MOH ALIM MUSONNAFA POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE POLITENESS
Positive and Negative Politeness
Moh. Alim Musonnafa
Brawijaya University, E-mail : a02.moh.alimmuson@gmail.com
Being polite is not as easy as people think about politeness. People tend to think politeness as a simply thing like saying thank you and please in appropriate place (Holmes, 2001). For instance, children are taught to say please for being polite when they make a request. But the word please for adults can be more than just being polite, sometimes they use please to give more power or peremptory in directive. When we learn politeness, we not only have to understand about the language but also the social and values of the community.
In general, politeness is how to considering someone feeling and make them comfortable with us. Holmes (2001;268) defines that politeness involves speaking to people appropriately based on their relationship with you. There are two factors that considered for being polite in community, social distance and status. These factors make the distinction between two types of politeness, positive and negative politeness. Positive politeness emphasizes with high solidarity or close social relationship. People make positive politeness to show that they want to cooperate and gain acceptance in communication. Someone who has high status or superordinate suggests that his subordinate should call him with his first name indicates a positive politeness. He wants to show solidarity and minimize different status (Holmes 2001). Besides that, negative politeness gives more attention to respect people and avoid iteruption on them. It involves the use of appropriate term of social distance and status diffences. When people use titile and the last name of their superordinate, older people or someone who you don’t know well , it indicates negative politeness.
In the first centuries, status was more considered than social distance or solidarity in order to being polite and use linguistic expression appropriately. People used TLN (title +
Moh. Alim Musonnafa
Brawijaya University, E-mail : a02.moh.alimmuson@gmail.com
Being polite is not as easy as people think about politeness. People tend to think politeness as a simply thing like saying thank you and please in appropriate place (Holmes, 2001). For instance, children are taught to say please for being polite when they make a request. But the word please for adults can be more than just being polite, sometimes they use please to give more power or peremptory in directive. When we learn politeness, we not only have to understand about the language but also the social and values of the community.
In general, politeness is how to considering someone feeling and make them comfortable with us. Holmes (2001;268) defines that politeness involves speaking to people appropriately based on their relationship with you. There are two factors that considered for being polite in community, social distance and status. These factors make the distinction between two types of politeness, positive and negative politeness. Positive politeness emphasizes with high solidarity or close social relationship. People make positive politeness to show that they want to cooperate and gain acceptance in communication. Someone who has high status or superordinate suggests that his subordinate should call him with his first name indicates a positive politeness. He wants to show solidarity and minimize different status (Holmes 2001). Besides that, negative politeness gives more attention to respect people and avoid iteruption on them. It involves the use of appropriate term of social distance and status diffences. When people use titile and the last name of their superordinate, older people or someone who you don’t know well , it indicates negative politeness.
In the first centuries, status was more considered than social distance or solidarity in order to being polite and use linguistic expression appropriately. People used TLN (title +
References: Yule, George.1996.Pragmatics.Oxford : Oxford University Press. Yule, George.2010.The Study Of Language.New York : Cambridge University Press. Holmes, Janet.2001.An Introduction To Sociolinguistics.England : Pearson Education Limited. Ogiermann, Eva.2009. On Apologising In Negative And Positive Politeness Cultures. Philadelphia : John Benjamins B.V.