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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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