IS THE THEORY OF POLITENESS PRAGMALINGUISTIC OR SOCIOPRAGMATIC?:A NEW LOOK INTO THE UNIVERSALITY/CULTURE-SPECIFICITY DIVIDE

Abstract

This review paper focusses on how Leech's (2014) General Strategy of Politeness and its sub-strategies (maxims) of pos-/neg-politeness work in the naturally occurring data of Japanese and English. The ultimate goal is to explore how people in conversation proceeds interactively by aligning themselves with each other in order to attain positive/negative politeness goals. Rather than looking at data pragmalinguistically in the sense of Leech (2014), we maintain the view that politeness phenomena are to be analyzed functionally and sequentially. After reviewing Leech's most recent approaches, we propose that his (old) cost/benefit or (new) high/low value maxims of politeness principle may be applicable to natural data in some way, but need complete revision in terms of social and functional perspectives.