Abstract
The present study attempts to analyze the interventions of Speakers of Polish and British Parliaments in the selected exchanges from 2018 to 2019 in terms of discourse-sensitive politeness theory advanced by Jonathan Culpeper. He proposes to use three types of impoliteness that affect three types of interlocutors’ faces via a range of impoliteness strategies. In the analyses we consider the linguistic, personal, and cultural as well as political context of the exchanges against the background of the unique, historically rooted institutional circumstances, with a special emphasis on the role of different physical contexts of respective Parliamentary chambers. We emphasize the discursive nature and continuum of (im)polite/(in)appropriate behaviors. In conclusion, the study falls back on Brown and Levinson’s tradition, argued not to be incompatible with Culpeper’s system, and confirms the existence of largely negative and largely positive politeness cultures, emphasizing the prevalence of Polish formal, impersonal, sometimes also affective impoliteness in contrast to the British somewhat more person-oriented, coercive impoliteness.
About the authors
Dorota Brzozowska is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Opole, Poland. Her academic interests include humor studies, intercultural communication, discourse, and Asian studies. She is the author of three monographic studies: on comparison between Polish and English jokes, on Polish ethnic humor, and Chinese traces in contemporary Polish discourse (in Polish). She is the co-editor of Humorous Discourse, Culture’s Software: Communication Styles, and The European Journal of Humour Research.
Władysław Chłopicki holds a post-doctoral degree in linguistics. He is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. His academic interests include interdisciplinary humor research in the context of cultural studies, cognitive linguistics, and linguistic pragmatics, with a special focus on communication styles. Author of a Polish language monographic study on humor research and editor of the publication series Humour and Culture, he is also co-editor of The European Journal of Humour Research.
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