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2 - Politeness, Praising, and Identity Construction in a Greek Food Blog

from Part I - Concepts and Cultural Norms Underlying Speech Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2019

By
Angeliki Tzanne
Edited by
Eva Ogiermann  and
Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
Eva Ogiermann
Affiliation:
King's College London
Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
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Summary

Tzanne’s analysis follows Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, with the author explicitly stating her role as a ‘legitimate analyst’ identifying and interpreting the instances of politeness in her data. The chapter focuses on the use of positive politeness and identity construction in the context of digital communication. More specifically, Tzanne examines the comment section of a food blog entitled Συνταγές της παρέας (‘Recipes from/for a group of friends’). The data neatly illustrate the tendency for Greek people to orient to positive politeness, with the judges of the recipes endorsing the identity of a friend through expressing enthusiastic praise, stressing common background knowledge, and using informal endearing terms. On the whole, the commenters tend to construct an identity that reflects the importance attached to in-group membership in Greece.

Keywords

Speech act theory
Type
Chapter
Information
From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness
Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives
 , pp. 48 - 67
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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