8 - Relevance Theory and concepts of power

Summary

POLITENESS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER

The alternative model of (im)politeness presented in chapter 6 places the onus of deciding what linguistic behaviour is ‘polite’ or ‘impolite’ squarely on the shoulders of members of a speech community in which these attributions or similar, related ones are made. It is therefore a model of (im)politeness rather than politeness, and it makes no claim to be cross-culturally universal, even though we can expect other speech communities to apply roughly equivalent attributions in other languages or language varieties. It also makes no claim to be able to predict when language-specific attributions will be made by members.

The model of (im)politeness is based on the theory of practice and the related theory of emergent networks, both of which draw on members' past experiences of previous interaction and the institutionalised, objectified structures of social reality that have been internalised in the process. In this sense the model of (im)politeness presented in this book is dynamic, flexible and emergent. It deals with ongoing evaluations and characterisations of (im)polite behaviour in social practice, and it allows for discursive dispute over the resources of (im)politeness. These concerns are largely absent from all the models of politeness presented in chapters 3 and 4.

Since social practice always involves relational work between the participants, it embodies a latent struggle for power in which perceptions of politeness play a significant role.