POLITENESS AND POWER, by Sandra Harris (2005, 122). in Sociolinguitics. edited by Carmen Llamas, Louise Mullany and Peter Stockwell

It is over three decades since Robin Lakoff (1973) wrote her article on the logic of Politeness, which for many linguists marks the beginning of the now burgeoning field of research into linguistic politeness carried out primarily within the fields of sociolinguistics and pragmatics. During those decades linguistic politeness has developed as a significant and challenging field of research, much of which is cross-cultural and involving researchers on a global scale the work of Brown and Lavinson (1978, 1987) on politeness universals, which focus on the notice of FACE and FACE-THREATENING ACTS and is strongly influenced by Goffman, has stimulated a large amount research, exercised immense influence and is still the canonical model against whi8ch much of the literature on linguistics politeness defines itself. Although Brown and Levinson’s model, involving conceps of negative face and positive face and the consequent generation of a series of negative politeness and positive politeness strategies, has been widely criticized, it is only recently that their basic paradigm has been seriously challenged. An important aspect of that challenge has centred on the on the relationship between politeness and power.

Until relatively recently the majority of work on politeness has been focused on interpersonal and informal contexts, with a resultant emphasis on the volition of individual speakers. Indeed Brown and Levinson’s own work makes little attempt to deal with different discover discourse types, although it is based on empirical evidence evidence from three widely divergent languages and cultures. In fairness Brown and levinson (1987) do include power as a crucial component of their well known formula for computing the weightiness of face-threatening acts, and much of the empirical work generated by their theories addresses the issue of ‘Power’ in some way, particularly in conjunction with the speech act of requesting. But again, it was Robin Lakoff (1989) who first argued explicitly well over a decade ago not only that politeness and power are closely related but that the relationship between them could be insightfully clarified if theories of politeness were extended to include professional and institutional contexts, which force us to see politeness from a different perspective, since many of these context involve a built-in asymmetry of power and social status. A number of studies have attempt to do this.  (see Linde on 1988 on flight crews; Perez de Ayala 2001 and Harris 2001 on political discourse; Aronsson and Rundstrom 1989 and Spiers 1998 on medical discourse Penman 1990 on courtroom discourse, and so on) but few of these address in detail the relationship between politeness and power.

          In addition, a considerable number of writers have explored the relationship between power and verbal interaction form various perspectives (see Wartenberg 1990, Ng nd Bradac 1993, Diamond 1996 and, particularly, those linguists working within Critical Discourse Analysis; see McKenna 2004 for an assessment of recent work). However, it is significant that none of these, including Fairclough (2001) in his edition of Language and Power and Thornborrow (2002) in her Power Talk, foreground the role of politeness even in the context of data taken from a range of institutional settings, though both Fairclough and Thornborrow analyse perceptively the relationship between power and discursive roles as they are manifest in such settings.

Defining the field

Given the large literature and the huge theoretical baggage which has accumulated around both ‘power’ and ‘politeness’, perhaps it is not so surprising that their conjunction has proved problematic, it is well beyond the scope of this chapter to attempt to offer a conclusive definition of either term. Instead, I shall first of all present, very briefly and in summary form, Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness and power, followed by a review of how recent work challenges that paradigm in relation to certain important issues being debated in the field.

          Brown and Levinson’s (1987: 76) propose a specific formula for assessing the weightiness (W) of a face-threatening act, which involve three essential components: power (P), social distance (D) and the Rating of imposition to the extent that they interfere with an individual’s face wants within a particular culture/ society (R):

Wx = D (S, H) + P (H,S) + Rx

S = speaker, H = hearer

Brown and Levinson maintain that, as a consequence theses three ‘dimensions’ (D, P, R) contribute to the seriousness of a face threatening act (FTA), and thus to a determination of the level of politeness with which, other things being equal, an FTA will be communicated (Brown and Levinson 1987 : 76)

Thus the greater the social distance and the power hierarchy between speaker and hearer the more weight becomes attached to face-threatening act, particularly one which also involve a relatively a high level of imposition (for example many requests, accusations, some offers, and so on). Brown and Levinson further argue that these dimensions subsume all other relevant factors in any particular context and importantly, that their formula thus predicts further that individuals will choose a higher level of linguistics mitigation as the weighteness of an AFTA increase proportionately.

