Frase On Politeness
Frase On Politeness
Frase On Politeness
North-Holland
PERSPECTIVES ON POLITENESS
Bruce F R A S E R *
This paper reviews four current approaches to an account of politeness: the social-norm view; the
conversational-maxim view; the face-saving view; and the conversational-contract view. A
characterization is given for each, followed by a discussion of certain salient aspects of the
approach. While none of the views is considered adequate, the face-saving view is seen as the most
clearly articulated and most thoroughly worked out, therefore providing the best framework
within which to raise the crucial questions about politeness that must now be addressed.
1. Introduction
"q shall not today attempt further to define the kind of material I understand to be embraced
within that shorthand description [of pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in
intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not
that." (U.S.v. Roth)
"'... avoid topics which m a y be supposed to have any direct reference to events or circumstances
which may be painful" (5)
[in the event a lady unintentionally raises a troublesome subject, she is instructed that] "'in that
case, do not stop abruptly, when you perceive that it causes pain, and above all, do not make the
matter worse by apologizing; turn to another subject as soon as possible, and pay no attention to
the agitation your unfortunate remark m a y have excited." (5)
"'Never question the veracity of any statement made in general conversation" (7)
"... if you are certain a statement is false, and it is injurious to another person, who may be
absent, you m a y quietly and courteously inform the speaker that he is mistaken, but if the
falsehood is of no consequence, let it pass." (7)
J The revised version of Politeness by Brown and Levinson (1987) contains a lengthy introduc-
tion which deals in part with the considerable applied research in the area of politeness since the
original version was issued in 1978. It also contains an extensive bibliography to which the reader
is recommended.
B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness 221
This same sense of politeness - - that associated with what constitutes 'good
manners' - is extant today, and is reflected in the following quote from Amy
Vanderbilt concerning proper conduct at a dance:
" W o m e n do not yet cut in on men, unless the dance is announced as a 'women cut-in', or unless
wives and husbands who are all close friends cut in on each other."
(Vanderbilt and Baldridge (1978: 47))
"I grant that he lacks higher education and his manners are not in accord with European
conceptions of the dignity of a chief magistrate. He is a well-developed child of nature and is not
skilled in polite phrases and poses. But he is a m a n of profound feeling, correct and firm principles
and incorruptible honesty." (cited in Bartlett's Quotations)
"The nonstandard usage of "Me and Mary are...' [is] more 'reprehensible,' though nonetheless
common, if the offending pronoun also violates the rule of politeness which stipulates that 1st
person pronouns should occur at the end of the coordinate construction ... Another reason is that
'x and I' is felt to be a polite sequence which can remain unchanged ..." (1985:338)
I think it is safe to say that the social-norm approach has few adherents
among current researchers. There are, however, three somewhat separate
approaches to an account of politeness within the recent linguistic literature. I
turn to them now.
222 B. Fraser ,' Perspectives on mliteness
"'Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of talk exchange in which you are engaged." (1975:45)
Stated in more simple terms, the CP provides that you should say what you
have to say, when you have to say it, and the way you have to say it.
While the CP is of p a r a m o u n t importance and is assumed to be operative in
most conversations, Grice associates with the CP a set of more specific
maxims and sub-maxims, which he presumes that speakers follow. Observance
of the CP and maxims is deemed to be reasonable (rational), along the
following lines:
"anyone who cares about the goals that are central to conversation/communication (e.g., giving
and receiving information, influencing and being influenced by others) must be expected to have
an interest, given suitable circumstance, in participation in talk exchanges that will be profitable
only on the assumption that they are conducted in general accordance with the CP and the
maxims." (1975: 49)
While one or more of the maxims may not be fulfilled by a speaker at a point
in a conversation, Grice assumes that the CP is always observed and that any
real or apparent violations of the maxims signal conversational implicatures:
non-explicit messages intended l~y the speaker to be inferred by the hearer.
For example, providing a scholarship recommendation for a student that
reads 'Ms. Jones always arrives on time and takes copious notes' violates at
least the maxim of 'Be Relevant' and, according to Grice's theory, leads to the
implicature that the speaker does not think highly of Ms. Jones.
