Linguistics; "politeness" in language behavior; sampler... Many of your comments have been pointing out -- accurately, and politely -- that the term "politeness" in our discussion continues to be undefined. I spent a little time putting together a sampler of definitions and related items that may -- impolitely -- tell you more about politeness than you are interested in knowing.
1.
The Free Dictionary, online, provides these two definitions, the first of which strikes me as unacceptably circular and the second of which strikes me as unacceptably vague:
a. politeness - a courteous manner that respects accepted social usage
b. politeness - the act of showing regard for others
2. My print edition of
Webster's defines "politeness" as the noun form of "polite," itself defined as follows:
a. having or showing culture or good taste; polished; cultured; refined
b. having or showing good manners; esp., courteous, considerate, tactful, etc.
I had no luck finding any dictionary definitions, on- or offline, that seemed to me to be anything more than variations on those above.
3. In "Politeness, Face and Facework: Current Issues" [on pp. 322-332 of
A Man of Measure: Frestschrift in Honor of Fred Karlsson, online at
http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2006_1/1.4.7.%20VILKKI.pdf ], Liisa Vilkki tells us (page 323) that most of the linguistics studies in politeness have "conceptualized" it as "strategic conflict-avoidance" or "strategic construction of co-operative social interaction." On page 328 she tells us that according to Richard J. Watts, "some examples of lay interpretations of polite language usage are 'the language a person uses to avoid being too direct', 'language which displays respect towards or consideration for others', or 'language that displays certain "polite" formulaic utterances like
please, thank you, excuse me or </i>sorry</i>'. On the other hand, some people may consider the polite use of language as, for example, 'hypocritical', 'dishonest' or 'distant'. " And on the same page: "His aim to to demonstrate that at least in English, linguistic structures do not in themselves denote politeness. Rather, they lend themselves to individual interpretation as polite in instances of ongoing verbal interaction."
[I recommend this article if you're looking for a basic overview of work on politeness theory in linguistics that's reasonably brief, reasonably thorough, and reasonably easy to understand. Vilkki is careful to explain basic concepts and terms, and to provide references.]
4. In "Logic and conversation," pp. 41-58 of Peter Cole and J. L. Morgan (editors),
Syntax and Semantics: Volume 3, Paul Grice writes:
"Politeness results from the requirement to create an undisturbed interaction with the members of one's own group. The function of politeness is among other things to create a framework to open conversations (i.e.: greeting, greeting back, introducing oneself etc.), to have a conversation (i.e.: interruption, change topic, questions of understanding, etc.) and to finish discussions (i.e.: conclusion of a topic, saying goodbye etc.), as well as to maintain conversations."
[This is quoted in a paper by Antje Brinckmann titled "Politeness in English and Japanese" -- only the first page or two of which is available online -- at
http://www.grin.com/en/preview/65840.html . Notice the loophole in the quote: "The function of politeness is among other things...." However, ""Politeness results from the requirement to create an undisturbed interaction with the members of one's own group" is, in my opinion, progress toward an actual definition.]
5. Then there's Geoffrey Leech's "Principle of Politeness," in a 30-page PDF titled "Politeness: Is there an East-West Divide?", online at
http://ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/geoff/leech2006politeness.pdf :
"The Principle of Politeness... is a constraint observed in human communicative behavior, influencing us to avoid communicative discord or offence, and maintain communicative concord."
And Leech goes on, usefully, to discuss two ways to evaluate politeness:
"(i)
Absolute politeness scale: We can order utterances on a scale of politeness out of context. For example... we can judge that
Can you help me? is more polite, as a request, than
Help me, and is less polite than
Could you possibly help me?."
"(ii)
Relative politeness scale: This is politeness relative to norms in a given society, for a given group, or for a given situation. Unlike the absolute scale, it is sensitive to context, and is a bi-directional scale. Hence it is possible that the form considered more polite on the
absolute politeness scale is judged less polite relative to the norms for the situation. E.g.
Could I possibly interrupt? could be understood as 'too polite', say, if spoken to family members monopolising the conversation: it could be interpreted as coldly sarcastic."
6. And here's Sara Mills, in "Rethinking Politeness, Impoliteness and Gender Identity," online at
http://tinyurl.com/24j3xz :
"In terms of the analysis of politeness, I would argue that we need several analytical changes: firstly, we need to see politeness as occurring over longer stretches of talk; secondly, it should be seen within the context of a community of practice, rather than simply as the product of individual speakers, and finally, we need to be aware that there may be conflicts over the meanings of politeness."
And she reminds us of Brown and Levinson's 1978 model of politeness, saying that "They argue for a pragmatic analysis of politeness which involves a concentration on the amount of verbal 'work' which individual speakers have to perform in their utterances to counteract the force of potential threats to the 'face' of the hearer."
End of sampler.
Finally.