From Politeness1 to Politeness2: Tracking norms of im/politeness across time and space MARINA MARINA TERKOURA TERKOURAFI FI
“Some think that [politeness] theory is irrelevant, in that it fails to correspond to [real life]. This opinion rests often on a misapprehension about [politeness]. It assumes that [it] exist[s] simply and immutably, that [it is] permanently established once and for all … Hence that all [politeness] theory has the same (lowish) value” Adapted from Georgia (1994: 100)
Abstract Increasing attention to the distinction between first- and second-order im/ politeness has led to considerable soul-searching soul-searching among theorists regarding regarding which of the two should form the basis of a theory of im/politeness. In this arti articl cle, e, I take take an alte altern rnat ativ ivee pa path th:: I bu buil ild d on no norm rmss of Poli Polite tene ness ss1, 1, as attested in influential texts laying out Politeness1 norms in different parts of the the worl world d from from an anti tiqu quit ity y to this this da day y, to extr extrac actt from from them them the the cor core elements of a theory of Politeness2. By affording us with some glimpses into the diachronic intertwining of Politeness1 and Politeness2, this analysis helps explain why it has been so difficult to keep these two notions apart in previous research. At the same time, it suggests some possible ways forward. Specifically, Specifically, this survey reveals reveals two overarching overarching themes regarding regarding the role of politeness (and, by implication, impoliteness) in these cultures. The first concerns the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms, while the second concerns the relationship of Politeness1 norms with an underlying morality. I propose that these two elements should be placed at the heart of an empirically grounded theory of Politeness2. Keywords: manuals, courtesy, civility, conduct, etiquette, manners, morals, regulation, religion 1. From Politeness1 to Politeness2: Take I
When politeness is mentioned in casual conversation today, ideas about letting the other go first, saying “please” and “thank you”, and table manne manners rs usual usually ly spri spring ng to mind. mind. Poli Politen teness ess is consi consider dered ed a matte matterr of
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upbringing and opens doors socially for those who display it; at the very least, least, it may be rewa reward rded ed with with a smile smile and and a favour favoura able impr impress essio ion. n. Exactly because of its potential to reap social rewards and the fact that it is considered teachable, a matter of nurture rather than nature, politeness has been a staple of didactic literature from early on. In this article, I track canonical understandings of im/politeness in different cultures from antiquity to this day as a novel way of approaching a question that has become increasingly central in im/politeness research over the past im/politeness ? which decade, namely, what is the object of a theory of im/politeness? inevitably leads to the follow-up question, what should be the object of a theory of im/politeness? In trying to answer these questions, researchers noticed a disconnect between the use of the terms politeness and polite by speakers speakers themselves, themselves, and and the way way these these terms terms have have been been used used in the ling linguis uistic ticss liter literatu ature. re. Speakers, as well as authors of etiquette books and foreign language textbooks, tend to associate politeness (and impoliteness) with a closed inventory of forms or behaviours that are thought to communicate politeness (or impoliteness) in and of themselves. It is with this understanding of politeness in mind what has more recently been called “firstorder politeness” (or Politeness1 for short; Watts et al. 1992: 11) that one should read comments regarding particular forms or actions as being “polite”, such as the ones cited at the start of this article, or related remarks in grammar and foreign language textbooks, ranging from T vs. V address usage to neg-raising, tense and aspect, and derivational phenomena1. Within contemporary linguistic theory, on the other hand, politeness came to the limelight as a result of the work of ordinary language philosophers, who saw in it a potential motivation for indirectness. Specifically cally,, Searle Searle (1975) (1975) sugges suggested ted that politen politeness ess constitu constitutes tes an additio additional nal meaning meaning (i. e., an implicat implicature) ure) conveyed conveyed by an indirect indirect speech act (i. e., a speech act that departs from the mandates of the conversational maxims; Grice 1975). This line of thought sparked what Culpeper (in press) calls the “first wave” of politeness theories, whose primary aim was to account for the range of forms that convey politeness by means of departures from the Cooperative Principle and the maxims2. No sooner, of course, did linguists embark on this task than they realized that even a slight shift in intonation, or repetition of the most canonical “polite” expression, could give rise to the opposite effect, making politeness resolutely a matter of inference (pragmatics) over and above encoded content (semantics). Politeness in this second sense what has more recently been called “second-order politeness” (or, Politeness2; Watts et al. 1992: 11) has has commo commonly nly been been inter interpr prete eted d as soci social al adequ adequac acy y (cf. (cf. Brau Braun n 1988: 4953; Held 1992: 139151), and the emphasis this time has been
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on accounting for how, when, and why linguistic expressions achieve this, rather than simply listing those that do. Having distinguished between Politeness1 and Politeness2, the question that arises next is: which of the two should be the object of a theory of im/politeness? If the answer to this question seems relatively straightforward surely, a theory of im/politeness must be a theory of Politeness2?3 proposing such a theory is easier said than done. As I suggested in the previous paragraph, Politeness1 and Politeness2 have different conceptual origins, historically, and serve different purposes socially and epistemologically. Following Eelen (2001: 3334), we might think of their differences in terms of Vygotsky’s distinction between spontaneous and scientific concepts: as a spontaneous concept, Politeness1 builds on speakers’ experiences using (and being told how to use) language, while as a scientific one, Politeness2 must be explicitly defined with the help of a metalanguage in order to circumscribe the scope of the phenomena under study. This way of looking at the two notions also explains why conceptualizations of Politeness1, being closely tied to each speaker/listener’s personal experience, can be highly individual; while Politeness2 should retain a stable meaning for all (at least for those working within the same theoretical framework), depending only upon the meanings of other theoretical notions in relation to which it is being defined4. Building on this distinction, Eelen has further proposed that a theory of Politeness2 should be non-evaluative, non-normative, and able to explain the whole gamut of behaviours, from polite to impolite5, i.e., it should essentially be at the antipode of Politeness1 (2001: 48). However, as he has also argued in detail, the distinction between the two is not as easy to maintain in practice, and theories of im/politeness have been at best ambivalent in their placement towards it (Eelen 2001: 4875)6. A major source of difficulty stems from the issue of norms and the role they play in both Politeness1 and Politeness2. According to Eelen (2001: 174187), theories of politeness have typically failed in this regard because they have, sometimes explicitly but more often implicitly, imported wholesale the normativity of Politeness1 into Politeness2. Eelen sees signs of the normativity of politeness theories in their “blindness” to the ethical underpinnings of allegedly technical principles (such as the CP), their representation of politeness norms as social mandates (hence potential vulnerability to prescription), and their reification of politeness. As he puts it, “[p]oliteness is regarded as a unique and objective system that exists ‘out there’ in reality, that can be discovered, manipulated and examined just as a physical object can” (Eelen 2001: 179). In other words, Eelen is pointing to the theories’ failure to make room for diverging norms and alternative interpretations, which essentially turns polite-
