The essays in this volume of Working Papers on the Web are all concerned with the analysis of linguistic politeness in relation to context. All of the essays deal with this issue in relation to the work which has been undertaken in the field of linguistic politeness, trying to test out analytical models in relation to the analysis of context. Within Brown and Levinson’s influential (1987) work on politeness, context was restricted to the analysis of variables of social distance, power and the rank of imposition. Because of Brown and Levinson’s concern to describe the universal features of politeness, and thus the role of culture/cultural context, the importance of institutional context, or other genre-specific contexts, on the production and assessment of politeness has been little researched. There seems to be a general move in linguistics to focus on context: for example, Norman Fairclough and Lilie Chouliaraki’s (1999) concerns with the relation between agency and structure, and hence their attempt to develop a model of context to meet the needs of both social scientists and discourse analysts in Discourse and Late Modernity; Mary Bucholtz’s (1999) focus on context in her work on communities of practice; Duranti and Goodwin’s (1992) critique of conventional models of context in Rethinking Context, and the latest issue of Critique of Anthropology on context (2001). Thus, context in current linguistics is undergoing something of a revival of interest, making its analysis both more interesting and more difficult. With the move to interrogate the distinction between text and context, analysis which focuses on context needs to carefully examine those elements which are seen to be determining features of the text/conversation and those which make up the text/interaction itself. There has also been a radical questioning of those features which make up context; for example, for ethnographers, gender is something which is addressed/worked on in the text by participants rather than simply a determining feature which acts on participants. In the analysis of politeness which features in these essays, the role of the Community of Practice and particularly the institution is of crucial importance, because the negotiation of posited group norms in relation to language bring about variation in both the production and interpretation of politeness. Thus, by focusing on interactions within particular institutions/genres (hospitals, House of Commons, broadcast interviews, and so on) and by suggesting ways in which context is co-constructed and produced by participants, often in contradictory and oppositional ways, we hope to move politeness research to a more focused and ‘punctual’ form of analysis.

In the essay ‘Politeness and the linguistic construction of gender in Parliament: an analysis of transgressions and apology behaviour’ Chris Christie explores the realisation of gender in parliamentary discourse by drawing together scholarship in politeness, studies of gender and language use, as well as work that adopts a communities of practice perspective. Her overall aim is to show that applying a CofP framework to the analysis of politeness behaviour brings into view aspects of gender identity that are specific to parliamentary practice. She argues that scholarship in language-use and gender has suggested a connection between male speech, public speech and politeness which would predict that men are more likely than women to conform to the transactional discourse norms (Kaspar 1990) of public discourses such as parliamentary debate. In her paper she draws on a study that was designed to explore whether there is evidence to support this prediction through an extended analysis of male and female MPs’ performance of parliamentary discourse. Her analysis suggests that, contrary to the prediction, there is evidence that female MPs are more careful than male MPs to conform to transactional norms. She also shows how the application of a CofP framework usefully problematises the relationship between gender and parliamentary debate in that a) it shows that unless politeness behaviour in a particular practice such as parliamentary debate is understood in practice specific terms, the significance of this linguistic behaviour remains obscured, b) it shows that in highlighting practice specific norms this type of analysis allows a distinction between ’polite’ behaviour and ’politic’ (Watts 1992) behaviour to be made and c) this in turn brings into view a structure and agency dynamic that helps to describe and explain differential uses of politeness resources by male and female MPs.

 In a jointly authored paper by British, Libyan and Georgian members of the Linguistic Politeness Research Group (Francesca Bargiela, Corinne Boz, Lily Gozadze, Abdurrahman Hamza, Sara Mills and Nino Rukhadze) entitled ‘Anglocentrism, involvement politeness strategies and naming’, the authors analyse the way that the naming strategies used by British and American speakers in conversation with Asian speakers of English may appear to be Anglocentric. Where speakers from other countries may be more comfortable with formal naming strategies, such as the use of title and last name, English and American speakers may try to move to first name terms as quickly as possible. The authors contrast the naming strategies used in Arabic and Georgian, to those used in English and then try to examine the options available to British and American speakers to challenge ethnocentrism.

Louise Mullany, Nottingham Trent University in her article: "I don’t think you want me to get a word in edgeways do you John?" Re-assessing (im)politeness, language and gender in political broadcast interviews’ highlights impoliteness as a neglected area of politeness research, a consequence of the dominance of Brown and Levinson’s (1987[1978]) theory of politeness universals. Previous studies that have investigated language, gender and politeness are critiqued for an over-reliance on Brown and Levinson’s model, and for over-generalising the complex relationship between language and gender by simply cataloguing differences in male and female speech patterns. The community of practice (CofP) framework (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992a, b) is presented as an alternative approach to language and gender studies. Following Mills, (forthcoming) the CofP approach is also adopted to bring a new dimension to the manner in which notions of linguistic politeness and impoliteness are conceived. In this paper, the communities of practice approach is modified in order to include the construct of media genres, and impoliteness in political broadcast interview data is analysed. The need for language and gender studies to acknowledge that gender may not be the only salient variable affecting linguistic behaviour is argued, and the CofP framework is suggested as a way forward to approach the complex relationship between language, gender and politeness.

