Abstract
Research on im/politeness has become increasingly cross-disciplinary, engaging linguists, psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists and anthropologists among others. But although this has led to ever richer understandings of im/politeness, it has also resulted in a fragmentation in which different strands of research have little chance of reciprocal influence (p. viii). This volume seeks to spark new lines of inquiry and new synergies by pulling together the work of experts on im/politeness across disciplinary boundaries.
Aside from an introduction and an epilogue, this book is organized into nine chapters in three parts corresponding to three methodological lines, self-reporting, observational and experimental studies. Part I is dedicated to self-reporting methodologies, arguably the first methodology to be used in im/politeness research. Using Discourse Comprehension Tests (including an elicited production task, an acceptability judgment task and a questionnaire), Luchkina (Chapter 1) examines the address term ‘comrade’ in Russian and Chinese; she concludes that, besides socio-historical changes, the term’s ambivalent politeness import underlies its deictic failure. Chapter 2, by Vergis and Terkourafi, uses online surveys to probe the conventionalization of impoliteness through a study of the Greek collocation ρε μαλάκα (re malaka). They find that the solidary sense of re malaka prevails in everyday use, challenging lexicographical beliefs in the primacy of the insulting sense. This chapter is distinctive for its focus on the speakers’ intuition of linguistic expressions out of context to test conventionalization. In Chapter 3, Burt looks at address terms in the power hierarchy of an academic community and suggests that the choice and interpretation of address terms are subject to participant negotiation, discussion and (re)analysis. Burt’s use of focus groups instead of individual interviews merits appreciation as a way to reduce interviewer bias.
Part II covers observational studies and represents the recent shift to impoliteness studies in public, multi-participant contexts and online. Chapter 4, by Yoon, examines the style shifting between honorifics and non-honorifics in Korean TV shows, demonstrating that style shifting does not merely indicate impoliteness but could be used creatively to change footing and construct identities. Mitchell (Chapter 5) employs short email messages and follow-up interviews to examine how goading (targeted banter directed toward a ratified participant) is evaluated vis-a-vis impoliteness. He finds that goading can be evaluated as non-impoliteness and suggests that goading participants are able to control their evaluations of unpredictable interactional input. Like Mitchell, Perelmutter’s Chapter 6 examines impoliteness within a community of practice, in this case, a Russian online community where anonymous participants engage in shaming practices concerning marital infidelity. He concludes that where the social, group and individual face concerns are in tension, impoliteness can be used to establish, reinforce and re-negotiate identities.
Contributions in Part III base their research on experimental methodologies, which have been little used in politeness research. Baxter’s Chapter 7 is most representative of interdisciplinary research into impoliteness by studying perceptions in interactional competence. Using an aural task (involving experimentally controlled stimuli and forced judgment), he uncovers linguistic (language proficiency and speech act type) and extralinguistic variables (influences of overlapping, content matching, gender and age) that affect Spanish speakers’ perceptions of the appropriateness of collaborative overlap. This methodology avoids relying on the interpretations of a single researcher when seeking to empirically establish social norms. Raizen, Vergis and Christianson (Chapter 8) use eye-tracking to examine the moment-by-moment processing of text containing taboo words and demonstrate that pragmatic information – including speaker’s identity and conversational situation – influence taboo word processing. In Chapter 9, Jiang and Zhou use electrophysiological methods to study the processing of disrespectful reference in Mandarin Chinese, revealing cognitive perceptions of verbal politeness. They show that successful handling of disrespectful address may engage semantic-pragmatic mechanisms, confirming the ‘conventionalization view’ of im/politeness processing. In the epilogue, Culpeper delineates similarities among the previous chapters and highlights future avenues for interconnection between them.
This volume breaks new ground in im/politeness research. For example, Baxter’s experimental testing of speaker perception in interactional competence is novel, and his research design could serve as a tool for identifying and measuring interactional norms and skills. The use of eye-tracking and electrophysiological methods to address im/politeness perception represents an advance in experimental pragmatics research, and adds a new vantage point from which knowledge about im/politeness can be investigated. Perelmutter’s inclusion of corpus-based analysis in his observational studies of im/politeness hints at the great prospects of corpus pragmatics. The extension of im/politeness research to digital data like TV and online forums characterized by the presence of multiple parties calls for a review of current im/politeness theory, which applies mostly to simple speaker/hearer dyads. Still another merit is that, although contributors apply diverse methodologies to various subject matters, they are united in the view that im/politeness is a matter of evaluation relevant to contextual parameters (p. ix). In addition, this volume covers both languages that have been studied extensively in im/politeness research (English, Greek, Chinese and Korean) as well as others now gaining visibility (Spanish and Russian).
Although the editors are not reserved about the drawbacks of each research methodology, such as the generalizability of self-reporting, some studies may have some room for improvement. For example, we are not certain whether non-impolite evaluations of goading are culture-specific; and the interpretation of gaze duration and brain responses is still open to question. However, this is also where the volume contributes: providing food for thought and stimulation for future interdisciplinary research by showcasing the ‘warp and weft’ of im/politeness research in one single volume. As such, this book is a must for researchers seeking to advance im/politeness research.