4 - Overview of the Politeness Evaluation Process

Summary

This chapter provides an overview to Part II of the book, which focuses on the process of making evaluative judgements with regard to politeness. Early in the history of mainstream politeness research, theorists argued that words and phrases are not inherently polite or impolite, but rather are judged as such by participants. Yet for many years there was remarkably little research into the process of interpersonal evaluation. Recently, there has been more attention paid to evaluation, yet there is a need for greater theorisation. This may particularly be the case with regard to politeness in intercultural scenarios, considering that the cultural background of the interactants, the extent to which culture influences the context of the interaction, and other aspects of culture strongly influence politeness evaluations. The chapter outlines the various steps involved in the process of making politeness evaluations. There are five main sections to the chapter: behaviour in context; normalcy zone and triggering of the evaluation process, evaluating behaviour and agent, evaluation warrant and judgement of behaviour and agent. We explore each of these steps in detail in subsequent chapters of Part II.