Negative Politeness Strategies (Brown and Levinson)

Another kind of politeness strategies is negative politeness. This strategy used when S wants to show that he cares and respect H’s Negative Face. If S did or will do an FTA, he will minimize the threat by using apology, deference, hedges and other strategies. Negative Politeness strategies consist in assurances that the speaker recognizes and respects the addressee’s negative-Face wants and will not (or will only minimally) interfere with the addressee Freedom of Action.

This strategy assumes that there might be some social distance or awkwardness between speaker and hearer and it is likely to be used whenever a speaker wants to put a social brake on his interaction (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 129).

Moreover, they (p. 129) introduce some strategies that included in negative politeness, they are:

1. Be direct
In the formal situation, sometimes the directness is needed to minimize the imposition by saying the point and avoiding the further imposition of prolixity and ambiguity as mentioned by Lakoff (in Goody, 1996). Fortunately, this strategy is rarely used in negative politeness because it is more relevant to be used in bald on-record strategy. For example, “Help me to pick up these boxes!”
In this strategy, S chooses to come rapidly to the point directly when she or he wants something. She does not care about maintaining face of the H but still respects and assure not to disturb the freedom of action of H.

2. Don’t assume about H’s wants
This type tries to avoid assuming that anything in FTA is desired or believed by H. it is stressed by hedging such assumptions in the form of word and phrase that modify the degree of predicate membership. For example, “A swing is sort of a toy’, or “You are quite right”.

3. Don’t coerce H
a. By avoiding coercing H’s response means that S gives H the option not to do a certain act.

b. By avoiding coercion of H means that S minimizes the threat by clarifying S view of the P, D and R values. 

c. Communicate S want not to impinge on H Indicate that S is aware and he takes account in his decision to communicate the FTA is one of the ways to satisfy H’s negative face.

4. Redress others’ wants of H

This is the higher strategy of negative politeness that consists of offering partial compensation for the face threat in FTA. It shows that negative politeness attends to other wants can be derived (H’s desire for territorial integrity and self determination). 

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Concept of Face and FTA (Face Threatening Acts)

Face
Based on Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) “Face is derived from the notion of Goffman and English people which is related to the idea of being embarrassed or humiliated, or ‘loosing Face’.” Since Face is something that is emotionally invested, can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, a person has to pay attention to his interlocutor’s Face. In other words, the speaker and the hearer must cooperate in maintaining each other’s Face in interaction. The action of maintaining each other’s Face called ‘Face work’.
Moreover, Goffman in Renkema (1993: 13) introduces the concept of face as an image which is projected by a person in his social contacts with others. Face has the meaning as in the saying to loose fact. Based on the opinion of Goffman, every participant in the social process has the need to be appreciated by others and the need to be free and not to be disturbed. He calls the need to be appreciated as a ‘positive face’ and the need to be free or not to be disturbed is called as ‘negative face’.
While negative face is defined as the desire of every member that he has Freedom of Action as well as freedom of imposition (the desire to not to be disturbed). For example is a father who is in the middle of giving advice to his children expects that his children do not tend to interrupt his speech (freedom of imposition).


Face Threatening Acts (FTA)
Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with the FTA’s. We understand the notion of ‘face’ previously from the dramaturgical theories of Erving Goffman that individuals as social actors perform (present a public self) on the stage of everyday life. The acts that threaten either the negative or positive face of the hearer are called ‘Face Threatening Acts’ (FTA) (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 65). There are acts that threaten the H’s Negative Face such as order, request, suggestion, advice, reminding, threat, warning, offer, promise, compliment and expression of negative emotion. Here, the speaker does not intend to avoid impeding H’s Freedom of Action. For example, when you ask someone to lend you some money, you are considered threaten that person’s Negative Face. It happens since you have violated his want to be free from being imposed.
In contrast, there are acts that threaten the H’s Positive Face such as expression of dissatisfaction, criticisms, complaints, accusation, and insult, disagreement, out of control emotion, irreverence, and bringing bad news about H or boasting about S, raising divisive topics, and blatant non-cooperation in an activity. All these acts indicate that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feeling or wants. For example, disagreeing with someone’s opinion also causes a threat to his Positive Face, as it means that you indicate that he is wrong about something.

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Positive Politeness Strategies (Brown and Levinson)

Positive politeness is redress directed to the addressee’s positive face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the actions/ acquisitions/ values resulting from them) should be thought of as desirable. Redress consists in partially satisfying that desire by communicating that one’s own wants (or some them) are in some respects similar to the addressee’s wants. There are 15 strategies of positive politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson, those are:

Strategy 1: Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods)
This output suggests that S should take notice of aspects of H’s condition (noticeable changes, remarkable possessions, anything which looks as though H would want S to notice and approve of it).
e.g. “You must be hungry,
it’s a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch?”

Another aspect of the notice output is that when H makes an FTA against himself (a breakdown of body control, or any faux pas), S should ‘notice’ it and indicate that he’s not embarrassed by it. (By contrast, in negative politeness S should always ignore H’s faux pas). He can do this by a joke, or teasing H about his penchant for faux pas: For example: “God you are farty tonight!”

Strategy 2: Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)
This is often done with exaggerated intonation, stress, and other aspects of prosodic, as well as with intensifying modifiers.
e. g: “How wonderful!”

Strategy 3: Intensify interest to H
S wants to share his interest to H as a form of S’s contribution into the conversation. Therefore, S exaggerates facts as well as he makes good story to draw H as a participant into the conversation, and H also usually uses tag questions like ‘uhuh’, ‘what do you think?’, etc. Sometimes, this can involve switching back between past and present tenses.
e. g: “I never imagined that there were thousands beautiful girls in Jim’s party
last night!”