These conversational maxims are guidelines for the 'rational' use of lan-
guage in conversation and are qualitatively different from the notion of
linguistic rule associated with grammar. Maxims do not provide an account of
well-formedness for a grammatical structure (e.g., the passive construction;
subject-verb agreement), but rather, serve to provide a set of constraints for
the use of language - for the use of linguistic forms in conversation. Whereas
the violation of a g r a m m a r rule results in ungrammaticality and the assess-
ment not 'knowing' the language, violation of a conversational maxim may be
accepted as signalling certain speaker intentions. Moreover, several maxims
may be applicable in a given situation. The speaker is then faced with
B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness 223
"There are, of course, all sorts of other maxims (aesthetic, social, or moral in character) such as
'Be polite' that are also normally observed by participants in talk exchanges, and these may also
generate nonconventional (i.e. conversational) implicatures. The conversational maxims, however,
and the conversational implicatures connected with them, are specially connected (I hope) with the
particular purposes that talk (and so, talk exchange) is adapted to serve and is primarily employed
to serve." (1975:47)
Lakoff (1973) was among the first to adopt Grice's construct of Conversa-
tional Principles in an effort to account for politeness. Unlike Grice, however,
Lakoff explicitly extends the notion of grammatical rule and its associated
notion of well-formedness to pragmatics: "We should like to have some kind
of pragmatic rules, dictating whether an utterance is pragmatically well-
formed or not, and the extent to which it deviates if it does" (1973: 296).
Extending this to the domain of politeness, she considers the form of
sentences - i.e., specific constructions - to be polite or not. Her later work
(Lakoff (1979)) reflects the same general position; whether she would still
embrace this view today is problematic.
Although entitling her 1973 paper 'The logic of politeness', Lakoff never
actually says what she takes politeness to be. We can, however, infer that she
sees politeness to be the avoidance of offense, since in writing about the
conflict between clarity and politeness she states that:
In her later works she is more explicit, referring to politeness as "a device used
in order to reduce friction in personal interaction" (Lakoff (1979: 64)).
Lakoff (1973) suggests two rules of Pragmatic Competence:
2 Since the initial offering from Grice in 1967, researchers embracing his approach have focused
on what a complete set of conversational maxims might be. Others (e.g., Bach and Harnish
(1979); Sperber and Wilson (1986)) have suggested serious defects in this view.
224 B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness
She takes these to be in opposition to each other, and notes that they are at
times reinforcing, at other times in conflict. In addition she posits sub-maxims
(sub-rules), adapted as follows:
Each of these are oriented to make the hearer 'feel good'. As Lakoff suggests:
" I n fact, one might try to generalize and say that this was the purpose of all the rules of politeness.
But they all do it in different ways" (1973: 301) ... "a polite action is such because it is in accord
with the dictates of one or more of Rules 1, 2, 3, as is a polite utterance." (1973 : 303)
These three rules are applicable more or less depending on the type of
politeness situation as understood by the speaker. For example, if a speaker
assesses the situations as requiring Intimate Politeness, window shutting might
be requested by uttering 'Shut the window', while Informal Politeness might
be met with 'Please shut the window'. The reader is never told how the
speaker or hearer is to assess what level of politeness is required.
The position of Leech (1983) is a grand elaboration of the Conversational
Maxim approach to politeness. Like Lakoff, Leech adopts the framework
initially set out by Grice: there exists a set of maxims and sub-maxims that
guide and constrain the conversation of rational people. He opts to treat
politeness within the domain of a rhetorical pragmatics, his account of goal-
directed linguistic behavior.
Important to Leech's theory is his distinction between a speaker's illocution-
ary goals (what speech act(s) the speaker intends to be conveying by the
utterance) and the speaker's social goals (what position the speaker is taking
on being truthful, polite, ironic, and the like). In this regard, he posits two sets
of conversational (rhetorical) principles - Interpersonal Rhetoric and Textual
Rhetoric, each constituted by a set of maxims, which socially constrain
communicative behavior in specific ways.
Politeness, never explicitly defined, is treated within the domain of Interper-
sonal Rhetoric, which contains at least three sets of maxims: those falling
under the terms of Grice's Cooperative Principle (CP), those associated with a
Politeness Principle (PP), and those associated with an Irony Principle (IP).
