Höflichkeit

Abstract

Politeness represents a basic interactional principle which affects all aspects of human behaviour. As a linguistic category it determines the use of certain speech acts, which aim at governing the interpersonal relationship between the interlocutors, and the selection of verbal means to express these speech acts. Two approaches have been influential in research on Slavic politeness: The first views politeness as the expected and therefore unmarked socially appropriate behaviour. Thus, handbooks of speech etiquette provide lists of politeness formulas together with detailed comments on how to use them correctly. However, they often fail to reproduce the actual use of the respective formulas. The second approach treats politeness as a strategy directed to protect damages to the interlocutors’ faces. Studies conducted within the framework of Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory have revealed that Slavic cultures place more emphasis on positive politeness strategies. Consequently, they allow for a much more direct verbal behaviour in comparison to Western cultures, at least in private domains of communication. Slavic languages use a wide range of verbal means in order to convey politeness: These include (1) prosodic devices, (2) morphological means (e.g., selection of verbal aspect in imperatives, use of diminutives etc.), (3) syntactic transformations (questions as indirect requests, together with use of conditional and negation as additional devices to soften the request) and (4) lexical politeness markers. Finally, the historical development of the Russian politeness system is discussed in order to show the importance of extralinguistic changes for altering modes of expressing politeness.