This essay explores sociolinguistic implications in the novel This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz. I investigate this literary work of Diaz in terms of the usage of code-switching by applying an adaptation of conversation analysis and a theoretical framework provided by Brown and Levinson (1999) that suggests that code-switching can be used to achieve interactional goals with other speakers. Also, I argue for widespread support of allowing multilingualism to be a more significant part of learning in the Swedish classroom. The conclusion drawn from this study tells us more about how politeness and code-switching can be applied in literary form and that different switches are used in different speech acts depending on which face is being threatened.  I have also presented examples of how teachers can use Diaz’s novel to conduct a literary or linguistic project using multilingual literature to raise awareness of sociolinguistics and language variations in alignment with The Swedish National Agency for Education (2011) directives

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This paper investigates the use and function of intertextuality in the television series Suits, and examines the interplay between intertextuality and politeness. Intertextuality allows a text to incorporate other texts and to draw upon connotations that belong to those texts. Politeness theory offers a tool to analyse the pragmatic use of language in social interaction. Analysing occurrences of intertextuality from the first episode of the television series, the paper explores in what ways the fictional characters use intertextuality and for what purposes. It explores if, and how, intertextuality can be used as a politeness strategy. Findings suggest that intertextuality is used for three main purposes, and functions as characterisation and as a means to establish and/or maintain social relations. Detailed analyses of instances of intertextuality propose that intertextuality can be used as a politeness theory, but only in certain ways. The paper discusses these findings and offers a possible explanation for why intertextuality is only used in this restricted way.

Cette recherche porte sur l’acte d’invitation au mariage eta pour but,d’abord, de révéler les caractéristiques de tel acte dans les cartes d’invitation en français et en vietnamien puis d’identifier des ressemblances et des différences qui sont culturellement déterminées. Pour ce faire, nous avons décrit la formulation et le fonctionnement pragmatique des cartes d’invitation au mariage dans les deux langues du point de vue de la politesse linguistique. Le résultat de l’analyse nous a permis, par la suite, d’identifierles particularités dans la formulation des cartes ainsi que dansles stratégies de politesse privilégiées dans les deux communautés française et vietnamienne. Cette étude nous amène à conclure qu’à la différence de l’individualité qui caractérise la culture occidentale y compriscelle de la France, les Vietnamiens, de tradition de riziculture, mettent beaucoup plus d’importance sur le respect de l’honneur, et ont peur de perdre la face, de faire perdre celle de l’autre, d’être différents des autres, d’être hors du commun. Par conséquent,ils optent très souvent pour des modèles traditionnels de cartes d’invitation sans trop d’éléments de personnalisation et privilégient la politesse positive. / This research on the act of invitation to marriage aims to find out the characteristics of this act in invitation cards in French and Vietnamese, then to reveal the resemblances and the differences which are culturally determined. For this purpose, we described the formulation and the pragmatic functioning of invitation cards to marriage in the view of linguistic politeness. The analysis result allowed us then to exploit the particularities in the formulation of cards as well as the strategies of politeness privileged in French and Vietnamese communities. We concluded that unlike the individuality that characterises Occidental cultures including French culture, Vietnamese people of rice culture attach more importance to the respect of honor and are afraid of losing face, making others lose face, being different from others, or not being in common with them. As a consequence, they often choose traditional models of invitation cards without insisting too much on the personalisation and they privilege the positive politeness.

