The History of Politeness in the English Language - Essay Example

? An Analysis of Politeness and Its Development in the English Language Politeness in English The history of politeness in the English language is seen to be long and of a checkered nature. Politeness in the English language has adopted a number of varying forms from its Anglo-Saxon England politeness to the form of politeness that the language has currently adopted. What is politeness? There are a number of several different definitions that have been developed to attempt to explain what exactly is politeness. One of these definitions suggests that politeness is generally developed by society in an attempt to try and reduce the incidences of friction that may occur in it (Coulmas, 1981, p. 157). The key assumption of this definition is that social friction is generally undesirable and there are several behavioral modes that have historically been gradually developed and can be adequately categorized as being polite. It is believed that if these behavioral modes are adequately applied in society, they will have the result of either preventing friction or at least minimizing its occurrence. Another definition of politeness defines it as being a strategic avoidance of any possible conflict (Watts, 2003, p. 50). Although this definition can be perceived as being concrete, a closer examination of the definition shows that politeness is something that we tend to use rationally and consciously with the sole intent of avoiding conflict.Another proposed definition of politeness defines it as being one of the various constraints of human interaction that is primarily used to aid in the promotion of rapport, the consideration of other’s feelings and the establishment of mutual comfort (Locher, 2004, p. 76). This definition of politeness equates politeness with a general constraint on human interaction that mainly involves a social injunction preventing one form doing the opposite (Bax and Ka?da?r 106-107). Defining politeness as being either a constraint or a set of various constraints is seen to conveniently help lead us away from any form of objectivist approach to politeness. This is mainly due to the nature of constraints that requires people to learn them on an individual basis through their social interactions and practice. Although researchers can be able to observe the various instances of emergent social practice, they are however unable to adequately observe the constraint itself (Bax and Ka?da?r 106-107). Politeness is found to be a common word that is frequently in everyday use in the English language and has various translations in different languages such as politesse in French and beleefdheid in Dutch. The tem is found to be particularly established in most scholarly works on pragmatics and linguistics. As is common with most everyday English expressions, politeness is found to be rather fuzzy and hence its susceptibility to having multiple variations based on personal, historical and social differences. It is common for such common terms to often have wider applications than technical terms in the language and there is a tendency for uncertainty to arise in the event that the two happen to be confused. Technical terms are found to often be not everyday expressions and as such have more a generally more specific denotation. This makes it important to clearly distinguish between the basically technical term “politeness” and the more everyday notion that the term is put to use(Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 5). An analysis of the term politeness as it is used in these contexts can be perceived to be a very worthwhile research both historically and in the different varieties of PDE. This can have the benefit of providing an ethnographic view of how the different speakers of the English language talk about politeness and the semantics of the word politeness or polite at several different points in the history of the English language (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 5). Politeness in the English Language The distinction existing between negative and positive politeness that was proposed by Brown and Levinson was seen to suggest a possible generalization pertaining to the differences in politeness scales. Most English speakers are usually noted to prefer the use of negative politeness in their various requests while requesting the general autonomy of persons who may happen to have the power, but not be necessarily having the desire to grant favors. It is this aspect that helps explain the frequency of use of a number of modals such as can, could and would (Odlin, 52). Politeness in the English language has been noted to have generally developed from the initial form of a positive politeness to the current cultural form of a negative politeness culture. One of the key indicators of this change can be noted by analyzing the general use of various pronominal terms of address as used in a number of Shakespeare’s plays and in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. By Shakespeare’s time, the pronoun you was increasingly being used as a deference marker indicating negative politeness, the word thou was noted to increasingly becoming used as a marker indicating strong emotions and positive (im)politeness. Another key indicator of the English language drift towards a negative politeness culture is marked by the development of a number of speech acts such as directives and apologies. However, it is critical to note that Early English correspondence and continual blurring of the line demarcating the difference between public and private life indicates that there are tendencies towards a general increase in positive politeness. This factor strongly suggests that these developments can be regarded as being genre and domain specific. The rules that govern politeness in English are seen to be of a very complex nature and somewhat hypocritical as a result of continual attempts towards attempting to disguise or deny the realities presented by differences in status. However, it can be noted that all forms of politeness are basically hypocritical as they all fundamentally involve an element of pretense. Some social psychologists Such as Fox tend to perceive politeness as being hypocritical and insincere with a number of characteristics that exhibit negative qualities that can widely be regarded as being of pretentious, a sham and dissimulation having a mainly artificial