Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ETIQUETTE
Sociolinguistics Course
Prof Necdet Osam
All the world
is a stage,
and we are
players!
As you will see using language involves
costs and benefits in what Holmes
(1992) refers to as “linguistic
market”. It also involves role-playing,
forging identity, power-sharing,
alternating converging and diverging
strategies, power and solidarity,
which, all in all, signify that “language is
a behavior” or, better said, “language is
an act.”
The Agenda
Some definitions
Conversational Principles
Implicatures
Politeness
Face
Is politeness diglossic?
Are implicatures accidental?
The issue of identity
The issue of ideology
Grice (1975) says ‘we
are able to converse with
one another because we
recognize common goals
in conversation and
specific ways of achieving
it.’ In other words, how
we say something is as
important as what we
To Grice, conversation is
cooperative in that both
interlocutors accept each
other for what they claim
to be. Conversation is
also bound to some
principles which calls
Conversational Maxims
or Cooperative
Gricean Cooperative
Principles
Maxim of
quantity
Maxim of quality
Maxim of relation
Maxim of manner
Maxim of Quantity
Make your contribution as
informative as is required.
A: Excuse me, have you got the time on you?
B: 10 of 5.
“war is war.”
So, what?
Maxim of Quality
Do not say what you believe is
false or lacks adequate
evidence.
A: Do you know who invented the
telephone?
B: Wasn’t it Graham Bell?
Minimize praise of
self; maximize
dispraise of self.