Strategy 4: Use in-group identity markers
By using any of the innumerable ways to convey in-group membership, S can implicitly claim the common ground with H that is carried by that definition of the group. These include in group usages of address forms, of language or dialect, of jargon or slang, and of ellipsis.

• Address forms. Other address forms used to convey such in-group membership include generic names and terms of address like Mate, honey, dear, babe, mom, brother, sister, cutie, sweetheart, guys. Using such in group kinds of address forms with imperatives. For example: “Come here, honey” indicates that S considers the relative P (power, status difference) between himself and the addressee to be small thus softening the imperative by indicating that it isn’t a power-backed command.
• Use of in-group language or dialect. Another type of code-switching phenomenon is the switch in English into a spurious dialect, or a dialect not normally used by S or H, to soften an FTA or turn it into a joke.
• Use of jargon or slang. Use brand names in a request may stress that S and H share an (in-group) reliance on the required object.
• Contraction and Ellipsis. S and H must share some knowledge about the context that makes the utterance understandable (for example that S and H are cooperating in building a house and S has the hammer in his hand).

Strategy 5: Seek Agreement

• Safe topics. The raising of ‘safe topics’ allows S to stress his agreement with H and therefore to satisfy H’s desire to be ‘right’, or to be corroborated in his opinions.
• Repetition. Agreement may also be stressed by repeating part or all of what the preceding S has said in the conversation and by using that function to indicate emphatic agreement (‘yes’, ‘Really’, etc) whenever someone is telling story.

e. g: “There was flood in my hometown.”
“Oh my God. Flood!”

Strategy 6: Avoid Disagreement

• Token agreement. S may go in twisting their utterances so as to appear to agree or to hide disagreement-to respond to a preceding utterance with ‘yes, but…..'in effect, rather than a blatant ‘No’.

e. g. H: “How the girl looked like, beautiful?”
        S: “Yes, I think she is quite, but not really beautiful, she is certainly not really ugly.”

• Pseudo-agreement. Another example of apparent or pseudo-agreement is found in English in the use of then as a conclusory marker.

e.g. I’ll meet you in front of the theatre just before 8.0, then.

• White lies. S may do white lie to hide disagreement. By doing this, S is saving H’s face.

e. g. In response to a request to borrow a car, “Oh I can’t, my father will use it
tonight.”

• Hedging opinions. To soften FTA of suggesting, criticizing or complaining, hedges may also be used.

e. g.: “I know you are sort of a polite person”

Strategy 7: Presuppose/ raise/ assert common ground

• Gossip or small talk. S is talking about unrelated topics to show that S is interested in H as the mark of friendship and does not come only to impose him.

e. g.: “You look so bright today. It must be because MU had defeated Chelsea, right? By the way, can you take me to the airport this afternoon?”

• Point-of-view operations. S may claim common ground by using cooperation point of view. (S speaks as if H were S, or H’s knowledge were equal to S’s knowledge).

e. g. I had a really hard time learning to drive, didn’t I.

• Presupposition manipulations. S presupposes something when he presumes that it is mutually taken for granted.

e.g.: “Wouldn’t you like a drink?”

Strategy 8: Jokes
Jokes can be used to stress the fact that there must be some mutual background knowledge and values that S and H share. That is why, the strategy of joking may be useful in diminishing the social distance between S and H.
e. g.: “OK if I tackle those cookies now?”
“How about lending me this old heap of junk?” (H’s new Cadillac)

Strategy 9: Assert or Presuppose S’s knowledge of and concerns for H’s wants.
It is the way to indicate that S and H are co-operators, and thus potentially to put pressure on H to cooperate with S. S wants to assert and imply knowledge of H’s wants and willingness to fit one’s own wants in with them.
e. g.: “I understand you can do it yourself, but this time, do what I suggested
you.”

Strategy 10: Offer or promises
S and H are good co-operators that they share some goals or S is willing to help to achieve those goals. Promise or offer demonstrates S’s good attention in satisfying H’s positive-face wants, even if they are false.
e. g.: “I’ll go there sometimes”

Strategy 11: Be optimistic
S assumes that H wants S’s wants for S (or for S and H) and will help to obtain them. This usually happens among people with close relationship.
e. g.: “You’ll tell your father that you did it, I hope”

Strategy 12: Include both S and H in the activity
Here, S manipulates the subject of an activity is done together. S uses an inclusive ‘we’ from when S actually means ‘you’ or ‘me’. Inclusive form ‘we’ is usually used in the construction ‘let’s’.
e. g.: “Bring us the book’ (i.e. me)
“Let’s go downtown, uh?” (i. e you)

Strategy 13: Give (or ask for) reasons
S uses H as the reason why S wants something so that it will seem reasonable to the hearer. S assumes (via optimism) that there are no good reasons why H should not or cannot cooperate.
e. g.:”Why not lend me your car for the weekend?”

Strategy 14: Assume or assert reciprocity
S asks H to cooperate with him by giving evidence of reciprocal rights or obligations between S and H. Thus, S may say, in effect, “I’ll do x for you if you can do y for me”.
e. g.:”I’ll tell you what it looks like if you tell me where she is now.”

Strategy 15: Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)
S satisfies H’s Positive Face want by giving gift, not only tangible gifts, but human relation wants which are the wants to be liked, admired, cared about, understood, listened to, etc. in other words, this strategy is usually used for the benefit of H.
e. g.:”I’m sorry to hear that”.

