Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
International Journal of Basic Sciences & Applied Research. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
Available online at http://www.isicenter.org
ISSN 2147-3749 ©2013 VictorQuest Publications
The Relationship of the Type and Number of Impoliteness Strategies Employed by Sistani
Students with Addressee`s Power and Gender
Maryam Keykhayee
Sistan and Baluchestan University
Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
Number 28. Bozorgmehr Street. Zahedan. Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
Abstract
Linguistic impoliteness phenomenon has been the subject of a good number of
studies in recent years. Different scholars have approached it from different
perspectives and proposed different models and definitions. Culpeper (1996) has
described impoliteness as the parasite of politeness and that is why he has formed
his impoliteness strategies in relation to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness
theory. The present study is intended to investigate the usage of impoliteness
strategies employed by Sistani students in the realization of request speech act. To
this end, a number of requests were collected through a Discourse Completion Test
(DCT). The data were gathered according to the Culpeper`s (1996) impoliteness
framework. The analysis of data shows that: 1) both male and female subjects tend to
be more negatively impolite in the realization of request speech act, 2) the
addressee`s power affects addresser`s use of impoliteness strategies in terms of the
choice and frequency of the strategies employed; and 3) the addressee`s gender
does not affect addresser`s use of impoliteness strategies in terms of the choice and
frequency of the strategies employed.
Keywords: Impoliteness, Power, Gender, Type of strategies, Sistani dialect, Request
speech act.
Introduction
Impoliteness is a fairly new area of research and it has not yet gained as much attention as its counterpart politeness.
Impoliteness is part of social interaction just as politeness but from a different point of view. Everything that interrupts the interaction
and causes social disharmony can be connected to impoliteness. When we communicate with other people we usually want to get
along with the person whom we are speaking to. Sometimes the situation might be different when we start a conversation or it might
change along the way from friendly to unfriendly, from cooperative to uncooperative. The situation or the context of the conversation
is critical because both participants of the conversation interpret each other‟s words according to it. Interpretation of impoliteness
depends a lot on the context and it is possible that a certain utterance is interpreted as polite in one situation and in another it can be
very impolite.
The concept of face and politeness
a) Negative and positive face
Face is a central concept in studying linguistic politeness and it was originally introduced by Erving Goffman in the 1960s
and later Brown and Levinson (1987) derived it for their politeness theory. Goffman‟s (1856, as quoted by Brown and Levinson,
1876) definition of politeness suggests that “politeness is socially motivated linguistic action consisting of participants‟ mutual
interactive efforts to support and maintain each other‟s face (public self-esteem)”. Brown and Levinson (1987) define face in the
following way:
Negative face: the want of every competent adult member that his actions be unimpeded by others.
Positive face: the want of every member that his wants to be desirable to at least some others. (Brown and Levinson, 1987).
243
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
In addition, a face can be lost, maintained or enhanced and it is in everyone‟s interest to maintain each other‟s face. The shared
knowledge of people‟s face is also universal. (Brown and Levinson, 1987).
b) Face-threatening acts
In relation to the concept of face, Brown and Levinson (1987) introduce the term FTA, a face-threatening act, which
sometimes cannot be avoided. In fact, the purpose of politeness is to soften face-threatening acts because it is in everyone‟s mutual
interest to do so (Brown and Levinson, 1987). A face threatening act is a speech act (such as a warning or a threat) that can
damage the hearer‟s positive or negative face (Brown and Levinson, 1987). Threats to a negative face are actions by which a person
indicates that they do not intend to avoid impending one‟s freedom of action. Examples of these are orders, advice, and warnings.
Threats to a positive face are actions which indicate that a person does not care about the addressee‟s feelings or wants. Examples
of these are criticism, disagreements, and mention of taboo topics.
c) Politeness
Politeness is a complex concept that many researchers have studied and tried to define for several decades. It has been
studied both in the fields of pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Many of the studies carried out in the recent years are based on the
work of Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson. However, there had been earlier work on politeness before Brown and Levinson,
for example Erving Goffman in the 1950s, Paul Grice and Robin Lakoff in the 1970s, and Geoffrey Leech in the 1980s. From these,
especially Goffman and Grice were those who had most influence on Brown and Levinson‟s politeness theory (Watts et al., 1992).
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), any rational agent wants to avoid FTAs and therefore uses certain strategies to minimise
the threat. When a person is about to perform an FTA, they have to estimate the degree of the face threat involved. The less
imposition of the act and the less powerful and distant the other person is, the less polite one has to be.
Culpeper (1885) has summarised Brown and Levinson‟s list of five strategies for doing FTAs:
1) Bald-on-record strategies9 the FTA is performed „in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way possible‟ (Brown and
Levinson 1987).
