Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2, University of Rostock (Institut für Anglistik & Amerikanistik), course: Linguistic Politeness, language: English, abstract: Positive politeness strategies are based on Brown and Levinson’s theory about politeness in general. They distinguish between two kinds of politeness – positive and negative politeness. Even though their theory about speech acts has been developed in 1978, it does not seem to be outdated. Brown and Levinson are still the leading linguists in the field of politeness who explain which positive politeness strategies people follow during speech acts. The strategies of positive politeness not only apply to speech, to spoken language and recorded speech; but also to written texts. There seems to be a difference in use of positive politeness strategies in written texts and speech act. Various problems occurred while working on the paper. First, it was very difficult to find an interview, which could be downloaded from the internet. Secondly, this interview had to be interesting enough to make it pleasurable to work on. And lastly, it was necessary to find an interview which can be used throughout this paper as an example to illustrate all 15 strategies of positive politeness. This seemed to be the most substantial problem. It is almost impossible to find an interview, which follows all 15 strategies. I assume that not all 15 strategies of positive politeness had been used during the interview. This paper will deal with documentary of the British rock band Coldplay. It was recorded from the BBC homepage, where you find links to British radio stations, and I edited the interview by cutting out musical interludes. The talk was broadcasted on Radio 1 in the Steve Lamacq’s show “Bigger, Stronger - Coldplay's early days”1. Even though I contacted Radio 1, I was not able to find out the exact date when the interview was broadcasted.

This book studies the principles for constructing polite speeches, based on the detailed study of three unrelated languages and cultures.

This book investigates how speakers of English, Polish and Russian deal with offensive situations. It reveals culture-specific perceptions of what counts as an apology and what constitutes politeness. It offers a critical discussion of Brown and Levinson's theory and provides counterevidence to the correlation between indirectness and politeness underlying their theory. Their theory is applied to two languages that rely less heavily on indirectness in conveying politeness than does English, and to a speech act that does not become more polite through indirectness. An analysis of the face considerations involved in apologising shows that in contrast to disarming apologies, remedial apologies are mainly directed towards positive face needs, which are crucial for the restoration of social equilibrium and maintenance of relationships. The data show that while English apologies are characterised by a relatively strong focus on both interlocutors negative face, Polish apologies display a particular concern for positive face. For Russian speakers, in contrast, apologies seem to involve a lower degree of face threat than they do in the other two languages."

Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Hamburg (FB Anglistics), 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Effective communication is a key process in everyday life. Not only do we need to communicate about business and public affairs but also about ourselves and the things which concern us personally. In each case, it is highly interesting to analyse how we try to convey the information we want to get across: Naturally enough, we make use of conventional language but we are also creative and constantly invent new words, phrases and formulations. This, according to Blank, is due to the fact that: "Linguistic (and even non-linguistic) communication can be seen as a process whereby people try to maximize their communicative success by minimalizing their linguistic effort" (1993, p. 6). Sometimes, however, we diverge from the maximally effective way of communication and, naturally-enough, the question arises, why we do so. The divergence, however, which seems to be highly irrational as far as efficiency is concerned will turn out to be highly rationally motivated - with politeness being the main reason for this process. In the following, I will (1) sketch out the maxims according to which effective communication takes place and (2) analyse the reasons why it is sometimes advisable to intentionally counteract to the requisite maxims. For this purpose, I will refer to different works of well known linguists, especially to the model of politeness suggested by Brown and Levinson ( 1987). It is the final aim of this paper to reanalyse the model put forward by these two linguists and, thereby, evaluate to what extent their model covers politeness phenomena.

The first substantial textbook on pragmatics to focus on Spanish. The authors discuss key theories within the Anglo-American tradition of pragmatics, concentrating on the relationship between language use and socio-cultural contexts, and their uptake by Hispanists. Drawing on research by foremost scholars in the field, with reference to a wide range of 'Spanishes', including a first treatment of 'sociopragmatic variation'. Concepts throughout are illustrated with real language examples taken from different Spanish corpora. The book is carefully structured to be appropriate for upper-level undergraduate, as well as postgraduate, students.

Seminar paper from the year 1997 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0 (B), University of Hannover (English Seminar), 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Introduction: Politeness as a General Concept According to Brown and Levinson (1978) politeness is a complex system for all human puplic and social interaction with the conventional politeness forms such as requests (e.g.: May I please use your phone?), excuses (e.g.: I'm very sorry for being late ), greetings (e.g.: Good evening, my dear Mister Jones.), orders (e.g.: Could you please be so kind as to give me the sugar?), claims (e.g.: Excuse me, this is my seat.), offers (e.g.: Would you like to have a cup of coffee?), 'please' and of course 'thank you'. In 1973, Robin Lakoff pointed out that the system of politeness follows two major rules: 1. Be clear. 2. Be polite. The first rule includes Grice's postulates accounting efficiency, economy and informativeness: a) Quantity: Be as informative as required. Be no more informative than required. b) Quality: Say only what you believe to be true. c) Relevance: Be relevant. d) Manner: Be perspicuous. Don't be ambiguous. Don't be obscure. Be succint. ...]