The subject of this thesis consists in comparing means of request expression in French and Czech language in pursuit of scaling them by their politeness level, taking into account the socio-pragmatic environment of both languages. Apart from that, a syntactic realisation of request is analysed in both languages as well as morphological, lexical and stylistic instruments that either increase or decrease the degree of politeness and the effect of performed request. Attention is primarily focused on indirect requests in both French and Czech in order to identify an appropriate translation equivalent expressing the same degree of politeness. The fundamental source for the contrastive analysis lies in InterCorp parallel corpus data. This research is further extended with survey that verifies the previous findings.

The thesis investigates ways of communicating gratitude are perceived and realised in Jordan and England. It focuses on the impact of several variables on the expression of gratitude and examines the differences between the data elicited by pragmatic research instruments (DCT and role-play). Data were collected from native speakers: 46 Jordanian Arabic, 46 English natives using DCTs, role-plays and interviews. Slight similarities and significant cross-cultural differences were revealed in terms of gratitude expressions’ perception, number and strategy type. This cultural contrast reveals differences in the sociolinguistic patterns of conveying gratitude in verbal and nonverbal communication. The most important theoretical finding is that the data, while consistent with many views found in the existing literature, do not support Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim that communicating gratitude intrinsically threatens the speaker’s negative face. Rather, it is argued that gratitude should be viewed as a means of establishing and sustaining social relationships. The findings suggest that cultural variation in expressing gratitude is due to the high degree of sensitivity to the interplay of several social and contextual variables. The findings provide worthwhile insights into theoretical issues concerning the nature of communicative acts, the relation between types of communicative acts and the general principles of human communication, especially rapport between people in social interaction, as well as the relation between culture-specific and universal features of communicative activity types. Differences were found between pragmatic research instruments. The outcomes indicate that using a mixture of methods is preferable as long as this serves the aim of the study as it merges their advantages by eliciting spontaneous data in controlled settings. The ramifications of this study for future multi-dimensional investigations of the contrasts between Arabic and English speaking cultures are expected to prove particularly significant in virtue of corroborating or refuting existing findings and in this way paving the way for new research.

The purpose of this study is to examine the differences and similarities regarding verbal politeness in greetings and requests in Swedish and the Chilean variety of Spanish. A survey with 12 questions, both open-ended and closed-ended, has been distributed to 20 native speakers of the two languages. Thus, the questions have been analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that the perception that the Swedes and the Chileans have about verbal politeness is similar, since the speakers of both languages see it as a way to show respect towards others. The study also shows that Swedes and Chileans share a similar view upon politeness, i.e. as a social norm that facilitates social interaction between people.

The interview is an important component of the selection process for employment and is one of the initial presentations of self by the applicant to the interviewer. As an extension of a study by Wilson, Aleman, and Leatham (1998), this study used politeness theory to investigate perception of face threat in the context of a job interview, specifically, when making requests and giving advice. This study predicted that jobseekers perceive an act as a greater threat to an interviewer’s negative face (appealing to interviewer’s autonomy) when making a request than when giving advice. Secondly, the study predicted that job seekers would perceive an act as greater threat to the interviewer’s positive face (appealing to the interviewer’s desire for approval) when giving advice or recommendations than when making a request. Both hypotheses were supported and other related interests such as acceptability of the act and likelihood of getting the job were also investigated. / text

This paper investigates communication between speakers with different first languages in a business setting, referred to as BELF, Business English as a lingua franca. The present paper investigates politeness strategies in BELF e-mail correspondence, and the interplay between them. Politeness strategies play an important role in e-mail correspondence, and this has been identified through studying formality in greetings and closings, and directness in requests. The dataset consists of 46 naturally-occurring e-mails, which have been grouped into internal or external correspondence to accordingly answer the research question, which aims to investigate whether or not there is a difference in the communicative approach depending on who the receiver is. This has been analysed in terms of the politeness strategies formality and directness, and the results show that the internal and external correspondence are very similar to each other, hence the level of formality and directness rather appears to depend on the sender him/herself. The results furthermore present that greetings are mainly informal, closings mainly formal and requests predominantly direct, for both internal and external correspondence. This would conventionally indicate that the e-mails are impolite; however, in accordance with some recent scholars it has been agreed that, along with the development of e-mails, the requirements for politeness have changed, and the e-mails in the present study are primarily considered polite.