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ness into a static notion, much like grammar textbooks and politeness manuals make it out to be. Granted that, if politeness norms are seen as fixed and observer-independent, the danger that Eelen identifies is real, his account, nevertheless, is oblivious to the fact that politeness (and impoliteness) do not generally remain perpetually in flux for participants themselves: participants typically do interpret each other’s utterances as polite (or impolite); what is more, they frequently justify their interpretations with respect to this or that social norm. What is important to understand is that, to play this crucial role in what Eelen calls the “evaluative moment” of im/politeness (2001: 35), norms need not be shared: they must simply be assumed to be shared. As Bicchieri points out, the very existence of a social norm depends on a sufficient number of people believing that it exists and pertains to a given type of situation, and expecting that enough other people are following it in those kinds of situations. Given the right kind of expectations, people will have conditional preferences for obeying a norm, meaning that preferences will be conditional on having expectations about people’s conformity. Such expectations and preferences will result in collective behaviours that further confirm the existence of the norm in the eyes of its followers [emphasis mine]. (Bicchieri 2006: 2) If norms are treated as observer-dependent and subject to change as described in this paragraph, incorporating norms in one’s account of im/ politeness can enhance the explanatory power of the account by affording some insights into the internal workings of the evaluative moment itself. If our aim, then, is to understand and account for participants’ linguistic behaviour, as in other branches of linguistic analysis, and if this behaviour makes reference to norms, then norms will figure prominently in any theory of linguistic im/politeness (cf. Eelen 2001: 186). That does not ipso facto make the theory a normative one. On the contrary, since norms are important to humans on both social and cognitive grounds, as a wealth of experimental evidence seems to suggest (Bicchieri 2006), then, if we want to explain human behaviour, part of our investigation (though not all of it) should focus on norms themselves: how they come about (both phylogenetically and ontogenetically); how they change; and how they figure in individuals’ reasoning and action. My aim, then, in this article is precisely to begin to understand Politeness1 norms and the relationships between them by studying the forms they took in different cultures and historical periods. Two major themes emerge from this investigation: the regulatory role of Politeness1 norms,
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and their ambivalent relationship with morals. With respect to the second theme, we will see that many societies, for various reasons, distinguished between manners and morals, but the directionality of this relationship could go either way, with either morals motivating manners, or the other way around, or, indeed, the two being assigned to different realms and having little to do with each other. By locating potential points of contact between Politeness1 norms, my aim is ultimately to arrive in a bottom-up fashion at an empirically grounded notion of Politeness2 that will do justice to these divergent points of view, without for that matter being identified with one of them. 2. Tracking norms of im/politeness across space and time
In this section, I examine canonical understandings of politeness as captured in didactic and/or prescriptive works from different parts of the world and from antiquity to this day. This overview is not meant to be exhaustive and focuses only on those texts that proved most influential and achieved a lasting impact. The notions of Politeness1 that emerge from these texts give us some insight into what it has meant to be “polite” for people in different places and at different times in human history, and, although there is a degree of variability, some common themes are also possible to discern. 2.1. Ancient Egypt, India, and China The earliest writings about politeness date back to the ancient Egyptians. The most widely cited text in this regard is The Instruction of Ptahhotep, a text of the late Old Kingdom (second half of the second millennium BCE), consisting of thirty-seven maxims addressed by the Vizier Ptahhotep to his son (Lichtheim 1973: 7, 61). There, among injunctions to be humble, moderate, and honest, one finds instructions about how to behave at the table (maxim 7), in the antechamber (maxim 13), and about speaking gently (maxim 25) and with restraint (epilogue, line 618). Similar instructions can be found in other ancient Egyptian texts belonging to the Ancient Near Eastern genre known as “wisdom literature”, which also includes archaic Greek and Hebrew texts7. Of these, Hesiod’s Works and Days is a general didactic work from around 700 BCE. It is mostly about farming but some material related to politeness can also be found, especially in lines 706722, which deal with interpersonal relationships, and 760763, which talk about one’s reputation and good name. Another didactic work, the Book of Sirach, was composed in Hebrew around 180 BCE but is preserved only in its Greek translation. Also known as Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach and as Ecclesiasticus, it is part
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of the Old Testament apocrypha and contains several references to politeness, especially in chapters 31 (about table manners) and 32 (about speaking with restraint). Around the same time (second half of the first millennium BCE), manuals codifying established norms of behaviour appeared in other cultures from which written records survive. The Manava Dharma Shastra (‘The Laws of Manu’) was the earliest and most influential of these texts in India; so lasting was its influence that it provided the basis for the legal system of the British Raj in India nearly two millennia later. Written in Sanskrit and consisting of 2,684 verses organized in twelve chapters, the Laws of Manu (Manu 1886) set out the proper conduct or ‘way’ (dharma) for each of the four castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras), including rules for sitting down and standing up, speaking, eating, and personal cleanliness (see, especially, chapter 2)8. Upholding these prescribed norms made one a virtuous person (chapter 10, verse 130; cf. Van de Walle 1991: 28). In contrast with ancient India, where caste was given by birth and virtue attained through solitary action9, “becoming a quality person” was a social and cultural achievement in another ancient tradition, that of China. In the Analects of Confucius, a work composed posthumously by his disciples between 475 and 221 BCE, propriety encompasses gaze, speech, and (physical) action (12/13), and the rules of propriety apply equally to all (1/15, 12/5). Although in the Analects these rules are not spelled out explicitly in the form of aphorisms, they can be inferred from references to the behaviour of the Master, who thus provided a living model of propriety. “The distinction between a society of principles [such as Western rationalized societies; MT] and a society shaped by models of propriety,” note Hall and Ames (1998), “helps us to understand the distinctly ‘aesthetic’ quality of Confucian morality. Propriety leads to ‘proper’ conduct in one’s relationships by at once reinforcing traditionally appropriate norms while at the same time insisting that they be internalized and ‘made one’s own’”. 2.2. Islamic adab The belief that externally appropriate behaviour is not only linked to an underlying morality but can also be instrumental to its attainment is also encountered in other cultural contexts, starting with Islamic adab. Adab is a key term in classical Arabic literature that can be translated, depending on the context, as ‘good breeding’, ‘manners’, ‘culture’, ‘refinement’ or ‘belles lettres’ (Kilpatrick 1998: 54). The content of the term has shifted over time, from signalling behaviour in conformity with tribal social norms in pre-Islamic times (Kilpatrick 1998: 54) to meaning culti-
