Ogiermann On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-90-272-8889-9
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 191, 312 Seiten

Reihe: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series

This book investigates how speakers of English, Polish and Russian deal with offensive situations. It reveals culture-specific perceptions of what counts as an apology and what constitutes politeness. It offers a critical discussion of Brown and Levinson's theory and provides counterevidence to the correlation between indirectness and politeness underlying their theory. Their theory is applied to two languages that rely less heavily on indirectness in conveying politeness than does English, and to a speech act that does not become more polite through indirectness. An analysis of the face considerations involved in apologising shows that in contrast to disarming apologies, remedial apologies are mainly directed towards positive face needs, which are crucial for the restoration of social equilibrium and maintenance of relationships. The data show that while English apologies are characterised by a relatively strong focus on both interlocutors’ negative face, Polish apologies display a particular concern for positive face. For Russian speakers, in contrast, apologies seem to involve a lower degree of face threat than they do in the other two languages.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ogiermann, Eva

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abbreviations, figures, tables
Preface
Chapter 1. Cross-cultural pragmatics
Chapter 2. The culture-specificity of politeness
Chapter 3. The speech act of apologising
Chapter 4. Literature review
Chapter 5. Methodological considerations
Chapter 6. Data collection
Chapter 7. Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices: IFIDs
Chapter 8. Accounts
Chapter 9. Positive politeness apology strategies
Chapter 10. On the culture-specificity of apologies
Chapter 11. Conclusion
Appendices
Notes
References
Index