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The present paper analyses self-reflexive opinions of 33 Estonians about small talk; it is based on interviews carried out in 2020–2022. The main topics covered in the paper are what participants consider small talk situations, how they feel in such situations, and what kind of topics they bring up or avoid. While silent Finns and silent Scandinavians appear in the literature almost as terms, research on Estonians and their behaviour has been scarce. The paper reveals that although Estonians might see themselves as silent, they often feel the need to break the silence. As it appears, it might result in a failed attempt, but the attempts are there. The article discusses various decisive factors in engaging in or refraining from small talk mentioned by the participants. It also sheds light on changes in time, which mainly seem to indicate that Estonians are opening up. Although small talk is not primarily connected with the notion of politeness in the interviewees' views, it nevertheless belongs to what is considered appropriate behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The present research hypothesises that speech acts can serve as a fundamental device of (im)politeness, potentially outweighing the significant contribution of honorifics, including speech levels. Specifically, it argues that agreeing with interlocutors and paying them compliments are closely related to the realisation and perception of politeness in Korean speech. Although the literature notes the deep engagement of speech acts in Korean (im)politeness, scholars have primarily focused on ‘polite refusal’ or ‘polite request’ as speech acts that explicitly threaten the hearer’s ‘face’ (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987). However, other speech acts, such as agreement, disagreement, complimenting and criticism, can also significantly affectﾠthe perception of (im)politeness across the spectrum of linguistic behaviours. Through a survey asking native Korean speakers to assess the degree of (im)politeness perceived from different utterances, the current study explores how several factors, including addressee, modality, speech level and speech acts, are complicatedly but distinctly involved in Korean speakers’ perceptions of (im)politeness. While the results confirm the impact of honorifics and ‘negative face’ on the speakers’ assessment of (im)politeness, they also indicate that positive politeness together with negative politeness needs to be more actively included in the discussion regarding how (im)politeness is perceived in actual speech practices. This comprehensive approach aims to capture the full spectrum of linguistic behaviours observed in actual speech practices, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of (im)politeness in Korean speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to explore the influences of prosody on (im)politeness perception in intercultural communication. Based on empirical data collected in perceptual experiments, the paper compares the perception of the (im)politeness prosodic properties of L1 German speakers and L2 German speakers of Chinese origin. It was found that the two subject groups show clear distinctions in their (im)politeness perceptions and that prosodic features exert different impacts on (im)politeness perception: L2 German speakers of Chinese origin perceive lower acoustic intensity, more pauses, and lower muscle tension as indicators of higher level of politeness, whereas the opposite holds true for L1 German speakers. In addition, the former demonstrate higher sensitivity to speech rate and modal particle stress than the latter. The study's findings indicate that (im)politeness and prosody perception are influenced by people's first language and home-grown culture, and a prosodic mitigation strategy may not be fully applicable in intercultural communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a corpus-assisted pragmatic investigation of three Japanese expressions: the adverb chotto 'a little', the verb-ending form -te shimau, conveying (formulaic) regret, and the conditional clause with -tara. These are deictic forms I refer to as indexical signs for (im)politeness because they can, under certain circumstances, trigger evaluations in terms of (im)politeness, potentially favouring an indirect interpretation of the utterance. They are investigated in co-occurrence with apology-like behaviour based on the assumption that, in this context, interactants are more likely to exploit linguistic strategies for conveying additional layers of pragmatic meaning. The main findings point to a wide range of possible interactional meanings the selected forms can acquire in naturally occurring data, from affecting the illocutionary force of the utterance, to conventionally matching interactants' expectations, to conveying a potentially face-threatening act. These results support the assumption that seemingly polite speech acts will not necessarily be doing polite work (or not only) and highlight the relevance of the interactional context for retrieving communicative meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores (im)politeness conceptualizations and evaluations and the moral foundations of lay notions of (im)politeness in Syrian Arabic. The data were collected using an online questionnaire which was administered to 88 native speaking participants. The results show that participants consider politeness and impoliteness as polar opposites; both are viewed as (in)consideration for others, chiefly conveyed through (dis)respect, and upholding/violating appropriate behaviors, respectively. Moreover, the results show that notions of hierarchical respect, face, equity