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expectations of how a speaker might intend to react to the event
e
being spoken
about in situations that are marked by divergence from the default evaluation of
event participants (
12.16
) (cf. Altmann and Riška
1966
).
(19)If 1st-polarity
<
2nd-polarity, expect politeness
(20)If 1st-polarity
>
2nd-polarity, expect impoliteness
(21)If 1st-polarity
<
proto-agent(
e
)-polarity, expect politeness
(22)If 1st-polarity
>
proto-agent(
e
)-polarity, expect impoliteness
(23)If 1st-polarity
D
2nd-polarity, expect politic behavior.
These principles may yield conflicting expectations. The first (
12.19
) is triggered
when the speaker has a greater estimation of the person addressed than self-
estimation, and an expectation of politeness is licensed. The penultimate principle
(
12.22
) leads to an expectation of impoliteness that conflicts with the expectation
arising from (
12.19
) when the speaker's self-estimation exceeds the speaker's
estimation of the proto-agent of the event being commented upon, as the latter may
be a third-party. The result may be a mixed signal towards deference to the addressee
and disdain for the third party. The final principle (
12.23
) conveys the default that
only marked behavior is appropriate to label polite or impolite, and therefore the
expectation for unmarked situations of equal addresser and addressee polarity is
merely
politic
behavior, following the terminology adopted by Watts (
2003
).
It may be useful to entertain additional principles in relation to extreme values,
as in (
12.24
).
(24)a.
If 2nd-polarity
<
0, expect impoliteness.
b.
If 2nd-polarity
>
0, expect politeness.
However, given tendencies of pejoration in language change (Borkowska and
Kleparski
2007
), there may asymmetrically be evidence for (
12.24
.
a
) as a robust
principle but not (
12.24
.
b
). Additionally, the applicability of all these principles
may vary with culture, age, gender, personality, context, and so on.
20
12.3.3
Interpretation
From (im)polite language corresponding further specification of
o
and
e
may
be inferred. Expressions of impoliteness support the inference that the speaker's
response to an event
e
00
is consistent with the conjunction of (
12.25
.
a
) and (
12.25
.
b
).
A neutral comment by the speaker supports the inference of (
12.26
.
a
) and (
12.26
.
b
).
20
On gender, it has been noted that over time a number of words related to women have obtained
pejorative connotations with which they did not begin (“hussy” or “wench”, for example), but that
words related to men have sometimes gained improved connotations (e.g., “knight”) (Fitch
2007
).
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