En linguistique, la politesse vise la préservation de l’harmonie interactionnelle. Que se passe-t-il dans les situations où le dissensus se trouve au cœur des échanges, tel le cas de nos talk-shows ? Le rôle de l’impolitesse, de la violence et leurs rapports à la politesse dans On n’est pas couché et Tout le monde en parle ont constitué le point de départ de notre recherche. Le présent travail est une analyse du système de la politesse confronté aux défis des émissions mentionnées, défis qui nous ont amenée à explorer la dichotomie politesse-impolitesse et qui nous ont conduite à articuler ces dernières avec les notions d’adéquation au contrat de communication, de violence et de mise en scène.Afin de rendre compte du fonctionnement de ces phénomènes, deux démarches nous ont semblé nécessaires. Premièrement, abandonner la conception selon laquelle la politesse désignait les comportements jugés adéquats et l’impolitesse était conçue comme sa « contrepartie » négative. Deuxièmement, tenter de « re-conceptualisation » la notion d’adéquation aux normes tout en allant au-delà des classements rigides et des formules conventionnelles polies ou impolies.Partant de ces réflexions, nous nous sommes fixé une double ambition : dans le premier volet, nous avons voulu aménager le cadre théorique de la politesse ─ qui, appliqué à notre corpus, présentait certaines insuffisances ─, et formuler des critères pour l’évaluation des notions présentées. Ainsi, nous avons proposé, avec prudence et modestie, un cadre et des outils théoriques adaptés à nos talk-shows. Dans le second volet, nous avons analysé ─ manipulant les outils présentés et nous appuyant sur ce nouveau cadre ─, le fonctionnement du système de la politesse ainsi que les mises en scène de la parole polie, impolie et violente. / In linguistics, politeness, considered omnipresent, aims at preserving the interactional and interpersonal harmony. But what happens when conflict is at the very heart of verbal interactions, as is the case with our talk-shows? The role of impoliteness and violence, as well as their relationship with politeness in “On n’est pas couché” and “Tout le monde en parle” are to be considered as the starting point for our research. Thus, the present work is an analysis of the notion of politeness confronted to the “challenges” raised by the televised shows mentioned above, an analysis in which we explored the politeness/impoliteness dichotomy that we articulated, thereafter, with the notions of appropriateness (in respect to the communication contract), violence and representation or “mise-en-scène”.In order to give a proper account of the functioning of these phenomena, firstly, we gave up the general view according to which politeness was defined as adequate behaviour while impoliteness was seen as its negative counterpart. Secondly, we tried to reconceptualise the notion of appropriateness going beyond rigid classifications or conventionalised polite and impolite formula.Given these considerations, we established a twofold objective. On the one hand, we tried to adjust the theoretical framework of politeness that, applied to our data, presented certain deficiencies, and to come up with some evaluation criteria for the analysed notions; consequently, we modestly and prudently proposed a framework and several theoretical “tools” adapted to our talk-shows. On the other hand, we analysed ─ using the presented tools and framework ─, the mechanisms of politeness and impoliteness as well as the divers “mises-en-scène” of polite, impolite and violent speech.

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This thesis examines the adaptation of Iranian Canadians (immigrants from Iran in Canada) to the new cultural environment with a special focus on a paradigm shift in their lingua-cultural attitudes. More specifically, it examines the attitudes of Iranian Canadians to ta’arof, an important politeness phenomenon in Farsi that has attracted the attention of many scholars of linguistics and anthropology. The actual use of ta’arof as well as attitudes to its use are compared for two groups of first generation Canadian Iranians (60 participants total), with long and short periods of exposure to Canadian culture. All the participants come from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. This thesis is informed by linguistic relativity, acculturation and politeness theories. The study employs a questionnaire survey as its methodology, commonly used in sociolinguistic studies (e.g. Makarova & Hudyma, 2015; Clement, 1986). The questionnaire contains questions about the respondents' use of ta’arof in different situations, and their attitudes to ta’arof. In addition, it included some sociocultural questions aimed at evaluating the respondents’ level of acculturation. The goal of this study is to describe the use of ta’arof and attitudes to its use among first generation Canadian Iranians, as well as to examine whether social variables such as length of stay in Canada, gender, education and English proficiency contribute to a change in attitudes to ta’arof among first generation Iranian immigrants in Canada. The results show that all the social variables in this study, namely age, gender, education, English proficiency, length of stay in Canada and acculturation can be either positively or negatively correlated with the participants’ use of ta’arof and their attitudes to ta’arof. The results also indicate that “ethnic self-identification,” in terms of “Canadian,” “Iranian,” or “Iranian Canadian,” is positively correlated with “the length of stay in Canada.” The Iranian immigrants with longer duration of stay in Canada are more likely to identify themselves as “Iranian Canadian” than as “Iranian.” Other findings suggest that the Iranian immigrants who have lived for a long perid of time in Canada provide higher acculturation-level responses and use ta’arof less in their interactions with Iranians and non-Iranians in Canada, as compared to immigrants who have lived in Canada for a short period of time. The latter group yields lower acculturation-level responses, and their attitudes to ta’arof are significantly more positive. Overall, even though the Iranian Canadian participants report the use ta’arof in Canada not only in communication within the Iranian diaspora, but also sometimes in communication with members of other Canadian ethnic groups, they dislike the pressures imposed by ta’arof, do not want to teach it to their children, and have overall rather negative attitudes towards ta’arof and its use. With the increase of the duration of stay in Canada, the attitudes to ta’arof become significantly more negative.

