Brown & Gilman

Politeness Theory and Shakespeare's Four Major TragediesAuthor(s): Roger Brown and Albert GilmanReviewed work(s):Source: Language in Society, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 159-212Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168029 .Accessed: 30/03/2012 09:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Languagein Society.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168029?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

Lang. Soc. i8, 159-212. Printed in the United States of America

Politeness theory and Shakespeare's four major tragedies*

ROGER BROWN

Department of Psychology Harvard University

ALBERT GILMAN

Department of English Boston University

ABSTRACT

Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (i987) have proposed that power (P), distance (D), and the ranked extremity (R) of a face- threatening act are the universal determinants of politeness levels in dyadic discourse. This claim is tested here for Shakespeare's use of Early Modern English in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. The tragedies are used because: (i) dramatic texts provide the best information on colloquial speech of the period; (2) the psychological soliloquies in the tragedies provide the access to inner life that is necessary for a proper test of politeness theory; and (3) the tragedies represent the full range of society in a period of high relevance to politeness theory. The four plays are systematically searched for pairs of minimally contrasting dyads where the dimensions of contrast are power (P), distance (D), and intrinsic extremity (R). Whenever such a pair is found, there are two speeches to be scored for politeness and a prediction from theory as to which should be more polite. The results for P and for R are those predicted by theory, but the results for D are not. The two components of D, interactive closeness and affect, are not closely associated in the plays. Affect strongly influences politeness (increased liking increases politeness and decreased liking decreases politeness); interactive closeness has little or no effect on politeness. The uses of politeness for the delineation of character in the tragedies are illustrated. (Politeness theory, speech act theory, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, theory of literature, Shakespeare studies)

INTRODUCTION

Act II, scene i, lines 31-32,' Macbeth (to servant):2 Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell.

? I989 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045/89 $5.00 + .00

159

ROGER BROWN AND ALBERT GILMAN

The same play, IV, ii, 63-67, Messenger (to Lady Macduff): Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you

known, Though in your state of honor I am perfect. [I am fully informed of

your honorable rank.]3 I doubt [fear] some danger does approach you nearly: If you will take a homely [plain] man's advice, Be not found here.

As speech acts (Austin I962; Levinson I983; Searle I969), both speeches are "directives" (Searle 1976) or attempts to induce the hearer to do something. The most notable contrast in the two speeches lies in the efficiency of the first and the politeness of the second.

Macbeth says just as much as, but not one word more than is necessary to make his intention unambiguous. The order to the servant perfectly satis- fies Grice's (1975) maxims of conversation. It is, however, brusque, as the messenger's advice to Lady Macduff is not. The latter speech says more than is strictly necessary and so sacrifices efficiency in order to accomplish something not mentioned in Grice's maxims. The messenger is concerned to be polite, and politeness means putting things in a way that takes account of the other person's feelings.

Where in the messenger's speech is politeness found? The salutation "Bless you, fair dame!" is more than routinely warm, and "dame" is a form of address for a woman of rank. Deference is expressed in the line "Though in your state of honor I am perfect" and also in the self-deprecating "a homely man's advice." There is delicate sympathy in the verb doubt of "I doubt some danger does approach you nearly" whether doubt is understood as a hedge on know or as fear. Finally, the request itself is not an action imperative but an agentless passive (Blake I983) which has no presumption in it.

Why should Macbeth's order to his servant be briskly Gricean and the messenger's advice to Lady Macduff most thoughtfully courteous? An answer could be given in terms of the unique particulars of each situation, but we are interested in an abstract answer that renders the two cases com- parable with one another and with infinitely many additional discourse dyads. We must first consider social station (or status or power); the ranking of speaker and hearer. Macbeth, the speaker, stands higher than his servant and so, as far as power considerations go, need feel no compulsion to be polite. The messenger stands lower than Lady Macduff and so has reason to be somewhat polite, even if station were the only consideration. Sec- ond, we must think of the horizontal social distance between speaker and hearer. Are they familiars or strangers? Familiars can be, and usually are, more casual. There is less horizontal social distance between Macbeth and his servant than between Lady Macduff and the previously unknown mes-

160

POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE S TRAGEDIES

senger. Finally, we must ask how great a thing is requested in the two cases. Both speakers intend actions to be taken, but the actions are differentially disruptive for the two addressees. Of Macbeth's servant, only a routine service is required. Lady Macduff is urged to take her children and flee the cas- tle as soon as possible. The greater intrusion, even though it is in the hearer's own interest, seems to require greater attention to the hearer's feelings.

