On Understandings of Politeness in Greek, Again!

Maria Sifianou

doi:10.18290/rh237106.12s

Published : 2023-07-24

Vol. 71 No. 6sp (2023)

On Understandings of Politeness in Greek, Again!

Maria Sifianou

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3231-937X

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh237106.12s

Abstract

Recent discursive approaches to im/politeness have emphasised the significance of exploring non-academic understandings of im/politeness. Pursuing this line of research, the data for this paper come from a questionnaire distributed to 100 undergraduate female university students. The informants were asked to provide some attributes of a polite person and offer examples of a person or behaviour that impressed them as being polite. The aim was to elicit the respondents’ perceptions of what constitutes politeness.

The results show that the prevalent attributes of a polite person for these informants are helpfulness and unconditional respect, along with kindness. These constitute a web of closely related concepts based on goodness and genuine concern for the other, with respectfulness and kindness probably motivating helpfulness. This finding suggests that non-academic understandings of politeness are broader and not confined to language use, which has been the locus of most im/politeness research.

Keywords:

im/politeness, non-academic conceptualisations, respect, helpfulness, kindness, sincerity, non-verbal communication

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Maria Sifianou

msifian@enl.uoa.gr
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3231-937X

Affiliation:

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Professor Emerita Greece

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Maria Sifianou is Professor Emerita of the Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her publications include Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece (1992, 1999), Discourse Analysis (2006) and a number of articles in edited books and international journals. She has co-edited Themes in Greek Linguistics (1994) and Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries (2001) among others. She is a member of the editorial board of a number of journals and the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict (Benjamins) and the Focus on (Im)politeness book series (Routledge). Her main research interests include im/politeness phenomena and discourse analysis.