcake?” The second rule, Offer-options, is an
improvement on the dyadic division established by Brown and Gilman (1960, 1972). It is a
gray area between power and solidarity resorted to when interlocutors are of more or less
equal status but the social distance between them does not allow intimacy, as in the
relationship of a businessperson and a new client of the business. In this case hedging and
indirectness are essential, e.g., “This style comes in a size 14 too” (The one you are wearing
is either too small or too large for you) (Green, 1996, pp. 147-155). Lakoff must be credited
for looking at the center of the “bulge” of human interaction, not only at its two extremes or
ends.
Thus, Lakoff (1973) extends Grice’s work and argues for the necessity of both a Politeness
Principle and a Cooperative Principle. She adds an interpersonal dimension to Grice’s
predominantly informational framework It is not enough to be informative; one has to know
when to say “please” and when to say “thank you’ to know pints from quarts, to distinguish a
p from a q – hence the title of Lakoff’s classic article. A more elaborate model of politeness,
also expanding and complementing Grice’s CP, was developed by Leech (1983).
3.2.3. Leech (1983): The Politeness Principle
Geoffrey N. Leech’s (1983) Principles of Pragmatics provides a rhetorical model of
pragmatics - defined as “the study of how utterances have meanings in situations” (p. x) - and
a socio-pragmatic model of rhetoric. It is a “complementarist” model where communication
is seen as problem solving. The model approaches communication in terms of goals and
principles of good communicative behavior. Leech does not reject Chomsky; rather, he seeks
“a new rapprochement between grammar and rhetoric” (p. xi). The strongest influences on
his model, he states, are Austin, Searle and Grice. He also acknowledges Firth for his
“situational study of meaning” and Halliday for his “comprehensive social theory of
language” (p. 2). It is on Halliday’s metafunctions that Leech builds his outline of pragmatic
principles. He does not include the ideational metafunction as it belongs more to semantics
than to pragmatics. Interpersonal rhetoric subsumes the CP, the Politeness Principle (PP)
and the Irony Principle. The principles/ maxims of Processibilty, End-focus, End-weight,
Clarity, Economy and Expressivity 07

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belong to textual rhetoric, which is less relevant to the present paper than interpersonal
rhetoric (Leech, 1983, p. 16).
The place of the PP in interpersonal rhetoric is justified by the inability of the CP to explain
many problems that interlocutors may encounter. Leech (1983, p. 80) suggests the PP to
complement the CP to help account for such exchanges as the following:
A: We’ll all miss Bill and Agatha, won’t we? B: Well, we’ll all miss BILL. (original
emphasis)
B fails to abide by the maxim of Quantity. When asked to respond to A’s opinion s/he only
responds to part of it. This implies that they will not miss Agatha. Leech notes that if B had
added “but not Agatha,” in order to conform to the maxim of Quantity, the utterance would
remain true, relevant, and clear. So, why does B flout the CP? It seems that B “suppressed the
desired information in order to uphold the politeness principle” (p.81). Thus, “politeness is an
important missing link between the CP and the problem of relating sense to force” (p. 104).
In addition to this justification of the PP, Leech (1983) provides some important distinctions
between semantics and pragmatics. The most comprehensive distinction is that the former
focuses on sense; the latter, on force (p. 30), which roughly correspond to locution and
illocution. As an illustration of the differences between sense and force, Leech explains how
the CP works and makes significant remarks on its four maxims. They apply variably and
depend on context; they apply in variable degrees, not in an “all-or-nothing” fashion (p.8). In
Searle’s (1969) terminology, the CP maxims are regulative rather than constitutive. One
analogy of this may be found in football. A football team must consist of eleven players. This
is a constitutive rule. The cooperation of the players in a team toward the ultimate objective
of scoring and winning is regulative. The players may or may not cooperate. In the same vein,
the CP maxims should not be treated as “statistical norms” (Leech, 1983, p. 80), but as
regulating conditions of cooperative interaction.
Tact is as non-constitutive as Grice’s maxims. Leech’s formulation of the Tact Maxim (TM)
– a first step in outlining his PP – is based on a reconsideration of speech acts in terms of the
trade-of between illocutionary function and social goal. Four types of illocutionary functions
are proposed: competitive – illocutionary goal “competes” with social goal, e.g., asking,
ordering; convivial - illocutionary goal “coincides” with social goal, e.g., thanking, greeting;
collaborative - illocutionary goal is “indifferent” to social goal, e.g., reporting, announcing,
and conflictive - illocutionary goal “conflicts” with social goal, e.g., accusing, cursing (p.
104). Only the first two involve politeness. The fourth type is impolite ex definitione as it is
“designed to cause offence” (p. 105). Competitives correlate with Searle's (1979) directives
and commissives to (discourteous negative politeness) and convivials with expressives and
some commissives (courteous positive politeness). Leech introduces the term impositives for
Searle’s directives and assertives for Searle’s representatives. Declarations do not involve
politeness.
The TM tends to be inversely proportional to the degree of linguistic directness, i.e. the more
an illocution is indirect, the more polite it is. Indirect illocutions tend to be more polite as
they (i) increase the degree of optionality for not doing something, and (ii) diminish force.
The TM has two dimensions to it: (a) negative: Minimize the cost to H, and (b) positive:
Maximize the benefit to H(earer) (e.g. making an offer to H). Thus, Leech isolates three
pragmatic scales: (1) cost-benefit scale, (2) optionality scale, and (3) indirectness scale. He

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gives the following examples of the relation between politeness, on the one hand, and cost-
benefit and directness, on the other (pp. 107-108):

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