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Leech's Politeness Principles

Politeness concerns a relationship between self and other. In conversation, self is identified as the speaker and other is the hearer. Beside that, the speaker also shows politeness to the third parties who may be present or not. The politeness principle (PP) is introduced by Geoffrey Leech. PP is Minimizing (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs, and there is a corresponding positive version (maximizing (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs) which is somewhat less important. PP proposes how to produce and understand language based on politeness. The purpose of PP is to establish feeling of community and social relationship. Thus, PP focuses on process of interpretation that the center of the study is on the effect of the hearer rather than the speaker. There are six maxims of the politeness principle that are used to explain relationship between sense and force in daily conversation, those are:

The Tact maxim
The tact maxim is minimizing cost to other and maximizing benefit to other. This maxim is applied in Searle’s speech act, commissives and directives called by Leech as impositives. Commissives is found in utterances that express speaker’s intention in the future action. Then, Directives/ impositives are expressions that influence the hearer to do action. The example of the tact maxim is as follows:

“Won‘t you sit down?”

It is the directive/ impositive utterance. This utterance is spoken to ask the hearer sitting down. The speaker uses indirect utterance to be more polite and minimizing cost to the hearer. This utterance implies that sitting down is benefit to the hearer.

The Generosity Maxim
The generosity maxim states to minimizing benefit to self and maximizing cost to self. Like tact maxim, the generosity maxim occurs in commissives and directives/ impositives. This maxim is centered to self, while the tact maxim is to other. The example will be illustrated as follows:

“You must come and dinner with us.”

It is an advice utterance that is involved in directive illocutionary act. In this case the speaker implies that cost of the utterance is to his self. Meanwhile, the utterance implies that benefit is for the hearer.

The Approbation Maxim
The approbation maxim requires to minimizing dispraise of other and maximizing praise of other. This maxim instructs to avoid saying unpleasant things about others and especially about the hearer. This maxim occurs in assertives/ representatives and expressives. Assertives/ representatives are utterances that express the true propositional. Meanwhile, expressive are utterances that show the speaker feeling. The example is sampled below.

A: “The performance was great!”
B: “Yes, wasn’t it!”

In the example, A gives a good comment about the performance. He talks the pleasant thing about other. This expression is a congratulation utterance that maximizes praise of other. Thus this utterance is included the approbation maxim.

The Modesty Maxim
In the modesty maxim, the participants must minimize praise of self and maximize dispraise of self. This maxim is applied in assertives/ representatives and expressives like the approbation maxim. Both the approbation maxim and the modesty maxim concern to the degree of good or bad evaluation of other or self
that is uttered by the speaker. The approbation maxim is exampled by courtesy of congratulation. On other hand, the modesty maxim usually occurs in apologies. The sample of the modesty maxim is below.

“Please accept this small gift as prize of your achievement.”

In this case, the utterance above is categorized as the modesty maxim because the speaker maximizes dispraise of himself. The speaker notices his utterance by using “small gift”.

The Agreement Maxim
In the agreement maxim, there is tendency to maximize agreement between self and other people and minimize disagreement between self and other. The disagreement, in this maxim, usually is expressed by regret or partial agreement. This maxim occurs in assertives/ representatives illocutionary act. There example will be illustrated below.

A: “English is a difficult language to learn.”
B: “True, but the grammar is quite easy.”

From the example, B actually does not agree that all part of English language difficult to learn. He does not express his disagreement strongly to be more polite. The polite answer will influence the effect of the hearer. In this case, B’s answer minimize his disagreement using partial agreement, “true, but…”.

The Sympathy Maxim
The sympathy maxim explains to minimize antipathy between self and other and maximize sympathy between self and other. In this case, the achievement being reached by other must be congratulated. On other hand, the calamity happens to other, must be given sympathy or condolences. This maxim is applicable in assertives/ representatives. The example is as follows.

“I’m terribly sorry to hear about your father.”

It is a condolence expression which is expressed the sympathy for misfortune. This utterance is uttered when the hearer gets calamity of father’s died or sick. This expression shows the solidarity between the speaker and the hearer.

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Brown and Levinson's Politeness Strategies

As it has been discussed in the previous article: means of communication, that as a means of communication, related to discourse study, language has two primary functions, those are, transactional and interactional function. In a simple definition, the first term refers to language as a means of conveyance of information, while the second refers to language that functions as a means of social relation maintenance. In line with the second function of language,  interactional function, people have to see to whom they are speaking, because it may be some expressions are considered rude. It is needed to identify the social values of a society in order to speak politely. Making decisions about what is not regarded as polite expressions in any community will involve assessing social relationship along the dimensions of social distance or solidarity, and relative power or status. Being polite may also involve the dimension of formality.

The study of politeness strategy is basically the study of knowing the way the people use the language while they are having interaction or communication. It preaches how to use the language and conduct the conversation run well and go smoothly.
In case of communication, however, everyone wants to be understood and not to be disturbed by others; moreover, he or she does not want to loose his face while communicating. Loosing face means the notions of being embarrassed, humiliated or disappointed. That is why face is something that is emotionally invested, maintained, enhanced and constantly attended in an interaction.

Concept of face
Face means respect, self-esteem, self-image in the community, Brown and Levinson say that society is governed by two desires: to be free from imposition, and to be appreciated and approved of. First desire considered a negative politeness, and the latter is considered a positive politeness.
Face is the central idea of ​​this theory:

• Negative face includes the following aspects: the basic demands of the private property and personal space, rights not to be disturbed, freedom of action and freedom from imposition. 
• Positive face refers to personality as well as desires that his own self-image is accepted and respected, the value of face is different in different cultures: the definite boundary  is a private space and the local culture. 

Face-Threatening Act (FTA) 
Meanwhile, in a conversation, the interlocutor could be a threat to someone's face and the face of his own by making a question, suggestion, criticism, reveling mistake, thanking, and so on. All of these are so-called face-threatening act (FTA). Most of the speech acts of speaker emerged potentially results FTA.

FTA could threaten the face of both positive and negative, as in point (I) and (II):
(I) Negative FTA: command, request, suggest, suggestions, remind, threaten, warn, offer, promise, express jealousy, admiration, hate, anger, passion, etc
(Ii) Positive FTA: an expression of disapproval, criticism, felt disgust, complaining, accusing, insulting, diagreeing, emotionally abusive, mentioning taboo topics, interrupting and uncooperative, etc.

