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Nov. 18th, 2006 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth"Exploring the language of Poems, plays and prose" by Mick Short
is currently my favourite book ever.
Yes, I know it sounds a bit dry to hold such a status.
But it has the rules! It has what normal conversation is like! And it has rules about turn taking, and a little table of how it relates to power, which makes me go "er, oops" because most of my stuff like accidentally interrupting or apparently changing the topic (because it connects somewhere in my head) actually comes out as *power* moves, which I can understand pissing people off, because it's like I'm sitting there saying I'm the boss of them, and clearly I am not.
And now it has a section on politeness, including the what and why of it.
With rules! And definitions!
Politeness has two faces, which it calls positive and negative, though I don't quite see why... ah,
Positive is for what we do want and Negative is for what we don't want.
We do want people to like what we do, and we don't want people to stop us doing what we do.
So saying "well done" is positive face politeness, but getting marks back for essays tends to include a bit of positive face impoliteness, on account of we dont get 100%
And asking someone to do something is negative face impoliteness, because it get in the way of whatever it was they wanted to do that wasn't the thing you were asking.
It doesn't say what negative face politeness would be. I guess telling people they can do what they want, or asking what they want to do and then letting them decide.
It also says that there's no way to go around being always polite. Because to get things done you have to be some degree of impolite, because no one person can be boss of the universe so you have to do things you don't want to and ask others to do stuff and all that.
So, because we have to be impolite, we find ways to minimise and mitigate.
Thing of it is, some of the particular ways they list do wind me up. Because while I can see the connection between "The washing up needs doing" and "Could you do the washing up", I do not tend to go from one to the other, and I do not tend to *mean* the second when I say the first. That is always winding mum up, that I mention things and then she's all why you ask me and I'm all I didn't ask you I said what was in my list and then it's all... well, not very helpful. So I don't get how it is polite to be confusing.
But apparently it is rude to say things "baldly" or "without redress" or "on the record" or... well, it sounds like is rude to be straightforward. Which doesn't sound terribly helpful.
But I understand about the difference between ask and order. Ask knows that they can say no, and is saying you are not the boss of them. Order says you are the boss of them, and that tends to annoy people who usually don't want you to be the boss of them at all.
But we mitigate our being a bit impolite by taking into account the two kinds of polite. To be nice to what they want and to not get in the way of it any more than we have to.
And then say please. Please is the being polite word. But it isn't the whole of being polite. Like, you can't do a lot of impolite and then stick please on the end and go back to polite, it only moves it back up the one notch.
Some of this stuff I'm immensely better at now than at some points I can remember.
But written down this way it makes sense as a coherent set of rules, rather than just a list of do and don't. Can see the why of it.
So I do the happy dance of knowledge acquisition.
I never know how much I'm exaggerating my confusion though. It is possible I do things quite well most of the time and only notice when I do oops. It is in fact probable the times I do oops eat most of my attention.
I should go apply theories to texts soon, but I want to read more of this book. It is full of interesting.
The only thing that do bug me is it lists his 'intuitions' about power relationships and how it shows up in turn taking. And then it goes on talking about them as if they are facts. To become facts they would have to be backed up by empirical data, yesno? And I'm sure there's people researching this stuff. I was looking stuff up when I was looking up the 'women speak more than men' theory (they probably don't, is probably men who speak more, which would fit the power thing sometimes). So where are the numbers? Why are his intuitions in a textbook?
Also like the other book was saying, how there's a gap between noticing all these things in the language and interpreting what they do, what effect they create. There's sometimes a small hop and other times a bigger one. So you have to look out for the jump.
Aside from that, I like this book.
is currently my favourite book ever.
Yes, I know it sounds a bit dry to hold such a status.
But it has the rules! It has what normal conversation is like! And it has rules about turn taking, and a little table of how it relates to power, which makes me go "er, oops" because most of my stuff like accidentally interrupting or apparently changing the topic (because it connects somewhere in my head) actually comes out as *power* moves, which I can understand pissing people off, because it's like I'm sitting there saying I'm the boss of them, and clearly I am not.
And now it has a section on politeness, including the what and why of it.
With rules! And definitions!
Politeness has two faces, which it calls positive and negative, though I don't quite see why... ah,
Positive is for what we do want and Negative is for what we don't want.
We do want people to like what we do, and we don't want people to stop us doing what we do.
So saying "well done" is positive face politeness, but getting marks back for essays tends to include a bit of positive face impoliteness, on account of we dont get 100%
And asking someone to do something is negative face impoliteness, because it get in the way of whatever it was they wanted to do that wasn't the thing you were asking.
It doesn't say what negative face politeness would be. I guess telling people they can do what they want, or asking what they want to do and then letting them decide.
It also says that there's no way to go around being always polite. Because to get things done you have to be some degree of impolite, because no one person can be boss of the universe so you have to do things you don't want to and ask others to do stuff and all that.
So, because we have to be impolite, we find ways to minimise and mitigate.
Thing of it is, some of the particular ways they list do wind me up. Because while I can see the connection between "The washing up needs doing" and "Could you do the washing up", I do not tend to go from one to the other, and I do not tend to *mean* the second when I say the first. That is always winding mum up, that I mention things and then she's all why you ask me and I'm all I didn't ask you I said what was in my list and then it's all... well, not very helpful. So I don't get how it is polite to be confusing.
But apparently it is rude to say things "baldly" or "without redress" or "on the record" or... well, it sounds like is rude to be straightforward. Which doesn't sound terribly helpful.
But I understand about the difference between ask and order. Ask knows that they can say no, and is saying you are not the boss of them. Order says you are the boss of them, and that tends to annoy people who usually don't want you to be the boss of them at all.
But we mitigate our being a bit impolite by taking into account the two kinds of polite. To be nice to what they want and to not get in the way of it any more than we have to.
And then say please. Please is the being polite word. But it isn't the whole of being polite. Like, you can't do a lot of impolite and then stick please on the end and go back to polite, it only moves it back up the one notch.
Some of this stuff I'm immensely better at now than at some points I can remember.
But written down this way it makes sense as a coherent set of rules, rather than just a list of do and don't. Can see the why of it.
So I do the happy dance of knowledge acquisition.
I never know how much I'm exaggerating my confusion though. It is possible I do things quite well most of the time and only notice when I do oops. It is in fact probable the times I do oops eat most of my attention.
I should go apply theories to texts soon, but I want to read more of this book. It is full of interesting.
The only thing that do bug me is it lists his 'intuitions' about power relationships and how it shows up in turn taking. And then it goes on talking about them as if they are facts. To become facts they would have to be backed up by empirical data, yesno? And I'm sure there's people researching this stuff. I was looking stuff up when I was looking up the 'women speak more than men' theory (they probably don't, is probably men who speak more, which would fit the power thing sometimes). So where are the numbers? Why are his intuitions in a textbook?
Also like the other book was saying, how there's a gap between noticing all these things in the language and interpreting what they do, what effect they create. There's sometimes a small hop and other times a bigger one. So you have to look out for the jump.
Aside from that, I like this book.