Russian vs. American politeness (was RE: [SEELANGS] О потере чувства стил =?iso-8859-5?Q?=EF_?=(Raia Rozina RAN))

Sat Oct 5 18:29:56 UTC 2013

I believe there are three types of imperative in Russian:

1. Повелительное наклонение (the mildest):  "Возьми меня с собой"
2. Инфинитив (much stronger):  "Не разговаривать"
3. Прошедшее время (the rudest):  "Встала и пошла отюда!"

The weirdest thing is that №3 in plural is not as nasty:  "Пошли в кино!" :)

Vadim

Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2013 18:52:32 +0100
From: anne_mariedevlin at HOTMAIL.COM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian vs. American politeness (was RE: [SEELANGS] О потере чувства стиля (Raia Rozina RAN))
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU

The imperative in English is generally rude and has to be mitigated either syntactically (modality) or lexically (please). Russian mitigates differently. Aspect, person and tense can be employed. Think idi, idite and poshli. Such pragmatic structures are embedded in culture and as such are extremely difficult to acquire. I've been told that English speakers can sound like idiots in Russian and likewise Russians can sound rude in English due to pragmatic transfer. I used to enjoy listening to my Russian colleagues managing their classrooms - sadites', syadte or vse seli. 
I would be really interested to know if there has been any research into the use of the past as an imperative in Russian - and of course the thoughts of fellow seelangers. Pragmatics is an aspect of language that is often overlooked in teaching.
AM

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