Abstract
The aim of this paper is to re-examine the notions of indirectness and politeness as applied to requests. The relationship between the two notions was examined in a series of experiments designed to tap native speakers’ perceptions of politeness and indirectness in English. The results indicate that the two notions are perceived as different from each other. The experiments in perceptions of politeness were designed. The 45 utterances included in English language were drawn from request data collected by the use of the CCSARP project discourse completion test. Subjects were presented with a description of the situation and were asked to rate each utterance on a nine point scale for either ‘directness’ or ‘politeness’.
These results are interpreted in the framework of a suggested model for politeness. The pragmatic clarity of the message is an essential part of politeness. Politeness is defined as the interactional balance achieved between two needs; non”conventional indirect strategies can be perceived as impolite because they indicate a lack of concern for pragmatic clarity.
1. Introduction
Examination of the notions of indirectness and politeness as applied to requests is the aim of this study. Regarding the literature on politeness and indirectness, it is often discussed that the two notions represent parallel dimensions. Therefore, for example, we encounter the suggestion of Leech (1983: 108) that given the same propositional content, by using a more and more indirect kind of illocution, we will be able to increase politeness. Indirect illocutions result in being more polite because of two reasons: first, they increase the degree of optionality, and second, the more indirect an illocution is, the more tentative its force will be. It is argued that at least for requests, we need to distinguish between two types of indirectness in order to modify such claims: conventional and non-conventional. Politeness seems to be associated more with the former but not necessarily with the latter. In particular, in the case of conventional indirectness it is believed that politeness and indirectness are linked together, but not always in the case of non-conventional indirectness. In addition, it might be the case that the nature of this association will change across cultures. These arguments will be supported by results from a series of rating experiments designed to test native speakers’ perceptions of politeness and indirectness in English.
Actually when people make requests, they tend to make them indirectly. They generally avoid using imperatives like ‘Tell me the time’, which are considered as direct requests, in preference for questions like Can you tell me the time? or assertions like ‘I’m trying to find out what time it is’, which are indirect requests. The crucial point about indirect requests is that they appear to have a kind of ambiguity. For example, ‘Can you tell me the time?’ As a request, has 2 meanings: the indirect meaning “I request you to tell me the time”, the literal meaning “I ask you whether you have the ability to tell me the time”.
Regarding these kind of questions there are two general kinds of processes through which an indirect request might be understood. First we have idiomatic processes, creates one and only one meaning which is the indirect meaning. Second is multiple-meaning processes, creates both the literal and the indirect meanings, but not necessarily one after the other. By this kind of process understand both a question and a request.
1.1 statement of the problem
1.2 research question
To achieve the purpose of this study, the following research question was proposed:
If the speaker is requesting something, why his ability take an important role? How does it figure in the listener’s understanding of that request? (Being indirect)
1.3 significance of the study
Politeness and a genuine concern for the rights and feelings of others in society is a crucial point. This can be found in many facets of life, including the business world. When dealing with a client, a true professional should always engage others in a way that projects that they are there for the client and the client’s needs. The most successful business relationships also have that idea reciprocated, but being treated courteously in return starts with treating others that way first. Indirect requests allow for plausible deniability, in which a cooperative listener can accept the request. Because of the extended relations among people in today’s societies, the way of requesting others has taken into account more than before. Investigating about the ways of being polite and using indirectness strategies in requests may lead to more professional interactions among people and higher achievement of success.
2. review of literature
A THEORY OF POLITENESS
A special way of treating people, saying and doing things is paying attention to their feelings. It means that what we say something politely we will be less straightforward than what we would say if we weren’t taking the other’s feelings into account.
Regarding the people’s feelings two aspects seem to be involved. One is the situation in which whatever the person says may be unwelcome so the addressee may not want to hear it, or be reminded of that point, or be asked to cooperate in that discussion. One way of being polite in such situations is to apologize for the imposition and to make it easy for the addressee to refuse to comply. So we try to give the most interactional leeway possible, and this, in one sense, is what it is to be polite.
