The present thesis applies the sociolinguistic concepts of politeness and face on interpreting theory and practice. Interpreting is, in its essence, highly face-threatening, which is reflected in codes of ethics adopted by interpreting vocational associations. Having insight into two cultures, interpreters can use their communication competence to preserve the face of their recipients or the speaker. For the Western society, it is natural to protect one's own face in communication; however, such efforts can collide with the endeavour to convey the message faithfully and precisely. The thesis therefore studies the strategies that interpreters apply in face-threatening situations and presents examples of what interpreters do to save face, including such events when face- preserving outweighs conveying the message. There is also a discrepancy between the conventional role of a neutral or passive interpreter as a message conduit and the role of interpreters as active communication participants who take the initiative. By analysing interviews and an online survey, the study demonstrates that many interpreters believe that their role is an active one and their impact on the output of interpreted interactions is significant. Keywords: face, politeness, interpreting, face-preserving strategies,...

<p>The main purpose of this study is to establish a socio-pragmatic categorization of politeness and impoliteness activities in informal interactions. In doing this, we describe the communicative strategies related to (im) politeness phenomena and how they are used to produce certain <i>social effects</i> in face-to-face interaction through the ongoing negotiation of participants’ <i>face </i>(Goffman, 1967). This study is based on informal conversations extracted from a <i>corpus </i>of spoken Spanish gathered in the metropolitan area of Valencia, Spain (Briz and Val.Es.Co. Group, 2002). Focusing on methodology, this study combines a qualitative method inspired in CA with a DA interpretative approach that analyzes communicative acts (Allwood 1995; Bravo, e. p.1). <i>Face</i> contents such as <i>autonomy </i>and<i> affiliative face, role face, group</i> and <i>individual face, </i>are a resource for analyzing what happens during interaction along with the resulting interpersonal effects. The integration of the analysis of context, which includes the co-text, the situational context and the socio-cultural context (cultural settings and shared assumptions), is equally important in this study. The empirical analysis of both the conversations and a questionnaire on impoliteness bring us to propose a series of categories of (im) politeness. The categories are as follow: Strategic Politeness (within this category we find <i>attenuating politeness </i>and<i> reparatory politeness</i>), Enhancing Politeness, Group Politeness, Ritual Politeness (here we differentiate between meeting situations and visit situations) and Discursive Politeness (we divide this category into <i>conventional </i>and <i>thematic</i>). Concerning Impoliteness, we find situations in informal conversation in which impoliteness is expected (<i>normative impoliteness</i>) and when threatening acts (reproaches, criticism, etc.) do not imply directly, <i>per se</i>, a negative personal effect. We next find two types of impoliteness: one produced by threats to the <i>face </i>of the speaker which are neither mitigated nor amended and the other caused by a break from the normal rules of politeness. </p>

The main purpose of this study is to establish a socio-pragmatic categorization of politeness and impoliteness activities in informal interactions. In doing this, we describe the communicative strategies related to (im) politeness phenomena and how they are used to produce certain social effects in face-to-face interaction through the ongoing negotiation of participants’ face (Goffman, 1967). This study is based on informal conversations extracted from a corpus of spoken Spanish gathered in the metropolitan area of Valencia, Spain (Briz and Val.Es.Co. Group, 2002). Focusing on methodology, this study combines a qualitative method inspired in CA with a DA interpretative approach that analyzes communicative acts (Allwood 1995; Bravo, e. p.1). Face contents such as autonomy and affiliative face, role face, group and individual face, are a resource for analyzing what happens during interaction along with the resulting interpersonal effects. The integration of the analysis of context, which includes the co-text, the situational context and the socio-cultural context (cultural settings and shared assumptions), is equally important in this study. The empirical analysis of both the conversations and a questionnaire on impoliteness bring us to propose a series of categories of (im) politeness. The categories are as follow: Strategic Politeness (within this category we find attenuating politeness and reparatory politeness), Enhancing Politeness, Group Politeness, Ritual Politeness (here we differentiate between meeting situations and visit situations) and Discursive Politeness (we divide this category into conventional and thematic). Concerning Impoliteness, we find situations in informal conversation in which impoliteness is expected (normative impoliteness) and when threatening acts (reproaches, criticism, etc.) do not imply directly, per se, a negative personal effect. We next find two types of impoliteness: one produced by threats to the face of the speaker which are neither mitigated nor amended and the other caused by a break from the normal rules of politeness.

The main purpose of this study is to conduct a contrastive analysis on a corpus of Swedish and Spanish family conversations with respect to two adjacency pairs: opinion-agreement/disagreement (OADs) and offer-acceptance/rejection (OARs). On one hand, from a structural perspective, based on the methodology of Conversation Analysis, one of the objectives is to observe how (dis)preferred turns of the OADs and OARs are managed by the interlocutors. On the other hand, from a functional perspective, based on the methodology of Sociocultural Pragmatics, the intention is to study how face is constructed and how politeness is managed by the family members when expressing OADs and OARs. The structural analysis of OADs and OARs shows that the majority of agreements and acceptances follow the rules for preferred turns proposed by orthodox conversation analysts, i.e. they appear directly after the first part of the adjacency pair (opinion or offer), and they are brief and unambiguous. However, the structural analysis also reveals that 70% (Swedish corpus) and 72% (Spanish corpus) of the disagreements as well as 64% (Swedish corpus) and 70% (Spanish corpus) of the rejections have a tendency to not follow the proposed rules for dispreferred turns, i.e. they are not delayed or accompanied by hesitations, justifications, etc. and nor are they evaluated as dispreferred by the participants. This indicates that social perspective, especially face, has to be considered when deciding what is considered (dis)preferred. The functional analysis of the OADs indicates that the majority of the disagreements in both Swedish (68%) and Spanish (79%) corpus are not mitigated, but rather are expressed in a fairly direct manner. Swedes tend to avoid disagreements, and therefore we expected to find a major difference between the two groups. One explanation could be that family members enjoy close relationships, and therefore the Swedes feel free to express their disagreements. As for the impact on the family members face, in both groups, it is both autonomy face and affiliation face that are influenced when OADs are expressed. As for agreement, for example, it is usually autonomy face that is affected. We interpret this as a way for the participants to show that both speakers and listeners have valuable opinions that deserve to be both voiced and commented on. This reveals the more discursive (rather than ritual) nature of OADs. In addition, the functional study of OARs shows that acceptances and rejections in both corpora are expressed using both ritual and attenuating politeness according to the norms required by the situation. Concerning the impact on face, autonomy face has different requirements in the two cultures: in the Swedish conversations, it is important to offer food without insisting several times, and in the Spanish corpus, it is important to offer food more than one or two times, and there is also a tendency to refuse the offer several times before accepting it. Therefore, according to one’s situational role, one has to know how to both give and receive offers, which points to the more ritual nature of OARs. Finally, we want to emphasize that by adding a social perspective to the structural one, we can interpret the meaning of the conversations in a way that provides a broader understanding of what is being said as participants express OADs and OARs.