The three variables postulated as determinants of the strong contrast in politeness between the two speeches from Macbeth we shall call power (P), distance (D), and ranked extremity (R). Brown and Levinson (1987) have proposed that P, D, and R are the universal determinants of politeness levels in speech acts though the ways in which P, D, and R are calculated are culturally specific. In this article, we determine whether the Brown/Levinson claim holds for Shakespeare's use of Early Modern English (I500-1700) in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello and, in addition, illustrate the uses of politeness in drama.

There is, finally, something unsatisfactory in our analysis of the messenger's speech. It is not only polite, not only politer than Macbeth's order to his servant, it is one of the politest speeches in the play. Why should so much consideration for Lady Macduff be necessary in advising her to flee for her life? Speech act theory suggests the answer. The messenger's five lines constitute not one but two speech acts: a directive and an assertion. The sense of the directive baldly expressed in the messenger's next line is: "Hence with your little ones." The sense of the assertion would seem to be: "Some danger does approach you nearly," but it is more extreme than that because it is already too late for the lady and her little ones to escape. The murderers are almost immediately upon them. The assertion in the messenger's mind is: "You are lost." And the politeness is there not just to make the directive tolerable but from pity for Lady Macduff's terrifying plight.

POLITENESS THEORY

Politeness means putting things in such a way as to take account of the feelings of the hearer. These feelings, in the Brown/Levinson theory, are of just two kinds: those concerned with positive face and those with negative face.4 Positive face is every person's want (the authors' carefully chosen word) that his or her wants be desirable to at least some others, not all others for all aspects of face, but the significant ones for each aspect. Very exactly expressed, what each person wants is that others want for him what he wants for himself; for example: life, health, honor, a positive self-image. Negative face is also a matter of wants: every person's want to be free from imposition and distraction and to have her personal prerogatives and territory respected. The two speeches from Macbeth both threaten the hearer's negative face since the speaker intrudes upon the free self-determination of the

161


hearer. The messenger's speech also threatens the hearer's positive face since the bad news delivered is that there are some who threaten the hearer's life.

The problem of politeness only arises, in the Brown/Levinson theory, when there is a speech act to be performed, for some reason other than politeness, which is however intrinsically face threatening (a face-threatening act or FTA). Any directive or request, for example, is a negative FTA and any criticism or insult is a positive FTA. The central goal of the theory is to specify the circumstances in which each of five politeness strategies will be selected.5 These strategies, ordered on a principle that is explained later, are:

i. Do the FTA on record without redressive action, baldly. 2. Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the kind called posi-

tive politeness. 3. Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the kind called nega-

tive politeness. 4. Do the FTA off record. 5. Don't do the FTA. Positive politeness is simply defined as any effort to meet positive face

needs. The phrase "Have a good day," renewed daily, is a quintessential act of positive politeness: The speaker wishes for the hearer what the hearer wishes for himself. Negative politeness is defined as any attempt to meet negative face wants, but negative politeness, unlike positive, is designed to redress just the specific FTA that creates the occasion for politeness. On record FTAs are speech acts for which the "speaker's meaning" or intention is unambiguous. An FTA is off record when the speaker's intention is ambiguous and can only be worked out by inference. Because off record FTAs are ambiguous, the speaker cannot be held accountable and any inferred meaning is deniable.

