A study of politeness strategies in the conversational activities of the course book new cutting edge (elementary, pre intermediate and intermediate)

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY







NGUYEN THI KHANH

A STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE
CONVERSATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE COURSE BOOK “NEW
CUTTING EDGE”
(ELEMENTARY, PRE-INTERMEDIATE AND INTERMEDIATE)

(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ ĐƯỢC SỬ DỤNG TRONG
CÁC BÀI HỘI THOẠI CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH GIAO TIẾP NEW CUTTING
EDGE ELEMENTARY, PRE-INTERMEDIATE VÀ INTERMEDIATE)

M.A. THESIS

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyen Thi Van Dong

HANOI – 2013

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DECLARATION

I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been
copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement
and that the thesis is original written by me under strict guidance of my
supervisor.

Hanoi, November 10
th
2013

Approved by Candidate



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the process of writing this thesis, I have been fortunate to
receive supports and assistance from a variety of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Van Dong, for her encouragement and guidance
throughout the research. Without her well-designed plan and meticulous
review of the drafts, this thesis would not have been completed.

I would like to acknowledge and express my appreciation to my
colleagues at Quang Ninh University of Industry, English department for their
enthusiastic support and constructive suggestions in completing this research.
I also wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post
Graduate, Hanoi Open University for giving me the best environment to fulfill
my thesis.
Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to my parents for their
endless love, constant support and encouragement.
I realize that this thesis is still far from prefect. I will be glad to receive
criticism and suggestion to make this thesis better. Finally, I expect that this
thesis is useful to the writer and everyone who is interested in linguistic study.









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ABSTRACT
This study is to focus on positive and negative politeness strategies in
conversations of the course book “New Cutting Edge Elementary, Pre-
Intermediate, Intermediate”, with an aim to help the students at Quang Ninh
University improve their awareness of politeness strategies in conversational
activities in the course book mentioned above, thus to apply these strategies
in their everyday conversations in English. The thesis lists three most popular

politeness theories: Politeness rules of Lakoff, Politeness principles maxims
of Leech and Politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson. The course book is
analyzed mainly in the light of the politeness theories of Brown & Levinson.
The research shows that people seems to prefer using negative positive
strategy in conversational activities than others. The last but not the least,
some suggestions for learning and teaching positive, negative and off –
record strategies are also presented.




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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FTA: Face threatening act
S: Speaker
H: Hearer, addressee
PP: Principle Politeness

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS v

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims of the study 3
3. Research questions 3
4. Scopes of the study 4
5. Methods of the study 4
6. Design of the study 4
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 6
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 6
1.1. Language and culture 6
1.2. Speech acts 7
1.2.1. Locutionary Acts 9
1.2.2. Illocutionary Acts 9
1.2.3. Perlocutionary Acts 11
1.3.4. Direct and indirect speech acts 11
1.3. Cooperative Principle and Grice’s Maxims 12
1.4. Politeness 14
1.4.1. General ideas of politeness 14
1.4.2. Face 15
1.4.3. Politeness rules of Lakoff 16
1.4.4. Politeness Principle Maxims of Leech 17
1.4.5. Politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson 19
i) Don’t do the FTA (say nothing) 20
ii) Bald on-record 21

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iii) Positive strategies 22
iv) Negative strategies 29

v) Off-record 34
CHAPTER II: CLASSIFICATION OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN
THE CONVERSATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE COURSE BOOK “NEW
CUTTING EDGE” I, II, III 39
2.1. Frequency of occurrence of positive, negative, off – record politeness
strategies in conversational activities in the course book “New Cutting
Edge” 40
2.2. Positive, negative and off – record politeness strategies of the course
book “New Cutting Edge” 44
2.2.1. Positive politeness strategies in conversational activities 44
2.2.2. Negative politeness strategies in conversational activities 48
2.2.3. Off - record strategies in conversational activities 50
CHAPTER III: IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
AND SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES 54
3.1. Implications for teaching politeness strategies 54
3.2. Supplementary activities 55
PART III: CONCLUSION 66
REFERENCES 70
APPENDIX 75