rights, reciprocity, and attending to others' needs are central in motivating participants' views of (im)politeness. These notions are rooted in the moral foundations of authority/respect, fairness/reciprocity, and harm/care. Additionally, interesting findings emerge in that politeness in Syrian Arabic appears to be more of a relational phenomenon, based on morality, which is in line with contemporary views on politeness, than a rational and strategic behavior, as theorized in classical approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of evaluative language in the identification of emotions in–and psychophysiological responses to–Twitter complaints and compliments by the readers of these messages. Three hypotheses were tested in this research. First, in line with recent experimental work in French, we expected the presence of negative evaluative language in complaints to increase perceived dissatisfaction, impoliteness, and offensiveness by the reader. Second, assuming the negativity bias hypothesis, stronger psychophysiological responses should be found in complaints compared to compliments. Third, readers' psychophysiological responses should be stronger for complaints and compliments including evaluative language. To test these hypotheses, we used a reading task involving cardiovascular reactivity measurements and a questionnaire. We found that perceived customer dissatisfaction, impoliteness and offensiveness were higher in complaints with vs. without evaluative language. We did not find an effect of the negativity bias on cardiovascular reactivity. Rather, compliments with evaluative language elicited larger cardiac slowing compared to complaints (with or without evaluative language) and compliments without evaluative language. As the stimuli is our study concern a railway company (which is mostly the target of criticism and complaints on Twitter), participants may have reacted more to the sort of feedback they would not expect the company to receive. Future research will be necessary to establish whether our findings still hold in the case of companies that achieve a better balance between negative and positive feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore how (im)politeness and face are managed by two top diplomats of the US and Iran amidst an ongoing conflict where both claim to occupy moral high grounds. To that end, 360 relevant tweets posted on the Iranian Foreign Minister and US Secretary of State's official accounts over one year were selected and analyzed qualitatively through the theoretical lens of Culpeper's (2011) impoliteness formulae and implicational impoliteness framework. Three overarching pragmatic functions were identified: criticizing the adversary, giving directives, and showing solidarity with allies while projecting a significant amount of face-threat to the adversary. We also identified three main strategies that they used to justify their impoliteness, namely, appeal to the moral order, appeal to common sense, and appeal to international conventions and regulations. These findings can contribute to impoliteness literature by providing insights into the pragmatic functions and justifications in political communication, where the speakers have to balance their face needs and their communicative goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although language research has focused on blackmail in general, less attention has been paid to emotional blackmail. To date, researchers could not locate any literature that examines emotional blackmail from a linguistic standpoint. The current study is intended to fill this gap by scrutinizing emotional blackmail from a pragma-stylistic point of view by examining the style of the characters in selected episodes extracted from the American Breaking Bad series. To carry out the study, an eclectic model comprising kinds of emotional blackmailers by Forward and Frazier (1997), Searles' speech acts (1979), Grice's maxims (1975), Brown and Levinson's politeness (1987), Culpeper's impoliteness (1996), and Simpson's stylistic levels (2004) will be used. The study examines how emotional blackmailers reflect themselves through language and how different pragmatic theories contribute to detecting emotional blackmail. The pragma-stylistic analysis reveals that emotional blackmailers use different pragmatic and stylistic elements. Pragmatically, the analysis demonstrates that punishers more frequently utilize commissive speech acts, whereas sufferers more frequently use representative and expressive speech acts. Besides, the punishers' speech is realized by breaching the quantity and manner maxims whereas the sufferer's speech is manifested by breaching the quantity and quality maxims. Concerning (im)politeness, the punishing behavior is accomplished by positive politeness, negative impoliteness, bold on-record impoliteness, and positive impoliteness while the suffering behavior is accomplished through positive politeness. Stylistically, the language used to talk about suffering is associated with discomfort and unhappiness. Concerning grammar, the punishing discourse emphasizes threats through fronting strategies. With suffering, negative auxiliaries are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of CIRCULO de Linguistica Aplicada a la Comunicacion is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present study aims to examine the socio-pragmatic scope of vocatives in present-day colloquial Spanish. As prototypical deictic markers, directly calling upon the addressee, vocatives are considered crucial mechanisms in the creation and maintaining of interpersonal relationships during interaction. This deictic potential makes them highly appropriate strategies at the service of face work and (im)politeness. However, the relation between (Spanish) vocatives and (im)politeness has scarcely been explored. In an attempt to fill this research gap, the present analysis empirically examines the socio-pragmatic functions related to the expression of (im)politeness that the Spanish vocative is able to fulfill in colloquial conversations. The results show that its socio-pragmatic multifunctionality needs to be evaluated in the broad context, not only by taking into account the hosting speech act and the vocative's semantic features, but also extra-linguistic parameters, such as the interpersonal relationship and the speaker's age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What (im)politeness means changes over time. As these changes are usually gradual, we tend to be relatively unaware of them. However, when changes are abrupt, people not only notice but are also concerned with them. The COVID-19 pandemic entailed such abrupt changes involving new rules most of which are at odds with the rather automatic conventions of politeness that we follow. My aim in this paper is to explore what politeness means to non-academics in the context of the pandemic and how similar or different their understandings are from academic accounts. To this end, I will draw from an online article entitled "Your politeness is a public health hazard", which appeared at the onset of the pandemic, and the user-generated comments it triggered. The discussion is placed within the discursive turn in (im)politeness research, considering its key distinction between first-order and second-order conceptualisations of politeness. The findings suggest that politeness in the pandemic is still mostly understood as consideration for the other, an understanding shared with (im)politeness research. However, posters' views are broader overlapping with understandings of 'civility'. These views manifest their knowledge as observers and participants of social reality but also reveal that they are in dialogue with work in philosophy, sociology and psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Románicos is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study explores the perceptions of small talk shared by the users of a Japanese online community, seeking information on their expected speech and behaviour in small talk and factors contributing to positive/negative evaluations of small talk. The study investigates a discussion thread consisting of 73 responses to a contributor’s request for advice on improving small talk capabilities from the perspectives of interaction ritual (Goffman 1967), balancing obligations (Ohashi 2008, 2013, 2021) and typology of speech acts (Edmondson & House 1981; House & Kádár 2022b). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most productive resources in the management of face in interaction is epistemicity. Given its high frequency for the purpose of modifying the speaker's commitment to what has been said (Albelda 2016; Figueras 2018; García 2020), the objective of this work is to determine which relationship exists between the use of specific epistemic resources and the management of the faces these devices develope in a specific genre: the semi-directed interview. For that purpose, a set of formal epistemic categories is established and it is made an attempt to determine which relational patterns can be recognized in their uses and their effect on the faces of those who are involved in communicative acts. The analysis suggests that there are four habitual behavioral patterns in high sociocultural level interviews that allow us to recognize graduality in the impact of the faces, derived from the focus and orientation taken by those epistemic resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze humorous mockery in terms of politeness. Using data from a Chinese standup comedy competition, Rock and Roast , we demonstrate that politeness is a determining factor in the contestants' selection of targets for their mockeries (primarily those close to them), in the characteristics of the targets being mocked (primarily those that reflect the targets' persona as opposed to the person), and in the fact that, when individuals are expressly mocked, they are very often vehicles for parodic or sarcastic criticisms of specific social issues. By looking at how politeness interacts with the play frame of the standup comedy genre, our paper contributes to both humor research and politeness theorizing. • Politeness is very much at work in the context of the play frame of humorous mockery. • Humorists target FACE 2 (persona), not FACE 1, in an attempt to be polite. • Humorists target those close to them more than those who are not. • Mockeries may also serve to enhance the image of self and other. • Politeness is relevant to humor as it is for other types of language use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the pragmatic functions served by ḥāshāk and its variants in colloquial Algerian Arabic (CAA) are unravelled. Literally, ḥāshāk means "You're exalted/exempt from X/I distance you from X," where X is a bad thing or socially/religiously unacceptable act. Its variants include ḥāsha, ḥāshākem, ḥāshāh/ḥāshāha/ḥāshāhem, maḥashākesh, and the verb ḥāsha/ḥāshi. As far as the author is aware, this is the first study on the pragmatics of ḥāshāk and its variants in colloquial (Algerian) Arabic. Two complementary data sets were collected and analyzed: an online survey administered to native speakers (N= 263) and a corpus of naturally occurring examples gained using an ethnographic method (N= 172). The findings indicated that the core semantic import (exaltative/excepting/exempting meaning) is retained in CAA and further extended to perform other pragmatic functions: apologetic, appreciative, requestive, concessive, critical, defensive, and sarcastic. These intertwined functions are expected in an array of highly conventionalized contexts. These findings were discussed from an eclectic perspective (e.g., pragmatic reversal, pragmatic markers, politeness theory, and rapport management). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Iliad, first person plural forms are scarcely used with a pseudo-inclusive meaning. This use is observed in potentially face-threatening speech acts, concretely, both in directives and in complaints, and it reflects different (im)politeness strategies. The pseudo-inclusive meaning is promoted by the description of non-factual states of affairs and by contextual devices that orient the discourse to the interlocutor. In directives, pseudo-inclusive forms function, as previous studies have suggested, as a positive politeness strategy. In most of the complaints, on the contrary, the pseudo-inclusive forms may be rather analysed as a negative politeness strategy, particularly, as a means to protect the addressee's self-esteem and dignity. In these contexts, pseudo-inclusive forms contribute to avoid the expression of direct disapproval and accusation. In other complaints, however, pseudo-inclusive forms function as a mock politeness strategy. In these cases, the pseudo-inclusive meaning serves the speaker to humiliate the addressee and to reinforce his/her own social or moral position of superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the key forms of address used amongst Jordanian university students, the impact of gender on using these forms and what accounts for the variation in their address system. By addressing the issue of normativity and heterogeneity in the use of address terms, in different social settings, the study enriches the understanding of the internal variation of the address term system. Data collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were analysed, based on Watts' discursive approach to politeness and Agha's approach of indexicality. The results revealed that the identified normative patterns represent Jordanian university politic behaviours, which index different social meanings and relations among the youth community, in relation to specific social contexts. The most frequent strategies university students use for addressing others are personal names, innovative terms, descriptive phrases, pronouns, titles, teknonyms, and religious, military, attention attractors, as well as a combination of these terms. It also seems that there are no absolute stable patterns of address term usage among the youth community, speaking Jordanian Arabic. Rather, there is an infinite society-internal heterogeneity in the address terms usage. The results also revealed that an intra-group variation signifies social struggles over the norms of address term usage and potentially normative incertitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, there has been little attention for the factors that influence the perception of online complaints. We present two experiments in which we test the impact of the degree of linguistic (in)directness and the formal realization of complaint components on complaint perception. Our experimental stimuli are designed on the basis of French-language authentic Twitter complaints which have been coded in terms of the presence of four constitutive complaint components: the complainable, the negative evaluation of the complainable, the person/company responsible for the complainable, and a wish for compensation. In our experiments, participants are asked to read Twitter complaints, and they are invited to assess them in terms of perceived strength, dissatisfaction, (im)politeness, and offensiveness. Our results indicate that not only the number but also the type of component that is formally realized shape complaint perception. We also find a positive correlation between perceived complaint strength and impoliteness. In addition, different formal realizations of the negative evaluation of the complainable have a different effect on complaint perception; in particular, negative emoji make the complaints softer and more polite. We also discuss methodological issues that have arisen while designing the experiments and that have to do with the operationalization of face-threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital discourse has emerged as a substantial focus of interest within the pragmatic field. Specifically, (im)politeness practices on social media have increasingly received scholarly attention in the last decade (Tagg, Caroline, Philip Seargeant & Amy Aisha Brown. 2017. Taking offence on social media. Conviviality and conviviality and communication on Facebook. Switzerland: Springer Nature, Palgrave McMillan; Tsoumou, Jean Mathieu. 2020. Analyzing speech acts in politically related Facebook communication. Journal of Pragmatics 167. 