Politeness theory holds that the selection of strategies is universally deter- mined by just three variables. Two concern the relationship between speaker and hearer: vertical social distance or power and horizontal social distance or solidarity. These are the same dimensions that Roger Brown and Albert Gilman used in I960 to describe the semantics of European oronouns of address as typified by the French tu/vous (T/V) distinction and which have been reported since I960 to be the dimensions underlying pronominal (and other) address in at least 28 different languages, many of them unrelated (Alrabaa I985; Fang & Heng I983; Friedrich I966; Kempff I985; Kroger, Wood, & Kim I984; Lambert & Tucker 1976; Levinson I977, I982;

Mehrotra I98I; Ogino I986; Paulston 1976; Yassin I975; and others). Pronouns of address have relational rather than referential meanings and

in this way they are like kin terms. Just as it is not a property of a person to be always addressed as dad or son, so it is not a property of a person to be always addressed as T or as V; in both cases the form used varies with a

162

POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

relation, the relation between speaker and addressee. The very important difference between kin terms and pronouns is that the former (unless "extended" or "fictive") serve to relate only some members of a social group with some others, whereas the latter serve to relate each one to each other one and so constitute a fully connected language of relationship. If the dimensions governing such relational forms are universal across languages, then such dimensions would seem to have a privileged fundamental status for the analysis of social life. On present evidence they are universal and, in politeness theory, they are called power and distance, symbolized as, respectively, P and D.

There is a third variable that affects the choice of a politeness strategy and this is the intrinsic extremity of the face-threatening act. In the culture and situation in question, how much does the FTA interfere with self-determination (negative face) and approval (positive face)? The assumption made is that there will be a fairly constant ranking of impositions in terms of expen- ditures in time, expertise, and goods and also a ranking of threats to positive face in terms of desired attributes like honor, beauty, and generosity. The necessary operations are not all at hand, but the idea is clear: Telling someone that a certain lieutenant, newly met, drinks to excess (e.g., lago to Montano of Cassio) is less disruptive than telling a man his wife is guilty of adultery (e.g., lago to Othello of Desdemona).

Brown and Levinson combine additively the three variables affecting the selection of a strategy into the formula Wx = D(S, H) + P(H, S) + Rx,6 which in words says that the weightiness or riskiness of FTAX is a function of the social distance between speaker (S) and addressee (H) plus the power of the addressee (H) over the speaker (S) plus the culturally ranked intrinsic threat (Rx) posed by the FTA. In crude operational terms, W should be greater if H is a superordinate (e.g., Macbeth) than if H is a subordinate (e.g., servant); W should be greater if S and H are long-separated country- men (e.g., Ross and Malcolm in Macbeth) than if S and H are old friends (e.g., Hamlet and Horatio); and W should be greater if R is an accusation of murder and incest (Hamlet to the king) than if R is an accusation of meddling (Hamlet to Polonius).

The overall claim is that the inclination to select a higher-numbered strategy will increase with the intrinsic weightiness or perceived risk of the FTA. For the lowest levels of risk, strategy (i): Do the FTA on record without redressive action, baldly, will seem ideal since it is maximally efficient and there is no risk. Such is the case with Macbeth's order to his servant. At the highest levels of weightiness or risk, the right strategy will seem to be (5): Don't do the FTA. Such is the case for Hamlet when he dare not accuse the king of having murdered his father. Intermediate levels of perceived risk are claimed to be associated with intermediate numbered strategies.

Brown and Levinson first published their politeness theory as a 3oo-page

163


article that was awkwardly packaged with a short essay on questions to make a book entitled Questions and politeness (Goody 1978). In I987, Cambridge University Press reissued the article as a book, Politeness: Some universals of language usage, which includes a new 5o-page review (by Brown and Levinson) of research inspired by the original article. The authors do not in their 1987 book revise their theory but, rather, reprint exactly the 1978 article. In their up-to-date critical review of research, they grant that recent work has made them question several points in the 1978 theory even though it has not convinced them of error on any point. New research has not, of course, stopped with the I987 review and we do not know how Brown and Levin- son will respond to the more recent empirical findings and theoretical criticisms (e.g., Holtgraves I986; Holtgraves, Srull, & Socall, in press; Slugoski & Turnbull, in press).

In this situation investigators who want to work with the Brown/Levinson theory of politeness must pick a version. We have done this - after reading most of what has been done and making our own critical evaluations. It seems best not to defend our decisions in a detailed way but simply to set them down, pointing out the differences from the original theory and taking responsibility for our judgments.