The objective of this study, based on the theories of Facework (Goffman 1967) and Politeness (Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987), is to observe and establish a classification of mitigating strategies used by two groups of friends to express and deal with disagreement and criticism in French. After a critical review of the development of sociopragmatics and of essential notions for the analysis of interactions, the concept of mitigation is presented, including mitigation used in the context of disagreement and criticism. The fieldwork and the transcription process and new conventions are then presented and discussed. For the analysis, three episodes from recordings of naturally-occurring conversations between friends were selected and transcribed. The data were analysed and classified in context with a view to defining both the pragmatic functions of the various mitigators and how they tend to be used by the speakers. The results of the analysis have allowed us to establish a classification of micro-mitigating-strategies within macro-strategies, and to show that speakers were able to mitigate disagreement and criticism, in order of descending frequency, by converging towards the interlocutor, by using modalised forms, by using a didactic, clarificatory speech style, but also by realising a "décrochage énonciatif" (enunciation disconnection) and trying to avoid or minimise the Face Threatening Acts. These observations contribute to the study of mitigating disagreement and criticism among friends, provide initial evidence of a considerable variation in the use of mitigating strategies in conversational French and call for further analysis of this type of conversation in order to determine to what extent these uses of mitigators result from a social behaviour specific to this type of interactional situation or speech acts.

abstract: The aim in this sociopragmatic study was to identify the linguistic and nonlinguistic types of responses used by Saudi Facebook users in the comments of congratulations on the events of happy news status updates on Facebook. People usually express their feelings and emotions positively to others when they have happy occasions. However, the ways of expressing congratulation may vary because the expressive speech act “congratulations” is not the only way to express happiness and share others their happy news, especially on the new social media such as Facebook. The ways of expressing congratulation have been investigated widely in face-to-face communication in many languages. However, this has not yet been studied on Facebook, which lacks prosodic strategies and facial expressions that help to convey feelings, despite a few contributions on studying various expressive speech acts such as compliment, condolences, and wishing, among others. Therefore, a total of 1,721 comments of congratulation were collected from 61 different occasions and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by using the frame-based approach to understand the construction of politeness of congratulation on Facebook. The results showed 23 verbal types of responses used by the users; however, the use of “congratulations,” “offer of good wishes,” “praise,” and “statements indicating the situation was warranted” were the most frequently used strategies. The results also showed 100 patterns of verbal compound strategies, but the use of “congratulations” with “offer of good wishes” was the most frequently used compound strategy. In addition, 42 types of emojis were found in the comments and categorized into seven different functions. However, the function of expressing endearment was the most frequently used one. Finally, the results showed that the posts received 31 sharings and 3 types of emoji reactions, such as “like” (Thumbs up), “love” (Beating heart), and “wow” (Surprised face), but the use of “like” was the most frequent emoji reaction to the posts. The explored different ways of expressing congratulation and sharing with others their happy news indicated that the linguistic strategies are not the only way to express happiness on Facebook. Therefore, users employed nonlinguistic strategies to express happiness and intensify their congratulations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