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vated behaviour defined precisely in opposition to these earlier norms (Metcalf 1984: 3), yet emerging from their refinement in the urban environment of Islam and encompassing, in addition to the Qur’anic teachings and model conduct of the Prophet and his Companions, Persian and Greek ideas about morality, Jewish and Christian attitudes, and regional patterns of behaviour of the conquered people (Böwering 1984: 62). Consequently, adab covers a range of meanings from ethical conduct to social etiquette to one’s inner cultivation through literature, without the addition of successive layers of meaning having necessarily meant the abandonment of earlier ones (Böwering 1984: 66; Kaufmann 1997: 67). The earliest works on adab are the two Compendia on Manners composed in the early eighth century by Ibn al-Muqaffa’, a translator and prose-writer of Persian origin who served as a secretary in the Abbasid court (7501258 CE)10. As a convert to Islam and a non-native speaker of Arabic himself, al-Muqaffa’ sought to empower the class of secretaries who were often foreigners at court. This may well explain his insistence on the importance of speaking Arabic without a trace of a foreign accent (Kaufmann 1997: 74, 78)11 and overall tendency not to distinguish “between personal virtues and habits of politesse specific to the secretarial profession” (Kaufmann 1997: 15): in a society in flux, such as that of the cosmopolitan early Islamic state, outward behaviour may well be all that is available to appraise one’s character, and the two will be intimately linked12. This link is eloquently explained by Barbara Metcalf in her introduction to a volume on the Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, which highlights the geographical and temporal expanse of these ideas. “The central metaphor for personal development” in Islam, she writes, is that of habit or malaka through which outer action transforms or colors the soul. Actions reflect true knowledge and actions create that truth. Divinely revealed ritual actions, above all the attestation of faith, prayer, fast, alms, and pilgrimage, act on man in ways beyond his comprehension […]. Obedience to legal injunctions generally is both a good in itself and the means to self-transformation, for moral choices create a pattern that ultimately, if repeated often enough, ideally makes it possible to act correctly without even the process of reflection. Even feigned emotions serve a legitimate end, for the Prophet himself taught that one should pretend to weep if one did not do so naturally, in order to cultivate the appropriate emotion [emphasis mine]. (Metcalf 1984: 10) The intimate link between manners and morals outlined in this passage is worth noticing for two reasons. First, because it turns received ideas
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about the relationship between manners and morals on their head: instead of treating manners as the externalization of a pre-existing cultivated inner self 13, in adab the directionality of this causal relationship is reversed. This raises the alternative possibility that, in true performative fashion, the clothes do maketh the man, or, in this case, the manners maketh the morals. But the intimate link between manners and morals described in this passage is also important for another reason: because it forces us to rethink the separation of manners from morals that pervades contemporary Western ideas about etiquette (e. g., Aresty 1970: 12), suggesting instead that this separation is the product of specific socio-historical circumstances (e. g., Gillingham 2002: 281284) and should not be taken for granted (Georgia 1994: 172). 2.3. Classical antiquity Far from being unique to non-Western thought, the connection between morality and outward conduct is also found in foundational works of Western moral philosophy, such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BCE) and Cicero’s De Officiis (‘On Duties’, 44 BCE). Like several of the texts cited in this section, these works are addressed from father to son. However, their aim is not to prescribe norms of behaviour but rather to set out the components of virtue and happiness in order to help the reader attain them of his own accord. Propriety is not unrelated to this pursuit. Thus, for Aristotle, [L]ife also includes relaxation, and one form of relaxation is playful conversation. Here, too, we feel that there is a certain standard of good taste in social behaviour, and a certain propriety in the sort of things we say and in our manner of saying them, and also in the sort of things we allow to be said to us; and it will also concern us whether those in whose company we speak or to whom we listen conform to the same rules of propriety. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.8) Similarly, for Cicero, [I]n standing or walking, in sitting or reclining, in our expression, our eyes, or the movements of our hands, let us preserve what we have called ‘propriety.’ In these matters we must avoid especially the two extremes our conduct and speech should not be effeminate and over-nice, on the one hand, nor coarse and boorish, on the other. We must besides present an appearance of neatness not too punctilious or exquisite, but just enough to avoid boorish
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and ill-bred slovenliness. We must follow the same principle in regard to dress. (Cicero, De Officiis I, 128131) Moreover, external conduct and underlying morality are inseparable. In ‘On Duties’, Cicero writes14: We have next to discuss the one remaining division of moral rectitude. That is the one in which we find considerateness and selfcontrol, which give, as it were, a sort of polish to life […]. Under this head is further included what, in Latin, may be called decorum ¬ pon (‘befitting’). Such is (‘propriety’); for in Greek it is called pre its essential nature, that it is inseparable from moral goodness; for what is proper is morally right, and what is morally right is proper. The nature of the difference between morality and propriety can be more easily felt than expressed. For whatever propriety may be, it is manifested only when there is pre-existing moral rectitude [emphasis mine]. (Cicero, De Officiis I, 934) In the Ethics, Aristotle concurs: [H]appiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things: these qualities are not separated. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.8) If these philosophical works are at several levels of remove from manuals of more direct utility, the latter were also available in classical antiquity. Plutarch’s Quaestiones Convivales (‘Table talk’ in Moralia 612c748d) covered such topics as sitting arrangements and conversation topics at symposia, among others, and is “the closest we’ve got to an actual etiquette manual” from this period (first to second century CE; Robin Nadeau, personal communication). Earlier works by Xenocrates and by Aristotle himself (both fourth century BCE), as well as by Ennius (third to second century BCE), are now lost but surviving descriptions suggest that they also contained significant material related to etiquette and (table) manners15. However, the classical work that proved most influential on posterity was Cato’s Distichs (Dionysii Catonis Disticha de Moribus ad Filium)16. 2.4. The classical legacy in the Middle Ages A pagan gnomic source-book composed in the third century CE by an otherwise unknown author, Dionysius Cato, and consisting of fifty-seven monostichs and 144 couplets in non-rhyming classical metre, Cato’s Dis-