Our version of the Brown/Levinson theory is graphically represented in Figure i, using all the conventions of the original so as to make evident the many points of identity and also two differences. The point of view is that of the speaker. The mental processes modeled are hers and they are assumed to be swift and unconscious though it is generally necessary in discussing them to use words that suggest deliberation. The problem the speaker is con- sidering is whether or not to perform some single face-threatening act, and if the decision is to perform it, then how to perform it, in what way. The FTA is addressed to the hearer (H) and taking account of the feelings of the hearer is the problem of politeness. The relevant feelings concern positive face and negative face.

There are four numbered strategies in Figure i. These four strategies are actually superstrategies since Brown and Levinson list 15 subvarieties of positive politeness and io subvarieties of negative politeness and say that even these lists are not exhaustive. The principal empirical claim of this version of the theory, as of the original, is that the superstrategies are ordered (as in Figure i) against a scale of lesser to greater estimated risk to face.

In the original (unmodified) Brown/Levinson theory there are five numbered super-strategies. Strategy (2) in Figure i is, in the original, divided into (2): Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the positive politeness kind; and (3): Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the negative politeness kind. The original then claims that positive politeness and negative politeness are mutually exclusive strategies and are ordered relative to one another and against the Wx as, respectively, (2) and (3). Our modified

164


Circumstances determining choice of strategy:

Lesser

(1) without Few redressive action, baldly

on record

(2) with redressive action

Do the FTA \ (positive politeness Do the FTA and/or negative

(3) off record politeness)

Many

(4) Don't do the FTA

Greater

Wx = D(S, H) + P(H, S) + Rx Politeness increases as Distance goes up. Politeness increases as Power of H over S increases. Politeness increases as Risk of imposition goes up.

FIGURE I: Super-strategies of politeness ordered against estimated risk of face loss (after Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987), but modified as described in the text).

version (Figure i) does not make these claims but substitutes a single super- strategy of redress in which acts of positive and negative politeness may be mixed but need not be. Brown and Levinson, in their I987 review of research, discuss evidence and arguments (e.g., Baxter I984; Blum-Kulka I985; Harris I984) favoring the modification we have made and concede, with qualifications: "we may have been in error to set up the three super-strategies, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record as ranked unidimen- sionally to achieve mutual exclusivity" (17). We ourselves in deciding to col- lapse positive and negative politeness into one super-strategy have been less

165


influenced by the published empirical data, which we think unconvincing, than by the naturalistic evidence of our ears, attentive for many months to politeness in everyday conversation. Our version (Figure i) does not, incidentally, alter the Brown/Levinson treatment of (3): Do the FTA off record.

The original theory does not include the "few-many" scale for (2): Do the FTA on record with redressive actions (positive politeness and/or negative politeness). Our addition here makes the claim that when an FTA is redressed, the amount of redress, the number of codable substrategies, will increase (from few to many) as the estimated risk of face loss or weightiness (Wy) increases. This is to say that redressed FTAs are not all at the same level of politeness but show a range correlated with W,, values. We have listed in Table i the i5 substrategies of positive politeness and in Table 2 the I0 substrategies of negative politeness with one or more illustrations from the tragedies of each substrategy. Tables i and 2 are based on Brown and Levinson (1978, I987), but we have omitted several levels of superordinate headings and our definitions are always selective from the original rich discussion and sometimes slightly modify the original statements.

Although Brown and Levinson do not build into their model a quantity of redress ("few-many") scale, many of their examples and several incidental remarks suggest that it belongs there. "In general, the more effort S expends in face-maintaining linguistic behavior, the more S communicates his sincere desire that H's face wants be satisfied.... He may achieve this effort simply by compounding the branching means to achieve wants, or by elaborate real- ization of particular means, or both" (I987:93). They offer an example that includes apology, reluctance to impose, deference to H, and self-abasement: "I'm terribly sorry to bother you with a thing like this and in normal circumstances I wouldn't dream of it since I know you're very busy but I'm simply unable to do it myself" (I987:93).

Our modified politeness theory retains the original formula for weightiness (Wx), but there is good reason to be doubtful about horizontal distance (D). In a general way, one can hardly doubt that P, D, and R are basic determinants of social interaction7 (see, e.g., Brown I965; Grimshaw ig80a, i98ob, I98oc), and there is experimental support for the role of P in politeness (Baxter I984; Falbo & Peplau I980; Holtgraves I986), as well as for R (Baxter I984; Cody, McLaughlin, & Schneider I98I; Lustig & King I980).

