A girl I work with is constantly dying her hair and asking "do you like my hair". Yesterday she attempted to bleach the blue dye out of her hair and now has multi-colored hair, gray in spots, blue and pink in others, and even a few streaks of blonde and green.
Some of the responses I have heard are,
Wow, it's different. CONSIDERSATION?? Quality, Quantity, Manner
Rainbows cheer me up! Relevance? manner, quantity
Like, is a strong word.
It looks "nice". Manner, quality
Someone handed her a card for their hairdresser.
Someone simply said, WELLLLLL manner
My hair turned purple one time. relevance?
Isn't it funny how one question can encourage so many different people to flout so many different maxims. I wonder if she was seeking agreement.
So, yesterday I received an email from someone I have been friends with for a long time. We were very close for years and just recently lost contact with each other. The email read as follows:
Hey,
Before I bother with a long, drawn out email, a question. Are you still out
there in internet land? If so, are you interested in communicating with me?
How are you?
I truly hope all is well with you. And for what it's worth, I miss you.
I highlighted the part that seems really strange to me considering the closeness of our previous friendship. I find it unusual that he would select Negative Politeness to reach out when it actually seems to put us at a distance. My question is this, why negative politeness and what perlocutions could this express?
My night gets crazier and humorous for my mom. I was kneeling at the edge of my bed filling out a deposit slip when I happen to look up to see a quarter shaped spider climbing up from my bed to the cieling. I FREAK OUT! Gasp for air as my body flings itself backwards away from the bed. It came from my bed. My bed. OMG! OMG!
I am fearful of spiders. Well, you probably already knew that from previous posts and the implicatures of the above. However, I stress to you yet again that I greatly dislike and am fearful of spiders. So, I go down stairs tell my mother and father who are sitting calmly on the couch what had happened. Niether one want to kill it. I say "well I can't do it. I'm not getting any where near that thing!" Mom responds, "well you better do something. See where it goes cause it may crawl back down on you when your sleeping." That comment gives me the chills yet again as I go back up stairs to see where the little booger crawled off to. I find it on the ceiling and stand their trying to figure out a plan on what to do. Leave it there, through a book up at the ceiling, get the vaccuum, etc., ect. My dad enters the room to save the day and releave me of this terrible creature that could bite me in the night ( visual and thought from mom). I tell him we should get the vaccum since its up on the ceiling but he grabs one of my shirts off the bed and starts swatting at it. OMG! WHAT WAS HE THINKING!?! I yell "No, don't do that." "why not? we have to get it off the ceiling." "NO! It'll just land back on my bed then we won't be able to find it." "He gets a little annoyed from my tone but continues swatting it until it falls... and where does it go? Yes, you've guessed it. On my bed! He thinks however that it got attached to the shirt and was snapping the shirt to lease it onto the floor but after a couple snaps of the shirt, no spider appeared. It was definetly on MY bed. He starts looking around and after a moment I decide to reach over and grab the pile of school books off the bed. Once I start to pick them up I see it move. I couldn't help but scream which scares the crap out of my dad and causes him to yell "where is it?" in an angry yet laughing tone. Angry that I screamed and scared him but laughing because to him it was the most ridiculous situation ever. I managed to yell "It's right there" but unable to point because my body is in some acute stage of shock. He responses with "I don't see it. where is it?" I say "Right there in the middle! Get it. Hurry!" He finally sees it and pinches it between some toilet paper.
When I went downstairs, I see mom crying from laughter on the couch because she heared all the commotion upstairs. I'm glad someone was amuzed by the spider cause I sure wasn't. But as I sat there on the couch I thought about the situation and how my positive politeness in asking dad to go up and please kill it had changed to me yelling out commands when we were in the act of finding and killing it. I don't talk to my dad in such a bald manner but I really wanted him to kill it and to hurry before it crawled out of sight again. Someone in class today mentioned that they use more of a bald tone when they want something to get accomplished and I think I related to them in a way tonight. However, I don't think I did it consciously. That is, I think I just wasn't thinking about my speech because my fear and anxiety took over causing me to have more of a direct, no non-sense or politeness tone.
What do you all think? Does that happen to you, where you change the way you speak consciously or unconsciously in certain contexts?
