Consolidating Grice, Brown & Levinson,

and GoffmanMaxims, Face, and Politeness

Theory

Recapping GriceO Grice’s Maxims: Quality – be true

Quantity – say enoughManner – be clearRelevance – be relevant

O Not following: Violating – being deliberately misleading

Opting-out – refusing to co-operate

Flouting – creating an

effect.

Recapping GoffmanO Face theory – we choose a different ‘face’

to present to our partner in conversation depending on the context of the conversation.

O The listener is responsible for maintaining the ‘face’ of their conversational partner.

Recapping Brown & Levinson

O Having regard for someone’s ‘face’ is polite.

O Face Threatening Acts damage the face someone puts on it conversation.

O We, as conversers, have positive and negative face.Positive face – the desire to feel approved of.Negative face – the desire to feel unimpeded.

O We use positive politeness to maintain positive face and negative politeness to maintain negative face.

O Positive Politeness is being complimentary, Negative Politeness is being apologetic.

“ I want to listen to my friend’s new CD but can’t get a copy of my own!”

Options

Be directBe indirect

“It’s a shame I won’t be able to listen to that.”

This is imposing and

potentially face threatening!

Face saving act

FTA“Give me that

CD.”

Negative Politeness

“I’m really sorry to ask you again…”

Positive Politeness

“I really appreciate all the music you’ve lent me…”

Task – 10minsO Working individually come up with

your own diagram of politeness options and label.

O You can choose your own situation to work from.

More than one maxim?O You can argue that in conversation

more than one maxim may be being broken at any one time.

O As long as you can argue reasonably for which maxim you think is being broken, you will get marks.

O It is not black and white and there is rarely only one thing going on.

Gordon Strachan (Maxim Flouter)

Reporter: “Gordon, can we have a quick word please?”Strachan: “Velocity” [walks off]

Relevance / Quantity = The word velocity is not relevant to what the reporter asked. The reporter obviously wanted to talk about football. Quantity = he did not say as much as the reporter would have expected.It is flouting because Gordon was trying to be sarcastic.Context: Gordon does not have time for the reporters or want to talk to them.

Gordon Strachan (Maxim Flouter)

Reporter: “Welcome to Southampton Football Club. Do you think you are the right man to turn things around?”Strachan: “No. I was asked if I thought I was the right man for the job and I said, ‘No, I think they should have got George Graham because I’m useless.”

Quality = this is not true. He obviously believes that he is the man for the job.Context = he obviously thinks this is a stupid question with an obvious answer.

Gordon Strachan (Maxim Flouter)

Reporter: “Gordon, Agustin Delgado?”Strachan: “I’ve got more important things to think about. I’ve got this yoghurt to finish by today, the expiry date is today. That can be my priority rather than Agustin Delgado.”

Quality = this is arguably not true, it may be very important to him.Relevance = the yoghurt is nothing to do with football. Context = again he thinks the question is either obvious / unimportant and does not want to answer.

Task – 5minsO Look at the remaining five

conversations between reporters and Gordon Strachan.

O Identify which maxim(s) are being flouted and consider what this tells us about the context.

The changing rooms – Grice’s Maxims

KK: them (.) they’re wet and dirtyIW: like your mam

Because we assume conversation is co-operative IW assumed that KK is saying something relevant about his mum – this allows us to appreciate the joke.Manner = “your mum’s a slag” would have been a clearer way to say what IW wanted to say.

We can also infer from the informal language that the people talking are friends.Lastly, we can tell that this is not a polite conversation where Face Needs are being considered. The context is the reason for this.

What can we infer about the context and the

relationship between the

speakers?

Transcript 5 – Maxims and Politeness

C [] did you get lost thenG [] halloT [] [laughs]G[] no we didn’t what we did however encounter was an accident on the roadC [] not to youG [] there were thousands of cars sort of piled up sort of miles back on the road that goes from Watford to

G follows all the maxims by supplying a relevant, clear and detailed explanation to C’s enquiry.G doesn’t explicitly apologise for being late but the explanation implies apology, which is a negative politeness strategy.T laughing is a positive politeness strategy as he is showing C that he appreciates them.What else can you extract from

this extract?

Interview with Louise – Maxims and Politeness

O At the beginning of the transcript Louise is following all the maxims by supplying relevant, detailed and true information.

O Louse is using positive politeness strategies by laughing.

O The language is informal (Yeah instead of Yes) so we can infer that the relationship between the participants is not too distant.

Task – 10minsO Choose on of the extracts we have

covered in this lesson.O Write up a paragraph of analysis. O What can you say about:

-politeness-maxims-context-the relationship between the participants