2) Positive politeness-the use of strategies designed to redress the addressee‟s positive face wants.
3) Negative politeness-the use of strategies designed to redress the addressee‟s negative face wants.
4) Off-record-the FTA is performed in such a way that “there is more than one unambiguously attributable intention so that the actor
cannot be held to have committed himself to one particular intent” (Brown and Levinson9 1876). In other words, perform the FTA by
means of an implicature (Grice, 1975)
5) Withhold the FTA.
Theorizing impoliteness
Although there have been several attempts to theorize politeness, the opposite phenomenon, impoliteness, has not gained
nearly as much attention. 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 behavior that is
more likely to be commented on in verbal interaction. He suggests that impoliteness is a notable form of social behavior because it
objects the acceptable and appropriate behavior (Watts, 2003). According to Wardaugh (1992), when we act impolitely we are
breaking the rules of politeness and if there were no rules of politeness we could not break them, that is, be impolite. Wardaugh
(1883) states, “Impoliteness depends on the existence of standards, or norms, of politeness”. Herman (1884) points out that it would
not be necessary to have rules of politeness, if there were not a danger of a social conflict. The rules of politeness are needed to
neutralize impoliteness. Watts (2003) points out that even though politeness has been studied a lot more than impoliteness when we
are participants in verbal interaction, it is more usual that we comment on impolite features of the discussion. He describes
impoliteness and politeness as a scale with a negative end with impolite behavior and a positive end with polite behavior. Behavior
that is impolite, rude, discourteous, obstreperous or bloody-minded is noticed more easily than polite behavior. When we are
evaluating if someone‟s words are impolite we cannot base our interpretation only on the impolite linguistic expressions but we have
to consider the whole behavior of the person in that particular social interaction situation. According to Watts (2003), the concept of
politeness and impoliteness has not been agreed upon in the past and he predicts that it will not be agreed upon in the future either.
Researchers tend to look at the issue of politeness and impoliteness from various viewpoints and their interpretations are not
compatible. Jonathan Culpeper (1885) builds an impoliteness framework similar to Brown and Levinson‟s (1876) theory of
politeness. He uses earlier definitions of politeness to define impoliteness-the use of strategies that are designed to cause social
disruption instead of maintaining social harmony - and then points out that there have not been studies that focus comprehensively
on the impoliteness phenomenon and its theories, although researchers such as Lakoff and Penman have studied confrontational
discourse along with their models of politeness.
Culpeper (1996) makes a distinction between inherent impoliteness and mock impoliteness. Both Leech (1983, as quoted
by Culpeper 1996) and Brown and Levinson (1987) have written that some acts, for example orders, threats, or criticisms are
inherently impolite and unavoidably threaten the hearer‟s face. According to Culpeper (1885), this kind of inherent impoliteness
concerns only acts that draw attention to another person‟s anti-social activity. As an example he mentions the sentence “Do you
think you could possibly not pick your nose?”. It draws attention to another person‟s activity which is not acceptable in our (if in any)
culture and the inherent impoliteness rises from the fact that the question does not show concern towards the hearer‟s positive face
242
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
and inevitably damages it. (Culpeper 1996). Mock impoliteness by contrast, remains on the surface. It is not intended to be offensive
and it is understood merely as bantering. An example of bantering is “you silly bugger”, which can be uttered by a host whose guest
has arrived late at a party because of a misunderstanding. Furthermore, the closer the relationship, the less important politeness is.
Close friends can be impolite towards each other because they understand it is not meant seriously. This is why one has to be
careful with bantering if it is targeted towards people who are not very close to oneself. (Culpeper 1996). Culpeper (1996) lists
opposite impoliteness strategies equivalent to Brown and Levinson‟s strategies. Their purpose is to attack the hearer‟s face instead
of trying to save it. The five strategies and their sub-strategies are:
1) Bald on record impoliteness
2) Positive impoliteness:
- ignore, snub the other
- exclude the other from an activity
- disassociate from the other
- be disinterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic
- use inappropriate identity markers
- use obscure or secretive language
- seek disagreement
- make the other feel uncomfortable
- use taboo words
- call the other names
3) Negative impoliteness:
- frighten
- condescend, scorn or ridicule
- invade the other‟s space
- explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect
- put the other‟s indebtedness on record
4) Sarcasm or mock politeness
5) Withhold politeness (Culpeper 1995).
Power and impoliteness
In order to get a sense of the state of the art with respect to thinking about power, I will cite Locher`s (2004) checklist,
derived from a review of the literature:
- Power is (often) expressed through language.