The length of our relations with people can also be important in taking their feelings into account. To maintain an ongoing relationship with others, one greets them on meeting in the street and inquires about their health and their family.
The necessity to study perceptions of indirectness and politeness from a cross” cultural perspective was initially motivated by work carried out within a project. That study investigated realization patterns of requests and apologies in different languages. CCSARP studies requests and apologies in eight different languages. They use the same coding scheme for the analysis of observed variation in both speech acts. The purpose of the project is looking for intra-lingual, situational, as well as cross-linguistic variation in the use of these two speech acts. The use of the same coding scheme for the analysis of patterns in different languages is meant to ensure cross-linguistic comparability.
Classification of request patterns in terms of a scale of nine strategy types is one of the central categories on the coding scheme. Applying this scale to the analysis of observed variation in requests were led to a number of issues, two of them are mentioned here. The first issue concerns the cross-cultural validity of this scale.
The interpretation of observed cross-cultural variation in the use of requests leads to a second issue, whether similar levels of directness carry the same social meaning.
The politeness of indirect requests
Regarding a request and its response, two people coordinate an exchange of goods. For example we can assume the requestor a woman called A, and the requestee a man called B. A requests B to do something for her, and in his tum, B commits or refuses to commit him, to do what she wanted. When she requests information, B ordinarily gives the information instead of committing himself to give it.
The problem with requests is that, on the surface, they are inequitable. While A benefits from the information she receives, it costs B some effort to give it to her. For Goffman’s (1955, 1967) ‘face’ is the positive social value people claim for themselves. It consists of two particular wants, first, the want to be free from imposition by others, and second, the want to be approved of in certain respects. Definitely people act to maintain or gain face and to avoid losing face. Clearly A’s requests, are potentially threatening to B’s face. In our case, A will be polite to the extent that she can reduce or eliminate the threat to B’s face caused by her request.
Conclusion
Speakers of English are using conventional indirectness as the most polite way to make a request. It means that between two processes, the shorter one is considered the more polite. However, it should be taken into account that the shortest path, namely the use of direct strategies is supposed impolite. Thus the most polite way of making a request is by being indirect without constraining the hearer with true indirectness. Brown and Levinson (1978) suggest that formal indirectness encodes the conflict between the need to go ‘on record’. Using a conventionally-indirect form, the speaker relies on conventionality to carry the request. But by this analysis, the reason of the politeness of conventional indirectness is still its indirectness. Brown and Levinson assume that requests are face-threatening acts and a politeness strategy should be used in order to reduce the risk of damaging hearer’s face. Indirectness is one of the options the speaker may choose for expressing the request on record or off record. Finally, in some situations the indirectness in requests is used in order to be ironic, impolite, rude or to achieve other goals without the intention of being polite. A different explanation has been argued: interactional balance between pragmatic clarity and apparent non-coerciveness which lead to the politeness of conventional indirectness. By this argument an important element in politeness is the need for pragmatic clarity, as proposed by R. Lakoff (1973) is. This need can be derived from Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Manner. Maxim of Manner has been interpreted by Leech to apply to both the propositional level of utterances and to their illocutionary point.
Politeness in this view is motivated both by two ways: first, to adhere to the sub-maxim of pragmatic clarity and second, to minimize the threat to face. When both needs can be satisfied simultaneously, the highest levels of politeness are achieved as in the case of conventional indirectness. By tipping the balance in favor of either pragmatic clarity or the appearance of non-coerciveness, might be perceived as impolite. Thus, direct, explicit strategies have a high chance of being perceived as impolite due to the fact that they testify to the dominance of pragmatic clarity concerns over those of face-saving. On the other hand, highly indirect strategies might also be considered as lacking in politeness, because they suffer from lack of concern for pragmatic clarity, in this case attention should be paid to considerations of non-coerciveness.
The findings argue even further for a multiple-meaning process, since the literal meaning of the request was used in so many ways. It was used initially by the students in deciding whether or not to make a literal move. Then it was used in selecting the right form of that move and in deciding how to strengthen that move appropriately. It seems difficult to account for this constellation of decisions with a process that used the indirect meaning and nothing more.