Politeness and globalization. Chance or risk? (PDF)

Essay aus dem Jahr 2015 im Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft / Sprachforschung (fachübergreifend), Note: 2,0, Universität Hildesheim (Stiftung) (Institut für englische Sprache und Literatur), Veranstaltung: Linguistic Pragmatics, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: In the following pages, I will investigate the connection between globalization and politeness and will try to divide the influence of globalization into positive and negative aspects, so I am able to make a conclusion at the end. To ensure this, it is necessary to deal with the terms “politeness” and “globalization” first. The term politeness has a long history, which goes back to the 16th century and describes some extent “the quality of being polite” (Eelen, 2001: i).

Automatically terms such as good manners, consideration and sophisticated are associated with it. Consequently, it can be concluded that politeness is “having or showing that one has good manners and consideration for other people” (ibid.). Another explanation describes the standards of behavior with the meaning of speech styles and formality. Here, the maxims of politeness and the face-saving and the face-threatening acts are of great importance. “There are standards of behaviour in any society and in any according to which the speaker is deemed to have spoken politely or not” (Locher, 2004: 60). However, I will not go into the maxims of politeness and the acts because they do not play a major role in the further course of the study work.

A third and final definition of politeness, which may also fits best to the central question, describes politeness as a field of intercultural pragmatics, which has gained extremely importance in recent decades, since “empirical studies have proliferated, examining – individually and cross-culturally – languages and language varieties from around the world” (Hickey & Stewart, 2005: 1). This approach therefore describes the increasing importance of politeness thanks to the global empirical studies on language learning and diversity. A first impression can be found here in what way politeness and globalization fit together.