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tichs is a work that owes much of its popularity over the next thirteen centuries to the fact that it was used as the set text for teaching Latin in primary schools well into Early Modern times. Addressed, following the genre’s conventions, to the author’s son, it contains a wealth of domestic advice on how to deal with one’s wife, servants, neighbours, household accounts etc. (Taylor 1992: 31). In dealing with these issues, [t]he wisdom of the Distichs was that of the worldly and the practical, based on a cynical and calculating view of human motives. The reader, ‘if he had followed to the letter the precepts given him, would have cultivated patience, prudence, temperance and fortitude’; [… but …] he would have done so out of self-interest, not out of any higher motive. (Gillingham 2002: 279) It has indeed been characterized as “[o]ne of the paradoxes of a supposedly Christian and clerical medieval culture […] that throughout this period the standard primary schoolbook was a pagan and secular one” (Gillingham 2002: 280). This, however, did not prevent the Distichs from achieving a lasting impact rivalled only by that of the biblical wisdom books (Taylor 1992: 25). As late as the fourteenth century, Chaucer wrote “He knew no Catoun, for his wit was rude” of the carpenter in The Miller’s Tale, to highlight that character’s lack of manners; while four centuries later, in 1735, the Distichs was among the first books that Benjamin Franklin chose to print (in James Logan’s English translation) in the puritan New World (Lemay 2005: 118). Nevertheless, notoriety did not necessarily translate into undisputed acceptance. Cato’s emphasis on self-interest was contrary to the religious sentiments of the Middle Ages, and “the religiously minded were often troubled by those Distichs in which ‘Cato’, like courtesy books, recommended dissimulation or concealment” (Gillingham 2002: 279). Attacking one of these passages in his allegorical poem Piers Plowman (written ca. 13601387), William Langland was scathing in his critique: In other science it says I saw it in Catoun ‘he who pretends with words, is not a faithful friend with his heart. And you [should] do the same. In this way, skill/art is deceived with skill/art.’ This is Catoun’s instruction to clerks that he teaches. But Theology teaches not so, whoso takes heed; (theology) teaches us the contrary against Catoun’s words, for (theology) bids us to be as brothers, and pray for our enemies17. If the utilitarian bent of Cato’s advice not to mention the effect of refined manners on women, who found them simply irresistible (Gilling-
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ham 2002: 268 fn. 4) seem to have contributed to this change of heart, they are not its sole, or even primary, cause. Already in the postCarolingian period, scholars had started replacing classical sources with biblical ones (Taylor 1992: 26), and adapting secular teachings to suit religious sensibilities (Taylor 1992: 31). The time of these developments coincided with a period when political power was gradually shifting from monasteries to aristocratic courts. Consequently, it was in the environment of the court, rather than the monastery, that the new genre of courtesy literature was forged during the twelfth century (Gillingham 2002: 283). The declining concern about all matters religious in the new genre was also expressed in quantitative terms: of the 2,839 lines of Daniel of Beccles’s Liber Urbani (‘The Book of the Civilized Man’), “the most substantial courtesy poem in any language” (Gillingham 2002: 272), only about 7 per cent concerned itself with behaviour in the church, while twice as much was separately devoted to household management, and to the duties and problems of a wide range of vocations, and almost double that to general advice about “how to hold a conversation, how to deal with friends and enemies, [and] how to choose a patron or a wife” (Gillingham 2002: 273275). In counterpoint, monastic clergy’s rejection of courtly manners was equally motivated by worldly motives, as can be seen in the ambivalent use of three key adjectives typical of the new genre, urbanus, facetus, and curialis, all roughly equivalent to contemporary ‘polite’. In the mouths of the austerely religious, who populated the ranks of the monastic clergy, these adjectives took on distinctly negative connotations, being associated with hypocrisy, sexual immorality, and even heresy (Gillingham 2002: 282283). For court clergy, however, who “were the first to see the value of [gentleness of spirit]” for “surviv[ing] in the competitive hothouse of court society” (Gillingham 2002: 278), these same adjectives had a positive meaning: they “drew attention to behaviour that was attractive and charming, which drew admiration […]. Where the Distichs advocated worldly wisdom, courtly literature added elegance and refinement” (Gillingham 2002: 283). It is, then, to this transitional period between the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity, and to the attendant competition for power between the monastic and courtly spheres, that the beginnings of a separation between manners and underlying morality in Western thought should most likely be sought. From then on, the two would be treated increasingly as separate, occasionally even antithetical, notions (Carre´ 1994; Georgia 1994: 98, 172; Watts 2002, 2003: 4142). Echoing this point of view in modern times, author Evelyn Waugh wrote in 1956: “[i]f you examine the accumulated code of precepts which define the gentle-
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man you will find that almost all are negative” (cited in Carre ´ 1994: 12). It is perhaps not a coincidence that Waugh was a staunch Catholic himself. 2.5. From the “courtier” to the “new man” With the expansion of the target audience of these works from the hereditary aristocracy of medieval courts to a class of self-made “new men” making their way up the social ladder, the notion of “courtesy” was transformed into that of “civility” (Bryson 1998). Much has been made of this transformation in terms of a “civilizing process” that spread across Europe’s rising urban middle classes (Elias 2000 [1939]). However, according to Gillingham (2002: 277278), for all its insight, Elias’s study focusing on Erasmus’s celebrated treatise De Civilitate Morum Puerilium (1532) may have overstated its case somewhat. As he points out, “[t]welfth-century courtesy literature was written in Latin, part of an elite culture common to all Western Europe. From the thirteenth century onwards we have courtesy poems written in Anglo-Norman” while the first texts in the English language do not appear until the fifteenth century (Gillingham 2002: 269270). Consequently, a much better picture of the evolution of the genre is obtained by taking into account works in all of these languages rather than just those written in English. Once earlier Latin and Anglo-Norman works are taken into account, continuities between the two periods emerge and the break between them appears less dramatic than what was previously assumed. While it may thus be time for a reassessment of the rise of civility, which may after all have simply accelerated trends begun earlier, what remains undeniable is that the expansion of the genre beyond court circles brought with it a pressing need for expediency and a shift of emphasis toward outward display and the regulation of daily social practices. It is important to remember, however, that this need for expediency is not unique to this historical period or geographical region. Parallels abound, starting with ancient Egypt, where a progression can be observed from “the maxims [of Ptahhotep] that embody the pragmatic wisdom of the upper-class Egyptian” (Lichtheim 1973: 7) and aim to instil a pious sense of morality in the reader, to the Instruction of Any that “comes from the sphere of the middle class and is meant for the average man” (Lichtheim 1976: 135) and eventually the Instruction of Anqhsheshonq in which “the moralizing is down-to-earth and utilitarian rather than lofty and idealistic, so much so that sometimes expediency takes the place of moral principle” (Lichtheim 1980: 160), all of which is “in keeping with the evolution of Egyptian society and with the growth of the middle class” (Lichtheim 1976: 135). A similar attitude is found in