There is some evidence from scholarship that politeness norms in China are diversified. I maintain that a study aiming to provide systematic evidence of this would require an approach to politeness phenomena that is able to address such diversity. Drawing upon the insights of recent scholarship on the distinction between the modernist and postmodernist approaches to politeness, I survey relevant literature. I show that many current works on politeness argue that the modernist approach (Lakoff 1973/1975, Brown and Levinson 1987[1978], Leech 1983) generally tends to assume that society is relatively homogeneous with regard to politeness norms. By contrast, I demonstrate that the postmodernist approach to politeness (e.g. Eelen 2001, Mills 2003, Watts 2003) foregrounds the heterogeneity of society and the rich variability of politeness norms within a given culture. I argue that, by using a postmodernist approach to politeness, it is possible to show evidence of differences between groups of the Chinese in their politeness behaviour and the informing norms of politeness. I then explore this issue in depth by focusing on compliments and compliment responses (CRs). I show that studies on these speech acts in Chinese have to date tended to adopt a modernist approach to politeness and often assume a compliment and a CR to be easily identifiable. Moreover, I show that they do not address the heterogeneity of Chinese society and generally assume interactants to be homogeneous in terms of politeness norms that inform compliment and CR behaviours. On this basis, I raise the questions as to whether, by adopting a postmodernist rather than modernist approach, there is empirical evidence that politeness norms informing compliments and CRs vary among the Chinese, and whether these norms correlate with generation. v To this end, by audio-recording both spontaneous naturally occurring conversations and follow-up interviews, I construct a corpus of compliments and CRs generated by two generations of the Chinese brought up before and after the launch of China's reform. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of these data show that there is variation in compliment and CR behaviours in Chinese and the informing politeness norms. Furthermore, the result shows that this variation is correlated with generation. I then show how, by using a research methodology which emphasizes the interactants' perceptions obtained through follow-up interviews, my study brings to light problems with previous studies on compliments and CRs which hitherto are not addressed. By showing evidence that compliments and CRs are not as easy to identify as many previous researchers have indicated. I argue that my emic approach to data analysis provides a useful perspective on the complexity of intention in studies on speech acts and perhaps beyond. My study, therefore, makes an interesting contribution to the debate over this notion central to politeness research. Moreover, I argue my methodology which is able to categorize and analyze data according to participants' self-reported perceptions allows me to draw out differences in the two generations' compliment and CR behaviours and the informing politeness norms.

The present study sheds light on how 16 Mexican-Americans residing in Texas perceive and follow politeness norms (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Fraser, 1990; Terkourafi, 2005) related to greetings and leave-takings in different cultural and linguistic contexts. Data from online questionnaires identify a significant difference in perceived level of social expectation (i.e. politeness) for employing the speech acts with Spanish- versus non-Spanish speakers. The data support previous research in identifying a sense of solidarity among Mexican-American extended families, but go further in suggesting that this bond extends to other Spanish-speaking acquaintances. Better understanding of these norms should facilitate inter-cultural exchanges between linguistic in- and out-group members. / text