Brown And Levinson's Theory Of Politeness

Politeness is able to show a person’s feelings towards others and awareness of a social custom. There are many purposes of politeness including: creating a public self image, creating solidarity, threatening people to send a negative message, not threatening people or upsetting them, indicating social relationship, showing awareness of social context, and power dynamics. The value of polite speech in a culture has the purpose of creating solidarity. Polite speech in a specific culture is very important and should be practiced as much as possible.

Our relationships with others depend on our mentality of thinking. Many people would like to receive the promotion or save their marriage but, they were not able to properly interact with others. There are six paradigms of human interaction (Covey, 1989).

Conversation is a ritual every person must encounter throughout their lives in order to function properly with one another in today’s society. However, every individual has a “different idea about what’s appropriate” when approaching someone in any sort of conversation; that is why we are referred to as individuals (Tannen 327). There are thousands of diverse languages to speak to one another with, in fact that means there are thousands of different ways to offend each other with our words. Within those languages there are several contrasting gestures that can offend any single person, such as the amount of times individuals apologize in one meeting, giving criticism too harshly, or thanking someone so often it does not seem genuine. In the article “What Do You Mean,” Deborah Tannen touches upon apologies, criticism, and thank yous in further detail to explain where individuals go wrong within conversation and how they can fix their actions. Individuals find it satisfying to please others by being polite because it is the ‘right’ thing to do, however like myself others need to stand up for themselves and get directly to the point now in order to avoid conflict later in life.

Judge Paul Heath Till’s essay “Morals, Manners, Customs, and Public Perception” has a very unique structure that helps the effectiveness of the authors argument. He starts off by giving reasons why people are lacking manners in everyday life. He also gives definitions of the words manner, manners, moral, and customs and then goes further to discuss the true meaning of these words. He also relates his life experiences and his personal beliefs to the topic at hand.

We are comfortable near friends and relatives, but maintain some distance when interacting with strangers. However, we are brought up to consider strangers as friends until the evidence indicates otherwise (Cramer, & Cramer, 2010). This explains our custom of immediate and beyond-the-surface communication with strangers and our willingness to bond with them. We also favor direct eye contact over indirect. We use direct eye contact during conversations as a sign of trust, respect and interest towards the speaker. However, we avoid eye contact with people in authority to show respect and attentiveness. Our personal relationships with people of the same age group are very informal, but we are very respectful to foreigners. A strong emphasis is placed on family, which is the source of identity, emotional and physical support and protection against life challenges. This is the intense sense of family belonging that is limited to family and close friends. Therefore, people that don’t belong to our family or circle of close friends are slow to be

But Politeness should be the expression of a benevolent regard for the feelings of others; it’s a poor virtue if it’s motivated only by a fear of offending good taste. In its highest form Politeness approaches love. “Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect for others‟ feelings, are at the root of politeness”13. Politeness is yet another typical Japanese virtue; however, Nitobe makes sure that it is not a superficial display of adulation but a sincere expression of care and concern for others: “Politeness is a poor virtue, if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of things, therefore due respect to social positions”14. He also gives an excellent explanation for the seemingly different practice of gift-giving between the Japanese and Western customs. That is, whereas Westerners present their gifts as wonderful and excellent items, Japanese give theirs saying they are poor and useless ones. Nitobe expounds that these two contrasting practices actually convey the same feeling and thought; they are just two ways of saying the same thing. In other words,

Simple things like saying thank you when someone holds a door for another or saying please when requesting a drink refill no longer seem to be the social norm. What has become the norm is to be waited on by a cashier, “all while having a conversation on her cellphone” (Weeks, 2014). In a telephone survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports, 77% of respondents believed that American adults were becoming ruder ("77% Think Americans", 2013). With society’s manners dwindling, the ease of caring only for ‘me’ has become easier. Hartwell-Walker (2008) believes that if you teach manners to children it will produce empathy. If one were to step back and put themselves into the shoes of the person that their selfishness is going to affect, they may be less likely to follow through with that

There was once a time in history in which people were scared to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. According to “Many aspects of Society Are Less Civil” by Paul Thoms, manners may have been a form of strict etiquette society had a form of courtesy. Civility was once only used by the upper class from their former homes in Europe. The public wanted to execute a level of sophistication to copy the ways of royalty. Though many of these practices were different from what there is today, the middle and lower class had no sense of these ways. But in the 21st century Americans have accustomed themselves to present a state of incivility. According to Merriam-Webster incivility is defined as “a rude or impolite attitude or behavior: lack of civility.” Incivility can be seen in many different ways in this society, resulting in informality. Incivility is a problem caused by the influences around us,