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some classical texts, such as Aulus Gellius in the second century CE, which advertise themselves as “a short-cut for the reader in a hurry” (Taylor 1992: 31). Finally, in the Islamic world, the medieval Arabic concept of zø arf , meaning ‘elegance’, ‘charm’, ‘wit’, or ‘resourcefulness’ (Giffen 1998: 821), came to be associated with “[u]rbanization and its concomitant phenomenon of an urbane” (Szombathy 2006: 114) and was similarly accompanied by a shift toward more worldly pursuits and the attenuation of the religious and moral high standards of earlier epochs (Szombathy 2006: 109110). Perhaps the greatest push for expediency, however, in the West at least, came with the subsequent expansion of the genre to yet another new audience: women (Georgia 1994: 78). 2.6. From the sphere of religion to the female sphere Until the seventeenth century, women had remained conspicuously absent from literature dealing with politeness and proper conduct. Indeed, one of the most enduring conventions across places and historical periods has been for the works to be addressed by father to son and, by extension, by (male) teacher to (male) disciple18. It may seem strange to us today when “[t]he teaching and enforcement of ‘manners’ is often considered to be the preserve of women” (Mills 2003: 203) but, for the longest time, politeness was a male business. In the earliest works, when women were mentioned, it was typically to advise the young man how to select a wife; women were often depicted as untrustworthy and a potential source of embarrassment that should be carefully managed or ignored (e. g., Van de Walle 1992: 3335; Kaufmann 1997: 13; Gillingham 2002: 270271, 275). Even when women were understood to be part of the author’s intended audience, as in the twelfth century Liber Urbani , they remained unaddressed (Gillingham 2002: 272). The first work in which women appear to be held in high(er) esteem was Castiglione’s Il libro del Cortegiano (‘The Book of the Courtier’), which appeared in 1528 (Carre´ 1994: 7; Georgia 1994: 86). But even then, women had to wait well over a century for the first books explicitly addressed to them to appear. Among the earliest was The Gentlewoman’s Companion, published in England in 167319. The appearance of women on the scene brought yet another transformation of the genre, which now morphed into the new genre of the conduct book. In addition to the catalytic role of women (to which I return below), the rise of the conduct book ought to be seen against the background of the post-Reformation period in England and the specific needs of a newly mobile and socially ambitious society for a more democratic collection of guidelines (Georgia 1994: 8588). This triggered a process of secularization that was expressed, not so much as the whole-
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sale abandonment of religious values, but rather as an implicit recasting of Protestant ethics in the terms of the new genre (Carre´ 1994: 6). The waning of the explicit influence of religion left a gap to be filled by “a new method for social control […], and that method was manners, as expressed in books like The Gentlewoman’s Companion” (Georgia 1994: 8788; cf. Carre´ 1994: 5). The underlying link between politeness and religion has not gone unnoticed in contemporary sociological works that are considered foundational of the field of politeness studies. In an oft-quoted passage, Goffman theorized this link as follows: I have suggested that Durkheimian notions about primitive religion can be translated into concepts of deference and demeanour, and that these concepts help us to grasp some aspects of urban secular living. The implication is that in one sense this secular world is not so irreligious as we might think. Many gods have been done away with, but the individual himself stubbornly remains as a deity of considerable importance. He walks with some dignity and is the recipient of many little offerings. He is jealous of the worship due him, yet, approached in the right spirit, he is ready to forgive those who may have offended him. Because of their status relative to his, some persons will find him contaminating while others will find they contaminate him, in either case finding that they must treat him with ritual care. Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest. (Goffman 1967: 95) The potential for social regulation that Goffman identifies in this passage as being shared between politeness and religion is what enables the emphasis to shift from one to the other according to the prevailing social and historical circumstances. Seen in this light, the “near obsession with politeness” (Georgia 1994: 98) in eighteenth-century England can be explained as the result of a renewed emphasis on the regulatory potential of politeness in the wake of the decreasing influence of religion in this regard. A consequence of this shift was the further decoupling of manners from morals that had already been set in motion a few centuries earlier. As Georgia (1994: 92) puts it, while “earlier courtesy books contented themselves with providing general precepts and allowing the reader to use his own judgement”, as one might expect if the cultivation of an
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underlying morality was still at least part of their goal, “the later etiquette book [takes] the rhetorical stance that social laws are codified” and concerns itself largely with codifying these laws. As the transitional genre between these two forms, the conduct book shows evidence of this trend, with the minutiae of daily social practices occupying more and more of its pages (Georgia 1994: 78; cf. Aresty 1970: 59; Carre´ 1994: 2). Over time, this trend contributed to a sense of moral decline that has been dubbed “the crisis of courtesy and its attendant decline into mere conduct [emphasis mine]” (Carre´ 1994: 2). Parallel to the weakening of religious influence, the rise of the conduct book (and attendant “decline” of courtesy into conduct) is related, as mentioned earlier, to another social development: the slow but certain emancipation of women (Georgia 1994: 68). At a time when women had not yet joined the workforce, adhering to norms of propriety became for them a means of improving their social situation by marrying “upwards”; a possibility that was not open to their male peers, for whom social advancement was tied to professional and financial success (Georgia 1994: 68). As a result, women took a keen interest in manners: “[f]or the first time, books began to describe women’s conduct in daily social life, and in the process, those books came to be written more frequently by women themselves” (Georgia 1994: 69). Georgia’s account of the potential of manners to symbolically “elevat[e] women’s status somewhat” (1994: 61) is reminiscent of Trudgill’s (1974: 94) explanation of his findings with respect to the (ng) variable in Norwich English and women’s preference for the standard variant thereof, what was recast later in more general terms by Hudson as the “Sex/Prestige pattern” (1996: 193). However, it also points to a wider association between correctness in manners and correctness in language which is found in many cultures and in different historical periods. For instance, Ibn al-Muqaffa’s emphasis on proper diction and lack of tolerance for foreign-accented speech, which he saw as central to the notion of Islamic adab (see Section 2.2), exemplifies the same trend, this time motivated by considerations of ethnicity rather than gender. In each case, a path seems to be traced from educated/standard language to polite language or vice versa, as Watts (2002) has suggested for English, with linguistic and social regulation mutually reinforcing each other and leading to the identification of polite and standard language as a natural outcome of their combined effect. The underlying principle seems once more to be inclusion/exclusion, as captured in Goffman’s analysis of deference and demeanour (1967: 95 and above): adherence to the dictates of polite conduct/standard discourse provides a means for counteracting the perception of Otherness, constructed on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, or whatever other social