80–97). However, research combining COVID-19, Facebook and (im)politeness in a politically polarizing context is still scarce. This paper is an analysis of (im)politeness in Facebook comments posted as reactions to Giuliani's COVID diagnosis. Thus, by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the aim of the present paper is twofold: On the one hand, it intends to further our understanding of the manifestation of (im)politeness practices on Facebook through an analysis of reactive comments to Giuliani's Covid-19 diagnosis on BBC news Facebook page. On the other hand, the paper aims to examine how the struggle between impoliteness and politeness divides Facebook users between sympathizers and detractors of the patient. Through a metadiscursive analysis, the identified (im)politeness items are distributed in an uneven fashion, with impoliteness-oriented items prevailing as the dominant macro category against politeness-oriented ones. The findings suggest that users employ different strategies to express or intensify (im)politeness, favoring explicit expressions of impoliteness such as redress/agreement, insults, pointed criticisms/complaints, unpalatable questions and/or presuppositions over others like threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although French courtly models spread to Europe, little research has compared the development of politeness in France with more remote European linguacultures. To fill this gap, I examine folk understandings of historical politeness in Finnish and French linguacultures. Concentrating on cultural outsiders' own understandings – that is, French people living in Finland and Finns who live or have lived in France – my study lies within the framework of a discursive approach, and draws upon data from five focus-group discussions and their dialogical discourse analysis. My study shows that the different forms of government, levels of urbanisation and branches of Christianity reportedly influenced differences in Finnish and French politeness. Yet, during participants' stays in these respective countries, an affinity towards politeness was described as stemming from globalisation. Future research should examine if the frames of expectations of politeness in Europe are generally moving closer towards one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study examined netizens' response to MSP's appointment as the Chairman of Brin Main Board of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) on October 13, 2021, by President Jokowi, which caused controversy. The netizens' responses are interesting to study from a cyber-pragmatic perspective. This study described and explained the types of netizens' responses to the inauguration of the Chairman of Brin Main Board, the forms of netizens' response to the inauguration, and degree of the politeness of the responses against MSP's inauguration. The data of this study is in the form of netizens' responses to the shows on YouTube. The data is gathered using the documentation method through the technique of Simak Bebas Libat Cakap (SBLC). The data was analysed using descriptive techniques following the stages of the interactive model of Miles and Huberman. The results of data analysis showed that there are three types of responses, namely pro responses, counter-responses, and neutral responses. The response is indicated in the form of assertive speech acts, which are stating, proposing, and informing; directive speech acts which are commanding, forbidding, advising, inviting, asking, and suggesting; and expressive speech acts, which are praising, sarcastic, and insulting. Netizens' utterances that are not polite have a more significant percentage than polite ones. This indicates that the Indonesian netizens tend to be uncivilized in responding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-cultural pragmatic study is centred on whether (in)directness (e.g. Leech, 2014) and social distance (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1987) have an effect on illocutionary modification of requestive speech acts. The latter effect has been addressed by accounting for a large-scale tendency towards the overt employment of intensifiers or mitigators, occurring as an intersubjectified surplus of meaning (Tantucci, 2021). The context of our enquiry is requestive behaviour in dialogic filmic interaction, as it bears acknowledged similarities with spontaneous interaction (Rose, 2001; Baños Piñero and Chaume, 2009). After collecting and annotating data from the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (Pavesi et al., 2014), we designed a multifactorial corpus-based study and compared the requestive behaviour in English vs Italian interaction. We fitted a multinomial logistic regression model which showed that social distance and (in)directness significantly affect the use of mitigating vs intensifying strategies. We also discovered that such correlations seem to be relatively stable across the two languages: mitigation is normally used with high social distance and when requests are made indirectly. However, Italian is somewhat distinctive in the way intensifying modifiers are used among socially close interactants. We suggest that corpus-based analysis of modification strategies may also be extended to non-scripted speech. Such a research agenda would decisively contribute to advancing usage-based approaches to cross-cultural (im)politeness, as most of the methods deployed in this area to date are still confined to elicited and conjured up speech. • Pragmatic modification of English and Italian requests correlates with (in)directness. • Pragmatic modification of English and Italian requests correlates with social distance. • Requestive modification is similar in English and Italian film interactions. • A logistic regression model was used as statistical method. • Social distance has more weight in Italian than in English interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of self-denigration is a typical example of politeness in Chinese culture. Despite the fact that this phenomenon has attracted much attention from scholars in previous studies, the issue of how to clarify self-denigration in relation to sincerity still remains very much an open question. Thus, the current study aims to revisit self-denigration from the perspective of sincerity. Based on data drawn from TV plays and structured interviews, it is found that sincere self-denigration is often perceived as a form of politeness. On the contrary, insincere self-denigration brings about an impolite evaluation. Thus, the study offers a new way of explaining