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Politeness is best expressed as the practical application of good manners or etiquette. It is a culturally defined phenomenon, and what is considered polite in one culture can often be quite rude or simply strange in another. While the goal of politeness is to make all of the parties relaxed and comfortable with one another, these culturally defined standards at times may be manipulated to inflict shame on a designated party. Sociolinguists Brown and Levinson identified two kinds of politeness, deriving from Erving Goffman's concept of face: Some cultures seem to prefer one of these kinds of politeness over the other. In this way politeness is culturally-bound.
Techniques to show politeness Linguistic devices Besides and additionally to the above, many languages have specific means to show politeness, deference, respect, or a recognition of the social status of the speaker and the hearer. There are two main ways in which a given language shows politeness: in its lexicon (for example, employing certain words in formal occasions, and colloquial forms in informal contexts), and in its morphology (for example, using special verb forms for polite discourse). Japanese is perhaps the most widely known example of a language that encodes politeness at its very core. Many complications aside, Japanese has two main levels of politeness, one for intimate acquaintances, family and friends, and other for the rest of the people, and verb morphology reflects these levels. Besides that, some verbs have special hyper-polite suppletive forms. This happens also with some nouns and interrogative pronouns. Japanese also employs different personal pronouns for each person according to gender, age, rank, degree of acquaintance, and other cultural factors. See also | ||||||||
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