- Power cannot be explained without contextualization.
- Power is relational, dynamic and contestable.
- The interconnectedness of language and society can be seen in the display of power.
Culpeper (1996) states that a powerful participant has more freedom to be impolite, because he or she can (a) reduce the ability of
the less powerful participant to retaliate with impoliteness (e.g. through the denial of speaking rights), and (b) threaten more severe
retaliation should the less powerful participant be impolite.
This led to a prediction that impoliteness is more likely to occur in situations where there is an imbalance of social structural power.
This seems to be confirmed by research on the courtroom (e.g. Lakoff 1975; Penman 1990), army recruits training (e.g., Culpeper
1996; Bousfield, 2004) and exploitative TV shows (e.g. Culpeper, 2005). In all three of the asymmetric situations mentioned above,
the powerful participants not only do impoliteness but are supported by the social structure in doing so; in contrast, the less powerful
participants are restricted by the social structure from meeting impoliteness with impoliteness.
Gender and impoliteness
In feminist linguistics in recent years, third-wave feminists have developed new models of gender and particularly new
models of the way that gender identity is constructed in language and interaction (Bergvall, 1996; Holmes and Meyerhoff, 2003).
McConnell-Ginet argue that feminist linguistics is no longer concerned with mapping out the differences between men‟s and
women‟s speech, and has thus progressed from “the search for correlations between linguistic units and social categories of
speakers to analysis of the gendered significance of ongoing discourse” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003). Gender is now seen
by feminist linguists as something which one performs in interaction rather than something which one has or possesses; it is
emergent rather than achieved (Holmes and Meyerhoff, 2003). Eckert and McConnell-Ginet argue that: gender is not a part of one‟s
essence, what one is, but an achievement, what one does. Gender is a set of practices through which people construct and claim
identities; not simply a system of categorizing people. And gender practices are not only about establishing identities but also about
managing social relations (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003).
Inherent impoliteness
Leech (1983) makes a distinction between 'Relative Politeness' and 'Absolute Politeness'. Relative politeness refers to the
politeness of an act relative to a particular context, whereas absolute politeness refers to the politeness associated with acts
independent of context. Within absolute politeness, Leech argues, "some illocutions (e.g. orders) are inherently impolite, and others
243
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
(e.g. offers) are inherently polite". Similarly, Brown and Levinson (1987), working within a face oriented model of politeness, write
that "it is intuitively the case that certain kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face"; in other words, they argue that certain acts (e.g.
orders, threats, criticisms) run counter to one's positive face, the want to be approved of, and/or one's negative face, the want to be
unimpeded. Culpeper (1996) argues that the notion of inherent impoliteness irrespective of contexts only holds for a minority of acts.
For example, acts which draw attention to the fact that the target is engaged in some anti-social activity (e.g. picking nose or ears,
farting) seem to be inherently impolite. It is difficult to think of politeness work or a change of context that can easily remove the
impoliteness from an utterance such as "Do you think you could possibly not pick your nose"?. An inherently impolite act does not
involve virtual or potential offence; it is in its very performance offensive and thus not amenable to politeness work. In the example,
"Do you think you could possibly not pick your nose?", the face threatening potential in the request to desist from a particular line of
activity can be mitigated by politeness work, but the face damage incurred in drawing attention to an anti-social habit cannot.
Methodology
The data collection method was a modified version of the Discourse Completion Test (DCT). In order to determine the
degree of appropriateness and naturalness of the situations selected for the present study, a pilot study was administrated. For
answering the research questions, an experiment was designed in which a number of requests were collected from a sample of
native Sistani speakers.
Data collection instrument
Data collection in the present study was done through administrating an open-ended written questionnaire- a modified
version of DCT ( which is presented in the appendix). An experiment was designed in which a number of requests were collected
from two different groups of subjects by a modified version of DCT. Our DCT includes two parts. The first part is about the
preliminary information about the gender, marital status, age, place of living, job, nationality, and the language of subjects. The
second part is about the speech act situations which includes total numbers of four situations in each of which there are six people
(two less powerful, two with equal power and two more powerful than the speaker) of whom speakers request something. Subjects
are asked to answer the questions in Sistani dialect.
Participants
One hundred Sistani speakers participated in the present investigation. They were university students, studying English
Translation and Literature at Sistan and Baluchestan University in Zahedan. The study included equal number of males and females;
50 females and 50 males. Their ages ranged from 18 to 30 years old. The mean age was 23 for females and 25 for males. In this
study, subjects are asked to write in Sistani.
