Phrases of politeness

[Ellen Contini-Morava]

A classic paper is Charles Ferguson's "The Structure and Use of 
Politeness Formulas", Language in Society 5, 137-151.  He has some 
examples from Arabic as well as English and some other languages.

Happy new year to all,

Ellen

On 12/28/2011 6:51 AM, Luke Kundl Pinette wrote:
> Hello all,
> I'm curious as to whether there's been any research done on 
> systematics of standard terms of politeness, in the same was as for 
> color or evidentiality.
>
> Most materials for learning languages seem to assume that each 
> language has distinct terms for hello, goodbye, good 
> morning/afternoon/evening/night, please, thank you, I'm sorry, and 
> excuse me/pardon.  This make things interesting in cases like Korean, 
> which uses one greeting for all times of the day but distinguishes 
> formality, or Hawaiian, which uses the same term for "hello" and 
> "goodbye."  (My Arabic teacher also claimed that "you're welcome" and 
> "sorry" are the same term in Modern Standard Arabic, though every 
> Arabic speaker I've met claims this isn't the case in their variety of 
> spoken Arabic.)
>
> On the other hand, it seems reasonable to assume that some languages 
> might have more such distinctions.  I have a few examples, but I don't 
> speak more than a few phrases of any of these languages, and haven't 
> had the opportunity to interrogate native speakers.
>
>  *   I've been told by English speakers of Korean that there are two
>    forms of "goodbye" depending on whether the speaker is staying or
>    going going "anyeongikaseo" and "anyeongikeseo." (I forget which is
>    which.)
>  * I think that the Japanese term "sumimasen" which can mean "thank
>    you" or "I'm sorry" might roughly correspond to "thanks, and I'm
>    sorry for the trouble," as opposed to "gomen nasai" (sorry) or
>    "arigatoo" (thanks), but the one Japanese speaker I asked told me
>    it's just a three-way distinction an English speaker won't be able
>    to make.
>  * Wikitravel claims that Georgian has four forms of pardon/excuse
>    me/sorry, which appear to making distinctions not present in
>    English, though I won't even try to speculate on the exact glosses.
>    /uk'atsravad/ (excuse me: pay attention), /map'atiye (excuse
>    me/pardon)/ /bodishi, (//excuse me/pardon/sorry), //vts'ukhvar/ 
> (sorry)
>
>
> So I guess my questions are:
> 1. Can anybody confirm, deny, or correct the above examples?
> 2. Does anybody know other such additional distinctions in other 
> languages?
> 3. Does anyone know if there's been research into the systematics of 
> politeness.  (E.g. A language that distinguishes "sorry" and "excuse 
> me" will also distinguish "hello" and "goodbye" or somesuch.)
>
> Thanks and regards (and a happy early New Year's),
> Luke

-- 
Ellen Contini-Morava
Professor, Department of Anthropology
Director, Program in Linguistics
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400120
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4120
USA
phone:  +1 (434) 924-6825
fax:    +1 (434) 924-1350