Karen Grainger, Sheffield Hallam University: ‘Politeness or Impoliteness?: Verbal Play on the Hospital Ward’ argues that although politeness phenomena in institutional talk have not been studied to any great extent (but see Bogoch 1994; Aaronsson and Rundstrom, 1989; Spiers, 1998), Brown and Levinson’s model of linguistic politeness would predict a preponderence of negative politeness strategies (‘deference’) between clients and professionals due to the degree of social distance between the speakers and the often weighty FTAs involved. However, as has been noted by Aronsson and Rundstrom (1989) sequences of naturally occurring insitituional discourse reveal that roles and relationships (involving power and distance ) are negotiable and therefore politeness strategies are not so easily predicted as the B & L model might suggest. In data from interactions between nurses and geriatric patients in a geriatric acute ward, it is clear that there is extensive use of positive politeness strategies, despite the fact that nurses and patients barely know one another, whilst engaged in fairly intrusive care tasks. These co-occur with negative politeness strategies, suggesting that, within the same interaction, nurse and patient construct both a deferential and solidary relationship. In this paper I will explore ‘ the interplay between choice and convention’ (Aronsson and Rundstrom, 1989) in linguistic behaviour in this context, and argue that politeness strategies are at once a reflection of the ambiguity of institutional roles (leaving them open to negotiation), as well as an indication of the delicacy of the task at hand, requiring extensive face-work to be carried out throughout the interaction.

Andrew Merrison, York St John College: ‘Politeness in Task-Oriented Dialogue’ argues that human communication is a process involving interactive and collaborative effort and its success is dependent on the joint responsibility of all participants involved (Grice, 1975; Clark, 1996). Furthermore, it is often assumed that while part of this effort concerns the management of transactional wants, it is another, entirely separate part which is concerned with the management of face wants (Goffman, 1967b). In short, there is apparently one fundamental organisational principle for talk which is transactional (task-related), and another for that which is interactional (social). What such a view fails to realise, however, is that in certain circumstances part of the collaborative effort required in transactional dialogue can be seen to involve the management of face. His paper investigates the role of face in task-oriented dialogue. In doing so it suggests a maxim of interactional organisation which recognises the interplay of face wants with transactional wants. Various ‘sensitive’ behaviours are seen to mitigate threats – either threats to the success of the transaction or threats to face. Consequently, and analogous to Brown & Levinson’s (1987) notion of face-threatening act (FTA), this paper introduces the term transaction-threatening act (TTA). More specifically this paper investigates the role of face in task-oriented dialogues between aphasic and non-aphasic individuals. Results indicate that when engaged in talk with aphasic dialogue partners, non-impaired speakers sensitively manage potential FTAs and TTAs:

Such management is found to be achieved both by active and inactive strategies of restoration. More importantly, much of this restoration involves face-work which obtains despite the very clear transactional aspect to the task-oriented dialogue in which the participants are engaged. In short, we find that even when engaged in task-oriented dialogue, speakers can be seen to invest a great deal of effort into doing politeness.

In the reviews section of this special issue, there are several reviews of recent publications on the subject of politeness research. Abdurrahman Hamza, Sheffield Hallam University, reviews Gino Eelen (2001) A Critique of Politeness Theories, Manchester: St. Jerome’s Press. Andrew Merrison, York St John, reviews Saeko Fukushima (2000) Requests and Culture: Politeness in British English and Japanese Bern: Peter Lang. Corinne Boz, Sheffield Hallam University reviews Ann Bayraktaroglu and Maria Sifianou’s (2000) Linguistics Politeness Across Boundaries: The Case of Turkish and Greek, and Sara Mills, Sheffield Hallam University reviews Helen Spencer-Oatey’s edited collection Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures, Continuum, London, 2000

The Linguistic Politeness Research Group was established in 1998 in order to bring together researchers working on the subject of politeness research. There is a mailing list which consists of members from China, Japan, America, Netherlands, Finland, Egypt, Libya and the UK; there is also a web-site http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ea/politeness/ which contains details of the group meetings and the research interests of members of the group. It also contains some research materials such as articles and bibliographies. There is also a smaller publishing group, consisting of these members:

Abdurrahman Hamza: abdul.hamza@student.shu.ac.uk

Francesca Bargiela: francesca.bargiela@ntu.ac.uk

Andrew Merrison: a.merrison@yorksj.ac.uk

Bethan Davies: b.l.davies@leeds.ac.uk

Christine Christie: c.christie@lboro.ac.uk

Corinne Boz: corinneboz@hotmail.com

Sandra Harris: sandra.harris@ntu.ac.uk

Karen Grainger: k.p.grainger@shu.ac.uk

Louise Mullany: Louise.mullany@ntu.ac.uk

Sara Mills: s.l.mills@shu.ac.uk

This research group consists of members based in British universities (Nottingham Trent, Sheffield Hallam, Loughborough, Leeds, York St. John) and some members based in the Georgian Republic. The UK based members meet up once a semester at one of the Midlands Universities to discuss current research; generally there is some preparatory reading of research in the field. Topics which have come under consideration recently have been power, communities of practice, and face. The group is currently organising a conference on Politeness and Power, which takes place at Loughborough University on September 14th, 2002. (contact: c.christie@lboro.ac.uk)