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PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
As we know that we are living in the world of globalization. English
language is a common language and is spoken in many countries. It is
considered as universal language. Nowadays, English has played an important
role in our daily life and made a considerable contribution to education,
culture, business, science and technology. Most of the universities worldwide

include English as one of their major subject and the number of people
learning English for different purposes such as finding a job, doing businesses
or traveling is continually on the increase every day. Therefore, different
kinds of English teaching and learning are available over the world especially
in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, English becomes the core language to communicate with
other countries over the world so English becomes a compulsory subject at
many schools at many levels such as: schools, colleges and universities from
major to non-major in English. However, the basis method is used in teaching
in Vietnam is more concentrating on vocabulary and grammar than on
communication. Therefore, learners do not know what to say to have
contextual, situational and cultural appropriateness in communication.
Consequently, learners have a certain limit when communicating or
interacting in an appropriate way or even being culture shock although they
can read well or have a good grammar.
Nguyen Quang [20, 2] states that one cannot master a language
without profound awareness of its cultural background and in both verbal
and non-verbal communication, culture makes itself strongly felt. So in order
to acquire the second language-English, it is necessary to learn not only

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linguistic knowledge and interaction but also knowledge of English culture
which described as the ideas, customs, skills, arts and tools which
characterize a given group of people in a given period of time (Marie Emmitt
and John Pollock, cited from Dang Thanh Phuong [18, 39]. Nowadays, some
cultural factors are included in the course design in universities and schools
only. When understanding the cultural factors students have chances to
expose themselves to natives speaking environments. Normally, Vietnamese

students tend to employ English based on their native culture and cause
misinterpretation in oral communication. They are sometimes impolite,
unfriendly even rude by chance.
Hence, to be successful in communicating in the target language,
learners must be aware of their own culture of the target speech community.
Especially, they must understand the hidden and very important parts of the
target culture including the politeness strategies used in everyday
conversations.
There were some authors such as Thanh Huong (2005), Nguyen Thuy
Hoa (2010), Tran Thi Phuong (2011), Pham Thi Hong Lien (2012) mentioned
on politeness strategies in the conversational activities of different course
books: “New Headway”, “Inside Out”, “New English File”…These studies
only concentrated on studying positive and negative strategies used in the
researched course books and mainly relied on the Nguyen Quang’s politeness
strategies theory to find out politeness strategies employed in those course
books.
This study aims to more deeply and fully understand about politeness
strategies in all aspects, politeness rules and how the aspects used in the
course book New Cutting Edge according to the theory of Brown and

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Levinson. Some linguistic researches on politeness such as Politeness rules of
Lakoff (1975), Politeness principles maxims of Leech (1983) and Politeness
strategies of Brown and Levinson (1987) are given and analyzed. Author
analyzed the course book in the light of Brown and Levinson theory which is
considered as the most influential one. In this thesis, off – record strategies
are found in the course book beside positive and negative politeness
strategies.

New Cutting Edge which contains a lot of useful conversational
activities with many real life situations, is an English course book written by
Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moor. This course book is employed at the
Faculty of English (Quang Ninh University of Industry) where thesis author
works as a teacher of English so as to improve the teaching and learning of
verbal communication in English.
2. Aims of the study
The study aims at the following objectives:
- To study different kinds of politeness strategies
- To classify politeness strategies used in the interaction activities in the
course book “New Cutting Edge”
- To provide suggestions for effective teaching and learning
- To adapt and design some cross-cultural activities to help students
avoid misinterpretations and misunderstandings in cross-cultural
communication.
3. Research questions
In order to achieve the aims stated, the study is meant to find out the
answers to the following research questions:
- Which are the main types of politeness strategies?