4 Kinds of politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson) 
• The bald on-record strategy does nothing to minimize threats to the hearer's "face" (directly without regard to the "face" of listener-usually in a subordinate-supervisor relationship)

 e.g. close the door!

• The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize that your hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity. (Wish yourself image is accepted and appreciated)

e.g. we both know that (seek agreement) everything will be alright from now on.

Brown and Levinson propose fifteen positive and 10 negative politeness strategies in which for further explanation will be discussed in "Positive Politeness Vs. Negative Politeness Strategies".

kinds of positive politeness strategies
1. Notice, Attend to H: speakers are advised to pay attention to the condition of the listener
2. Exaggerate: exaggeration on the condition of the listener
3. Intensify interest: strengthening S's interest to the condition H
4. Use in group identity markers: put H as part of the community of S
5. Seek agreement: provide the same perception of the condition that occurs towards the S.
6. etc.

• The negative politeness strategy also Recognizes the hearer's face. But it also Recognizes that you are in some way imposing on them. (Right to not be disturbed)

e.g. "I do not want to bother you but ..." or "I was wondering if ..."

• Off-record indirect strategies the main purpose is to take some of the pressure off of you. You are trying to avoid the direct Face Threatening Act of asking something. (Do indirect FTA-satire / questions)

e.g. This day is very hot, is not it?

Used to tell someone standing / sitting near the window to open it.

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The Functions of Illocutionary Acts

Leech's (1993:104) purposes the illocutionary acts based on its functions. It is according to how illocutionary acts relate to the social goals or purposes of establishing and maintaining politeness. The form types of illocutionary acts functions are as follows:

1. Competitive aims at competing with the social purposes, such as ordering, asking, demanding, and begging. It is intended to produce some effects through action by the hearer. For instance, “I ask your cookies”.

2. Convivial aims in compliance with the social purposes, for instance offering, inviting, greeting, thanking and congratulating. Such as, “Do you want these cookies?”

3. Collaborative aims at ignoring the social purposes as like asserting, reporting, announcing, and instructing. It is commit the speaker to the truth of expressed proposition. For instance, “I like this book”.

4. Conflictive aims at conflicting against the social purposes. Such as threatening, accusing, and reprimanding. If you say again “I will say to your father”.

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See also:

• Austin's Speech Act Theory
• Performative vs. Constative Sentence
• Austin’s five categories of performative

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Kinds of Performative Utterance

Yule (1996: 53-54) states that one general classification system lists five types of general functions performed by speech acts, those are:

1. Directives
A directive speech act is an attempt by speaker to get hearer to do something. Example of directives are ordering, commanding, requesting, pleading, begging, entreating, daring, suggesting, inviting, questioning, insisting and permitting. Note that the action must be future and voluntary, because it is impossible to ask someone to perform an action in the past or to do something which is not a matter of human will. e.g. ;
• Give me your hand, please!
• Could you lend me a book, please!
The expressed psychological state is that speaker wants hearer to do something. The direction of fit is world-to-word, for speaker (S) is attempting to get the world resemble his or her words.

2. Commisives
In a commisives speech act, speaker commits himself or herself to the performance of an action. Examples of commisives are promising, pledging, threatening, guaranteeing, agreeing, consenting and refusing. Again, the promised action must be future and voluntary. The examples are;
• I’ll accompany you going to the market tomorrow
• If you disobey the rule, I will give you a punishment.
The expressed psychological state is that speaker intends to do something. The direction of fit is world-to-word.

3. Representatives (also known as “Assertives”)
In this type of speech act, speaker represents a state of affairs. Examples of representatives are affirming, declaring, describing, claiming, stating, explaining, classifying, insisting, emphasizing, and predicting.  representative commits speaker to the truth of the preposition. The expressed psychological state is one of belief. The direction of fit is wordto- world. The examples are:
• Dad : he is my son
• I tell you that Jakarta is the capital city of Indonesia

4. Expressives
In an expressive speech act, speaker expresses a psychological state about the situation or state of affairs denoted by the preposition. Examples of expressives are thanking, apologizing, consoling, congratulating, greeting, deploring, and welcoming. The propositional content is something which affects speaker or hearer. In using expressive, the speaker makes words fit the world (feeling). e.g.
• I’m really sorry!
• Congratulation for your success
• Thank you for being helped, Nick!

5. Declaratives
Declaratives are the prototypical speech acts. Here the speaker brings about a change a world by uttering a locutionary act. The example of declaratives are declaring war, seconding a motion, adjourning a meeting, firing, nominating, betting, baptizing, finding guilty or innocent, divorcing arresting, and resigning. E.g.
• Priest: I now pronounce you husband and wife
• Bush : attack!, Iraq
The speaker has to have a special institutional role, in a specific context, in order to perform a declaration appropriately.
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See also:

• Austin's Speech Act Theory
• Performative vs. Constative Sentence
• Austin’s five categories of performative

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Cooperative Principles: The Hedging of Maxims

Hedging is any deliberately ambiguous statement or any equivocal statement. Grundy (2000) includes hedging among other mitigating devices in his politeness marker category ‘downgraders’. He calls there devices, hedges, play-downs, understaters, downtoner, or ‘minus’ comminters.

The hedges and intensifiers are more comment on the extent to which the speakers abiding by the maxims which guide our conversational contributions than a part of what is said or conveyed. It seems that when we talk, we not only convey messages, but also frequently like to tell each other how informative, well founded, relevant, and perspicuous these messages are. Speakers frequently use highly grammaticalized hedges and intensifiers to inform their addressees of the extent to which they are abiding by the maxims. These hedges and intensifiers show that the guiding principles for talk suggested by Grice really do exist and that speakers orient reflexively to these principles as they communicate.

