A face-theory-based quantitative analysis of American English usage of four linguistic politeness strategies.

摘要

This dissertation is a quantified study of four linguistic politeness strategies--positive and negative politeness, off-record, and based-on-record--based on face concerns, as discussed by Brown and Levinson in their 1987 book Politeness. Four dialogs each were written by 491 respondents, using content cues, a list of participants, and a photograph of a setting with the other participant in the dialog. The other participant in the dialog, pictured in the photograph, was either a young man, a young woman, a middle age man, a middle age woman, an older man, or an older woman.; The hypotheses tested were the following: (1) Usage of the four linguistic politeness strategies will vary as the respondent's and model's intrinsic characteristics--demographic: age, sex, ethnic background, and educational level completed; regional: population of hometown, whether hometown is urban or rural, length of time lived in hometown, and whether the respondent is a native Floridian or not--vary. (2) Usage of the four linguistic politeness strategies will vary as the extrinsic characteristics of the setting and social situation vary. (3) Extrinsic characteristics will have more bearing on the usage of the four linguistic politeness strategies than the intrinsic characteristics.; The hypotheses were tested using a doubly repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance with covariates. All four linguistic politeness strategies were assessed in all four questionnaire situations, according to whether the situation was formal or informal, whether the degree of acquaintance as given in the direction was stranger or friend, and whether the interactional role was that of speaker (the respondent) or hearer (the model in the photograph).; None of the regional variables were significant. Of the demographic variables, neither educational level completed, sex and age of the model, nor sex of the respondent were significant with regard to these four linguistic politeness strategies. Age and ethnic background of the respondent were found to be significant only in interaction with extrinsic characteristics, explaining about 4-6 percent of the variability. All three extrinsic factors were significant. Formality (formal, informal) explained about 30 percent for demographic and 15 percent for regional variables, acquaintance (stranger, friend) about 27 percent for demographic and 17 percent for regional variables, and interactional role (speaker, hearer) about 39 percent of demographic and about 19 percent of regional variables. In general it can be said that the extrinsic characteristics explain more of the variability found in the usage of the four linguistic politeness strategies than do the intrinsic characteristics of either the respondent or the model.