veneer of parity and harmony (Fox, 2004 p. 97). This view might be largely accepted by persons who view politeness as basically being quite superfluous and unnecessary and a quality that should generally be avoided due to its deceptive nature. In some of the more somber English literature, politeness has generally been described as being an expression of paranoia. In concluding her paper on Politeness in Britain, in which she found that British English tends to favor non-conventional indirectness and off record strategies while having a strong inclination towards negative politeness, Stewart observes that it can be assumed that a healthy degree of paranoia at times proves to be of great benefit to the British (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 4). The British have been described as being standoffish creatures that thrive in a negative-politeness culture. Politeness has been strongly described as essentially being a velvet glove that works hard at hiding an iron fist (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 245). Of note is that a number of researchers argue that historically, the British have not always been a negative politeness culture. In fact, most of these researchers point out that the English language has historically hand a positive politeness culture and there is a clear move that there was a shift from this positive politeness culture to the current negative politeness culture that is predominant in at least British English (Hickey, 2010, p. 161). Additional evidence of this is presented by an analysis done by Kopytko on the politeness strategies that have been used in Shakespeare’s plays showed that there was an overall predominance of numerous positive politeness strategies and it is on this basis that Kopytkoargues that English generally moved form a positive politeness culture to a negative politeness culture. One example of this transition that has been pointed out by Kopytko is the replacement of the verb prithee or pray by the modern day please. The initial word Pray was essentially used as an expression of the speaker’s wish to indicate I pray you, this has been replaced by non-imposition if it pleases you that is indicated by the word please (Busse, 2002, p. 194). The initial positive politeness culture was seen to mainly focus on a number of addressee-based requests for both understanding and forgiveness such as pardon me and Excuse me. However, by using terms such as I am sorry, negative politeness is seen to mainly focus on the remorse and feelings of the speaker without necessarily imposing any request to attempting to either understanding or forgiveness. This trend is also an indicator of the shift from a positive politeness culture to a negative politeness culture (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 4). It is necessary to remember that during the middle ages, the English language was generally an extremely small and rather insignificant Germanic dialect that was found to mostly be spoken at the peripheral regions of Europe its growth has it becoming established as a world language spoken in a very large number of different varieties by millions of speakers globally (Curtius, 2013, p. 35: Birnaum&Puhvel, 1966, p. 13)). It is this aspect that causes it to become rather difficult to easily establish a comprehensive history of politeness in the English language. Kopytkoas cited in (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 18)argues that politeness as used in Shakespeare reveals that it is not essentially restricted to the use of address terms. Ana analysis that was conducted on some of Shakespeare’s works revealed that positive politeness strategies are generally understood to be utterances that are generally directed towards the actual addressee’s positive face, which is basically their positive personality or self-image. Likewise, negative politeness strategies are generally understood to mainly be utterances that are mainly oriented towards the addressee’s negative face meaning their wish to essentially be unimpeded and basically be free from any distraction and imposition and hence have their own territory and prerogatives essentially respected by others. An analysis of Shakespeare’s works shows that the total number of positive politeness strategies generally far outnumbers the total number of negative politeness strategies in all of Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies. This balance in favor is found to be more marked in the tragedies as compared to the comedies. Speech Acts and their Politeness Values Normally, individual speech acts have been widely analyzed for their innate politeness values (Alatis, 1993, p. 379). This is generally found to be so with acts whose nature portends to either the actual speaker himself or to the addressee. The analysis of speech acts such as contrastive and historical pragmatics can help provide adequate insights into the politeness issues as applied in different languages. If speech acts are carefully analyzed from a diachronic perspective they can provide information on the general development of politeness in one language (Bubliz&Norrick, 2011, p. 95). While the methodological tools used in the analysis of contrastive pragmatics can generally be in the form of discourse completion tasks, speaker intuition, experimental methods and role plays, the methodological tools used in the analysis of historical pragmatics is seen to mainly rely on written data that has fortunately survived the harsh vagaries of time(Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 19). Apologies In analyzing the generally development of apologies in the history of English, apologies are found to fundamentally be a face threat to the speaker’s very own positive face due to the fact that the speaker is seen to take responsibility for a potential or actual offence. In Present day English (PDE), apologies are seen to mainly appear in a routinized form as expressed by a few standard expressions such as excuse me, pardon or even sorry, these are at times noted to occur as detached apologies on their own (Jucker, Schreier&Hundt, 2009, p. 4). However, in Early Modes of English (EModE), these very same lexical elements were commonly in use but the act of apologizing was essentially more explicit and less routinized. Apologies were often seen to be embedded within the much larger speech acts and were rarely found to be fully detached and the speaker would