The Linguistic Aspects of Politeness Phenomena in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (ID:126122)

CHAPTER 1 POLITENESS PHENOMENA: NOTION, CONCEPTUALIZATION AND THEORIES 1.1 The Notion and Importance of Linguistic Politeness Phenomena As a social person, human beings always need to have a communication with others. It is impossible for them to lead a comfortable life without communicating and cooperating with others. And to interrelate and to communicate with others, human beings use language as a means of communication. Politeness is closely related to the social construction and social relationship between the speaker and the hearer. Chaika [11, p.38] mentions that where language can be used to say anything, style is confined to massages about social status, moods, and desired degree of intimacy between speakers. Politeness is a phenomena which requires people to face problematical operation in using any language. It is difficult to learn because it involves understanding all the implied aspects of language. Not just the language itself but also the social and cultural values of the community, because language cannot be separated from the community that uses it. In daily conversation, people can identify the real condition where the interaction between alike or different level of social stratification happens. When we are with a group of friends, for instance, we can say to them, "Go get me that plate!", or "Shutup!" However, when we are surrounded by a group of adults at a formal meeting, which our parents are attending, we must say, "Could you please pass me that plate, if you don't mind?" and "I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I am not able to hear the speaker in the front of the room." In different social situations, we are obligated to adjust our use of words to fit the occasion. It would seem socially unacceptable if the phrases above were reversed. Being linguistically polite involves speaking to people appropriately with their relationship. Therefore, making decision of what is and is not considered polite in any communities involves assessing social relationship along the dimension of social distance or solidarity, and relative power or status. According to Grundy [20,pp.145-146], politeness phenomena extend the notion of indexicality, because every utterance is uniquely designed for its audience. Seen as the exercise of language choice to create a context intended to match the addressee’s notion of how he or she should be addressed, politeness phenomena is a paradigm example of pragmatic usage. Among the aspects of context that particularly determinate the language choice in the domain of politeness are the power distance relationship of the interactants and the extent to which a speaker imposes on or requires something of their addressee. 1.1.1 Definition and Concept of Politeness Politeness has become an important topic since Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness was first published in 1978, which has engendered energetic, continuous research in this area. In the past three decades, politeness phenomena have been widely observed by many researchers and scholars studying intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, stylistics and pragmatics. The phenomenon of politeness has been defined and interpreted from various perspectives. Apart from Brown and Levinson’s theory, which has been chosen as the ground for this research and will be presented further on, many other scholars have made significant contribution in theorising the concept of politeness. Dimitrova-Galazci notes that: … part of the problem in defining politeness comes from the lack of a universal formal and functional equivalence across cultures, from the different perceptions and motivations behind it across cultures and the close and often difficult to untangle link between the folk understanding of politeness and the theoretical concept [10, p. 1]. A common understanding of the concept and how to account for it is certainly problematic. To define politeness appropriately is one of the difficulties existing in the study of linguistic politeness. The researches on linguistic politeness started from the middle of 1970s, but researchers tried to put forward their definitions of it until the late of 1980s.