Studies of D (Baxter I984; Slugoski I985; Slugoski & Turnbull, in press) all suggest that it has been too simply conceptualized in politeness theory. The assumption that interactive distance can be counted on always to covary with affect (liking associated with intimacy) seems to be wrong.

Slugoski and Turnbull composed vignettes about Jill and Sue, members of a college faculty, who were (i) either near-strangers or collaborators in teaching a course for the past io years and who (2) either liked one another a great deal or disliked one another a great deal. Subjects read vignettes that

166

TABLE i. Substrategies of positive politeness

1. Notice admirable qualities, possessions, etc. First Senator: Adieu, brave Moor. (Othello, I, iii, 286) Desdemona: Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio. (Othello, III, iv, 122)

2. Exaggerate sympathy, approval, etc. Goneril (to King Lear): A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable:

Beyond all manner of so much I love you. (I, i, 62-63) Regan (to King Lear): And find I am alone felicitate

In your dear Highness' love. (I, i, 77-78) 3. Intensify the interest of the hearer in the speaker's contribution.

Othello (to the Duke and others): And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Grew beneath their shoulders. (I, iii, 142-144)

4. Use in-group identity markers in speech. Hamlet (to Horatio): Sir, my good friend, I'll change that name with you. (I, ii, 163)

5. Seek agreement in safe topics. Edgar (to Edmund): How now, brother Edmund; what serious contemplation are you in?

(King Lear, I, ii, 149-150) 6. Avoid possible disagreement by hedging your statements.

Knight (to King Lear): My lord, I know not what the matter is; but to my judgment. (I, iv, 57-58)

7. Assert common ground. King (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of themselves and Hamlet): I entreat you both

That, being of so young days brought up with him, And sith so neighbored to his youth and havior. (II, ii, 10-12)

8. Joke to put the hearer at ease. Macduff (to porter): Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,

That you do lie so late? (Macbeth, II, iii, 23-24) 9. Assert knowledge of the hearer's wants and indicate you are taking account

of them. Regan (to Oswald of himself and Goneril): I know you are of her bosom. (King Lear,

IV, v, 26) 10. Offer, promise.

Regan (to Oswald): I'll love thee much, Let me unseal the letter. (King Lear, IV, v, 21-22)

11. Be optimistic that the hearer wants what the speaker wants, that the FTA is slight. Desdemona (to Othello of Cassio): How now, my lord?

I have been talking with a suitor here, A man that languishes in your displeasure. (III, iii, 41-43)

Desdemona (to Othello of Cassio): I prithee call him back. (III, iii, 51) Desdemona (to Othello of Cassio): Why, this is not a boon;

'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves. (III, iii, 76-77) 12. Use an inclusive form to include both speaker and hearer in the activity.

Goneril (to Regan): Pray you, let's hit [agree] together; if our father carry authority with such disposition as he bears [continues in this frame of mind], this last surrender [recent abdication] of his will but offend [vex] us. (King Lear, I, i, 306-309)

13. Give reasons why speaker wants what he or she does so that it will seem reasonable to the hearer.

Regan (to Edmund): Our troops set forth tomorrow: stay with us; The ways are dangerous. (King Lear, IV, v, 16-17)

14. Assert reciprocal exchange or tit for tat. Macbeth (to Banquo): If you shall cleave to my consent, when

'tis Uoin my cause when the time comes], It shall make honor for you. (II, i, 25-26)

15. Give something desired: gifts, position, sympathy, understanding. Goneril (to Edmund): Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak,

Would stretch thy spirits up into the air. (King Lear, IV, ii, 22-23)


TABLE 2. Substrategies of negative politeness

1. Be conventionally indirect. Iago (to Othello): You were best go in. (I, ii, 29) Banquo: Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure [convenience]. (I, iii, 148)

2. Do not assume willingness to comply. Question, hedge. Queen (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern): If it will please you

To show us so much gentry [courtesy] and good will. (Hamlet, II, ii, 21-22) 3. Be pessimistic about ability or willingness to comply. Use the subjunctive.

