Politeness is one of the major social constraints on human interaction regulating participants' communicative behavior by constantly reminding them to take into consideration the feelings of the others.
(He Zi'ran 2003)
Leech (1983) proposed the Politeness Principle which is formulated in a general way from 2 aspects:
1) to minimize the expression of impolite beliefs
2) to maximize the expression of polite beliefs
The Politeness Principle encompasses six maxims: Tact maxim, Generosity maxim, Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim, Agreement maxim and Sympathy maxim.
Apparently, as He Zi'ran mentioned, it is necessary to consider the hearer's feelings in order to establish a mutual rapport between the conversationers. Human is really a face-wanting animal (face is Goffman (1959)'s term originated from Chinese). According to Goffman, face is a sacred thing for every human being, an essential factor communicators have to pay attention to. Face wants are reciprocal, that is, if one wants her face cared for, she should care for other people's face.
The problem is that Leech naively (in an unoffensive way) believed that most people will stick to these six maxims in verbal interations, or even other human interations.
Here is my interrogation: how motivated is every human being in saving others' face? Honestly, I would say that I am not a highly motivated face-saving human being. And I guess that there must be a large amount of people who would agree with me. I think the truth is, most people are reluctant in saving others' face or considering others' feelings, because saving others' face may cost too much of their own face, which is contradictory to the claim that every human being wants her/ his face. Oh, this might look like a logical fallacy. But just suppose in particular contexts, for example, a guy just goes bankrupt and loses his girlfriend at the same day, how likely will he considering his friends' feelings when they (with the disasters unknown)are speaking in dispraise of his taste?
So, the most possible situations when the Politeness Principle is used would be those hypocritical situations where the speaker and the hearer both want something from each other (this sounds really evil, right?). But not all people use the PP for this double-dealing purpose. Or does this kind of purpose of being polite happen only among hypocritical people? Or do all kinds of people actually keep this purpose in their mind and pretend that they are polite to others?
People can cover themselves well under the politeness strategies they use. After all, this article is a summary of my daydreams that i had when attending pragmatics lectures.
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