Levinson (1985) states that the theory of conversational implicature is a theory of language in which language is viewed as a self-contained system of rules. He further argues that there are interesting relations between structure and function of the language. Thus, the English particles such as ‘well’, ‘oh’, ‘ah’ ‘so’, ‘anyway’, ‘actually’, ‘still’, ‘after all’, are the lexical items which at time refer to the notion of conversational implicature and are being described as “maxim hedges” indication how an utterance is preface in order o make up to cooperative expectation.

Moreover, in academic speech, hedging is most appropriately described as either (a) a lack of competence commitment to the truth value of an accompanying proposition, or (b) a desire not to express that commitment categorically.

Myers (1989) groups all linguistic devices under his categories of "negative politeness and hedging, focusing less on the description of the linguistic devices themselves than on their purpose or motivation. Further, hedging is a politeness strategy when it marks a claim or any other statement as being provisional, pending acceptance in the literature, acceptance by the community-in other words, acceptance by the listeners.  He goes to point out that hedging can be realized in any different linguistics forms, and gives examples of the use of condition statements, modifiers, verb choice, framing statement that indicates the weight a statement should have or the degree of doubt involved, and even statements of personal opinion.

Quality Hedges
Brown and Levinson (1990) state that quality hedges may suggest that the speaker is not taking full responsibilities for the truth of his utterances. For instance:
          think…
I         believe…
          assume…

Or alternatively they may stress S’s commitment to the truth of his utterances; in other words, they reflect the commitment of the writer to the quality of the proposition contained in the subsequent part of the statements and do not contribute truth value to the statements as a whole. Such as, I absolutely (deny/ promise/believe) that…, others take the opposite view and say…, The issue says…, It is quite right what people say…, Some people believe that…, So you can imagine even…, In this case..., etc. Or they may disclaim the assumption that the point of S’s assertion is to inform H, such as, As you know…, As it well known…, As you and I both know…, etc.

Quantity Hedges
Quantity hedges, we find archetypal examples in these English expressions, which give notice that not as much or not as precise information is provided as might be expected, such as: roughly, more or less, approximately, give or take a few, or so, I should think, I can’t tell you more than that it’s…, to some extent, all in all, in short, basically, so to speak, etc. the assertion of personal opinion show that the information tried to be conveyed is limited.

Relevance Hedges
In Relevance hedges, we note that because of sensitivity of topic changes as impositions on H’s face, such changes are often done off record. Hedges that mark the change, and perhaps partially apologize for it, include, by the way…, oh I know…, anyway…, this may not be relevant/ appropriate/ timely but…, I might mention at this point…, while I remember…, etc.

Manner Hedges
Finally, some common Manner hedges includes, what I meant was…, more clearly…, to put it more simply…, you see, yeah?, got it?, OK?, is that clear?, see?, etc.

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See also:
Grice's cooperative principle 
Cooperative Principle: Implicature
Cooperative Principle: Flouting Maxims
The Hedging of Maxims 

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Cooperative Principle: The Flouting of Maxims

The infringement of maxims which involves exploitation, that is, a procedure by which a maxim is flouted for the purpose of getting a conversational implicature, is usually carried out by means of indirect, contradictory utterances, or figure of speech such as irony, metaphor, overstatement, understatement, tautology, and hyperbole. Grundy (2000) states that whenever a maxim is flouted there must be an implicature to save the utterance from simply appearing to be a faulty contribution to a conversation.  Consider these four sentences examples taken from the previous post, Grice's Cooperative Principle:

(1)  A: What time is it?
      B: It's two a'clock, in fact it's four pass two, and now it's Sunday.

Maxim of quantity and its implicature occur when the speaker or the writer conveys messages that are not as informative as they are required or the information is too much and unnecessary. B flouts the maxim of quantity, since he gives too much information to A, while too much information can distract the listener. However, it is not very difficult to recover the implicature that B wants to show to A that he is a kind of "on time" person.

(2) A: What is the Capital City of Indonesia?
     B: I believe it's Bogor, or maybe Jakarta, Indonesia has wide territory. 

Maxim of quality and its implicature occur when your contribution one that is untrue or lack adequate evidence. B flouts the maxim of quality since he gives insincere answer for A's question. The implicature of this flouting maxim would be that B doesn't know exactly about Capital City of Indonesia.

(3) Mom: Have you done your homework?
     Son: My bicycle is broken mom. 

Maxim of relevance and its implicature arise when the speaker deviates from the particular topic being asked and discussed. The answer of the son is not answering the mother’s question. The son tries to direct his mother’s concern away from the question which he does not like. 

(4) It’s the taste

Maxims of manner and its implicature occur when the utterances are not brief, ambiguous, and obscure. Advertisements often flout the maxim of manner. The statement flouts maxim of manner because it is obscure. The utterances triggers an inference process in which the addressee looks for the likeliest that is relevant in the context that obtain – that the taste is good for people who favor Coca cola and bad for those who dislike it. 

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See also:
Grice's cooperative principle 
Cooperative Principle: Implicature
Cooperative Principle: Flouting Maxims
The Hedging of Maxims 

Read more »

Cooperative Principle: The Concept of Implicature

The concept of implicature was first introduced by Grice (1975) as the answer to the meaning concern which is unable to be covered by the ordinary semantics. It is insufficient to use semantics to uncover the meaning of utterances. The inappropriateness of understanding of meaning of utterances much influences the achievement of the communication purpose. The purpose of communication is in order the massage the speaker wants to convey is accepted appropriately by the hearer. To understand precisely what is meant by the speaker in uttering the utterances in a conversation, it is very important to understand the concept of implicature.