Each of these interpersonal principles have the same status in his pragmatic
theory, with the CP and its associated maxims used to explain how an
utterance may be interpreted to convey indirect messages, and the PP and its
maxims used to explain why such indirectness might be used:
B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness 225
"Politeness does not serve here as a premise in making inferences about S's communicative
intention. Thus, the PP does not seem to help in understanding S's intention although, obviously,
it plays a role in S~s choosing the appropriate expression of his communicative intention ... Thus
the PP may help to understand reasons S had for choosing the particular content and form of
what he said, but usually does not help to infer S's intentions." (1983:38-39)
Other things being equal, minimize the expression of beliefs which are
unfavorable to the hearer and at the same time (but less important) maximize
the expression of beliefs which are favorable to the hearer.
But the CP and PP, as part of the Interpersonal Rhetoric, do not operate in
isolation. Similar to Lakoff, Leech argues that they often create a tension
within a speaker who must determine, for a given speech context, what
message to convey and how to convey it. He writes:
"The CP enables one participant in a conversation to communicate on the assumption that the
other participant is being cooperative. In this the CP has the function of regulating what we say so
that it contributes to some assumed illocutionary or discoursal goal(s). It could be argued that the
PP has a higher regulative role than this: to maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly
relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first
place." (1983: 82)
Tact Maxim:
Minimize hearer costs; maximize hearer benefit.
(Meta Maxim:
Do not put others in a position where they have to break the Tact Maxim.)
Generosity Maxim:
Minimize your own benefit; maximize your hearer's benefit.
Approbation Maxim :
Minimize hearer dispraise; maximize hearer praise.
Modesty Maxim:
Minimize self-praise; maximize self-dispraise.
Agreement Maxim:
Minimize disagreement between yourself and others; maximize agreement
between yourself and others.
Sympathy Maxim:
Minimize antipathy between yourself and others; maximize sympathy between
yourself and others.
Leech is even more detailed. He proposes that each of these maxims has a
set of scales (never defined in any specificity) which must be consulted by the
226 B. Fraser Perspectives on politenesx
Cost-Benefit Scale:
Represents the cost or benefit of an act to the speaker and hearer
Optionality Scale:
Represents the relevant illocutions, ordered by the amount of choice which
the speaker permits the hearer
Indirectness Scale:
Represents the relevant illocutions, ordered in terms of hearer 'work' to infer
speaker intention
Authority Scale:
Represents the relative right for speaker to impose wishes on the hearer
Social Distance Scale:
Represents the degree of familiarity between the speaker and hearer
On Leech's view, the Tact Maxim can be observed only as follows: As the
hearer costs, the hearer authority relative to the speaker, and the social
distance increases, the greater will be the need for providing the hearer with
options and the greater the need for indirectness in the formulation of the
expression conveying the message. 3
Leech distinguishes between what he calls 'Relative Politeness', which refers
to politeness vis-a-vis a specific situation, and 'Absolute Politeness', which
refers to the degree of politeness inherently associated with specific speaker
actions. Thus, he takes some illocutions (e.g., orders) and presumably the
linguistic forms used to effect them - to be inherently impolite, and others
(e.g., offers) to be inherently polite.
Within his account, Negative Politeness (but see below for a different view)
consists in minimizing the impoliteness of impolite illocutions, while Positive
Politeness consists in maximizing the politeness of polite illocutions. For
example, using 'If it would not trouble you too much ...' as a preface to an
order constitutes Negative Politeness, while using 'I'm delighted to inform you
...' as a preface to announcing the hearer to be the winner constitutes Positive
Politeness for Leech.
Leech goes yet further, and notes that because of its force an utterance will
require different kinds and degrees of politeness, and suggests that there are
four main illocutionary functions, according "to how they relate to the social
goal of establishing and maintaining comity" ((1983 : 104 f.), adapted)
3 While intuitively appealing, there is no evidence that this proposition applies to the real world.
Moreover, there is currently some evidence (of. Blum-Kulka (1987, 1990)) that this view is
seriously defective, since indirectness and politeness on her analysis do not co-vary.
B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness 227
Competitive:
involving acts such as ordering, asking, demanding, begging, where negative
politeness is required in order to reduce the "discord implicit in the competi-
tion between what the speaker wants to achieve and what is 'good m a n n e r s ' "
Convivial:
involving acts such as offering, inviting, greeting, thanking, congratulating,
where positive politeness may be called for.