She's bald! I admit it. She is bald. That's ambiguous, I know, so let me explain... I was sitting in the kitchen eating my late dinner alone by myself when my mom came in from the living room to chat. She talked about the ladies she works with and how her day was while she wiped down some stuff in the kitchen. When she got to the table I noticed she had stopped talking. I looked up from my plate to see why and I see her staring at me. She says "What's that on your face?" pointing to the spot she was referencing, only on her face to show me visually where. I, being a normal person, respond with "what?" as I touch my face where she indicates. "It looks swollen" she replies leaning in to get a better look. "Oh it's probably a pimple or something" I say, trying to finish my meal. Mom responds with "Well don't touch it, it's nasty looking." "Wow! Thanks mom," I reply sarcastically. :) (P.S- It was the tiniest little thing that wouldn't be noticeable unless you are a parent looking you over inch by inch, like my mom, lol)
I guess as a mother she thinks she can violate the politeness maxims such as tact because she doesn't minimize cost to the hearer (me) and consideration because she doesn't minimize my discomfort. However, I wasn't embarressed because I guess I'm used to it or because it's coming from family. But either way, she doesn't minimize potential discomfort.
Do you all have family or friends like this who feel they are in a position or relation with you that they don't have to be face-saving? Instead, they are simply bald in their utterances.
While watching a bit of tv, I saw a few previews for some movies. I quickly noticed that these frequently use performative verbs:
Rolling Stones declares this the best movie of the year
'someone else' raves that...
I was just astounded at how they stood out in these previews.
When Dr. Myers was talking about the wedding she attended last week, she mentioned that a lot of people try to change their vows to make them their own and such. This got me thinking about church services and how, with many denominations, the same thing is repeated over and over each week - so much so that it has seemingly lost its meaning. I feel like the rise of alternative church services has followed the same tradition as alternative vows have in order to give back meaning to what is being said.
After so much repetition of language, it seems that more things that are signifigant in our society would have lost meaning just as these have seemingly. Why do you think that these stand out? Also, do any other instances come to mind of long phrases, or even speeches being stated so much that they loose their meaning?
I find the agreement maxim interesting. This maxim is (at times) is basically just a lie. The agreement maxim says we should minimize disagreement and maximize agreement with the hearer. So let's pretend someone gives me an idea. I reply with "I think that's a good idea, but what do you think of this..." Basically what we often mean with a response like this is "I think your idea sucks and mine is better." I wonder how many friends we would keep if we just stopped following the politeness principle all together.
So I've decided that flouting maxims is much more interesting than following them. I'm glad people flout them. If no one flouted these maxims we would have some very boring conversations. Simple sarcasm, irony, and joking often is the result of these maxims being flouted.
I like how the maxim of manner is violated (there is definitely ambiguity w/ the use of "paper" here- toilet paper vs. writing paper) in the below example found at: http://hkjtefl.tesolteachers.org/2005-Nunn-Humor.html.
- Mrs. Richards: Hallo! (Polly emerges) Girl. There’s no paper in my room. Why don’t you check these things? That’s what you’re being paid for, isn’t it?
- Polly: Well, we don’t put it in the room.
- Mrs. Richards: What?
- Polly: We keep it in the lounge.
- Mrs. Richards: In the lounge?!!
- Polly: (really trying to help) I’ll get you some. Do you want plain or ones with our address on it?
- Mrs. Richards: Address on it?!!
- Polly: How many sheets? (Mrs. Richards looks appalled) How many are you going to use?
- Mrs. Richards: (hitting the bell) Manager!!
- Polly: Well, we don’t put it in the room.
So, one of the commercials that absolutely crack me up is the car commercial where the people are making requests similar to those you would to get your mp3 car player to play such as "Play artist Seal". I absolutely love the part where the woman says "open door" and proceeds to walk into it spilling her coffee. Anyway, a couple days ago I had an armload full of family stuff and trying to use humor to hint to my husband that I needed him to open the door I said "Open Door" about 4 times. When he still didn't get the hint I looked at my 2-year-old and said, "wouldn't it be nice if Daddy would open the door for Mommy?" Of course I was making a request. Yesterday, we were walking up to the back door, my daughter had her favorite rabbit in one hand and her backpack in the other. She looked at her rabbit and said "wouldn't it be nice if mommy would open the door for Emma?" This is the way my two-year-old's brain works. Just a few days ago she got really upset with me for not listening and said, "some people never listen" to get my attention. She has certainly opened my eyes to my passive aggressive requests.
After our class discussion I started thinking about the signs we see everyday and the perlocutions that could accompany them. For example, Slippery When Wet might yield the reaction of slowing down on a wet road. It might yieldt the response, "duh". I found a few interesting ones. What are the possible perlocutions for these signs.