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category is deemed pertinent each time. Since linguistic and social regulation both serve the same end, it is not long before one comes to stand in, “metonymically” so to speak, for the other, until they are finally treated as one and the same. In other words, it is important to realize that the link between standard language and polite language is crucially mediated by perhaps, presupposes a socially constructed Other. When it comes to eighteenth-century England, this role was played by women, who therefore served as the necessary catalyst in this respect. Developments during this period thus largely shaped contemporary Western stereotypes about politeness as “a prototypical description of white, middle-class women’s behaviour” (Mills 2003: 203). 2.7. From etiquette to netiquette By the end of the nineteenth century, the trend begun during the late seventeenth century had spread to both sides of the Atlantic and politeness literature, now in the shape of the contemporary etiquette book, was increasingly both written by women and addressed to them (Georgia 1994: 69; Young 2010: 239). The English term etiquette derives from the French e´ (s)tiquette meaning ‘label’, from the Old French verb estiquier, ‘to stick, to attach’. According to Aresty, e´ stiquette originally referred to “the list of rules and regulations attached to a post in the courtyards of feudal castles and palaces [which] could be torn down and changed daily if necessary” (1970: 13). Two centuries after borrowing the Old French term, English borrowed also its Middle French successor, etiquet, which gave rise to English ticket, which was in turn borrowed back into French as ticket. So, while etiquette did not originally refer to that which secures access to a closed-off social circle20, it derives from the same family of semantically related terms. Nevertheless, the “access” afforded by etiquette was not unconditional; if being introduced to the world of politeness (manuals) was initially seen as a sign of emancipation for women, over time it became a subtle means of keeping them apart, and even discriminating against them. As Young writes, in mid- to late-nineteenthcentury American etiquette manuals, “women were counselled to be more vigilant than men in their possible breaches of etiquette and to master the laws to a finer degree”. In this way, etiquette became a socially favoured means of “maintaining divisions of gender and class in a society that has historically refused to acknowledge social stratification in its narratives of success” (Hemphill 1999, reported in Young 2010: 239). More recently, public attention has shifted to questions of internet etiquette or netiquette, a term which has been in use at least since 198321. Almost ten years later, in 1995, netiquette acquired its first official man-
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ual when the Intel Corporation circulated an informational memo titled Netiquette Guidelines. In the Introduction to these Guidelines, the following rationale is given: In the past, the population of people using the Internet had ‘ grown up’ with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These ‘Newbies’ are unfamiliar with the culture and don’t need to know about transport and protocols. In order to bring these new users into the Internet culture quickly, this Guide offers a minimum set of behaviors which organizations and individuals may take and adapt for their own use [emphasis mine]. (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855; accessed 13 December 2010) This rationale reiterates several themes also found in some of the cultures and/or historical periods discussed above. To start with, parallel with the processes of social transformation that mediated the passage from, for instance, courtesy to civility, or civility to conduct, it is the expansion of the target audience that creates the need for explicitly outlining practices that were previously unwritten yet silently agreed on and unproblematically followed by a select few who had “grown up” with these principles. This confirms that a primary function of Politeness1 norms is a gatekeeping one; netiquette is no exception to this. At the same time, “newbies” do not need to understand all the intricacies of the culture; they merely need to be quickly familiarized with it so that their presence among the ranks of internet users will not be disruptive (to the old users). In the name of the preservation of the existing social order, in other words, expediency is ratified and so is the consequent shift toward outward compliance without deeper understanding. Again, this is the now familiar scenario resulting in the separation of manners from morals, also seen in the case of the “decline” of courtesy into conduct (Carre´ 1994: 2), or the feeling that “etiquette [is] merely ‘ethics in the diminutive’” (McKendrick 2007 cited in Young 2010: 235). Finally, the temporal gap between the emergence of the term netiquette and the publication of these guidelines is also telling. Once more in line with a trend observed across cultures and historical periods, Netiquette Guidelines emerge later, not in order to propose a new, invented set of practices but rather to codify existing ones. This is interesting because it blurs the boundary between what I have elsewhere called “prescriptive” vs. “descriptive” norms, that is, norms about what one should do vs. norms about what one is likely to do (Terkourafi 2005: 244; cf. Haugh 2003: 399400). Prescriptive norms, we are reminded,
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never materialize out of thin air; the process is never an entirely topdown or bottom-up one. Rather, prescriptive norms historically follow and reflect descriptive ones, while at the same time constraining future practices and so feeding back into the descriptive norms that gave rise to them in the first place. If prescriptive norms are the domain of Politeness1 and descriptive ones belong rather to the realm of Politeness2, as politeness theorists have argued (Leech 1983: 10; Lakoff 1977: 86), then it should come as no surprise that Politeness1 and Politeness2 are hard to keep apart (Eelen 2001: 177179): they cannot be kept apart in principle, because they are intertwined from the outset. 3. From Politeness1 to Politeness2: Take II
While recent accounts possibly influenced by the work of Elias (see Section 2.5 above) have picked up the thread of “politeness” some time around the late Middle Ages and the emergence of the concept of “courtoisie” (e. g., Ehlich 1992; Watts 2003: 3441; Fe´lix-Brasdefer 2008: 710), the overview presented in the previous sections suggests that concepts of Politeness1 have existed, perhaps unsurprisingly, during all historical periods and in all cultures. We have seen how a succession of genres from wisdom literature through philosophical and gnomic works to the Courtesy book, the Conduct book, today’s Etiquette book, and most recently, Netiquette have been shaped, in dialogue with both previous genres and the social conditions of the time. This opening up of the scope of the investigation is useful because it allows certain common themes to emerge. The first of these themes is the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms. Politeness1 norms effect social regulation inasmuch as they contribute to the reproduction of the social order that gave rise to them in the first place, legitimizing and consolidating it further. In this, politeness norms closely resemble religious creeds, with which they were closely intertwined, especially in the earliest texts. However, more than their moral aspect (to which I will return in a moment), what seems to bind together polite and religious principles is their association with the ruling class. Politeness1 norms typically emanate from the upper classes and are a reflection of their power. This allows them to play a gatekeeping role which is central to the smooth operation of society as we know it. Politeness1 norms thus function as “carrot” and “stick” at one and the same time: abide by them, and you will go far; ignore them at your own peril. Understandably, their grip over society can be very strong. It is against this social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms that the deregulatory role of impoliteness can also be fully appreciated. If impo-