Data analysis
Responses collected through our open-ended questionnaire are classified in lines with the types of impoliteness strategies
employed by the subjects with respect to power and gender variables. The basis of our classification is the framework proposed by
Culpeper (1996).
Results
Impoliteness Super-strategies and Strategies Used by Male and Female Subjects in Less Powerful Situations
The following table and figures show the frequency distribution and percentage of impoliteness super-strategies and
strategies used by male subjects in the less powerful situations (where the power of the speaker is less than the power of the
hearer). As it is shown male subjects used 81.4% negative impoliteness super-strategy. 16.04% Frighten-instill a belief that action
detrimental to the other will occur, for example:
pošo
go away
yâ na
xot-to
or
yourself
m-fam-I
know
Go away or I behave you in a different way.
25.93% Invade the other's space - literally (e.g. position yourself closer to the other than the relationship permits) or
metaphorically (e.g. ask for or speak about information which is too intimate given the relationship), for example:
biâ
malaka
come
queen
ru
on
sar-me
head-my
Queen! Come and sit on my head.
244
barši
sit
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
31.96% Condescend, scorn or ridicule-emphasize your relative power. Be contemptuous. Do not treat the other seriously.
Belittle the other (e.g. use diminutives), for example:
var
âdam
wisdom-too for
man
ᾱɣl-a
xub
čiz-i-y-a
good
thing-is
Wisdom is a good thing for man.
And 7.47% Explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect - personalize, use the pronouns 'I' and 'you', for example:
ostâd
xe-to
professor
xrâs
meno
with-you(singular) talk
do
Professor! I`m talking with you.
18.57% positive impoliteness super-strategy ( Use taboo words - swear, or use abusive or profane language, for example:
aǰab
âdame
nâfame
asti
how
man
stupid
are
How a stupid person you are.
In the less powerful situations, as indicated, male subjects are more negatively impolite in less powerful situations.
Table 1. The frequency and percentage of impoliteness super strategies and strategies used by male subjects in less powerful
situations.
Super strategy
Strategy
Frighten
Frequency
Percentage
133
16.04
Invade the
other‟s
space
215
25.93
Negative impoliteness
Condescend, scorn
or ridicule
265
31.96
Explicitly
associate
62
7.47
Total
Positive Impoliteness
Use taboo words
675
81.4
Figure 1. Impoliteness strategies used by male subjects in less powerful situations.
245
154
18.57
Total
829
100
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
Figure 2. Impoliteness super strategies used by male subjects in less powerful situations.
Table 1 and figures 1 and 2, show the frequency distribution and percentage of impoliteness super strategies and strategies used by
female subjects in the less powerful situations (where the power of the speaker is less than the power of the hearer).
Table 2. The frequency and percentage of impoliteness super strategies and strategies used by female subjects in less powerful
situations.
Super
strategy
Strategy
Frequency
Percentage
Negative impoliteness
Frighten
115
13.08
Invade the
other‟s
space
227
27.25
Condescend,
scorn or
ridicule
281
33.73
Explicitly
associate
50
6.002
Total
673
80.78
Positive
impoliteness
Use taboo
words
160
19.20
Figure 3. Impoliteness strategies used by female subjects in less powerful situation.
Figure 4. Impoliteness super strategies used by female subjects in less powerful situations.
246
Total
100
100
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
The table 3 and figures 5 and 6 show the frequency distribution and percentage of impoliteness super-strategies and
strategies used by male subjects in the more powerful situations (where the power of the of the speaker is more than the power of
the hearer). As it is shown male subjects used 76.16% negative impoliteness super-strategy and 23.83% bald on record super
strategy-the FTA is performed in a direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way in circumstances where face is not irrelevant
or minimized, for example:
b-ro
go
var-xa
sandali
for-yourself
chair
b-y-âr
bring
Go and bring a chair for yourself.
Table 3. The frequency and percentage of impoliteness super strategies and strategies used by male subjects in more powerful
situations.
Super strategy
Strategy
Frequency
Percentage
Bald on record
Be direct, clear and unambiguous
82
23.83
Negative impoliteness
Use taboo words
262
76.16
Total
829
100
Figure 5. Impoliteness strategies used by male subjects in more powerful situations.
Figure 6. Impoliteness super strategies used by male subjects in more powerful situations
The table 4 and figures 7 and 8 show the frequency distribution and percentage of impoliteness super-strategies and
strategies used by female subjects in the more powerful situations (where the power of the of the speaker is more than the power of
the hearer). As it is shown female subjects used 75.32% negative impoliteness super-strategy and 24.67% bald on record super
strategy.
Table 4. The frequency and percentage of impoliteness super strategies and strategies used by female subjects in more powerful
situations.