Brown and Levinson (1987: 77) conceptualize power (P) as ‘an asymmetric social dimension of relative power, i.e. ‘P (H, S) is the degree to which H (hearer) can impose his (sic) own plans and his self-evaluation (face) at the expanse of S’s (Speaker) plans and self evaluation’. This definition thus views power primarily as an individual attribute, vested in the hearer: it is the hearers ‘power’ relative to his/her own which the speaker must take into account when uttering a potentially face-threatening act. The purpose of Brown and Levinson formula is thus to enable us to predict (both as interaction and researchers) the scale and the number of redressive strategies and mitigating linguistics forms a speaker is likely to use in particular interactions by calculating the variability of the social distance and relative power of the participants along with the weighteiness of the imposition. Thus one of the importance aspects os the Brown and Levinson’s work is, for them, predictive power. The formula most  seem apply most to ‘requests’ (nearly all Brown and Levinson’s own examples of its application involves ‘request’), predicting that the greater the power (and distance) between speaker and hearer the more redressive strategies will be used by the less powerfull interactent, particularly when making a weighty request of a more powerfull one (for specific criticism of Brown and Levinson’s formula see Coupland et al. 1988; Spiers 1998; Harris 2003; Milles 2003; Watts 2003).

          Review of recent work: some current issues

Politeness research has now become a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary field of study, and only a relatively small amount of literature can be reviewed in this brief space. Moreover, the issues raised are complex ones which often draw on concepts and understandings in other disciplines. Nevertheless, it is significant that a number of books (mainly in series of sociolinguistics) have been published within the past four or five years which are of particular interest to research on politeness and power, and I shall concentrate on these books : Eeleen (2001), Holmes and Stubbe (2003), Watts (2003) Locher (2004) and Mills (2003), with some references also to recent journal articles. That this number of recently published books can be seen to explore certain common aspects of linguistics politeness suggests its continuing high level of interestingas a research field. (A glance at the hundreds of internet entries under ‘politeness’ also suggested a continuing high level of popular interest and its perceived relevance to everyday life.)

Conceptualizing Power

All recent writers on politeness and power seek to conceptualize power not as a static component of particular interactive situation or as an inherent attribute which certain individuals possess but rather as a complex , multi-faceted dynamic force. Power is ‘something is people do to each other’ Eelen 2001 224); our focus is workplace discourse and we examine how people do power and politeness throughout the day in their talk at work’ (Holmes and Stubble 2003: 1) Drawing on Bourdieu’s work on Symbolic power, Eelen goes on to argue that

The subordinate pays deference to the superordinate because the superordinate is in a position deference from the subordinate. Although power is still associated with specific socio-structural position, which convey power to their occupants, it is no longer an objective external force but become relatives to how it is used by those occupants. So instead of determining behavior, power becomes relative to behavior- or better: is itself a form of behavior.             Eelen 2001: 114

Watts (2003) also stresses the nature of power as a process, a social practice, in his concept of emergent networks, whereby interactants continually act out and negotiate relationship, including those of power and dominance, through their interaction in particular contexts.

Perhaps the most explicit discussion of the nature of power in interaction is Locher (2004). Locher does not attempt to define power as such but rather offers  a “checklist” for understanding the nature and exercise of power. Her concept of power as relational, dynamic and constentable not only enable us to perceive conflict and classes of interest which maybe latent but it also ‘meant as a toolfor the analysis of power using a qualitative approach to linguistics data’ (Locher 2004 : 321). Thus the issuei of conceptualizing power in research concerned with linguistics politeness has centred on attemting to find a way to do justice to the thoetrical complexity and multy faceted nature of power as a form of social practice while at the same time providing a version of power which can act as a credible and useful analytical tool and will enable us to opearationalize the concept and identify the exercise of power in naturalistic linguistics data’ (Locher 2004: 321) These versions of power are markedly different from Brown and Levinson’s and are designed, among other things, to be applicable to longer stretches of verbal analysis as well as to make use of and illuminate radically different discourse types.