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liteness has so far been absent from this discussion, it is because, rather than promoting the reproduction of the existing social order, impoliteness undermines that order and aims to subvert it. It is symptomatic of this state of affairs that manuals for rudeness are few and far in between; and when they do appear, as in the recent How to be rude! A training manual for mastering the art of rudeness (Montry 2002), they aim at a humorous and entertaining effect22. Note, however, that in aiming to subvert the existing social order, impoliteness at the same time presupposes Politeness1: without a target to subvert the existing social order embodied in Politeness1 norms impoliteness cannot exercise its subversive function. This is true even of banter, exemplified, among others, by the sounding practices of New York African American youths first analyzed by Labov (1972). Criticizing scholars’ classification of these practices as “mock impoliteness [emphasis mine]”, Eelen (2001: 181183) argues that such a characterization is normative in that it embodies a (mainstream White) point of view, whereas, he continues, these practices are not experienced as impolite by the youths themselves but rather as strengthening their sense of solidarity and community belonging. I would argue that a more adequate analysis of this phenomenon follows from Leech’s (1983) analysis of banter as a second-order phenomenon parasitical upon canonical/mainstream notions of Politeness1: subverting these canonical notions is precisely the means by which banter fulfils its solidarity-enhancing function. In other words, in order to work, banter necessitates that participants not only be aware of Politeness1 norms but also that they acknowledge such norms as canonical ones. The normative point of view, then, is not imputed upon the situation by the analyst, as Eelen claims, but is rather inherent in the practice itself, and should therefore be taken seriously and accounted for. In sum, the mere possibility of impoliteness and related notions such as banter confirms the social regulatory role of Politeness1; none of these could work if social regulation were not an important function of Politeness1 in the first place. A theory of im/politeness (or Politeness2) should account for this finding by incorporating a reference to norms. The second theme that emerges from this overview of Politeness1 norms in different cultures and historical periods is their ambivalent relationship with morals. In the earlier texts, politeness and morality appear to be two sides of the same coin, often closely associated with the divine. For instance, maxim 13 of the Instruction of Ptahhotep reads: If you are in the antechamber, stand and sit as fits your rank, Which was assigned to you the first day. Do not trespass you will be turned back,
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(Lichtheim 1973: 67)
But politeness and morality can also be viewed as inseparable without reference to the divine. We have here a reiteration of the classical ideal ¬ w ka œ gauo ¬ w (lit. ‘beautiful and (morally) good’),23 succinctly capof kalo tured in Cicero’s aphorism: “what is proper is morally right, and what is morally right is proper” (De Officiis I, 94). Yet, the existence of two separate lexemes rather than one honestas vs. decorum suggests an awareness of morality and politeness as two distinct, if interdependent, phenomena. This creates the possibility of a two-way relationship between them. For Cicero, this relationship went from (underlying) morality to (surface) politeness: “[propriety] is manifested only when there is pre-existing moral rectitude [emphasis mine]” (De Officiis I, 94). However, the opposite is also possible. This is the case, for instance, with Islamic adab (see Section 2.2), but also, as Young argues, with (at least some) nineteenth-century American etiquette books: the end goal for many advice writers and perhaps also for polite practitioners was to make manners sincere, blurring distinctions between character and outward comportment, authenticity and artifice, virtue and veneer […] The rules of conversational etiquette, in this light, create a model for practice in which artful speech is both ‘the index of the soul’ […] and the means by which speakers become sincere and ethically attuned [emphasis mine]. (Young 2010: 242244) The intimate relationship between morality and politeness described so far can become strained at times of rapid social transformation, when competing interests can pull the two apart relegating them to different spheres. The rise of the middle class, urbanization, the secularization of society, and the emancipation of women played this catalytic role in ancient Egypt, medieval Islam, the European Middle Ages, and eighteenth-century Britain, respectively. Emptied of moral content, politeness becomes “mere conduct”, a faint and potentially treacherous reflection of one’s underlying morality. This opens the way for “politeness [to be] seen as hypocritical or insincere […]. [T]he speaker’s linguistic behaviour is evaluated as “polite”, only there are doubts as to whether this outward appearance matches the speaker’s actual intentions” (Eelen 2001: 41).
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Much has been made in the recent im/politeness literature of this possibility for politeness to be negatively evaluated (cf. Eelen 2001: 367; Mills 2003: 73; Watts 2003: 18, 260). Yet, as I hope to have shown above, this is to some degree a culturally-biased perspective, in that, despite being true of politeness in several unrelated times and places, it is not true of all of them. What this means for a theory of im/politeness is that, while Politeness1 will always encompass an evaluative moment, Politeness2 should account for this (implicit or explicit) measuring up of one’s behaviour against some standard without necessarily predicting the direction of the evaluation, which may be positive or negative. What will remain constant in both cases is the passing of a judgement on the speaker based on her verbal behaviour. This judgement may be about any number of aspects related to the speaker, including her group (ethnic, sexual, and so on) affiliation, liking of the addressee, or even mood of the moment. Crucially, depending on this judgement, the addressee will go on to position himself in particular ways vis-a`-vis the speaker. In other words, evaluation never takes place just for the sake of evaluation; it is morally charged and leads to interactional consequences. These interactional consequences are stressed time and again by the authors of the manuals overviewed earlier, and constitute, alongside norms, a second component of a theory of im/politeness (or Politeness2) that emerges from our investigation of Politeness1 norms. 4. Summary and conclusions
I have surveyed a number of influential texts capturing Politeness1 norms in different parts of the world from antiquity to this day. This investigation revealed two overarching themes about the role of politeness (and, by implication, impoliteness) in these cultures. The first concerns the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms. In playing this role, Politeness1 norms perform an important gate-keeping (or social categorization) function which is fundamental to the preservation of a social order, resembling in this respect religious and moral principles (from which Politeness1 norms are often indistinguishable, especially in the earlier texts). The second theme that emerged from this investigation concerns precisely this relationship of Politeness1 norms with an underlying morality, a relationship which spans the range from identification (“what is proper is morally right, and what is morally right is proper” in Cicero’s De Officiis I, 94) to diametric opposition (the “precepts which define the gentleman [… are …] almost all […] negative” (Waugh, cited in Carre´ 1994: 12). These two themes constitute opportune starting points for working our way back from Politeness1 norms to a theory of im/politeness (or Politeness 2). Increasing attention to the distinction between these two different “orders” of politeness over the past couple of decades has led