O objetivo deste trabalho é a análise dos elementos de cortesia e atenuação no Português falado na região de São José do Rio Preto e no Espanhol falado na região de Málaga. Os corpora analisados foram obtidos por meio de entrevistas semidirigidas e fazem parte do Projeto ALIP Amostra Linguística do Interior Paulista, o brasileiro, e PRESEEA - Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y América, o espanhol. Analisamos um total de 24 entrevistas, sendo 12 de nível médio e 12 de superior, seis em cada idioma, divididas igualmente entre falantes do sexo feminino e do sexo masculino. Os falantes de nível médio tinham idades entre 25 e 45 anos, enquanto que a faixa etária entre os de nível superior era entre 50 e 70 anos. Partindo da teoria pragmática dos Atos de Fala e de estudos mais recentes sobre cortesia e atenuação de teóricos como Leech (2007), Bravo (2001, 2004, 2005), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2004, 2005, 2006), entre outros, analisamos tanto a fala dos entrevistadores quanto a dos informantes. A partir da fala dos entrevistadores, pudemos observar como as perguntas, as solicitações de informações eram elaboradas em ambos os idiomas. Tal análise possibilitou a verificação de como o entrevistador se posicionava e quais eram as estratégias utilizadas verbos no imperativo, enunciados diretos, uso de atos de preparação ou verbos que visavam a proteger a face do informante. Já a análise da fala dos informantes objetivou a averiguação do uso de outras estratégias, cuja intenção era a defesa pessoal ou de terceiros, protegendo sua própria face ou a do entrevistador. Entre essas estratégias citamos a desfocalização do eu, a proteção à própria face ou à do outro, o uso de elementos atenuadores no momento de expressar opiniões, entre outras. Ao longo de nossa análise investigamos também o posicionamento de cada entrevista no eixo de solidariedade ou poder de acordo com a teoria de Brown e Gilman (1960). Para isso, foi necessário o estudo das formas de tratamento empregadas, bem como o uso ou não de formas nominais. Os resultados obtidos, dentro dos corpora estudados, mostram que a Língua Espanhola é uma língua de mais aproximação com o interlocutor, enquanto que a Língua Portuguesa denota maior distância. Observou-se ainda que determinados elementos como o uso de um tratamento mais formal no caso da Língua Portuguesa se caracteriza mais como uma estratégia conversacional do que uma distância social. / The present paper aims at the analysis of the politeness and attenuation elements in both the Portuguese spoken in São José do Rio Preto region and in the Spanish spoken in Malaga region. The studied corpora were obtained by means of partially guided interviews and are part of the ALIP Project (São Paulo\'s Countryside Linguistic Sampling), the Brazilian one, and the PRESEEA ( Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of the Spanish Spoken in Spain and America), the Spanish one. A total of 24 interviews were analysed, being 12 of those on an average level and the other 12 on a superior one, six in each language, equally divided into male and female speakers. The average level speakers range aged from 25 to 45 whereas the superior level ranged from 50 to 70. Considering the pragmatic theory of Speech Acts and other more recent studies on politeness and attenuation by theorists such as Leech (2007), Bravo (2001, 2004, 2005), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2004, 2005, 2006), among others, both interviewers\' and interviewees\' speeches were analysed. From the interviewers\' speeches it was possible to observe how the questions, the information required, were built up in both languages. Such an analysis made possible verifying how the interviewer was positioned as well as which strategies were used: verbs in imperative, direct enunciations, preparation acts usage or verbs aiming at protecting the informer\'s face. Yet the informers\' speech analysis aimed at the inquiry of other strategies usage being the intention of such the personal or third parties\' defense, proctecting oneself\'s face or the interviewer\'s one. Among these strategies we mention defocusing the self, protecting oneself\'s own face or the other\'s one, attenuating elements usage when expressing opinions, among others. Throughout our analysis we investigated also the positioning of each interview coming to the axis solidarity or power according to Brown and Gilman\'s theory (1960). For such, it was made necessary the study of the treatment forms applied as well as the use or not of noun forms. The achieved results in the studied corpora showed that the Spanish language proves to be a language of more approximation coming to the interlocutor whereas the Portuguese language denotes more distance. It could also be noticed that certain elements such as the use of a more formal treatment coming to the Portuguese language are characterized more as a conversational strategy than as a social distance element.

This Study examines some cross-cultural differences in conveying good and bad news in Australian English and Vietnamese. Three major aspects are taken into consideration: address forms, modality, and directness-indirectness. Theoretical issues are raised and discussed, and questionnaire data collected and analysed. Chapter I shows why it is important and necessary to study crosscultural differences and sets up the aims of the study. Chapter II deals with address forms in general and the use of address forms in conveying good and bad news in the Australian and Vietnamese cultural contexts in particular..The similarities and differences between the two systems are also discussed. Chapter III dwells on modality and its devices: modals, modality markers, subjunctive mood (in English) and lexico-modal operators for subjunctive mood (in Vietnamese). The use of these devices in communicating good and bad news in the two cultures is discussed in detail. Chapter IV is concerned theoretically with directness-indirectness, and the relationship between indirectness and politeness. How directness and in-directness are actually used to convey good and bad news in Australian and Vietnamese cultures is also analysed. Chapter V concludes the Study and suggests implications for ELT.

Politeness Phenomena and Mild Conflict in Japanese Casual Conversation