Conceptualizing politeness as constestable rather than predominantly normative

Politeness has proved as hard to define as power, and, as, with power, more recent work has tended to regard politeness as a ‘contested concept’ rather that as one which is predominantly normative. Making use of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Eelen (2001) argues that politeness is most productively anlysed not  as a system or a normative set of prescripts but, once again, as a social practice both dynamic and social practice which is both dynamic and interactive , with variability seen as a positives component that builds into human communication of capacity for social and cultural negotiation and change rather than as an inconvenience which must be argued away or concealed by statistics in a quantitative analysis. One of the consequences of this ways of approaching politeness is to reject the brown and Levinson’s notion that certain speech act (such As requests orders, offers, accusation and so on) are inherently face threatening and, in consequence, the primarily motivationof a speaker is to select both strategies and linguistics forms which serve to mitigate the face threat, particularly when the hearer is more powerful than the speaker. Indeed, Watts (2003: 98) that:

Participant in verbal interaction are polite (or not, as the case may be), that they asses their own behavior and the behavior of the others as im(polite), and that im(politeness) does not reside in a language or in the individual language.

  This is radically different view of politeness form those many studies , including Brown and Levinson’s, which seek to link polite linguistic behaviour with particular normative structures and forms within specific languages and cultures.

There are several consequences of taking such a view. First of all, as most recent writers would maintain, the emphasis of most research in past decades has been on linguistic politeness rather than impoliteness, which has been studied far less often. Impoliteness can no longer be seen merely as the polar opposite of politeness, and the relationship between them is much less straightforward one. Brown and Levinson Spend relatively little time analysing impoliteness, but it is perhaps implicit in their model that impoliteness mainly constitutes an attack on face. Mills (2003: 122) argues rather that ‘impoliteness has to be seen as an assessment of someone behavior rather than a quality intrinsic to an utterance’. Thus both politeness and impoliteness most crucially involve judgments and interpretations of heaher which can be argued about and disputed. A form which maybe deemed polite in context (even such forms as are conventionally associated with politeness such as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’) maybe interpreted differently in another.

Second, a version of politeness as social practice places particular emphasis on the interactive context, and the most recent work on politeness and power involve a version of context which appied at the number of different levels of analysis, including the type of speech event, the immediate physical context, the topic being discussed, social and cultural expectation of the participants, gender, age, education, and status differences, distance and the effect between interactants, personal history and so on. Mills (2004) suggest that the notion of the communities of practice is particular useful one, especially in view of the difficulty of defining a culture or a society, If we add ‘a wider notion of the social and an awareness of the pressure that institutions can exert on communication and individuals’ (Mills 2004 : 197)

Negotiation of Status and identity

Locher (2004) suggest that both informal social situation and more formal discourse contexts  her (her examples of the latter are a university staffs meeting, a political radio interview, extract from US supreme court and a televised presidential debate), the exercise of power and politeness often tends to involve the negotiation of status and, more generally, identity. Clearly, the degree of negotiation is constrained, especially in institutional contexts, by interactents’ formal position of power (or powerlessness), but Locher demonstrate that, even in the case of the radio interview which involves the US President, there is a surprising amount of negotiation of both power and identity. Harris (2003) likewise argues that relativity powerful people such as magistrates, doctors and police officers, even in institutional context where their power is built into hierarchical structures, are often ‘polite’ and make extensive use of redressive strategies and mitigating forms, something which Brown and Levinson’s model previously quoted would not predict. In the workplace, where once again power hierarchies tend to be structural, Holmes and Stubbe (2003: 163) conclude that power and politeness consistently emerge as aimportant dimensions constraining the way in which participant negotiates and resolve miscommunication and problematic issues at work’, particularly where there is a difference in relatives status between the interactants. Identity and status are discursively negotiable, though now without constraints and boundaries , even in situation where power is explicitly exercised and ‘politeness’ is a crucial component of this process of negotiation.

