5.2 Bald on record ,
5.2.1 Cases of non~minimization of the face threat. Where maximum effi
ciency is very important, and this is mutually known to both S and H, no.
face redress is necessary. In cases of great urgency or desperation, redress
would actually decrease the communicated urgency. For example:
(1) Help! (compare the non-urgent ‘Please help me, if you would be so kind’)
(2) Watch out!
(3) Your pants are on fire!
(4) Give me just one more week! (to pay the rent) In Tzeltal we find equivalent urgent imperatives:
(5) ma Sa9£ik’ 9a9k’ab!
Don’t burn your hand!
And similarly in Tamil:
(6) eRu! eRu! periya paampu!
Get up, get up! (There’s a) big snake!
. Where S speaks as //maximum efficiency were very important,29 he provides metaphorical urgency for emphasis. Good examples of this are found in attention-getters used in conversation:
(7) Listen, I’ve got an idea.
(8) Hear me out: . . .
(9) Look, the point is this: . . .
Th^verb^look]in Tzeltal (as in Tamil, too) is used in precisely the same way, for emphasis in making a rhetorical point:
(10) 9ila9wil, 9ay 9ek lek stohol ta me batf’il melel, yu9un . ..
Look, it’s good if that’s really the case, because ..
Jiiis metaphon urgency perhaps explains why orders and entreaties / (or begging), whichhave inverted assumptions about the relative status of S and H, both seem to j)ccur in many languages with the same superficial syntax — namely, imperatives. Thus beggars in India make direct demands like:
(11) kaacukuTu.
Give money.
So also in English one uses imperatives in formulaic entreaties:
(
ExcuseForgive me.
Pardon , (13) Accept my thanks.
Similarly in Tzeltal:
(14) pasben perdon.
Forgive me. (lit.: ‘Make forgiveness for me’)
And this is perhaps also the source of certain metaphorical ‘entreaties’:
(15) Send me a postcard.
(16) Don’t forget us!
where S speaks as if imploring H to care for S, thereby stressing his high valuation of H’s friendship.
Another motivation for bald-on-record (non-redressed) FT As is found in cases of channel noise, or where communication difficulties exert pressure to speak with maximum efficiency. This can be seen, for example, when S is calling across a distance:
(17) Come home right now!
or talking on the telephone with a bad connection:
(18) I need another £1000.
Again, where the focus of interaction is task-oriented, face redress may be felt to be irrelevant, as in:
(19) Lend me a hand here.
(20) Give me the nails.
(21) That’s wrong; the gap should be bigger.
Such task-orientation probably accounts for the paradigmatic form of instructions and recipes:
(22) Open other end.
(23) Add three cups of flour and stir vigorously.
Another set of cases where non-redress occurs is where S’s want to satisfy H’s face is small, either because S is powerful and does not fear retaliation or non-cooperation from H :
(24) Bring me wine, Jeeves.
(25) In future, you must add the soda after the whisky.
or because S wants to be rude, or doesn’t care about maintaining face. A good example of socially acceptable rudeness comes in teasing or joking.
For example, in Tzeltal when teasing the baby one may say:
(26) 9ok’an. 9ilinan.
Cry. Get angry.
without risk of offending.
A third set of cases where non-minimization is likely occurs where doing the FTA is primarily in H’s interest. Then in doing the FTA, S con
veys that he does care about H (and therefore about H’s positive face), so that no redress is required. Thus sympathetic advice or warnings may be baldly on record:
(27) Careful! He’s a dangerous man. (warning H against someone who could threaten him)
(28) Your slip is showing.
(29) Your wig is askew; let me fix it for you.
(30) Your headlights are on!
Comforting advice may similarly be non-redressed, as in the Tzeltal:
(31) ma Sa9 mel 9a9wo9tan.
Don’t be sad.
And granting permission for something that H has requested may likewise be baldly on record, as in English:
f (32) Yes, you may go.
or in Tzeltal:
(33) yakuk. la9 Suka tey 9a.
