Topic 12 - Meaning between the lines (Session B) > Politeness and characterisation > Task E > Answer

Politeness and characterisation

Task E – Our answer

Jeeves wants to get Captain Biggar to believe that he has misidentified the car. So he attacks his positive face by saying that he has bad eyesight. But he mitigates this FTA linguistically with the hedge ‘in the kindliest spirit’, abstract lexis and suggesting a solution rather than merely stating the deficiency.

The repeated echo question indicates that Captain Biggar cannot come to terms with what he has just heard. He tries to defend his eyesight by claiming a special status for himself (i.e. is he trying to enhance his own positive face), but in a way that does not properly become clear until turn 25. He is trying to repel the accusation of bad eyesight by pointing out that he is a good shot, something which has led, in big game hunting circles to his being called ‘Sahib Biggar’ by his native bearers. But because this does not become clear until 25, here he looks as if he is just claiming a high status (and rather unclearly), and so looks pompous in doing so.

Jeeves says that he has not heard of Sahib Biggar (which is a threat to Biggar’s positive face). He mitigates this through his complex grammar and statement of sadness ‘I regret to say’. In Jeeves’s second sentence it is unclear whether he is using ‘Sahib’ as an honorific (this seems rather unlikely as he would be uncharacteristically putting himself in a subservient position with respect to Biggar) or pretending that ‘Sahib’ is Biggar’s Christian name (in which case it is a violation of the maxim of quality, rather like those we have seen in earlier extracts, and being used to confuse Captain Biggar).

This is Captain Biggar’s interrupting turn that we have already looked at in Task B. Although the interruption is impolite, the Captain appears merely to be trying to help Jeeves understand the conditions under which he normally uses the term. So he seems not to have cottoned to Jeeves’s rudeness in 22.

Jeeves attacks Biggar’s positive face by saying that he has made a mistake, mitigating it as usual, this time with the hedging adjective ‘pardonable’ and formal and abstract lexis. His use of ‘Sahib or Captain’ suggests either that he is confused about which term to use, or doesn’t care. The latter is an FTA attacking Biggar’s positive face, but the ambiguity mitigates the face threat.

Captain Biggar again does not seem to notice the disguised barb in what Jeeves says. He now attacks Jeeves’s positive face by saying he is ignorant, but with some mitigation (the hedge ‘perhaps’), presumably because he is trying to come to terms with what from his perspective is merely a mistake by Jeeves . In the rest of the turn Biggar praises his own positive face in three ways: (a) he claims that he is the most famous white hunter in large parts of the world, (b) that he is fearless, and (c) that he is a crack shot. It is only the last item which properly counts as a rebuttal of the earlier accusation of bad eyesight, suggesting that Captain Biggar, unlike Jeeves, is not very good at defending his position in a conversation. He is too straightforward, and too keen on promoting his own positive face so that others respect him.

We now come to Jeeves’s conversational coup de grâce at the end of the excerpt. First, he concedes all that Captain Biggar has said. But then, politely threatening his own positive face (‘poorly informed as I am on the subject), he pretends that the visual powers needed to be able to aim at a precise spot on a wild animal are irrelevant to the issue in hand. He does this by claiming politely (again with linguistic mitigation – ‘I do not believe’) something everyone else knows to be the case (i.e. he violates the maxim of quantity), namely that rhinoceri do not have number plates. Thus he has undermined Captain Biggar’s attempt to defend himself against the accusation of poor eyesight, and in a way that makes him look extremely silly – in other words he has achieved yet another threat to Biggar’s (positive) face.

What we see throughout the extract is a master of the verbal duel making his opponent look very stupid. Captain Biggar has right on his side – after all, Jeeves and the Earl of Towcester have stolen his money. But nonetheless we laugh at him throughout.

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