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- What types of politeness strategies are used in interaction activities of
the course book “New Cutting Edge”?
- What are the suggestions for effective teaching of politeness strategies?
4. Scopes of the study
The study focuses only on major politeness strategies found in the
interaction activities of the course book “New Cutting Edge” (Elementary,
Pre-intermediate and Intermediate [see at next page]) which for a long time,

has been in use at Quang Ninh University of Industry.
5. Methods of the study
The major methods that the author has employed are quantitative and
qualitative. All the considerations remarks and comments are based on
analysis and references. The theoretical background of chapter 1 largely
depends on the published research of various authors.
The main supporting methods are: Reference to publications,
Discussion with the supervisor, Discussion with colleagues, Discussion with
students, Personal observation.
6. Design of the study
The study is divided into 3 parts:
Part I is the opening of the study which includes the rationale, the aims
of the study, the research questions, the scopes, the methods of the study.
Part II is the main part of the study which consists of three chapters.
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical background on language and culture,
speech act, Cooperative Principle and Maxims, the definitions of face,
politeness and politeness strategies. Chapter 2 analyzes positive, negative,
off - record politeness strategies found in the conversational activities of the
course book "New New Cutting Edge" (Elementary, Pre – intermediate,

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Intermediate). Chapter 3 presents the implications for learning and teaching
politeness strategies for students at Quang Ninh University of Industry,
supplementary exercises and activities for cross - cultural study.
Part III is the conclusion of the study which summarizes the study and
suggestions for further research.

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PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Language and culture
The term culture is a too large area to give a satisfying definition.
Pioneer English Anthropologist Edward Tylor defined culture is that complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society [27, 1].
According to Fanz Boas, culture is defined as the totality of the mental
and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior of
individuals composing a social group collectively and individually in
relations to their natural environment, to other groups, to members of the
group itself and of each individual to himself. It also includes the products of
these activities and their role in more, for its elements are not independent,
they have a structure [3, 149].
Another widely – accepted definition is that language is an inseparable
part of our everyday lives. It is the main tool used to transmit messages, to
communicate ideas, thoughts and opinions. It situates us in the society we live
in; it is a social affair which creates and further determines our position in all
kinds of various social networks and institutions. Nguyen Quang [20, 3]
defined that culture enables us to communicate with each other since it is a
shared language background (e.g. national, religions), resulting from a
common language and communication styles, customs, beliefs, attitudes,
values.
In certain circumstances we are literally dependent on its appropriate
usage and there are moments when we need to be understood quite correctly.
Language is involved in nearly all fields of human activity and maybe that is

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why language and linguistic communication have become a widely discussed
topic among linguists, lawyers, psychologists and philosophers.
Language is a term to the general faculty, which enables human beings
to engage in the verbal exchange of information. Language is considered as
the “principal means” of conducting our social lives.
It could be obvious that language and culture are interrelated and can
not exist outside the social context. There are many ways in which the
phenomena of language are intimately related. Both phenomena are unique to
humans and have therefore been the subject of a great deal of anthropological,
sociological study. Language, of course, is determined by culture. People of
different cultures have different ways of viewing and interpreting the world.
Hence, learning a language has to go with learning culture.
1.2. Speech acts
It is said that we perform speech acts when we offer an apology,
greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal. A speech act
is an utterance that serves a function in communication. A speech act might
contain just one word, or several words or sentences. Speech acts include real-
life interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also
appropriate use of that language within a given culture. Language is very
important in communication and speech acts are act of communication. By
doing speech acts, speaker tries to convey intention and purpose of the
communication by the hope that it is understandable by the hearer.
According to Searle [29, 16], he defined Speech act is an action such as
making a statement, giving orders, asking questions, making appointments, etc.,
this action is generally made possible by and conducted in accordance with
certain rules for the use of linguistic elements. Austin thought that understand

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language one must understand the speaker’s intention and by understanding the
speaker’s intention, it is possible to capture the meaning and establish a speech
act.
Austin, the pioneer of speech acts theory and an American language
philosopher, states that speech acts are not just acts such as making a word,
but also having more meaning behind the words uttered, as suggested in How
to Do Things with Words in which he introduces basic terms and areas to
study and distinguishes locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts [1,
101]. According to Lyons [17, 173], Austin’s main purpose was to challenge
the view that the only philosophically (and also linguistically) interesting
function of language was that of making true or false statements). Austin
proves that there are undoubtedly more functions language can exercise. The
theory of speech acts thus comes to being and Austin's research becomes a
cornerstone for his followers (cited from Justova, [5, 6]).
According to Leech, locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts
are three basic components with the help of which a speech act is formed.
And Leech [14, 199] briefly defines them like this:
Locutionary act: performing an act of saying something;
Illocutionary act: performing an act in saying something;
Perlocutionary act: performing an act by saying something.
E.g.: Turn off the light!
In the above example, locutionary act of this utterance is simply a
question with a clear content (Turn off the light).
Illocutionary act: He urged/required me to turn off the light.
Perlocutionary act expresses the speaker’s desire that the H should go
and turn off the light.

