Personal reference and politeness strategies in French and Spanish : a corpus-based approach
The aim of this thesis is to examine personal pronominal reference in two lang1;5ges, French and Spanish, from an interactional perspective. Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987) 'Politeness theory' seeks to provide an explanation for much of the mismatch between what is 'said' and what Is 'implicated' in spoken discourse. One area of speech where this mismatch is particularly evident is that of personal reference where extralinguistic information is paramount in its use and interpretation. While previous approaches to this area have sought to assign one interpretation to a given pronominal use, this study seeks to show how speakers and hearers can exploit a multiplicity of potential values in the interest of faceprotection. Based on 5 qualitative methodology derived from the field of linguistic pragmatics applied to a corpus of naturally-oc:urring data of speech situations where there is threat to the face of speakers and hearers, this study will argue that the contextual factors of power and status as well as a knowledge of linguistic politeness itself are of crucial :mportance in the use and interpretation of persmal reference.
Stewart, Miranda Mary
Linguistics
Personal reference and politeness strategies in French and Spanish : a corpus-based approach. The aim of this thesis is to examine personal pronominal reference in two lang1;5ges, French and Spanish, from an interactional perspective. Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987) 'Politeness theory' seeks to provide an explanation for much of the mismatch between what is 'said' and what Is 'implicated' in spoken discourse. One area of speech where this mismatch is particularly evident is that of personal reference where extralinguistic information is paramount in its use and interpretation. While previous approaches to this area have sought to assign one interpretation to a given pronominal use, this study seeks to show how speakers and hearers can exploit a multiplicity of potential values in the interest of faceprotection. Based on 5 qualitative methodology derived from the field of linguistic pragmatics applied to a corpus of naturally-oc:urring data of speech situations where there is threat to the face of speakers and hearers, this study will argue that the contextual factors of power and status as well as a knowledge of linguistic politeness itself are of crucial :mportance in the use and interpretation of persmal reference.
personal reference politeness_strategy french spanish corpus_based approach aim_examine personal pronominal reference french spanish interactional perspective brown_levinson_politeness theory seek_provide explanation much mismatch implicated spoken_discourse area speech mismatch particularly evident personal reference extralinguistic information paramount use interpretation previous_approach area seek assign interpretation give pronominal use study_seek show speaker_hearer exploit multiplicity potential value interest based qualitative derive field linguistic pragmatic apply corpus naturally data speech situation threat face speaker_hearer study argue contextual_factor power status well knowledge linguistic_politeness crucial use interpretation reference