Some methodological implication

There are number of methodological implications which are raised by recent work on the interface between politeness and power. Perhaps the most significant is the willingness of researcher to draw on the other discipline and the focus on qualitative rather than quantitative method. LOcher (2004:30) argues conclusively that ‘power is thus a concept that needs a qualitative analysis of data in order to become sufficiently identifiable for discussion’, though her own work does make use of relatively limited amount of quantitative data, mainly to support her fine grained qualitative analysis of length stretches of discourse. All the other writers (Holmes and Stubbe, Mills, Watts, and Eeleen) also focus strongly on qualitative analysis, with Elen (2001:141) And Mills (2003: 43) in different ways defending this position most explicitly. A furthue important trend is the emphasis on the collection of the natural language data as evidence. (and away from the use of a questionnaires except as a supplementary to the primary data) and on the interactive spoken language. Moreover, the extract used in recent researcher as evidence are often fairly lengthy ones, and taken from a variety of discourse types and situations even when the focus is on a single context (such as the workplace, as in Holmes and Stubbe). The extracts than provide the data for the detailed analyses and close reading which all these writers engage in. (Although Brown and Levinson also use natural language data s evidence, their extract tend to be brief, with the emphasis  on speaker utterances consisting often a single speech acts.) the importance of the analyzing such extract as situated discourse, and the crucial significance of contextual features both in the immediate and wider sense is paramount in recent work. Lastly all these writers point to the importance of recording interactive discourse which becomes a site of ‘dispute’ or ‘struggle’ as being particularly interesting and revealing in enabling us to understand in greater depth how power is exercised and its relation to politeness.

CONCLUTION

Both Elen (2001) and Watts (2003) make quite large claims for the shift to a perspective of politeness where the main characteristics of the theory are ‘argued’ to be ‘variability’, ‘evaluativity’, ‘argumentativity’, and ‘discursiveness’ Elen (2001:240) and which represents ‘a radical departure from a theory of linguistics politeness currently available (Watts 2003:262). Certainly viewing politeness as an area of discursive struggle in social practice is a far cry from the popular nonlinguistic view of politeness as a good manners or etiquette. Clearly, the high level of interest in politeness and power which both the quantity and, more important the quality of recent research represent is to be welcomed, along with the challenging nature of much of that research and its proposal of new paradigms.

However, perhaps a tentative note of caution should be voiced as well. Watts (2003) argues that:

The goal of the theory of linguistics politeness which takes (im)politeness as it starting point should not be to explain why speaker say what they say and to predict the possible effects of utterances on addressees. Sit should aim to explain how all the interactants engaged in an ongoing verbal interaction negotiate the development of emergent network and evaluate their own position and the positions  of others within those networks. (Im)politeness then  become part of the discursive social practice through which we create, reproduce and change our social worlds. Watt 2003: 255

            While it is certainly true that politeness research has been dominated too long bythe ‘face-oriented model of Brown and Levinson, the great strength of that model, and probably one of the main reasons for its dominance for such as lengthy period, is ti coherence level of detail and testability, supported by cross-cultural empirical evidence. In fact the vest amount of criticism directed at Brown and Levinson, particularly from speaker of Asian languages, has proved extremely insightfull and productive in creating a large literature on a wide range of issues (Negative versus positives politeness, individualism versus collectivism, defence versus volition, universalism versus cultural relativity and so on) as well as rising some searching question which new theories have begun to address. In addition, it seems to me that perhaps we shouldn’t quite conclusively write off concepts such as ‘predictability’ or ‘normativity’, particularly when everyday popular versions of politeness till take them seriously. Also although the emphasis on qualitative methodology in the examination of politeness and power is clearly justified, there is still room, in my view, for quantitative data to make useful, if supportive, contribution. There is no doubt, however, that, given the limitation of Brown and Levinson’s model, research on linguistics politeness did and does need to move in significantly newdirections and that the recent work interfered to in this chapter represents such as move in exciting and challenging ways. It also seems that a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between politeness and power will play an essential part in establishing both the degree of applicability and explanatory power of new theories of linguistics politeness in a more general sense.

FURTHER READING

Brown, P and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: some Universals in language usage, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Eelen, G. (2001) a Critique of politeness Theories, Manchester : St. Jerome

Harris, S. (2003) ‘Politeness and Power: making and responding to a “request” in institutional settings’ Text 23 (1) 27-52

Locher, M. (2004) Power and Politeness in Action : Daisagreement in Oral Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.                      ’                                   

ini full isi makalah Sndra Harris dalam Buku Socioliguistics.