“Will you fuck off please”. The use of please by London teenagers

Abstract

The paper investigates how the politeness marker please is used by young people to distinguish themselves from adults and create an identity of their own. The analysis of please is based on the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT). The distribution and uses of please in COLT are compared with similar data from the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). We can recognize several functions of the “impolite” please in the COLT Corpus. To begin with, it is used strategically to establish or confirm harmonious relationships between the speakers (rapport-strengthening impoliteness). Secondly, “mock impoliteness” may be understood in a positive way because it is amusing or entertaining. In young people’s circles entertainment skills are for example highly valued (entertainment impoliteness). Finally, impoliteness is used creatively in interaction by the participants who use repetition, reformulation and escalation to construct ritualized sequences of apparent insults (creative impoliteness).