Collaborative:
involving acts such as asserting, reporting, announcing, instructing, where the
illocutionary goal is "indifferent to the social goal", and politeness is seen to
be "largely irrelevant".
Conflictive :
involving acts such as threatening, accusing, cursing, reprimanding, where
politeness is "out of the question, because conflictive illocutions are, by their
very nature, designed to cause offence" (1983: 105).
"'Politeness of speech acts is a matter of their costs, as determined by certain scales of values. An
ordinary speech act is presumably rational and as such its justification and reconstruction involves
considerations as to which course of action would be of the least cost, from certain points of view.
One such point of view, or cluster of points of view, is politeness [italics mine]. Another one is
time. Under certain conditions, additional scales of values are used, such as ones involving
considerations of commitment or implicature." (1986: 110)
He argues that where there are cases in which both the CP and PP apply, a
tug-of-war ensures, and what one needs is overriding principles of rationality
to guide the resolution. We are not provided with the specific rational
principles which would permit a more careful assessment of this variation.
228 B. Fraser Per,~pectives on politeness
"... is at the heart of Grice's proposals, namely that there is a working assumption by
conversationalists of the rational and efficient nature of talk. It is against that assumption that
polite ways of talking show up as deviations, requiring rational explanations on the part of the
recipient, who finds in considerations of politeness reasons for the speaker's apparent irrationality
or inefficiency." (1987:4)
Thus, for B& L, a strong motivation for not talking strictly according to
conversational maxims is to ensure politeness. While B & L do acknowledge
that politeness (never defined in the entire book) is not the only reason for
'deviation', they do not elaborate on other motivations such as sarcasm,
humor, and irony, to name but a few.
In contrast to Leech, they maintain that Grice's CP has a very different
status in their theory from any so-called politeness principles. More speci-
fically, the CP specifies a socially neutral framework within which ordinary
communication is seen to occur, the operating assumption being "no devia-
tion from rational efficiency without a reason" (1987:5). It is, however,
considerations of politeness which do provide principled reasons for such
deviation.
They go one step further and assert that linguistic politeness must be
communicated, that it constitutes a message, a conversational implicature of
the sort proposed by Grice. Moreover, they suggest that the failure to
communicate the intention to be polite may be taken, ceteris paribus, as
absence of the required polite attitude. The speaker of 'I would really like it if
you would shut the door', for example, implicates not only a request (the
speaker only states what he/she would like the hearer to do), but also
implicates the intention to be polite. On the other hand, uttering 'Shut the
door' under the same circumstances may be heard as conveying the lack of
polite intentions. It is hard to believe that this conclusion will hold up if
considered across a range of contexts.
They place this explication for politeness within a framework in which their
rational Model Person has 'face', the individual's self-esteem. Adapted from
Goffman (1967), face is a universal notion, albeit a culturally elaborated
"public self-image, that every member [of a society] wants to claim for
himself" (1987: 61). 4
4 Goffman proposes that "'face may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively
claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact ...'" (1967: 5)
B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness 229
N e g a t i v e Face:
"the want o f every 'competent adult m e m b e r ' that his action be unimpeded by
others" (p. 62) ... [the] want to have his freedom o f action unhindered and his
attention unimpeded" (p. 129).
Positive Face:
"the want o f every member that his wants be desirable to at least some
others" (p. 62) ... [the] perennial desire that his wants (or the actions/acquisi-
tions/values resulting from them should be t h o u g h t o f as desirable" (p. 101)
Face is something that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and any threat
to face must be continually monitored during an interaction. And, since face
is so vulnerable, and since most participants will defend their face if threat-
ened, the assumption is made that it is generally in everyone's best interest to
maintain each other's face and to act in such ways that others are made aware
that this is one's intention.
The organizing principle for their politeness theory is the idea that " s o m e
acts are intrinsically threatening to face and thus require softening ..."
(1987: 24). To this end, each g r o u p o f language users develops politeness
principles from which they derive certain linguistic strategies. It is by the use
o f these so-called politeness strategies that speakers succeed in communicating
both their primary message(s) as well as their intention to be polite in doing
so. A n d in doing so, they reduce the face loss that results from the interaction.
