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Politeness
345 pages
A rigorous, foundational deep-dive into the invisible social rules that govern every conversation we have.
What it feels like
Reading this foundational linguistics text feels like putting on a pair of X-ray glasses that suddenly reveal the hidden scaffolding of every human conversation. The pace is steady and methodical, demanding careful attention as it builds a complex, universal model of social interaction out of the seemingly mundane ways we say please or thank you. The mood is deeply analytical and intellectually stimulating, replacing the chaos of everyday chatter with a beautifully structured taxonomy of human behavior. Its prose is undeniably academic and dense with terminology, yet it rewards the patient reader with profound moments of clarity about the mechanics of social friction and face-saving. It will absolutely delight sociolinguists, anthropology nerds, and anyone who loves dissecting the unspoken rules of human connection.
- Mood
- intellectually stimulating
- curious
- structured
- Tone
- analytical
- scholarly
- objective
- insightful
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- mechanics of social friction · universality of human interaction · cultural translation · architecture of conversation
- The writing
- Dense, rigorous, and highly structured, employing specialized linguistic terminology to dissect everyday phenomena.
- The arc
- Moves from a curiosity about everyday social interactions to a profound appreciation for the complex, universal architecture of human communication.
- Who it's for
- Linguistics students, sociologists, and anyone fascinated by the invisible rules that govern how we speak to one another.
About the book
"This study is about the principles for constructing polite speeches. The core of it first appeared in Questions and Politeness, edited by Esther N. Goody (now out of print). It is here reissued with a fresh introduction that surveys the considerable literature in linguistics, psychology and the social sciences that the original extended essay stimulated, and suggests distinct directions for research. The authors describe and account for some remarkable parallelisms in the linguistic construction of utterances with which people express themselves in different languages and cultures. A motive for these parallels is isolated - politeness, broadly defined to include both polite friendliness and polite formality - and a universal model is constructed outlining the abstract principles underlying polite usages. This is based on the detailed study of three unrelated languages and cultures: the Tamil of South India, the Tzeltal spoken by Mayan Indians in Chiapas, Mexico, and the English of the USA and England, supplemented by examples from other cultures. Underneath the apparent diversity of polite behaviour in different societies lie some general pan-human principles of social interaction, and the model of politeness provides a tool for analysing the quality of social relations in any society. This volume will be of special interest to students in linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, anthropology, and the sociology and social psychology of interaction."--Publisher's web site.
Description from Open Library.
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