often ask the addressee for forgiveness by requesting the addressee’s generosity in an act that was seen to constitute a face threat to the addressee’s actual negative face. EModE apologies often asked the addressee to actively forgive the offence that had been perpetrated (Jucker&Taavitsainen, 2008 p. 229-244). On the contrary, in PDE where apologies are normally seen to take the form of I am sorry or simply sorry; apologies are seen to be routinized expressions of the remorseful feelings of the speaker without necessarily attempting to request the addressee to change his general attitude towards the actual offense (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 20). This development can be deemed to be a movement towards a relatively higher level of negative politeness in PDE where attempts are constantly made to try and avoid face threats wherever possible. Requests In the development of requests in the English language, EModE requests were seen to often take the form of prithee or pray whereas in the PDE these have been replaced with please (Watts &Trudgill, 2002, p. 224). Requests are seen to basically constitute of direct face threats to the addressees as they ask the addressee to do something. This is seen to temporarily breach the addressee’s free and unimpeded imposition. Although the use of the terms prithee and pray and their full forms of I pray thee and I pray you do not happen to mitigate this threat directly, they however indicate the speakers basic sincerity in making the request (Busse, 2002, p. 210). On the other hand, the use of the PDE term please in its full form of if it pleases you is noted to directly address the negative face needs of the addressee. In using this term, the speaker provides an escape hatch that can be used by the addressee without in any way presuming the addressee’s willingness to comply. The addressee is only asked to comply with the request only in the event that it so happens that that it pleases them to do so. This escape hatch is often found to be spurious as most speakers often use the polite form please even when they do not intend to leave the addressee any opportunity for them not to comply. However, even in thesternest of requests, this is seen to fundamentally be a token acknowledgement of the addressee’s own negative face wants. It is because of this that the replacement of pray by the term pray can be judged to evidently be a greater concern for negative face in PDE (Traugott& Dasher, 2002, p. 257). What Did the Term “Politeness” Really Ascribe to as Applied to the English Language in the Eighteenth Century? As a result of the term “politeness” being mainly used as a verbal fixture in the eighteenth century, that was frequently used in a vacuous manner resulting in its adding relatively little to both the general notions of “correctness” and “refinement”. However, during the early part of the eighteenth century, there is significant evidence of the term “politeness” having a definite and specific set of resonances. The importance of investigating the contours that mark the notion of “politeness” in the early eighteenth century is that although the main idom of “politeness” is seen to have generally been cultivated in a number of important ways by numerous writers during the Restoration decades, it is seen to have been mainly crystallized during the treatises of the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1714 and the reign of the English Queen Anne as well as the great Whig periodicals of Steele and Addison (Stein &Ostade, 1994, p. 32). To effectively gather the true meaning of politeness, it is critical to ensure that one endeavors to ensure that they look beyond the various specific genres of linguistic discourse and onto a large number of texts. Politeness is broadly viewed to be a tool that can be used for the general reconstruction of culture (Stein &Ostade, 1994, p. 32). The suppositions and language of politeness can be seen to have first been established in the continental courtesy literature that was produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, the courtly assumptions that were attributed by politeness were seen to be generally abandoned in favor of what was perceived to be a more wide-ranging and inclusive ideal. During this period, “politeness” could generally be used to help in evoking a vision of culture and social life that would be found to be appropriate to modern times. This vision of politeness linking cultural refinement and moral improvement was generally epitomized in gentlemanly and urbane conversation. Politeness was found to mainly be a refined condition of social interaction (Atkinson, 1999, p. 150-151), however, social politeness was found to be paradigmatically conversational. Conversational politeness was seen to attempt to pursue verbal agreeableness that was essentially captured in a characteristic vocabulary in the form of phrases and words such as soft, natural, easie and never tiresom (Stein &Ostade, 1994, p. 33). Thus it is seen that although the actual origins of the subject of politeness were seen to be mainly on the basis of social interaction, politeness eventually came to sanction an essentially exemplary role for general conversation in written discourse. Polite text was deemed to be specifically conversational in nature. The Ideology of “Politeness” as applied to the English language in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century The actual pace of comment on the English language was seen to remarkably quicken in the late seventeenth through to the eighteenth centuries. Though a large number of language-related texts were seen to be published during this period as a result of advancements in printing (Kernan, 1989, p. 61), there was a lot of new concern with the notion of “correctness” in the literature produced during this period. According to Stein &Tieken-Boon vanOstade (31), these initiatives were broadly linked to the various ideals of politeness. One of the most frequently cited examples of this eighteenth century shift towards the new prescriptivism Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English tongue which was published by Swift in 1712. In the publication, Swift who perceived that he was writing the publication mainly on behalf of all persons in the nation who happened to be both polite and learned, was keen to point out how the natural impoliteness that is a common attribute of the English language has been