Impoliteness Essay

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Although there have been several attempts to theorise politeness, the opposite phenomenon, impoliteness, has not gained nearly as much attention. Richard J. Watts (2003) includes impoliteness in his attempts to theorize politeness. He points out that the greater focus on politeness instead of impoliteness could be considered quite surprising because it is specifically impolite behaviour that is more likely to be commented on in verbal interaction (Watts 2003:5). He suggests that impoliteness is a notable form of social behaviour because it objects the acceptable and appropriate behaviour (Watts 2003:18). However, he does notactually separate impoliteness from politeness because he uses the term (im)politeness throughout his book Politeness. Allan and Burridge (2006) examine impoliteness, as well as politeness, from a viewpoint of taboo language and as it interacts with ortophemism (straight talking), euphemism (sweet talking), and dysphemism (speaking offensively). According to them, people censor their language by default in order to be polite and because they want to enhance the well-being of themselves and others. (Allan and Burridge 2006:1-2). Politeness is connected to different factors, such as context, place and time, and what is polite is at best pleasing to an audience. This follows that what is offensive, is impolite or dysphemistic. For example, in the word group toilet (an ortophemism), loo (a euphemism) and shithouse (a dysphemism), the latter word choice is most likely considered to be the most offensive or dispreferred choice and these kinds of expressions might also be called tabooed expressions. (Allan and Burridge 2006:30-32). Jonathan Culpeper (1995) builds an impoliteness framework similar to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness. He uses earlier definitions of politeness to define impoliteness - the use of strategies that are
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