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 Topic 12 - Meaning between the lines (Session B) >Top Girls revisited - with politeness in mind > Task F > Answer skip topic navigation

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Politeness and impoliteness
Top Girls revisited - with politeness in mind
Politeness and characterisation
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Top Girls revisited - with politeness in mind

Task F – Our answer

If we compare this turn with turns 11-12 and 15-16, we can see that Win has no choice but to increase again the amount of face threat (positive and negative) to Louise. Win has tried to brooch the subject in a way that has mitigated the face threat to Louise as much possible, while still asking the relevant questions. But Louise’s replies in turns 12 and16 have been very uncooperative. As a consequence Win has to become even more specific, suggesting a possible example of what would count as a ‘long term misunderstanding’. However, she still mitigates the FTA as much as she can. She uses the ‘NP tactic’ again, thus avoiding spelling out her guesses about who might have done what to whom. Similarly, although the coordinated NPs ‘your immediate superiors or inferiors’ narrow down the possible candidates for people Louise might have been at odds with (her equals and those a long way above or below her are ruled out), they are still pretty vague.

Overall, we can see that Louise uses two main politeness strategies in this extract. At the beginning she uses positive politeness to try to put Win at her ease. Then, when she discovers that she has accidentally trodden on Louise’s toes she resorts to mitigation strategies to reduce the amount of face threat in her FTAs – which she has no real choice but to perform if she is to do her job. Louise effectively refuses to answer the questions (something which in itself is uncooperative, and so is negatively impolite to Louise, who is only trying to help, after all). These refusals force Win to increase the amount of face threat to Louise, which she consistently tries to mitigate with two strategies: (i) ‘use NPs rather than clauses wherever possible, to avoid the issue of agency’ and (ii) ‘make the NPs as vague as you can while asking the questions that need to be asked’.

Looking at significant parts of this passage in politeness terms has told us quite a lot about the two characters. Louise seems to be rather brittle: defensive and uncooperative – though we can’t know from such a short extract whether this is a permanent character trait or something induced by the particular circumstances she has found herself in at work. Win appears to be rather good hearted, yet determined to get to the bottom of things (though again we can’t yet know whether these are permanent character traits or not), and she also appears to have a particular politeness style.

 


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