In conversation, the utterances produced by either the speaker or hearer has explicit and implicit meaning. Explicit meaning can be understood both by predicting the semantic meaning of the words within the conversation and by understanding the syntactic structure of the language used in the conversation. In the other hand, to understand the implicit meaning in a conversation, the rules of semantics and syntactic of the language is insufficient. Therefore, the concept of implicature was introduced. According to Brown and Yule (1983) implicature is used to calculate what is suggested and meant by the speaker as a different thing from what he actually said explicitly.

Furthermore, Grice (1975) states that there are two kinds of implicature, those are: conventional implicature and conversational implicature. The difference between them is that the former depends on something other than what is truth-conditional in the conversational use, or meaning, of particular form of expression, whereas the latter derives from a set of more general principles which regulate the proper conduct of conversation.
In order to have complete understanding about the difference between conventional and conversational implicature, pay attention to the following are examples:

(i) Mary got pregnant and John was pleased
(ii) Mary got pregnant but John was pleased.

The difference between the two utterances above is in the conjunction ‘and’ and ‘but’. In (i), the conjunction used is ‘and’, thus it means that the Mary’s pregnancy makes John happy or pleased. In the other hand, in (ii), the conjunction used is ‘but ‘, which shows contradiction, thus, it can mean that Mary’s pregnancy makes John unhappy or not pleased. By understanding the different meaning between conjunction ‘and’ and ‘but’ well, therefore, the meaning of the utterances in (i) and (ii) are clearly understood since the meaning of them is exactly the same with the meaning of structure of the utterances. The above case is called conventional implicature, it is resulted from the understanding of an utterance based on the structures form of the utterance.

Conversational implicature, on the other hand, has more various meanings since understanding the meaning of the utterance much depend on the context in which the utterance occurs. The conversational implicature arises as a result of the cooperative principle violence. A conversational implicature is, therefore, something which is implied in conversation, that is, something which is left implicit in actual language use. The example of conversational implicature as follows:

A: Has John arrived?
B: There is a red car in the garage.

B’s answer for A’s question has an implicature that John usually drives a red car; B has seen that there is a red car, which John usually drives, in the garage. Therefore, B concludes that John has arrived.

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See also:
Grice's cooperative principle 
Cooperative Principle: Implicature
Cooperative Principle: Flouting Maxims
The Hedging of Maxims 

Read more »

Austin’s Speech Act Theory

What is speech act: Brainstorming

Every word belonged to human language represents to the actual world, which means, there must be things, actions, or even characteristics in the actual world that can be seen, done, or felt when you say the words. Just say the word ‘table’, it represents a thing made of wood usually has square shape and four legs which function as the pair of chair. You can see the thing in the actual world, and of course in your mind there is an image about how the ‘table’ looks like. Or the word ‘walk’, you move from one place to another place by foot. The action is there, and it can be seen and done. Or the word hot, cool, beautiful, etc, they all have the same case since all of them can be felt directly in the actual world.

However, have you ever heard the word promise, command, suggest, advise, congratulate  etc? Can you see the particular action done by someone to refer to those? How is the form movement of the body? Can you imagine how the action represented by those words look like? Those words are called speech acts, that is language as action, which means by uttering the word you do the action, you are not just saying something but are actually doing something. If you say “get out of here!” actually you do command action, or “you should do this instead of that.” By uttering that sentence you perform an action that is suggesting, or etc.
It is important to note that the utterance sentence category that can be used to refer to speech act must be performative utterence/sentence.

You can perform at least three different kinds of act when you speak. There are locutionary act (as Searly called it utterance act) refers to the fact that you must use words and sentences if you are saying anything (the act of saying something), it functions merely to inform something, illocutionary act refers to the intent of the speaker, it functions not only to inform something but also to do something , (the act of doing something), and perlocutionary act refers to utterance that is uttered to affect the reader (the act of affecting someone), an act will be done by the hearer as the response to what the speaker says.

"I go to school every day"
That utterance is uttered merely to inform that I go to school every day.

"It's so hot inside here"
That utterance is categorized as illocotionary act since it has intent not merely to inform the situation of the room, but also to ask someone who stand near the window to open it, or etc.

"Yesterday I was little unwell"
That utterance is spoken by someone who did not attend to wedding party of his friend. therefore, the illocution of this utterance is apologizing and the perlocotion is asking his friend to understand his situation.

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See also:

• Austin's Speech Act Theory
• Performative vs. Constative Sentence
• Austin’s five categories of performative

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Grice's Cooperative Principle

The Gricean cooperative principle refers to the concept of the philosopher Grice about the cooperation between speakers in using the maxims. The cooperative principle makes our contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which we are engaged. Levinson (1985) states that the Gricean cooperative principle is construed as a theory of communication; it has the interesting consequence that it gives an account of how communication might be achieved in the absence of any conventional means for expressing the intended message. A corollary is that it provides an account of how more can be communicated, in his rather strict sense of non-naturally meant, than what is actually said.

In sorting out the different conversations can be very complex. There are, however, four maxims that can be regarded as general principles in all conversations, those are:

(1) The Maxim of Quantity, try to make your contribution as informative as is required, in the other words, do not make your contribution more or less informative than is required;
Example of violation:
A: What time is it?
B: It's two a'clock, in fact it's four pass two, and now it's Sunday.

(2) The Maxim of Quality, try to make your contribution one that is true. At this point, to make your utterances understandable, you have to avoid saying something that you believe to be false or lack adequate evidence; 
Example of violation:
A: What is the Capital City of Indonesia?
B: I believe it's Bogor, or maybe Jakarta, Indonesia has wide territory. 

(3) The Maxim of Relevance, try to make your contributions relevant. It means you have to say some information which is related to the topic; 
Example of violation:
Mom: Have you done your homework?
Son: My bicycle is broken mom. 