Whereas Leech proposes that certain types o f acts are inherently polite or
impolite, B & L propose that such acts are inherently face-threatening to the
speaker, to the hearer, or to both. s They propose the following four-way
analysis:
(i) Acts threatening to the hearer's Negative Face: e.g., ordering, advising,
threatening, warning;
(ii) Acts threatening to the hearer's Positive Face: e.g., complaining, criti-
cizing, disagreeing, raising taboo topics;
(iii) Acts threatening to the speaker's Negative Face: e.g., accepting an offer,
accepting thanks, promising unwillingly;
... "and while his social face can be his most personal possession and the center of his security and
pleasure, it is only on loan to him from society; it will be withdrawn unless he conducts himself in
a way that is worthy of it" (1967: 10). Whether or not B & L have remained true to Goffman's
sense of face is problematic.
5 In some sense, all acts are inherently FTAs, since they all require the hearer to do work to
understand the speaker's communicative intentions. Thus, they impose an effort on the hearer.
Moreover, nearly all (perhaps all) acts can be construed as non-FTAs under appropriate
circumstances.
230 B. Fraser / Per.wectives on politeness
(iv) Acts threatening to the speaker's Positive Face: e.g., apologizing, accept-
ing compliments, confessing.
"We have claimed that a face-bearing rational agent will tend to utilize the FTA-Minimizing
strategies according to a rational assessment of the face risk to participants. He would behave thus
by virtue of practical reasoning, the inference of the best means to satis~, stated
ends.'" ([987:91)
~ Do FTA ~ On Record
Off Record
/
With Redress Q , . .
' "
Pos. Politeness
Neg. Politeness
Don't Do FTA
High Face Risk to the Participant
Performing an act on record, but (baldly) without redress, entails doing it the
most clear, unequivocal way (e.g., 'Stop a moment!'). On record, with
redressive action
"'attempts to counteract the potential face damage of the FTA by doing it in such a way, or with
such modifications or additions, that indicate clearly that no such face threat is intended or
desired." (1987:69 70)
(i) Social Distance (D) between the speaker and hearer; in effect, the degree
of familiarity and solidarity they share;
(ii) Relative Power (P) of the speaker with respect to the hearer; in effect, the
degree to which the speaker can impose will on the hearer;
(iii) Absolute Ranking (R) of impositions in the culture, both in terms of the
expenditure of goods and/or services by the hearer, the right of the
speaker to perform the act, and the degree to which the hearer welcomes
the imposition. (1987:74ff.)
In their model, the 'weightiness', Wx, (the seriousness or the estimate of risk
of face-loss) of an FTA is calculated thus:
Wx = D(S,H) + P(H,S) + Rx
with the assumption that each of the three variables can be measured on a
scale of 1 to n, with n being a relatively small number. It is the value of Wx
which will determine the degree of politeness (face-saving) that the speaker
concludes is required for the communication of the act, X. Asserted but
untested is their claim that a Wx value of 5, for example, has the same
significance for determining the strategy to be used, independent of what
values of D, P, and R were summed to arrive at this value. Of course, none of
these variables can be viewed as a constant between individuals; participants
vacillate in their social distance when job and anger intervene, relative power
is altered as the roles and responsibilities change back and forth even over
short periods of time, and the specifics of an act content or the circumstances
of the participants at the time can easily cause a change in the ranking of
degree of imposition. The choice of a specific linguistic form is to be viewed as
a specific realization of one of the politeness strategies in light of the speaker's
assessment of the utterance context.
The operation of their model can be summarized into the following steps
((1987: 90-91), adapted):
(i) Unless the speaker intends to perform an FTA with maximum efficiency,
the speaker must determine that he/she wishes to fulfil the hearer face
wants to some degree as a rational means to secure the hearer's coopera-
tion, either for purposes of face maintenance or some joint activity, or
both.
(ii) The speaker must then determine the face-threat of the particular FTA
(the Wx) and determine to what extent to minimize the face-loss of the
TA, considering factors such as need for clarity and the need to not
overemphasize the degree of potential face-loss.
variety of features with Leech such as Power and Familiarity. I will not go into them here, since
the purpose of this review is not comparative in a narrow sense.
232 B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness
(iii) The speaker must then choose a strategy that provides the degree of face-
saving consistent With (ii), above. Retention of the hearer's cooperation
dictates that the strategy chosen meet the hearer's expectation of what is
required at that point.
