Politeness Theory and Relational Work

TLDR

The paper revisits Brown and Levinson‑influenced politeness research, arguing that scholars should focus on the discursive struggle of interaction and proposing relational work as a useful concept for investigating politeness. The authors demonstrate this approach by analyzing five naturally occurring interactions, using relational work to examine how participants negotiate relationships through polite, impolite, or merely appropriate behavior. They find that the tradition conflates politeness with face‑threatening act mitigation, but politeness is a discursive concept that cannot be predicted, thereby reducing it to a smaller part of facework and allowing behavior to be seen as merely appropriate rather than inherently polite or impolite.

Abstract

In this paper we briefly revisit politeness research influenced by Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory. We argue that this research tradition does not deal with politeness but with the mitigation of face-threatening acts (FTAs) in general. In our understanding, politeness cannot just be equated with FTA-mitigation because politeness is a discursive concept. This means that what is polite (or impolite) should not be predicted by analysts. Instead, researchers should focus on the discursive struggle in which interactants engage. This reduces politeness to a much smaller part of facework than was assumed until the present, and it allows for interpretations that consider behavior to be merely appropriate and neither polite nor impolite. We propose that relational work, the “work” individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others, which includes impolite as well as polite or merely appropriate behavior, is a useful concept to help investigate the discursive struggle over politeness. We demonstrate this in close readings of five examples from naturally occurring interactions.