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to considerable soul-searching among politeness theorists regarding which of the two should form the basis of a theory of im/politeness. Eelen (2001: 4876) has convincingly argued that: Although very few theories make explicit statements about their orientation towards the distinction, it [is] nevertheless seen to be implicitly present in each account. Some frameworks claim a Politeness2 viewpoint […] but in the actual course of their analysis end up making claims and statements about what goes on in speakers’ heads. Other frameworks claim the opposite: their intention is to represent ‘local’ or commonsense notions of politeness […] but they end up with systems or models that lead to counterintuitive results or theoretically contradictory statements when consistently applied to actual cases, or confronted with ordinary speakers’ definitions or evaluations. So the theoretical accounts invariably occupy an ambiguous position in relation to the distinction. (2001: 7576) By affording us with some glimpses into the intertwining of Politeness1 and Politeness2, the analysis presented in this article goes some way toward explaining why it has been so difficult to keep these two notions apart in previous research. The search for a theory based on one undiluted by elements of the other is destined to fail precisely because it fails to acknowledge their intimate intertwining. I have attempted to trace an alternative path. Specifically, I build on norms of Politeness1, as attested in manuals from different historical periods and cultures, to extract from them the core elements of a theory of Politeness2. Two elements stand out: the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms, and the fact that they lead to interactional consequences in virtue of being morally charged. In Terkourafi (forthcoming), I propose that the first may be captured by incorporating into a theory of im/politeness the notion of a cognitive frame (Terkourafi 1999, 2001, 2009), while the second leads us to the notion of face (as revised by Terkourafi 2007, 2008), making these two into central elements of an empirically grounded theory of Politeness2. Bionotes
Marina Terkourafi is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in post-Gricean pragmatics, theories of im/politeness, socio-historical linguistics, and construction grammar(s). Her work has appeared in journals such as Cognition and Emotion, Diachronica, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, Language in Society, and Journal of Greek Linguistics. Currently, she is working on a monograph ‘From politeness to impoliteness:
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The frame-based approach’ (to be published by Cambridge University Press). She is also an Associate Editor for the International Review of Pragmatics and Co-Editor of the companion book series Empirical Foundations of Theoretical Pragmatics (both published by Brill). E-mail:
[email protected] Notes 1. A common term for V forms is of course the “plural of politeness” (Holton et al. 1997: 197), while neg-raising is the phenomenon where a narrow-scope negation operator (internal) takes wide scope over the sentence (external), as in English “I don’t think he’s coming” standing in for “I think he’s not coming”. In an early account, use of the “illogical” neg-raised form in French is attributed to “the wish to attenuate the rigour of the defence [translation mine]” (Martinon 1927: 536). Regarding tense and aspect, Jespersen (1933: 285) noted that “It would seem or one would think is a more polite or guarded way of saying “it seems”.” Finally, Triantafyllidis (1963 [1927]: 147) noted the use of diminutives in Modern Greek “to phrase something more politely”. The tendency to associate particular forms with politeness is not a modern one: writing in the second century CE, Herodianus ¬ to pre ¬ pon ; Triantafylremarked that diminutives may be used “for decency” (dia lidis 1963 [1927]: 148). 2. This first wave was led by Lakoff (1973), followed by Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]), and Leech (1983). I have elsewhere referred to these authors’ work jointly as the “traditional view” (Terkourafi 2005). 3. For an alternative view, see Watts (2003, 2005) and Locher and Watts (2005), and responses by Terkourafi (2005) and Haugh (2007). I return to this point in Section 4. 4. Below, I propose “face” and “frames” as such notions. See also Terkourafi 2005, 2008. 5. “Im/politeness” is a notational shorthand for this expanded notion. 6. Eelen’s critique focuses on theories that appeared from the 1970s to the 1990s. Specifically, he discusses: Lakoff (1973), Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]), Fraser and Nolen (1981), Leech (1983), Ide (1989), Blum-Kulka (1987), Gu (1990), Arndt and Janney (1992), and Watts (1992). 7. See: Instruction of Any, 15001300 BCE (Lichtheim 1976: 135); Instruction of Amenemope, 1100 BCE (Lichtheim 1976: 147); Instruction of Ankhsheshonq, before c. 50 BCE (Lichtheim 1980: 159); Instruction of Papyrus Insinger, before c. 100 CE (Lichtheim 1980: 184). I am grateful to Eleanor Dickey for providing me with references to the Egyptian, Greek and Hebrew texts mentioned in this paragraph. 8. All references are to George Bühler’s 1886 translation (Manu 1886). 9. For instance, chapter 4, verse 240, reads: “Single is each being born; single it dies; single it enjoys (the reward of its) virtue; single (it suffers the punishment of its) sin”; similarly, chapter 6, verse 42: “Let him always wander alone, without any companion, in order to attain (final liberation), fully understanding that the solitary (man, who) neither forsakes nor is forsaken, gains his end.” 10. See al-Adab al-Kabir, ‘The Major Compendium on Manners’, and al-Adab alSaghir, ‘The Minor Compendium on Manners’, translated into English by Kaufmann (1997: 191240). These works are considered precursors of the genre of Mirrors of Princes, which served a twofold, practical-cum-ethical, intention, and was inaugurated by Tahir’s epistle to his son (821 CE; Bosworth 1998: 528). Works in this genre also include Al Jahiz’s Kitab al-Bukhala (‘Book of Misers’), which deals with the etiquette of meals and table manners among other things, and Ibn
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11. 12. 13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
23.
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Qutayba’s Adab al-katib (‘The Secretary’s Culture’) and Uyun al-akhbar (‘Quintessential reports’), addressed to the class of secretaries and the general public respectively (Bosworth 1998: 600). On the association between politeness and standard language, see also Section 2.6. A similar point is made with respect to the functionality of etiquette in 19th century American society by Young (2010: 237); see also Section 3 below. This view is represented, for instance, by Cicero’s De Officiis I, 934 (cited below) and by French eighteenth century author Franc¸ois-Vincent Toussaint, who asserted that “civility is […] with respect to men, what external worship is with regard to the deity: a public testimony of our internal sentiments” (cited in Georgia 1994: 174). Georgia (1994: 172) makes a similar point based on the etymology of Latin moralis from mor-, ‘custom’, pl. mores, ‘manners, morals, character’. The symposium appears to have been a locus of learning good manners already before the fourth century BCE. For an overview of related works and in-depth analysis, see Nadeau (2010: 97152). For a chronological classification of similar gnomic works in the Western tradition from antiquity to 1450 CE, see Taylor (1992: 23). In the second and third lines of this excerpt (Piers Plowman, lines 10.19110.197), Langland cites Cato’s distich i.26 in the original Latin. I thank Benjamin Slade and Anthony Augoustakis for their help translating this excerpt. Among the works mentioned so far, this is true, for instance, of the Instructions of Ptahhotep, of Any, and of Ankhsheshonq, Confucius’ Analects, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero’s De Officiis, and Tahir’s Epistle to his son. On the question of its authorship, see Georgia (1994: 6993). Pace Georgia (1994: 87), who derives English etiquette from the French word for “ticket”. Netiquette is the topic of several recent studies on im/politeness, including Hongladarom and Hongladarom (2005), Hardaker (2010), and a special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research 6:1 (March 2010). Although in the product description the book is characterized as a “humorous gift book”, the same description ends by suggesting that “maybe, by becoming more aware, we’ll attempt to curb ourselves, even a little bit, into becoming more considerate and hopefully, polite!” (http://www.amazon.com/Rude-TrainingManual-Mastering-Rudeness/dp/0967248337; accessed 14 December 2010). In other words, even a rudeness manual, if it has a didactic goal at all, cannot aim at anything other than politeness. It is worth noting, in relation to the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms discussed above, that in classical Athens this became a fixed phrase by which the aristocracy referred to itself, while by the fourth century the term had been appropriated by non-aristocrats as well (Donlan 1973).
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