Super strategy
Bald on record
Negative impoliteness
Total
Strategy
Be direct, clear and unambiguous
Use taboo words
Frequency
76
232
829
Percentage
24.67
75.32
100
247
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
Figure 7. Impoliteness strategies used by female subjects in more powerful situations.
Figure 8. Impoliteness super strategies used by female subjects in more powerful situations.
Conclusion
The present study was carried out on impoliteness strategies used by male and female Sistani university students to
explore the kind of impoliteness strategies they use in the realization of requestive speech act as well as to investigate the possible
effect that the two variables of gender and power may have on the choice and frequency of these selected strategies. As the results
show, Sistani students of Sistan and Baluchestan University use negative impoliteness super strategy in the realization of requestive
speech act. As it is shown in the above-mentioned tables and figures, the percentage of negative impoliteness usage in all situations
is more than other super strategies, therefore, we can conclude that subjects used negative impoliteness super strategy more than
other strategies in the realization of requestive speech act.
In the case of the effect of addressee`s power, as the results show, the power of the addressee affects male and female
addressors` choice of impoliteness strategies in all situations. In the case of the effect of addressee`s gender, as the results show,
there is no difference between male and female subjects in using impoliteness strategies in all situations in the realization of
requestive speech act.
References
Bergvall V, Bergvall VL, Freed A, 1996. Rethinking Language and Gender Research. Addison Wesley Publishing Company.
Bousfield D, 2004. Impoliteness in Interaction. Unpublished PhD thesis. Lancaster University, UK.
Brown P, Levinson SC, 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper J, 1996. Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics. 25(3): 349-367.
Culpeper J, 2005. Impoliteness and The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research.1(1): 35-72.
248
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
Eckert P, McConnell-Ginet S, 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge University Press.
Goffman E, 1967. Interaction Ritual. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.
Grice HP, 1975. Logic and Conversation. In: Speech Acts [Syntax and Semantics 3], Peter Cole, Jerry Morgan., (Eds.), New York:
Academic Press.
Holmes J, Meyerhoff M, 2003. The Handbook of Language and Gender, Wiley.
Lakoff R, 1975. Language and Woman`s Place: Text and Commentaries. New York: Harper & Row.
Leech GN, 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Penman R, 1990. Face work and Politeness: Multiple goals in courtroom discourse. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 9:
15-38.
Wardhaugh R, 1992. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford, UK: Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publisher.
Watts RJ, 1992. Linguistic Politeness and Politic verbal Behavior. In politeness in language: Studies in its History, Theory and
Practice. Richard J, Watts, Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich., (Eds.), Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Watts RJ, 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
253
Intl. j. Basic. Sci. Appl. Res. Vol., 2 (4), 352-361, 2013
Appendix
The impoliteness strategy questionnaire of requestive speech act realization
A) Preliminary information:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Gender9
Male ………
female ………..
Marital status
single ………
married………..
Age:
Place of the birth9
City9 ……….
District9 …………….
Place of the living:
City9 ………..
District9 …………….
Education: BA student: Term9 ……..
Year9 ……………….
Place of the education:
University9 ………… Faculty9 …………
Job9 ……………
Languages9 …………………………………………
Country9 …………
Country9 …………
Major9 …………….
Department9 ……….
B) Speech act situations:
Imagine that you are in each of the following situations and write the phrases or sentences that you may use in each situation.
1.You are sitting in a train. You are too tired and want to rest but one of your travelling companions, one of the following
persons, is talking continuously. If you want to ask them not to speak, how do you request this?




Your younger brother ( aged from 7 to 11 years ):
Your father:
University butler:
Dean of the faculty:
2. You are waiting in line at the bakery for about an hour. Suddenly one of the following persons take you aside and stand in front of
you. Now, if you want to ask her not to do this and stand in line, how do you request this?




Your younger brother ( aged from 7 to 11 years ):
Your father:
University butler:
Dean of the faculty:
3. On a hot summer day, you`re in a hurry and drive fast. After a while you face with a heavy traffic. Someone stops in the middle of
the street and starts to talk with someone else, ignoring you standing behind them. Now, if you want to ask them, one of the
following persons, to move their car, how do you request this?




Your younger brother ( aged from 7 to 11 years ):
Your father:
University butler:
Dean of the faculty:
4. Your mother is seriously sick and you have to provide a lot of money for her surgery. If you decide to call your friend, one of the
following persons, and take back the money that you lend them, how do you express your request?




251
Your younger brother ( aged from 7 to 11 years ):
Your father:
University butler:
Dean of the faculty: