Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

116 Gabriel Dorta
communicative situations, i.e. the participants’ cognitive schemata (cf. Schütz &
Luckmann 1994a/b), also plays a fundamental role for interpreting an utterance as
(im)polite. Finally, (im)politeness should be considered as a salient communicative
behaviour (cf. Watts 2003).
3. Politeness as a salient communicative behaviour
As mentioned before, the evaluative activities of the participants play an
important role for analyzing (im)politeness in the interaction. Linguistic structures
or specific communicative strategies cannot be seen as inherently polite or
impolite. It is almost impossible to determine which linguistic behaviour is
(im)polite out of the context of ongoing verbal interaction. This is the approach
adopted by Watts (2003), who explains that the perspectives of the speakers and
hearers have to be taken adequately into consideration for analyzing (im)politeness
in verbal interaction, because the roles of speakers and hearers are interchangeable
and social interaction is negotiated during the ongoing exchange.
According to the author, this point “implies that what may have been originally
interpreted as ‘(im)polite’ behaviour is always open to evaluative remodification
as the interaction progresses” (ibid:23). At the same time, this also shows the
perspective I intend to adopt for the analysis of politeness in chats: communication
as an intersubjective and not as an exclusively rational or subjective
activity.
Watts (2003) makes a distinction between the terms ‘politic behaviour’ and
‘politeness’. Politic behaviour is the linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour
which the participants construct as being appropriate to the ongoing social interaction.
The construction may have been made prior to entering the interaction, but it is always
negotiable during the interaction, despite the expectations that participants might bring
to it (ibid:20).
It corresponds to Goffman’s (1986) explanations about forms of ritual behaviour
(ritual order; cf. ibid:55ff): a system of conventions, practices and rules
continually reenacted through the interaction and judged by the participants as
‘appropriate’ or ‘correct’. Politic behaviour refers not only to our personal construction
of the self but also to the maintenance of other participants’ faces in the
interaction (face-work; ibid:25ff). According to Goffman (1986), a participant’s
face relates to the line or behaviour others assume he or she has taken during the
interaction. It represents a group of approved social attributes, which can be
shared or not by others. An individual has face, when the line of behaviour
followed by him or her is shared and evaluated positively by other participants in
the interaction (ibid:10ff.). This line of behaviour might differ from one
communicative situation to the next. Therefore, the notion of face is a highly
changeable entity, depending on how it is interpreted by other participants.