Task II: Politeness and interaction
Politeness: the use of communicative strategies tomaintain or promote social harmony. the use
of expressions that are both contextually appropriate and socially positive as understood by the
target.
Written or spoken words or utterances can be studied by applying different strategies concerned
with the study of pragmatics. Pragmatics includes four main areas of study: these are, the study
of speaker meaning, contextual meaning, how more gets communicated than just what is said
and finally the expression of relative distance (Yule, 2002:3). An analysis of speaker meaning
would include taking a closer look at what people mean by what they say instead of analyzing
what the sentences and phrases mean by themselves. A study of contextual meaning would
include interpretations of how speakers choose and compile their utterances depending on who
they are talking to and when and where the communication is taking place. Investigating the
relevance of what is communicated by non-verbal means and 5 how close the relationship is
between the speakers respectively, Informs us of how more gets communicated than by verbal
means.
In face- to- face communication we use politeness strategies in order to avoid face threatening
acts when we interact with one another. As more and more communication takes place in an
online environment, it is interesting to look at whether and how politeness strategies are used in
situations like this. Presumably, the absence of gestures and facial expressions in online
conversations may force the speaker to use other means or strategies to compensate