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1.2.1. Locutionary Acts
Austin [1, 95] distinguished three aspects of the locutionary act.
According to Austin, locutionary comprises three sub-acts: phonetic, phatic
and rhetic.
a. A phonetic act: Performing the act of uttering certain noises (noises
recognized as linguistic).
b. A phatic act: Performing the act of uttering certain vocables or words.
c. A rhetic act: Performing the act of using vocables with a certain more-or-
less definite sense and reference.
According to Austin, a phonetic act is the act of merely producing
sounds or phonemes and this is not sufficient for saying anything at all. He
also gave the distinction between phatic act and rhetic act. It is said that we
can easily report a phatic act by direct quotation and report a rhetic acts by
indirect quotation.
E.g.: He said “she is coming here” (phatic act)
E.g.: He said that she was coming here (rhetic act)
His follower is Searle [18, 412] who reformulated description of
illocutionary act and he suggests the term which so-called propositional act
which expresses the proposition (a neutral phrase without illocutionary force).
In other words, a proposition is the content of the utterance.
1.2.2. Illocutionary Acts
Illocutionary acts are considered as the core of the theory of speech acts
and an illocutionary act is the action performed by the S in producing a given
utterance. Illocutionary act is closely connected with speaker’s intentions, e.g.
stating, questioning, promising, requesting, giving commands, threatening…
There are hundreds of illocutionary which the S performs.

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E.g.: a. Can you close the window?
b. Will you close the window?
c. Could you close the window?
d. Would you close the window?
For better understanding and orientation, some linguists proposed their
classification in which Searle’s division is the most popular one. Searle
(1976) divided illocutionary acts into five major categories:
- Representatives are such utterances which commit the H to the truth of
the expressed proposition (e.g. asserting, concluding,…)
E.g.: The name of the American president is Obama.
- Directives are attempts by the S to get the addressee to do something
(e.g.: ordering, requesting…)
E.g.: Would you make me a cup of tea?
- Commissives commit the S to some future course of action (e.g.:
promising, offering)
E.g.: I promise to come at 12 am and pick you up.
- Expressives express a psychological state (e.g.: thanking,
congratulating)
E.g.: Thank you for your enthusiasm help.
- Declarations effect immediate changes in the institutional state of
affairs which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (e.g.
christening, declaring war)
E.g.: I bequeath all my property to my beloved-husband.




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1.2.3. Perlocutionary Acts
Perlocutionary acts are Austin’s last element in the three-fold definition
of speech acts and performed with the intention of producing a further effect
on the H.
As for his definition, perlocutionary often performs an act by saying
something such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening or otherwise
getting someone to do or realizing something. In some cases, the difference
between perlocutionary and illocutionary is not very clear.
1.3.4. Direct and indirect speech acts
In the course of performing speech acts, we ordinarily communicate
with each other. The content of communication may be identical, or almost
identical, with the content intended to be communicated.
However, the meaning of the linguistic means used may also be
different from the content intended to be communicated.
Yule [31, 54] said that based on the basic structure, sentences or
utterances can be identified as direct utterances and indirect utterances. In
terms of speech acts, directness could be explained as matching the speech act
with the grammatical structure it most naturally takes.
E.g.: Clean the door! (Direct speech act)
E.g.: It’s very cold in here (Indirect speech act). In this example, S’s
intention is making the addressee to close the door.
If directness was defined as matching your speech act with your
structure, indirectness would then be using an interrogative structure to
convey a non-question speech act, like a statement, even a command or reject
the proposal.
E.g.: A: Would you like to meet me for coffee?”