OK. Come tie it there, (i.e. your bull in my field)
These usages (of imperatives for actions directly in H’s interest) give rise to a host of cliche farewell formulae, as in the English ‘advice’ delivered to those departing on a trip:
(
Take care of ^Treat J yourself, be good, have fun.
Enjoy
J
(35) Don’t take any wooden nickels.
The Tzeltal farewell formulae are directly comparable:
(36) tfahta me bel.
Take care of yourself, (lit.: ‘Choose your way’) (37) ma ba St’uSahat.
Don’t fall down.
(38) k’un k’un Sbenat bel.
Go slowly, carefully.
5.2.2 Cases of FTA-oriented bald-on-record usage. The above, the standard uses of bald on record, are usages where other demands (at least meta
phorically) override face concerns. But another use of bald on record is
actually oriented to face. This nicely illustrates the way in which respect for face involves mutual orientation, so that each participant attempts to foresee what the other participant is attempting to foresee. For in certain circumstances it is reasonable for S to assume that H will be especially preoccupied with H’s potential infringements of S’s preserve. In these circumstances it is polite, in a broad sense, for S to alleviate H’s anxieties by pre-emptively inviting H to impinge on S’s preserve.
Three areas where one would expect such pre-emptive invitations to occur in all languages are these: {ijywelcomings (or post^reetin^s), where S insists that H may impose on his negative face; (ii)ifarewells, where S insists that H may transgress on his positive face by taking his leave; (iii) offers, where S insists that H may impose on S’s negative face,
These three functional categories are all potential FTAs: there is a risk that H may not wish to receive such invitations. Where this risk is great, we would expect some other strategy than bald on record to be utilized.
Thus S will not say ‘Come in’ to persons who are clearly more important than he and are clearly in a hurry. But we would predict that where such risk is small, these pre-emptive invitations will always and in all languages be delivered baldly on record. The reason for this is clear: if H is reluctant to impinge, he will be the less reluctant the firmer the invitation is. So, provided that no other face wants are infringed, the firmer the invitation,
the more polite it is.
The classic example of such invitations is perhaps ‘Come in’, which is a bald-on-record imperative in many languages:
(39) English: Come in, don’t hesitate, I’m not busy.
(40) Tzeltal: 9ocan.
Enter.
(41) Tamil: vaa.
Come in.
G r e ^ ^ and in general rituals of beginning or ternunating encounters* often contain such bald-on-record commands. In Tzeltal we have:
(42) la9, (response to a greeting hail) Come.
(43) ban. (farewell) Go.
(44) naklan. (offer to visitor) Sit down.
(45) solan, (trail greeting) Pass.
In Tamil (as in English) we find:
(46) ukkaaru.
Sit down.
(47) pooy vaa.
Come again, (lit.: Go and come)
Gillian Sankoff informs us (personal comm.) that in Buang, a Melanesian language spoken in New Guinea, leave-taking always involves the person who is staying behind providing an on-record specification of what both parties are to do. For example:
(48) kem ’do,g’na.
I am staying, you (singular) go.
Similar usage is applied in Tok Pisin (New Guinea pidgin English), where the stayer says:
(49) Orait, mi stap, yu go.
All right, I’m staying, you are going.
Other examples of bald-on-record imperatives include offers, as in English:
(50) (You must) have some more cake.30 (51) Don’t bother, I’ll clean it up.
(52) Leave it to me.
Similarly, in Tzeltal offers are often baldly on record:
(53) hitf’an tal. la9 we9an.
Pull (your chair) up. Come eat.
And the Tzeltal imperative:
(54) poka9a9k’ab.
Wash your hands.
accompanied by the holding-out of a water-basin, constitutes a standard offer of a meal. Equally, in Tamil one says to a guest:
(55) caappiTTu.
Eat!
in offering a meal.
Other cases of bald-on-record imperatives seem to be addressed to H’s reluctance to transgress on S’s positive face (as contrasted with the above, which are aimed at forestalling H’s reluctance to impinge on S’s negative face). For example, in:
(56) Don’t worry about me.
(57) Don’t let me keep you.
S communicates essentially ‘Feel free to get on with your business and don’t worry about offending me.’ And in:
(58) Don’t mind the mess.
