Reflection: Indirectness, (im)politeness and cultural variation

Gricean implicature underpins the notion of directness (cf. Searle 1975). This is the main dimension for both of the classic politeness theories, Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1987). Leech’s (1983: 108) comments on the relationship between politeness and indirectness are frequently cited: indirect utterances, such as Could you possibly answer the phone, tend to be more polite because they increase optionality for the hearer, while decreasing illocutionary force (ibid.). However, we must be careful not to assume that implicitness or indirectness always conveys politeness, a point we discussed. It may be typical of British culture, but is not so for all cultures. More directness is not always interpreted as less politeness (particularly, it seems, in less individualistic cultures) (see also Field 1998 on directives in a native American culture).

We should briefly note that researchers typically mis-report Leech’s work (see Leech 2007). As far as indirectness and politeness are concerned, they usually ignore the fact that he also points out that indirectness might increase impoliteness when expressing “impolite beliefs”. He comments “because ‘You have something to declare’ is an impolite belief, the more indirect kinds of question [e.g. ‘Haven’t you something to declare’] are progressively more impolite, more threatening, than the ordinary yes–no question” (1983: 171). While intuitively there seems to be something in this, it has not as yet been fully empirically investigated.

Perhaps the biggest problem for all classic approaches to politeness, both those subscribing to the maxim view and those subscribing to the face-saving view (to be discussed below), is that they focus on politeness arising from deviations from the Cooperative Principle, and pay little attention to politeness that does not. Merely saying good morning to a colleague at the beginning of the working day may be considered “polite”, but this does not involve a deviation from the Cooperative Principle triggering the recovery of the speaker’s intention – it is more a case of performing a routine expected by the hearer, given the social norms. A number of researchers have accounted for the fact that politeness can be expected, normal, not noticed and thus not a deviation from the Cooperative Principle (e.g. Escandell-Vidal 1998; Jary 1998; Terkourafi 2001; Watts 2003). This kind of politeness is labelled anticipated politeness by Fraser (1999, cited in Terkourafi 2001). Anticipated politeness is based on associative inferencing, as described. The distinction between anticipated politeness and inferred politeness is elaborated by Haugh (2003) (see also Terkourafi 2001: 121–127). Inferred politeness is based on “logical” inferencing as mentioned and elaborated

It is this kind of politeness that is discussed by the classic theories. In a nutshell, “politeness is anticipated when the behavior giving rise to politeness is expected, while it is inferred when the behavior giving rise to politeness is not expected” (Haugh 2003: 400). The distinction between anticipated and inferred politeness is also echoed in the distinction between politic behavior and politeness, which we will discuss.