Chapter 8
Pointing at colleagues

Indirectness and politeness revisited

Article outline

8.1Non-specificity, indirectness, and politeness
8.2Addressing and mentioning: The system of person reference
- 8.2.1‘One’: Indeterminate, non-specific, and indirect?
- 8.2.2‘Someone’ (and we all know who)
- 8.2.3‘Anyone who’ (but not really anyone, all things considered)
- 8.2.4‘Those who’ (but more specifically ‘the one who’)
8.3‘Call me by my name’: Proper names and reference assignation
- 8.3.1‘Whoever’ (Mr. Struck indeed)
- 8.3.2Naming Members of Parliament
- 8.3.3Naming absent discourse participants
8.4‘Save me from naming them by name’: The pragmatics of hints
- 8.4.1Approaching the notion of salience
- 8.4.2From salient referents to targets
- 8.4.3From salience to the identification of the referents
- 8.4.4From reference assignation to contested meaning
Conclusion
Notes