S communicates something like, ‘Don’t worry that I will mind you seeing me (or my preserve) in such a mess; I won’t.’
Note that only sometimes is the ‘urgency’ expressed by such face- oriented bald-on-record usages totally unredressed. Often it may be em
phasized by positive-politeness hedges:
(59) Do come in, I insist, really!
(60) Do go first.
Or it may be softened by negative-politeness respect terms, or by please:
(61) Please come in, (sir).
5 3 Positive politeness
Positive politeness is redress directed to the addressee’s positive face, his perennial desire that his wants (or the actions/acquisitions/values resulting from them) should be thought of as desirable. Redress consists in partially satisfying that desire by communicating that one’s own wants (or some of them) are in some respects similar to the addressee’s wants.31 y
Unlike negative politeness, positive politeness is not necessarily redres
sive of the particular face want infringed by the FTA; that is, whereas in negative politeness the sphere of relevant redress is restricted to the impo
sition itself, in positive politeness the sphere of redress is widened to the appreciation of alter’s wants in general or to the expression of similarity between ego’s and alter’s wants. As the outputs charted in Fig. 3 illustrate, the linguistic realizations of positive politeness are in many respects simply representative of the normal linguistic behaviour between intimates, where interest and approval of each other’s personality, presuppositions indicat
ing shared wants and shared knowledge, implicit claims to reciprocity of obligations or to reflexivity of wants, etc. are routinely exchanged. Perhaps the only feature that distinguishes positive-politeness redress from normal everyday intimate language behaviour is an element of exaggeration; this serves as a marker of the face-redress aspect of positive-politeness expression, by indicating that even if S can’t with total sincerity say ‘I want your wants’, he can at least sincerely indicate ‘I want your positive face to be satisfied.’ Thus the element of insincerity in exaggerated expressions of
approval or interest (‘How absolutely marvellous! I simply can’t imagine TTow you manage to keep your roses so exquisite, Mrs B!’) is compensated
for by the implication that the speaker really sincerely wants Mrs B’s positive face to be enhanced.
It is precisely this association with intimate language usage that gives the linguistics of positive politeness its redressive force. Positive-politeness utterances are used as a kind of metaphorical extension of intimacy, to imply common ground or sharing of wants to a limited extent even between strangers who perceive themselves, for the purposes of the interaction, as somehow similar. For the same reason, positive-politeness techniques are usable not only for FTA redress, but in general as a kind of social accelera
tor, where S, in using them, indicates that he wants to ‘come closer’ to H.
53.1 Claim common ground. The strategies of positive politeness involve three broad mechanisms, labelled 5.3.1-5.3.3 on the chart (Fig. 3).
Those of the first type involve S claiming ‘common ground’ with H, by indicating that S and H both belong to some set of persons who share specific wants, including goals and values. Three ways of making this claim are these: S may convey that some want (goal, or desired object) of H’s is admirable or interesting to S too; or he may stress common mem
bership in a group or category, thus emphasizing that both S and H belong to some set of persons who share some wants; finally, S can claim common perspective with H without necessarily referring to in-group membership.
The outputs of these three methods of stressing common ground give us positive-politeness strategies 1-8, which we now examine in turn.
Strategy J: Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods) In general, this output suggests that S should take notice of aspects of H’s condition (noticeable changes, remarkable possessions, anything which looks as though H would want S to notice and approve of it). Examples used as FTA redress include, in English:
(1) Goodness, you cut your hair! ( . . . ) By the way, 1 came to borrow some flour.
(2) You must be hungry, it’s a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch?
(3) What a beautiful vase this is! Where did it come from?
In Tzeltal, similar examples serve the same function:
Your blouse is very good, where was it bought?
did you make it yourself?
And similarly, in Tamil:
(5) ookoo! putupooTToo pooTTiinkalaa?
Ah! You’ve got a new photo (on your wall), eh?
or of a newly painted house:
(6) oo! nallaa irukkiratu!
Oh! it’s very nice!