(4)The Maxim of Manner, try to make your utterance as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and avoid obscurity and ambiguity. 
Example of violation:
" It’s the taste" (ads of Coca cola) 

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See also:
Grice's cooperative principle 
Cooperative Principle: Implicature
Cooperative Principle: Flouting Maxims
The Hedging of Maxims 

Read more »

Discourse Deixis

Discourse deixis deals with the orientation in the text through the writer or the speaker, the relation of the text passages to the current utterance either as a head of time or past, forthcoming or simultaneous. It encodes reference to portions of the unfolding discourse in which the utterance is located (Levinson, 1983, p.62). It means that discourse deixis is deictic reference to a portion of a discourse relative to the speaker’s current location in the discourse, such as: above, below, last, previous, proceeding, next or following (usually used in texts) and this, that, there, next, last (usually used in utterances).

In spoken or written discourse, there is frequently occassion to refer to earlier or forthcoming segments of the discourse. Since discourse unfolds in time, it is natural to use temporal deictic terms to indicate the relation of the referred to to the temporal location of the present utterance in the discourse. But spatial terms are also often employed. Reference to parts of of a discourse which can only be interpreted by knowing where the current coding or receiving point is, are clearly deictic in character (Asher 1994, p.856).

Levinson (1983, p.85-86) added that discourse deixis should be distinguished from a related notion that of anaphora. Moreover, discourse deixis shares with anaphora and cataphora the capacity to function as a text cohesion device. As we noted, anaphora concerns with the use of a pronoun to refer to the same referent as some prior term. Anaphora can hold within sentences, across sentences, and across at speaking in a dialogue. Deictic or other referring expressions are often used to introduce a referent, and anaphoric pronouns are used to refer to the same entity thereafter. However, it is important to remember that deictic and anaphoric usages are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, in principle the distinction is clear: when a pronoun refers to a linguistic expression itself, it is discourse deictic. When a pronoun refers to the same entity as a prior linguistic expression refers to, it is anaphoric.

In other words, discourse deixis is an expression used to refer to certain discourse that contain the utterance or as a signal and its relations to surrounding text.

A. Person Deixis

B. Place Deixis

C. Time Deixis

D. Discourse Deixis

E. Social Deixis
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See also:
Deixis

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Social Deixis

Social deixis does not deal with three main components (person, place and time) of the coordinate system of subjective orientation, but they show how different social rankings and the participants of communication utter relationships within society via language. Briefly, it is rather to refer to the level of relationship between people than to information.

Levinson (1983, p.90) stated that social deixis concerns with the aspects of sentences which reflect or establish or determined by certain realities of participants or the social situation in which the speech event occurs. He adds that there are two basic kinds of social deixis information that seems to be encoded in language around the world. They are: Relational social deixis and Absolute social deixis. Relational social deixis is a deictic reference to some social characteristic of referrent apart from any relative ranking of referents or deictic reference to a social relationship between the speaker and addressee. In English, relational social deixis may be a lexical items (e.g. my husband, teacher, cousin, etc), pronouns (you, her). Absolute social deixis is a deictic reference usually expressed in certain forms of address which will include no comparison of the ranking of the speaker and addresse. For examples: your highness, Mr. President, your majesty, etc.

Briefly, social deixis is a deictic expression used to distinct social status. Social deixis separated in to two kinds relational and absolute social deixis.
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 A. Person Deixis

B. Place Deixis

C. Time Deixis

D. Discourse Deixis

E. Social Deixis
 ...................................................................................
See also:
Deixis

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Time Deixis

Time deixis is also called as temporal deixis. Renkema (1993, p.79) stated that time deixis is a reference to time relative to a temporal reference point and it is typically the moment of utterance. These language resources are the adjectives of time in the line….yesterday….now….tomorrow, and the verb tenses. The verb sometimes also has another function besides referring to a specific time.

Furthermore, Levinson (1993, p.73) said that the basis for systems of reckoning and measuring time in most languages seem to be the natural and prominent cycles of day and night, lunar months, season and years.

While, Grundy (2000, p.31-32) states another important time deixis is tense system. In fact, almost every sentence makes reference to an event time. Often this event time can only be determined in relation to the time of the utterance. Moreover, Yule (1996, 14-15) says that the basic type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice of verb tense. English only has two basic forms, the present and the past. For example:
a. I live here now.
b. I live there then.
The present tense is the proximal form as in (a) and the past tense is distal form as in (b).

The deictic items use reference can only be determined in relation to the time of the utterance in which they occur. Such as:
• This / last / next Monday / week / month / year.
• Now, then, ago, later, soon, before.
• Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
In other words, time deixis is an expression in relation to point to certain period when the utterances produced by the speaker.

 A. Person Deixis

B. Place Deixis

C. Time Deixis

D. Discourse Deixis

E. Social Deixis
 ...................................................................................
See also:
Deixis

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Place Deixis

Place deixis is also described as spatial deixis, where the relative location of people and things is being indicated. Place deixis or spatial deixis usually expressed in this, these, there, here, that, and those. Place deixis can be described along many of the same parameters that apply to the time deixis. Therefore, those references to place can be absolute or relational in nature. Absolute references to place locate an object or person in a specific longitude and latitude, while relational references locate people and place in terms of each other and the speaker (Cummings 2005, p.26).

Levinson (1983, p.79) stated that place or space deixis concerns for the specification of locations to anchorage points in the speech event and typically the speaker, and there are two basic ways of referring objects by describing or naming them on the one hand and by locating them on the other. Alternatively, they can be deictically specified to the location of participants at the time of speaking. There are a proximal (close to the speaker) such as this, and these, and a distal (sometime close to the addressee) such as that, and those. Each may be used either as a pronoun or in a combination with noun.