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B: I have to do my homework.
In this situation, B used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal.
This is indirect because the literal meaning does not entail any sort of
rejection. The S avoids rejection by using I have to do my homework.
The interplay of directness and indirectness is also an interesting factor
in social situations where some people know each other better and some are
new acquaintances. Using direct speech to your old friends and indirect
speech to the newcomers is an efficient way to be polite.
According to Leech, Indirectness is a widely used conversational
strategy. People tend to use indirect speech acts mainly in connection with
politeness since they thus diminish the unpleasant message contained in
requests and orders for instance [cited from Justova, 5, 17].
1.3. Cooperative Principle and Grice’s Maxims
In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative
principle describes how people interact with one another.
Grice [7, 45] proposes that participants in a conversation obey a general
“Cooperative Principle”, which is expected to be in force whenever a
conversation unfolds: Make your contribution such as it is required, at the
stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged.
The cooperative principle goes both ways: Speakers (generally)
observe the cooperative principle, and listeners (generally) assume that
speakers are observing it. This allows for the possibility of implicatures,
which are meanings that are not explicitly conveyed in what is said, but that
can nonetheless be inferred.

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Implicature can be established by envisaging the four conversational
rules or “Maxim” comprised by Cooperative Principle:
1. Maxim of quantity: In this maxim, S tries to give adequate
information as is required for the current purposes of the exchange
and not to make the contribution more informative than is required.
2. Maxims of Quality: Be truthful: S does not say what believe to be
false and what lacks adequate evidence.
3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant: Both S and H are expected to give
the relevant contribution about something which is uttered. (This
maxim is appreciated by Grice)
4. Maxims of Manner: Be clear: S avoids obscurity of expression and
ambiguity. Moreover, the information should be brief (avoid unnecessary
prolixity), orderly, directly, clearly, and unambiguously.
Because cooperative conversation is determined by culture, therefore
the Grice’s Maxims and the Cooperative Principle cannot be universally
applied due to intercultural differences. Another criticism is that the Grice’s
Maxims can easily be misinterpreted to be a guideline for etiquette,
instructing S on how to be moral, polite conversationalists. Despite their
wording, the Grice’s Maxims are only meant to describe the commonly
accepted traits of successful cooperative communication. Geoffrey
Leech created the Politeness maxims: Tact maxim, Generosity maxim,
Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim, Agreement maxim, and Sympathy
maxim (See at 1.4.4).




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1.4. Politeness
1.4.1. General ideas of politeness
Durkheim (1915) pointed out that The human personality is a scared
thing; one dare not violate it nor infringe it bounds, while at the same time the
greatest good is in communion with other (cited from Brown and Levinson,
[2, 1]). So the way people choose to speak and how the Hs react to their
speech is very important and it is the reason why linguists and anthropologists
have given the politeness definitions.
Lakoff (cited from [31, 106] defined politeness as a system of
interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the
potential conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange.
Leech defines politeness as a type of behaviour that allows the
participants to engage in a social interaction in an atmosphere of relative
harmony. Besides, he states that politeness as crucial in explaining why
people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean (in Thomas [24,
158].
Thomas sees that politeness interpreted as a genuine desire to be
pleasant to others, or as the underlying motivation for an individual’s
linguistic behaviour [24, 150].
Yule [31, 60] said that “politeness, in an interaction, can then be
defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face.”
Face can be defined as the public self-image of a person.
In short, Politeness is one of the most important aspects of human
communication and people can only exist in a peace if the basic conventions
of politeness are observed.


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1.4.2. Face
When people are involved in conversations, they individually consider
certain variables, whether consciously or sub-consciously, that help them
determine the form that their speech will take. According to Gumperz [9,
xiii], he defined that Face is a socially attributed aspect of self that is
temporarily on loan for the duration of the interaction in accordance with the
line or lines that the individual has adopted. It is not our personal
constructions do contribute towards that construction….If our constructed
role remains relatively stable individual. If we can find some underlying
grammatical and social regularities which account both for this type of
variation and for the recurrent patterns, we will have taken a major step in
demonstrating and not just claiming the basically social nature of human
language.
Sociologist Erving Goffman (1967) appropriates the folk notion of face
and re-characterizes it as follows: the positive social value a person effectively
claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular
contact….an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes
and an image of self, delineated in terms of approved social attributes”
(mentioned in Watts [30, 124]). Goffman’s definition is closer than Brown
and Levinson’ interpretation.
Following Brown and Levinson (1987), face is defined as the public
self-image that every member wants to claim for himself. We assume that
being regarded as polite is achieved in part by maintaining, and, in case of
threat, saving desired or conventionally valued aspects of others’ face. Brown
and Levinson (1987) further also define the following two notions,
corresponding to two types of face:

