Almost all linguistic research views politeness as a universal feature of civilized societies, regardless of their background culture, or their language.

Politeness is thus seen as an important social or ‘urbane’ value, inherent to successful communication, although its realization may vary across the different speech communities.

Politeness offers a good way of emotional control of the individual.

It is typically means of preserving and maintaining good social relationship between the speakers of one or more cultures.

Polite behavior generally protects the individual, as well as their addressee, and often becomes subject matter of self-help books on etiquette .

Politeness is an aspect of pragmatics in that its use in language is determined by an

external context. This external context is the context of communication

determined by the social status of the participants: politeness is a system used by thespeaker in order to keep up to the addressee’s

expectations

The verbal realization of politeness poses even greater problems when the interlocutors belong to different cultures and try to communicate, transferring their pragmatic knowledge of polite behavior into the foreign

language .

Lack of practice and the learners’ concern with rendering correctly the foreign language’s grammatical structures in the first place often lead to misunderstandings

or the so-called ‘socio-pragmatic failures’ errors resulting from non-native speakers not knowing what to say or not saying the appropriate things as a result of transferring incongruent social rules, values and belief systems from their native languages and

cultures .’

These types of errors are likely to cause a downright insult for both the non-native and the native speakers of a certain language, the native speakers misunderstanding and misinterpreting the intentions of the non-native speaker, and the non-native speakers being over-sensitive to ‘distinctions of

grammatical form ’

In a way the native speakers are not. In any case, being polite is essential to maintaining healthy social relations within a specific culture, and even more so, for

the communication across cultures .

Cross-cultural communication offers a wide field for research, as the socio-pragmatic failure of one speaker of a certain community tends to be stereotyped for the whole community

One is often confronted with statements like ‘Russians are rude’, ‘The English are hypocrites’, ‘Japanese bow a lot’, all of them resulting from a superficial comparison between the own pragmatic knowledge and the politeness strategies of

the foreign culture .

Nowadays English only uses one level of grammatical politeness. When speaking to someone, you always use the form "you". You can use it while speaking with your little sister and with the queen, (though in this case you may also use "Your

Majesty", or "Your Royal Highness") .

English used to have two levels of politeness, thou and you. However, over time, "thou" became less and less used, until it disappeared entirely and "you" was left to serve as the pronoun of choice for all situations

distance

power

Imposition.

Imposition covers every action (by this we also mean speech acts) which threatens the addressee’s autonomy and freedom of action and usually is conveyed in the form of an order.

power is evaluated in terms of numerous factors such as position in

society and age .

distance implies the evaluation of the other’s place in the world,

degree of familiarity and/or solidarity towards the addressee.

Politeness is not only expressed in oral interactions but also in one’s

behavior .

The model defends that everyone has a FACE that is selfesteem

This is to put danger in a communication situation. According to this theory,

Patterns of politeness try to avoid this effect on the addressee and they do so in twodifferent ways: by appealing to his/her POSITIVE FACE

that is, acknowledging one’s need for communion,

by appealing to his/her NEGATIVE FACE that is, acknowledging the other the need for autonomy and freedom of action.

B&L speak of POSITIVE POLITENESS

If the speaker tries to strengthen his positive face by using special oral expressions as

for example INTENSIFYING MODIFIERS (how absolutely marvelous)

We call this the STRATEGY OF APPROACH and for this we use a familiar language

(between friends )or the rules of politeness, the so called a ‘make A feel good-be

Friendly .

When the speaker on the other handmarks distance in his oral utterances, he strengthens his negative face. Thus, he usesthe STRATEGY OF DISTANCE; his communication consists of hedged information

)he uses words like may, presume, probably, I believe that… or modal verbs like want to,

would like to .(... These hedged utterances stress that the speaker does not want to getinvolved too much.

Address terms:

Forms used to refer to, or to name a person directly in speech or writing.

• Titles )your Ladyship(.

• kinship terms )mother, mum(,

• Endearments and insults

• First names )Margaret(

• Surnames )Thatcher(.

• Titles and last names )Mrs. Thatcher(.

The position in society was indicated by one’s title that positioned the person in one of the three existing estates, which formed society in medieval England:

The clergy. The nobility.

The laborers.

• Land owners were called the GENTRY

• The others were the NON-GENTRY

developed from the expression

for a land owner.

In the sixteenth century

this term extended its meaning and referred to a man who could live a comfortable

life without working .

• were only used when there was a great intimacy between the addresser and the addressee.

•

was used more frequently than first name alone but it was still only used by people who were familiar with each other.

A first name could have been used by sisters and brothers.

And first plus last name by intimate friends.

were used quite frequently in direct address.

• A cook was addressed cook )occupational

term(. • husband and wife addressed one anotherhusband and wife )terms of relationship(.• men, women and gentlemen wereaddressed as such )generic terms( .

Until today most European languages have at least two different pronouns of address:

• Formal term • Informal term

• The formal, polite term normally is made up by the 3rd respectively 2nd person plural form.

• This polite pronoun address marks a kind of distance and respect towards the

addressee.• It is used by people who do not know each

other well or want to mark distance or/and respect.

• The closer term .• It is made up by the 2nd person singular. • It is used for relatives, friends or people you feel

acquainted with as well as among young people.• English, however, is not as complicated as

German or French. • Nevertheless, some Europeans – even high

politicians – do not know how to handle the easy English address terms.

Old English

In Old English the two address-terms were similar to the European system. It had the singular “ðu” and the

plural “ge.”

• In Middle English – Plural ye Changed to Singular ye

• The two terms became thou )singular( and ye )plural(.

• In the 13th century the plural pronoun ye was used more and more in a singular context

In early modern English ye was slowly replaced by youThe use of plural you became very popular.

The pronoun you now is the formal and informal address term.

It is used by everybody and addressed to everybody, it does not matter to which social class you belong to.