(iv) The speaker must then choose a linguistic means that will satisfy the
strategic end. Since each strategy embraces a range of degrees of polite-
ness, the speaker will be required to consider the specific linguistic forms
used and their overall effect when used in conjunction with one another.
The fourth and final approach to politeness is that presented by Fraser (1975),
Fraser and Nolen (1981), and elaborated on here. While also adopting Grice's
notion of a Cooperative Principle in its general sense (as quoted above), and
while recognizing the importance of Goffman's notion of face, this approach
differs in certain important ways from that of B & L.
We can begin with the recognition that upon entering into a given conversa-
tion, each party brings an understanding of some initial set of rights and
obligations that will determine, at least for the preliminary stages, what the
participants can expect from the other(s). During the course of time, or
because of a change in the context, there is always the possibility for a
renegotiation of the conversational contract: the two parties may readjust just
what rights and what obligations they hold towards each other.
The dimensions on which interactive participants establish rights and
obligations vary greatly. Some terms of a conversational contract may be
imposed through convention; they are of a general nature and apply to all
ordinary conversations. Speakers, for example, are expected to take turns
(subject to the specific constraints of that sub-culture), they are expected to
use a mutually intelligible language, to speak sufficiently loudly for the other
to hear clearly, and to speak seriously. These are seldom negotiable.
Related are terms and conditions imposed by the social institutions appli-
cable to the interaction. Speakers are expected to speak only in whispers, if at
all, during a Protestant church service, everyone is expected to address the
U.S. Chief Executive as 'Mr. President', and a witness in court is expected to
speak only when questioned. Such requirements are also seldom, if ever,
renegotiated.
And finally, other terms may be determined by previous encounters or the
particulars of the situation. These are determined for each interaction, and
most are renegotiable in light of the participants' perception and/or acknowl-
edgements of factors such as the status, the power, and the role of each
speaker, and the nature of the circumstances. These latter factors play a
B. Fraser / Perspectives on politeness 233
"'as with m a n y politeness techniques, the speaker is really only going through the motion of
offering options, of showing respect [deference - BF] for the addressee's feelings. The offer m a y be
a facade, the option nonviable, and the respect a sham. It is the fact that an effort was made to go
through the motions at all that makes the act an act of politeness." (1989: 147)
6. Conclusion
The foregoing has been an attempt to briefly present four perspectives on how
to account for politeness: the social-norm: the conversational-maxim: the
face-saving: and the conversational-contract. I think some clear conclusions
follow.
First, there is little agreement among researchers in the field about what,
exactly, constitutes politeness and the domain of related research. At times
researchers seem more interested in defining the term 'politeness' than with
understanding an interactive concept that appears to be relevant in all
cultures. The distin'ction between linguistic and non-linguistic politeness is not
drawn, if it indeed exists. The notion of politeness as universal is often
proposed but seldom validated, even in B & L's work. And how the notion of
politeness (assuming for the sake of argument it can be clarified) differs from
that of deference, tact, civility, and the like requires serious consideration.
Second, assuming acceptable answers to the above issues, what form might
an account of politeness take.'? It seems clear at the outset that a viable theory
of politeness cannot rest upon a set of rules based on social, normative
behavior. What we view as polite or impolite behavior in normal interaction is
subject to immediate and unique contextually-negotiated factors and, as such,
cannot be codified in any interesting way. The normative perspective must be
rejected.
Third, a viable theory of politeness must be sufficiently precise to be
assessed. It is one thing to adopt Grice's intuitively appealing Cooperative
Principle. It is quite another to posit a host of maxims involving tact,
modesty, agreement, appropriation, generosity, and the like, which are claim-
ed to be guidelines for polite interaction, but without either definition and/or
suggestions by which one could, on a given instance, determine the relative
proportions of influence from these maxims. The conversational maxim
perspective must be rejected as non-viable, for the same reasons that re-
searchers have rejected Grice's program for conversational implicature (cf.
Sperber and Wilson (1987)).
Fourth, while there are certain differences between the face-saving and
conversational-contract perspectives (e.g., whether politeness is the result of
deviation from a maximally efficient effort or is inherent in a maximally
efficient effort: whether politeness is implicated ( B & L ) or anticipated (CC);
whether the use of 'politeness strategies' is motivated by speaker concern for
hearer face-loss or by concern to abide by the CP), they share the same
B. "Fraser / Perspectives oll politeness 235
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