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Negative face was defined as the want of every “competent adult
member” that his actions be unimpeded by others, or the basic claim to
territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction - i.e., to freedom of
action and freedom from imposition. (cited from Brown and Levinson, [2,
61])
Positive face was defined as the want of every member that his wants
be desirable to at least some others executors, or alternately, the positive
consistent self-image or “personality” (crucially including the desire that this
self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants. (cited
from Brown and Levinson, [2, 61]).
It is believed that when we communicate, participants will co – operate
with each other due to the mutual vulnerability of face. However, there are
acts that by nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of
the speakers. Brown and Levinson (1987) defined the performance of such
utterances as Face threatening acts. The S need to consider how it should be
uttered when need to perform an FTA.
1.4.3. Politeness rules of Lakoff
Lakoff was one of the first linguists to study politeness and gave birth
to the notion that politeness is an important aspect of interaction that needs to
be studied. Many theorists following Lakoff have focused on either expanding
on his maxims or contesting them.
Lakoff’s theory of politeness gave some set of rules that people should
use when interact with each other, which prevent interaction from breaking
down. As outlined in “Politeness theory”, Lakoff proposes that there are two
rules of politeness: Be clear and be polite, which aim at minimizing conflict in

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an interaction. In this part, we only focus on politeness rules which are
detailed as following:
i) Don’t impose
E.g.: a) Give me a pencil.
b) Could give me a pencil?
c) I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you for a pencil or something?
Sentence (a) is high imposing. The sentence (b), the politeness rate is
reinforced by auxiliary verb “could”. In sentence (c), the politeness level is
highest among three examples. This utterance is used widely in
communication.
ii) Offer options
When using this rule, people prefer using “I wonder if you could help
me close the window?” than using “Close the window”.
iii) Encourage feelings of camaraderie
This is the rule to make the audience feel good, maintain equality.
She stated that “don’t impose”, “give the receiver options”, and “make
the receiver feel good” are paramount in good interaction. By not adhering to
these maxims, S is said to be “flouting the maxims”.
1.4.4. Politeness Principle Maxims of Leech
Leech’s theory approaches politeness from a more pragmatic
perspective. Geoffrey Leech introduced politeness principle which is
minimizing the expression of impolite beliefs, and there is a corresponding
positive version which is somewhat less important.
Politeness principle proposes how to produce and understand language
based on politeness with the purpose is to establish feeling of community and
social relationship. Thus, politeness principle focuses on process of

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interpretation that the center of the study is on the effect of the H rather than
S.
Leech [14, 132] stated that politeness principle consists of six maxims,
i.e. tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim,
agreement maxim, and sympathy maxim, those are:
i) Tact maxim: This maxim aims at minimizing costs to the S and
maximizing benefits to the audience.
E.g.: Let’s carry the luggage for you.
This utterance is spoken to ask the H to carry his luggage. The S uses
indirect utterance to be more polite and minimizing cost to the H.
ii) Generosity maxim: This maxim aims at maximizing the benefits for others
and minimizing benefits for self.
E.g.: I can lend you my car.
In this case S gives more priority the H’s advantage and implies the
disadvantage of the speaker.
iii) Approbation maxim/Praise: This maxim aims at minimizing
dispraise of the audience and maximizing praise/approval of the audience.
E.g.: A: The performance was great!
B: Yes, wasn’t it!
In the example, A gives a good comment about the performance. He
talks the pleasant thing about other. This expression is a congratulation
utterance that maximizes praise of other.
iv) Modesty maxim: This maxim aims at minimizing praise of self and
maximizing dispraise of self.
E.g.: Please accept this small gift for you