Grundy (2000, p.28) add that there are three degrees of proximity is by no means uncommon, with some languages distinguishing proximity to the speaker and to the addressee. They are: here (proximal), there (distal), where (and the archaic hither, hence, thither, thence, wither, whence), left, right, up, down, above, below, in front, behind, come go, bring, and  take.

Briefly, place deixis is an expression used to show the location relative to the location of a participant in the speech even.

 A. Person Deixis

B. Place Deixis

C. Time Deixis

D. Discourse Deixis

E. Social Deixis
 ...................................................................................
See also:
Deixis

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Deixis Theory Proposed by Stephen C. Levinson

There are four kinds of deixis proposed by Levinson, they are:
A. Person Deixis
In many languages, person deixis can also contain other meaning elements like the gender of the third person. In addition, to pronoun and agreeing predicates, person, or participant-role is marked in various other ways. Person deixis concerns with the encoding of the role of participants in the speech even in which the utterance in question is delivered. Yule (1996, p.9-10) describe that person deixis involves the speaker and the addressee and operates in a basic three-part division they are:

a) First person (I). The first person deixis is a reference that refers to the speaker or both speaker and referent grouped with the speaker which is expressed in singular pronouns (I, me, myself, mine) and plural pronouns (we, us, ourselves, our, ours). The first person deixis can be divided into exclusive first person deixis, which refers to a group including addressee.

b) Second person (you). The second person deixis is a deictic reference to a person or persons identified as addressee, such as you, yourself, yourselves, your, yours.

c) And the third person (He, She, It). Third person deixis is a deictic reference to a referent(s) not identified as the speaker or addressee and usually imply to the gender that the utterance refers to, for example: he, she, and they, him, himself, her, herself.

Renkema (1993, p.77) adds that person deixis is realized with personal pronouns. The speaker as the first person (I) direct the utterance to the listener as second person (You), and conclude be talking about a third person (He, She, and It).

In other words, person deixis is described as expression in which to refer to person who the speakers intend to refer.

 A. Person Deixis

B. Place Deixis

C. Time Deixis

D. Discourse Deixis

E. Social Deixis
 ...................................................................................
See also:
Deixis

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Deixis

Deixis deals with connections between discourse and the situation in which discourse is used. The term of ‘deixis’ is derived from the Greek word which mean ‘to show’ or ‘to indicate’ used to denote the elements in a language which refer directly to the situation. Moore (2001, 14) give definition about deixis as follows:

"Deixis is an important field of language study in its own right and very important for learners of languages. But it has some relevance to analysis of conversation and pragmatics. It is often and best described as "verbal pointing", that is to say pointing by means of language. The linguistic forms of this pointing are called deictic expressions, deictic markers or deictic words; they are also sometimes called indexicals."

Moreover, deixis is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic things we do with utterance. Or it can be said ‘pointing’ via language. Essentially language, deixis concerns with the ways in which the interpretation of utterance depends on the analysis of that context of utterance.

In English, according to Yule (1996, p.93) there are three different ways to point out in. They are gesture, symbolic and anaphoric. Gesture is used by which it can be properly interpreted only by somebody who is monitoring some physical aspects of communication situation. Example: I want you to copy this paper. Symbolic use of deictic expression means that the interpretation involves merely knowing certain aspects of the speech communication situation, whether this knowledge comes by common perception or not. For example: I want you to put the paper there. Anaphoric is the use of expression that can be correctly interpreted by knowing what other portions of the same discourse that expression is co-referential with anaphoric use of an expression, which can be seen in the sentence; I have copied the paper and I put it there.


A. Person Deixis

B. Place Deixis

C. Time Deixis

D. Discourse Deixis

E. Social Deixis
 ...................................................................................
See also:
Deixis

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Performative vs. Constative Sentence

Philosophically sentence is devided into two categories, performative and constative. Performative is a sentence which does not describe nor affirm about fact but contains a felicity condition, that is a certain condition that have to be fulfilled when the perform takes place. There are five characteristics of performative sentence, they are:

(1) The subject of performative sentence must be in the form of first person pronoun;

(2) The verb must be in the same category with performative verbs such as tell, say, demand, advice, ask etc.;

(3) The object of performative sentence is always a second person pronoun;

(4) It must be in the form of affirmative not negative;

(5) It must be in the form of present tense.

e.g. Stand up!

Note:

- The deep structure of the above sentence before encountering modification (become imperative) is

"I command you to stand up."

- Felicity condition of the above sentence:

¢Your addressee is sitting, or laying, or ducking, etc.

¢Your addressee has ability to stand (not cripple)

On the other hand, constative sentence is a sentence which affirms about fact, reports events, and describes situation and condition. It must contain truth values.

e.g.  Prices slumped.

The sentence is true if the fact in the actual world the prices are slumped. If in fact they are not slumped, you can simply say that the sentence is false.

However, when you take a look constative deeper, you will find that it also fulfills the five criteria of perfomative sentence, since the above example of constative sentence is only in the level of surface structure, in deep structure, it will become: “I tell you that price slumped”. In this form the constative sentence also has the all criteria take to become a performative sentence. Therefore, in short we can simply say that constative sentence is also included into performative sentence. You will find the reflection of the principle of maximum ease of articulation in this pattern. The metrical sentence “I tell you …” is unnecessarily to say, so that it is omitted. A sentence “I tell you that prices slumped” encounters a modification or a deletion process in the phrase “I tell you …” it appears only the surface structure “prices slumped”. Other examples of this phenomenon are that:

See Also:

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• RULE OF NATURE REFLECTED IN LANGUAGE USAGE
• Assimilation
• Apocope
• Syncope
• Lenition
• Clipping
• Blending
• Performative Sentence
• Imperative Sentence
• Ellipsis Sentence
• Metaphor

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