(Im)politeness: Towards an evaluative and embodied approach

What is it about?

Fascinations for Brown and Levinson’s (1987) paradigmatic politeness model have evolved into obsessions or even frustrations on the part of many scholars doing linguistic politeness, who, after three decades of research, are still asking “What is politeness?” and many other ontological, epistemological and methodological questions (Eelen 2001). Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness represents, to some degree, an admirable endeavor to break away from the limitations of Brown and Levinson’s politeness model and to advance our understanding of politeness and ourselves. After a critical review of this book, I present a preliminary case for evaluative (im)politeness, exploring how insights from cognitive linguistics that emphasize embodiment, as well as from recent (im)politeness research may be drawn upon to broaden the horizon of linguistic (im)politeness. It is argued that, if we want to obtain a deeper and clearer picture of (im)politeness and ourselves, top priority should be given to evaluative judgments in (im)politeness studies, that more attention should be paid to meaningdeconstruction and meaning-reconstruction after the interaction, in addition to meaning-construction in the interaction, and that on-line and off-line (im) politeness evaluations should be distinguished, with more attention paid to the latter.

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