POLITENESS AND MONEY

The purpose of this chapter is to work towards an alternative model of politeness that does not have as its aim the explanation of how native speakers produce polite language. In other words, the model that I shall outline here does not aim at being a production model of linguistic politeness, as Brown and Levinson's model has frequently been understood. Nor does it aim to provide a blueprint for interpreting certain linguistic expressions, but not others, as realisations of politeness. Both the explanatory and the descriptive approaches to polite verbal behaviour make the same mistake in abstracting away from real data and creating a concept of politeness for which they claim universal validity, i.e. politeness. The claim is then made that those approaches are equipped to predict where instances of verbal politeness should occur in interaction. Politeness in all the models discussed in chapters 3 and 4 has thus become a social given, a social ‘fact’. It is assumed that politeness is present in all human societies, but all too often that which the theory predicts as polite behaviour is not classified as such by lay members.

Equating politeness with strategies for mitigating face-threats has been the most feasible step in creating this particular social ‘fact’ and, despite all the criticism of Brown and Levinson's model (see chapter 4), it has led to the equation of Politeness Theory with Face Theory. Chapter 5 has shown that the equation is not always valid.