self-denigration in terms of its politeness and communicative effects. • Self-denigration is more complex than be taken as merely expressing politeness in modern Chinese. • Self-denigration is manifested as a continuum of politeness to impoliteness. • Sincerity affects the interpretation of self-denigration and its communicative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Glottotheory is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on the conceptual contributions of proxemics and verbal proxemics, we aim to construct the concept of linguistic-discursive proxemics. Therefore, we will use three empirical texts, with the purpose of giving visibility to this mechanism in three distinct theoretical fields: the theories of (im)politeness and face; the notion of discourse genres; and the indexicality common to contextualization cues, referencing and social/discursive deixis. In short, we found that the linguistic-discursive proxemics, present in the three theoretical fields, is related to the establishment of more/less (as)symmetric interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their criticisms of traditional theories of politeness, Watts et al. (2005 [1992]) and Eelen (2001) call for first-order approaches to (im)politeness. While their 'discursive approach' has faced its own criticisms, one useful strand which has emerged from this research is a focus on how (im)politeness is evaluated and discussed. However, compared to other approaches to (im)politeness, such language has received little attention. Studies on (im)politeness metalanguage also often preselect lexical items for analysis, for instance 'polite', 'rude', and 'courtesy'. Likewise, there is still a near vacuum in historical and stylistic aspects of (im)politeness metalanguage. This paper broadly contributes to (im)politeness (meta)pragmatics by establishing a method for inductively locating (im)politeness metalinguistic items in a corpus, specifically employing a corpus of Shakespeare's plays, and in doing so locates a total of 234 (im)politeness metalinguistic forms with a collective total of 4,023 instances in a corpus of 1 million words. This study then identifies semantic patterns in how these terms are used by arranging them into five second-order categories, reflecting on previous (im)politeness literature. Finally, the study briefly considers the potential that this approach has for (im)politeness research, as well as this data in particular for stylistic and historical interests in (im)politeness. • Hundreds of different lexical items can and are used to evaluate (im)politeness. • (Im)politeness metalanguage can be discovered and explored using corpora. • Semantic analysis and categorisation of (im)politeness metalanguage in Shakespeare's plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study examined the influence of social and power distance on students’ preferences of openings and closings and requestive strategies used when sending an email in an academic context. Students were more conventionally indirect with a person of higher power and greater social distance as well as when writing to their peers. However, email directness increased in emails to a faculty member with whom they maintain a closer social distance despite their status-unequal relationship. Familiarity with a higher-up may give students the authority to relinquish the sociopragmatic norms they, otherwise, would use in social-distant and power- unequal communication.

This work studies linguistic elements that the speaker uses to express persuasion in Spanish and shows how the use of emotions through lástima can also act as a mechanism of argumentative force, with mitigating or intensifying value in its different discursive uses. With a Pragmatic Linguistics approach (Fuentes Rodríguez 2017a [2000], 2017b and 2020a) and close to the Theory of Argumentation (Anscombre and Ducrot 1983) and its recent developments in the Theory of Stereotypes (Anscombre 2001, Donaire 2006), this research describes how the instructional meaning of lástima (que) and its different variants favor pragmatic functions in communicative interaction and can be used for various persuasive purposes. The comparison of examples in different contemporary corpora (MEsA, CORPES and CREA) aims to analyze the discursive functions and argumentative purposes of lástima in persuasive discourse, whether as a form of self-criticism, in strategies of positive politeness as reinforcement of face and empathy with the misfortune of the interlocutor, as a euphemism that attenuates impoliteness and even as a reinforcer or intensifier of impoliteness in direct attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluations of polite, impolite and over-polite linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviors depend largely on the socio-cultural attributes of a society and the individuals' schemata, which are rooted in the communicators' previous experiences. In intercultural settings, communication represents a complicated picture due to the participants' different socio-cultural backgrounds and their unshared cultural schemata. Adopting the discursive approach to (im)politeness and employing ethnographic methods, this study identifies some significant sources of (im)politeness-related miscommunication between 10 Malaysian university lecturers/professors and 15 Iranian students. The findings suggest that different socio-cultural behaviors as well as some aspects of professional practices are the sources of misunderstanding and have potential for either impolite or over-polite judgments. Findings are discussed in light of the practical and theoretical implications for intercultural politeness and impoliteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]