Civility calls for a display of courtesy and politeness in actions and expressions that address other people. There are several elements that civility features, and they include listening, tolerance, respecting other people's viewpoints, application of dignity and honor while treating others and respecting differences. In essence, civility requires one to adopt a certain behavior that projects respects towards others. The word civility means a city or community in Latin, and it is a fundamental element that enables people to live together in harmony (Jkaiservi, 2015). Therefore, civility stands for active engagement in the creation and participation in a community. It means that for a community to last until an unforeseeable future,

Goffman illuminated the significance of seemingly insignificant acts. Of particular import are a person’s demeanor (conduct, dress) and the deference (honor, dignity, respect) it symbolically accords to others. By expressing oneself to be a well or poorly demeaned person, an individual simultaneously bestows or withholds deference to others. The reciprocal nature of deference and demeanor is such that maintaining a well-demeaned image allows those present to do likewise as the deference they receive obligates them to confer proper deference in kind. Each is rewarded for his or her good behavior by the deference that person reaps in turn. Yet, whether or not an individual is judged to be well demeaned is determined not by the individual himself but, rather, by the interpretations others make of his behavior during interaction. Indeed, claiming oneself to be well demeaned is a sign of poor demeanor (484).

The journal article that I chose to write about pertains to the norms for politeness, aggression, and interaction styles amongst both northerners and southerners. The reason that I chose this article is because of the fact that I was born and raised in South Carolina and I was fascinated in knowing the findings of how southerners reacted to hostile situations. Within the article “How Norms for Politeness, Interaction Styles, and Aggression Work Together in Southern Culture” written by Dov

Rhetorical sensitivity deals with adapting the audience to a message which means explains a reading in a way that others can understand. Critical analysis is a subjective writing that expresses the writer’s opinion or evaluation of a text. Lastly curiosity deals with a strong desire to know or learn something. I choose to further research civility because I believe this is something we need more of all around the world. Civility is a politeness within a person’s behavior or speech. Its origin comes from the Latin word civilis relating to citizens. Everybody has some type of civility, whether they know what civility is or not. Synonyms include curiosity, politeness, and respect. These are three common words that many others can understand, so if they understand these words they understand civility. Many people show the opposite of civility, which is rudeness, no manners, and impoliteness. I learned that civility is not something you absolutely have to learn; it may be something we are born with some just show civility better than

“Expectancy violations exert significance on people’s interaction patterns, on their impressions of one another, and on the outcomes of their interactions” (Burgoon 1993:40). In other words, Judee Burgoon, founder of the expectancy violation theory, concluded from various experiments that people evaluate communication with others in a negative or positive regard, based on their expectation of the interaction and their opinion of the communicator. When people do not act in accordance with ones expectations, one resorts to evaluating their communication behavior, be it verbal or non verbal as well as how this behavior makes one feel. The following essay will further explore and explain the

I believe people of equal “status” respond to each other in the same way they are spoken to. With professors, I believe students try to be more polite than what the professor intends to be. I am not saying the professor is rude, but rather, not as consensus of the level of respect students have for them. There is a hierarchy of power and the person who is inferior tries to be even more cordial and respectful. Businesses that deal with rude customers do not respond in the same manner they are spoken to because there are consequences. The employee has more to lose than the customer, so they tend to respond in a nice, or even witty manner, but they avoid being rude. The way someone responds can also be affected by what language they are speaking. Some languages and cultures emphasize respect, politeness, and etiquette. If a person’s mother tongue focuses on this, they have been shaped into reacting a certain way. Nonetheless, people may talk back in the same manner they were spoken to if faced with a conflict. An argument can become even more intense if one person decides to talk back in a similar fashion they were initially

The Nature of Deference and Demeanor Goffman states in his article "The Nature of Deference and Demeanor" (1956) that human behavior in social interactions is determined by what he calls ‘Rules of Conduct’. If one wishes to use the rules as biblical I think they may be called the Ten Commandments; Exodus 20 which is also rules for spiritual means. All ‘Rules of Conduct’ serves as ‘a guide for action’. A rule of conduct may be an obligation or an expectation, and the two are intimately mated, for one man’s obligation is often the other’s expectation. Goffman developed the extensive theories of deference and demeanor in this essay, as two different terms that play integral roles and are interconnected.