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LATVIJAS UNIVERSITÂTES RAKSTI. 2004. 666. sçj.: LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA, 194.–198. lpp. Morphosyntactic Features of English and Latvian Linguistic Structures that Serve Politeness Function Pieklâjîbas formu izteikðanai angïu un latvieðu valodâ lietoto lingvistisko struktûru morfosinaktiskâs îpaðîbas Linda Apse (Latvija) Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Latvia Visvalþa iela 4a, Riga, LV 1050, Latvia e–mail: linda_apse@hotmail.com Sociolinguistic and related investigations have proved that usage of expressions of courtesy in any language is not only mirroring of the corresponding culture but also a cognitive process that is independent of the surrounding world. According to principles of Chomski’s universal grammar (UG) it follows that morphosyntactic features of expressions of courtesy are similar in different languages, i.e., they are universal. This work investigates the structure of courtesy phrases both in English and in Latvian. Keywords: face threatening, face saving, impersonalisation, nominalization. Current research in sociolinguistics and related disciplines suggests that politeness is universal not only from the cultural viewpoint, but also from cognitively since humans seem to be cognitively predisposed to use certain language patterns that serve politeness function. This paper presents a comparative study of morphosyntactic patterns and, to a certain extent, lexis used in politeness formulas in English and Latvian. Brown and Levinson 1 in their extensive study on language pragmatics claim there is universality not only at the level of social behavioural patterns but also at the level of morphosyntax. Indeed this claim is only logical and once again views language and cognitive patterns in some systematic correspondence. This paper aims to demonstrate that English and Latvian share the same morphosyntactic patterns to serve politeness function and specify the principal linguistic features of the respective patterns. The study is aimed at giving an insight in impersonal structures and nominalization which are the two principal face saving strategies explicated in Brown and Levinson’s 2 cross–linguistic investigation. 1. Impersonalisation of the Speaker and/or Addressee In a face threatening speech act (FTSA) 3 where the Speaker doesn’t want to overtly attack the Addressee, the Speaker may choose to use language structures that impersonalise either the Speaker alone or both the Speaker and the Addressee. This strategy implies using forms indicating that the agent is other than the Speaker, or not overtly stating it is the Speaker or implying it is a group of people rather than the Speaker alone. Regarding the Addressee, the impersonalisation strategy allows to imply that the Addressee is not alone but part of a group thus scaling down the emphasis put on the Addressee. Impersonalisation also allows one to assume the Addressee might be other than the respective Addressee. All the above mentioned strategies serve to hide the Speaker and create an ‘armour’ for the Addressee.
Linda Apse. Pieklâjîbas formu izteikðanai angïu un latvieðu valodâ lietoto lingvistisko .. 195 I will demonstrate how impersonalisation is rendered through imperatives, impersonal verbs and modals, passive constructions and impersonal or deleted pronouns as these linguistic forms are believed to be the principal linguistic structures where impersonalisation occurs for the reason of moderating a FTSA. 1.1. Imperatives Commands, commonly verbalized by imperatives, no doubt are the most straightforward FTSAs. It should be stated at the outset that in imperatives the Speaker is not linguistically present at all and thus all strategies to save the face concern the Addressee only. Commands are face threatening intrinsically and are realized by a very peculiar linguistic form, namely, the subject that normally is the agent, in imperative structures becomes the potential agent. Thus the argument structure of imperatives is, if not morphosyntactically, then semantically a bit awkward. Be it for this reason or other there is compelling evidence that in many languages imperative forms do not contain the second person pronoun, i.e. the addressee, and it remains to be implied. The following are imperative forms in English and Latvian: (1) Bring it now! Atnes tûlît! (2) You bring it now! Tu atnes tûlît! Both in English and Latvian, it is still possible to mark the addressee explicitly as illustrated in (2) but such form of a command is regarded as extremely rude as instead of hiding the Addressee it is disclosed and thus goes against the above mentioned face saving strategies. It can be further hypothesized that in English where the verb has a zero inflection both for the plural and singular second person the Addressee cannot be readily labelled as one particular person since it may well be a group. In Latvian the verb inflections encode the number leaving the Latvian imperative more face threatening than its English counterpart. (3) (Tu) atnes tûlît! (2nd , sing) (Jûs) atnesiet tûlît! (2nd , pl) Brown and Levinson claim that in a great many inflected languages the imperative inflection does not encode person while other inflections do. It can be thus concluded that the imperative being one of the most face threatening language structures has certain linguistic features that help to save face. 1.2. Impersonal verbs In many languages, in intrinsically face threatening speech acts, certain verb forms are impersonalised. Both in English and Latvian verbs that normally take dative agents, in potentially face threatening speech forms the dative agent is normally deleted: (4) It appears (to me) that…. (Man) ðíiet, ka… It seems (to me) that … (Man) liekas, ka … It looks (to me) that…. (Man) izskatâs, ka…
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