Another aspect of the N o t i c e output is that when H makes an FTA against himself (a breakdown of body control, or any faux pas), S should
^llce*ItiTtdrindicate that he’s not embarrassed by it. (By contrast, in negative politeness S should always ignore H’s faux pas.) He can do this by a joke, or teasing H about his penchant for faux pas:
(7) English: God you’re farty tonight!
(8) Tzeltal: lom stf’isnah! (‘very much his fartiness!’)
or by including S himself as part of the act (cf. positive-politeness strate
gies numbered 4 and 7 below):
(9) We ate too many beans tonight, didn’t we\
Similarly, if H’s nose is running, a positively polite thing for S to do is to offer H a tissue, or comfort for having a cold, rather than ignoring it as in negative politeness.
{ Strategy j : Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)
This is often done with exaggerated intonation, stress, and other aspects of prosodies, as well as with intensifying modifiers, as in the English:
(10) What a fantastic garden you have!
(11) Yes, isn’t it just ghastly the way it always seems to rain just when you’ve hung your laundry out!
marvellous ( 12)
^ incredible
Similarly, in Tamil, positive-politeness exaggerations abound:
(13) viiTu payankaramaa kaTTirukkiraar.
lit.: He built the house terrifyingly, (conversationally implicates (c.i.): he built it amazingly lavishly; he really splashed out) (14) peN lakshanamaa irukkiratu.
The girl’s (as beautiful as) Lakshmi.
(c.i.: she has grace and beauty; this is a typical comment on a bride) or:
(15) peN avaLavo lakshanamaa irukkumnnu naan nennekkavee ille: aRakaana irukkiratu.
I never thought a girl could be so Lakshmi-like: she’s beautiful, (a woman reports on the bride at a recent marriage)
(16) ciile rompa aRakaana irukkiratu; on-ooTiya nerattukku itukaTTinaa, pramaatamaa irukku!
That sari is very beautiful; for your colouring it’s outstanding!
(17) anta kalyanattle payankaramaa kuuTTam ekaccakamaa iruntatu!
At that marriage there was a terrifyingly excessive crowd! (said in admiration)
Tamil has some special intensifying devices much used in such circum
stances: one of these is a set of conventional sound symbolisms, followed by the quotative particle. Thus jumm-nnu means ‘exquisite’, ‘perfect’. Another device is reduplication: periya periya kuTumpattile (lit.: ‘in a big big family’), which emphasizes (and in this case pluralizes), conveying: ‘in many really big families. . . ’ The two devices work together to produce forms like jilajilu-nnu (‘very chilly’), paLapaLa-nnu (‘very shiny’), jummajumm-nnu (‘really exquisite’).32
In Tzeltal the exaggeration in positive politeness is quite remarkable, even to an observer who doesn’t know a word of the language. (One American visitor observed that the women, talking to one another, sounded as if they were ‘acting in a play’, their emotional expression was so drama
tized.) A rough tonal contour is all we can do to non-technically charac
terize this on paper. For example:
(18) k’an me ta yufc’oh to yilel. yalel 9ihk’al Stun to bal yilel*
wozol nanis shol 7a, Staytun nanis sne 9a, ho9pol nanis 9a!
This is the speech of a woman describing the disreputable appearance of her drunken husband to a church crowd, eliciting their sympathy with
heightened pitch (of outrage), exaggerated stress and rhythmicity, and exaggerated intonation contours. A rough translation: ‘He looked as if he was still drunk; he looked incredibly dirty, really uncombed hair, really crooked clothes, really his belt half-tied!’
Interestingly enough, the intonation and prosodies of sympathy or commiseration are very similar in English and Tzeltal; elsewhere we have outlinedan argument for the universal bases for the semantics of prosodic usage (Bro^ra to d tevinson 1974).
The exaggerative or emphatic use of words or particles, illustrated in the above examples, is another feature of this positive-politeness output.
For English, they include expressions like for sure, really, exactly, absolutely, in Tzeltal the particles nanis (‘really’), i% i'e (exclamatory
particle), melel (‘truly’), m l (‘exactly’, ‘just so’), and others serve the same function (see the discussion under ‘Hedges’ in section 5.4.2).