Situated politeness

要旨

While the theories of linguistic politeness advanced by In this study, I maintain that expressions of politeness are relative to specific social contexts as well as to the speakers' ideas about politeness. An adequate account of linguistic politeness thus requires a close examination of the relationship among linguistic expressions in discourse, speakers' ideas about politeness, and social contexts. As a case in point, the present study examines Japanese conversations with regard to the use of honorifics--one of the most important means of expressing politeness in Japanese. However, it has been pointed out that every utterance in Japanese requires a choice between honorific and non-honorific expressions, which, therefore, cannot be regarded as a matter of politeness strategies applicable only to certain potentially face-threatening speech acts Further, while politeness in languages like English is mostly thought to concern speakers' volitional strategies, the use of honorifics and other formal expressions in Japanese is often said to be governed by rigorous situation-based rules, or conventions. Given certain social situations, it is argued, honorifics are obligatory or expected; honorifics grammatically encode certain social relations recognized in the context, such as status difference and degree of intimacy (e.g. Ide 1989; Tokunaga 1992). While Volition "allows the speaker a considerably more active choice" in linguistic expressions of politeness, Discernment refers to "the almost automatic observation of socially-agreed-upon rules"; that is, in the Discernment aspect of politeness, "the speaker can be considered to submit passively to the requirement of the system. That is, once certain factors of addressee and situation are noted, the selection of an appropriate

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