The Pragmatics of Politeness - Brossura

Leech, Geoffrey

Brossura

ISBN 10: 019534135X ISBN 13: 9780195341355

Casa editrice: OUP USA, 2014

Riassunto

This readable book presents a new general theoretical understanding of politeness. It offers an account of a wide range of politeness phenomena in English, illustrated by hundreds of examples of actual language use taken largely from authentic British and American sources. Building on his earlier pioneering work on politeness, Geoffrey Leech takes a pragmatic approach that is based on the controversial notion that politeness is communicative altruism. Leech's 1983 book, Principles of Pragmatics, introduced the now widely-accepted distinction between pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of politeness; this book returns to the pragmalinguistic side, somewhat neglected in recent work. Drawing on neo-Gricean thinking, Leech rejects the prevalent view that it is impossible to apply the terms 'polite' or 'impolite' to linguistic phenomena.

Leech covers all major speech acts that are either positively or negatively associated with politeness, such as requests, apologies, compliments, offers, criticisms, good wishes, condolences, congratulations, agreement, and disagreement. Additional chapters deal with impoliteness and the related phenomena of irony ("mock politeness") and banter ("mock impoliteness"), and with the role of politeness in the learning of English as a second language. A final chapter takes a fascinating look at more than a thousand years of history of politeness in the English language.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Leechs scholarly contribution is a rich addition to existing literature on the subject. The book is notable for the comprehensiveness with which the author conducts his exploration of the area and for providing guidance and pointers for further explorations. (Saw-Choo Teo (University of Sydney),Australian Review of Applied Linguistics)

Geoffrey Leech's Pragmatics of Politeness (2014) manages to successfully evaluate the explanatory power of the theory of politeness and provide a robust framework that generates a better understanding of it. (Dr habil. Silvia Florea, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu)

L'autore:

Geoffrey Leech is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at Lancaster University, where he has been a faculty member for over 40 years. He has published many books and articles in the fields of English grammar, stylistics, pragmatics, semantics, and corpus linguistics. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1987.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: OUP USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 019534135X
• ISBN 13: 9780195341355
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 368