highly aggravated by a number of various historical factors that have helped most English speakers from what he defined as being patterns of politeness(Stein &Tieken-Boon van Ostade31). One of the key recommendations that was made by Swift in this regard to help remedy was the situation that was promoting linguistic impoliteness in the English language was the establishment of an academy, however, this proposal by Swift is seen to have earlier been proposed by Defoe who writing in 1697, had proposed that an academy be established to help encourage polite language as well as to aid in the polishing and refinement of the English tongue (Sutherland, 1950, p. 20-21: Swift 1712, p. 8,19 25). Since Defoe made the initial suggestion pertaining to the possible rehabilitative nature of linguistic work that would be carried out in an English Academy or even society, there has grown considerable anxiety about the overall state of the English language as used by the majority of its speakers (Fitzmaurice, 1998, p. 2). One of the more material aspects of this anxiety was seen to be on the part of persons who happened to strongly believe that they would be able to easily rise in this world if only they could be able to both control and acquire properly expressed discourse. Defoe’s sentiments were roundly echoed by other writers such as Addison and Swifta factor which caused most of the English writers of this period to keep well away from any attempts at addressing the perennial issues pertaining to the decaying state of the English language. These Writers instead set about describing the grammatical patterns that were commonly used and encountered in language. Thus the early eighteenth-century writers were seen to not be interested in attempting to instruct or address a speech community that was heavily divided by factors such as education, gender and class. According to Fitzmaurice (1998), In the second half of the eighteenth century, grammar-writers began to assume the mantle of arbiter and judge of correct and thereby polite English. It was due to this that schoolmasters and grammarians took to producing handbooks and grammar that was designed to both inform and equip the rapidly rising middle class with the much sought after linguistic manners that promised to help them get admitted to the society which they happened to constantly yearn to belong to (p. 2). Polite Writing in the Eighteenth Century During this period, the social personality was deemed to contribute to the character of the writing. The general perception was that polite writing essentially came from the pens of gentlemen and was a shared trait common among polite gentlemen. Politeness was thus seen to bestow gentlemanly attributes on the various literary expressions: Polite writing was deemed to be free from any pedantic uncleanliness and stiffness, it gained the love of others as well as enjoyed a genteel motion and free air (Stein, Tieken-Boon 31). Due to its social personality, the politeness of the writer left its stamp on the writing which in turn was seen to assume the fundamental characteristics of gentlemanly politeness, civility, grace and delicacy. Politeness in the Modern Day English Language It has often been said that politeness is basically a key defining characteristic of every language whose universality is attested to by the fact that competent adult members of almost all communities use to help them achieve effective and smooth communication (Yoshitomi, Umino&Negishi, 2006, p. 19). However, it should be noted that the general implementation and actual usage of the formulas and structures of this concept is found to be highly culture specific and is often tied to the structure and culture of a particular society. It is mainly due to this that while the ultimate purpose of politeness can be viewed as being universal among the different cultures, there exists a general contrast as to what exactly are the social implications of politeness and how these implications psychologically influence the members of a given society (Obana&Tomoda, 37). Current Trends on Politeness in the English Language and Conclusion The current trends of English towards a negative politeness culture may quite possibly be reversing (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 20). There is a very strong tendency in our current society for the enactment and perception in a private manner of situations that were previously deemed to be of a public nature (Bignell, 2008, p. 207). This is found to be particularly so in both the electronic, the more traditional print and web based media. Interestingly to note is that,a large number of intimate issues are now becoming frequently discussed in public. Most news broadcasts are now structured in a manner that has seen them include the interview opinions of the average random persons to help provide the required insight of the person in the street (Eldgridge, 1995, p. 97), the media has also taken to widely publicizing the private lives of both politicians and celebrities (Verderber, Verderber&Sellnow, 2010, p. 166). The mushrooming reality shows also churning immense profits by turning the private individuals who take part in the shows into public spectacles. This trend in reversal is also seen by the instance of the Pacific Bell Telephone company which instructed all its directory assistance operators to drop the use of the word please in all their opening utterances wherever they happened to receive a call. This was done in an effort to try and cut down on the total duration of calls that were being made to the company and it was hoped that this measure would eventually translate in a considerable financial difference for the phone company (Lakoff& Ide, 2005, p. 32). Interestingly, although the negative politeness marker was dropped, salutations such as hi and the use of the often bogus names such as Mary that directory assistance operators use due to their relative ease to understand was retained. These two retained elements are seen to be positive politeness markers and help make the situation more positive as the speakers are placed on a first name basis and formality is effectively avoided (Gotti, Dossena&Dury, 2008, p. 24). References Bax,M. &Ka?da?r, Z.D. (2012)Understanding historical (im)politeness : relational linguistic practice over time and across cultures. Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Company. 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