Article published In:
Understanding Historical (Im)PolitenessEdited by Marcel Bax and Dániel Z. Kádár
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2] 2011
► pp. 104–132
Edited by Marcel Bax and Dániel Z. Kádár
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2] 2011
► pp. 104–132
A socio-cognitive approach to historical politeness
The central argument of this paper is that “politeness”, when looked at not as a theoretical term but as a lexeme in the English language, has a relatively unstable set of cognitive concepts for which it prompts when used. The first-order notion of “politeness” developed by Watts, Ide and Ehlich (1992a), Watts (2003, 2005) and Locher (2004) entails the need for a very different form of theorisation from the rationalist/objectivist approach presented in Brown and Levinson ([1978] 1987). The only way to develop such a new “theory” of first-order “politeness” is to take positively and negatively evaluated linguistic expressions referring to the general area of “politeness” (polite, polished, refined, well-mannered, standoffish, etc.) to prompt for the socio-cognitive construction of a range of meanings that do not always correspond to one another or even overlap, i.e. to develop a socio-cognitive constructionist approach to emergent social practice. In terms of looking at “politeness” from a historical point of view, it is obviously difficult if not impossible to reconstruct the forms of emergent social practice, but English writings during the early eighteenth century are replete with references to terms such as polite, polished, affected, politeness, etc. The close study of how such terms are used reveals that what was understood by them was very different from what politeness researchers of today understand by “politeness”, and such differences can only be accounted for by positing a relativist model that can account for variability and change.
Cited by
Cited by 15 other publications
Jucker, Andreas
2020. Politeness in the History of English, 
Taavitsainen, Irma & Andreas H. Jucker
2020. Manners, norms and transgressions. In Manners, Norms and Transgressions in the History of English [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 312], ► pp. 2 ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. The Eighteenth Century: Educational Literature. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 135 ff.
2020. Conclusion: Politeness, Manners and Dissimulation. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 184 ff.
2020. Terms of Address in Middle English. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 53 ff.
2020. Terms of Address in Early Modern English. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 100 ff.
2020. Preface. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. xi ff.
2020. Research Methods and Data Problems. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 18 ff.
2020. References. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 192 ff.
2020. The Eighteenth Century: The Age of Politeness. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 117 ff.
2020. The Rise (and Fall) of Non-imposition Politeness. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 160 ff.
2020. Medieval Britain. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 32 ff.
2020. Renaissance and Early Modern England. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 78 ff.
2020. Exploring Politeness in the History of English. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 1 ff.
2020. Index. In Politeness in the History of English, ► pp. 208 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.