Osric (to Hamlet): Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his Majesty. (V, ii, 91-92)

4. Minimize the imposition. Edgar (to Albany): Hear me one word. (King Lear, V, i, 39)

5. Give deference. Othello (to the Duke and Venetian Senators): Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,

My very noble and approved good masters. (I, iii, 76-77) 6. Apologize. Admit the impingement, express reluctance, ask forgiveness.

Ross (to Macduff): Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound That ever yet they heard. (Macbeth, IV, iii, 201-203)

7. Impersonalize the speaker and hearer. Use the passive without agent. Knight (to King Lear): your Highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection

as you were wont. (I, iv, 58-60) 8. State the FTA as an instance of a general rule to soften the offense.

Gloucester (to King Lear): My dear lord, You know the fiery quality of the Duke, How unremovable and fixed he is In his own course. (II, iv, 90-93)

9. Nominalize to distance the actor and add formality. King (to Hamlet): But to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness. (I, ii, 92-94)

10. Go on record as incurring a debt. Queen (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern): Your visitation shall receive such thanks

As fits a king's remembrance. (Hamlet, II, ii, 25-26)

Source: After Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987), but much modified.

combined interaction and feeling in various ways and judged how given remarks by one young woman (e.g., a literal insult or a literal compliment) would be interpreted by the other. The important general finding is that distance and affect had to be treated separately and, for the problems presented, affect was the more important variable by far. We leave the Brown/ Levinson formula as they presented it but expect to find that our results call for a revision of D.

From Macbeth we have had an example of super-strategy (i), and that is Macbeth's on record, unredressed command to his servant. From the same play we have had an example of super-strategy (2), which included both positive politeness and several kinds of negative politeness, and that was the messenger's advice to Lady Macduff. Strategy (3): Do the FTA off record,

168


may be looked for in circumstances where the estimation of risk is very high - almost high enough to forbid doing the FTA at all. lago, in II, iii, of Othello, is in just such circumstances. The intrinsically face-threatening communication he has in mind is telling Othello (falsely) that Desdemona and the honorable Cassio are secret lovers. This act would threaten Othello's positive face since it would besmirch the two people closest to his heart and by implication himself - a cuckolded Moor. The threat (Rx) is extreme and the power of the hearer (Othello) over the speaker (lago) is great. No amount of redressive politeness would make it possible to speak on record.

The point in going off record (strategy (3)) is to communicate an intention with enough ambiguity so that you cannot be held strictly accountable. The Brown/Levinson treatment (unmodified by us) is elegant. Since the hearer must interpret what he hears, must go from what is said to something hinted at, there must be a trigger to alert him to do more than the usual amount of interpretive work. What should the trigger be? Some violation, the theory proposes, of the Gricean maxims of cooperative conversation. The speaker must say too little - or too much - must say something not clearly relevant, must be vague or self-contradictory. A trigger is a signal to look for what speech act theory calls an implicature or inference, something implied by what has been said, together with the situation and the personalities involved.

Act III, Scene iii, lines 35-40 Iago: Ha! I like not that. (Ellipsis violating the maxim of quantity) Othello: What dost thou say? (Registering the violation) Iago: Nothing, my lord; or if - I know not what. (Vague, contradictory,

and elliptical, violating the maxims of quality, quantity, and manner) Othello: Was not that Cassio parted from my wife? Iago: Cassio, my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it

That he would steal away so guilty-like, Seeing your coming. (Hint, violating the maxim of relevance)

Finally, there is strategy (4): Don't do the FTA, which is the strategy to adopt when the risk of speaking is prohibitively great. One might think it impossible to provide an example since it is necessary to know not only that something was not said but that it was thought and suppressed. This is where the psychological soliloquies in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are of inestimable help. Hamlet, in I, ii, is asked by his uncle and now step- father: "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" and he answers: "Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun." For an attentive and well-prepared audience, Hamlet's response is off record. We can infer the meaning: too much in royal favor, with a pun on son. The king makes no response to the speech and it is fair to suppose that it either seemed irrelevant or unwise to

169


acknowledge. When Hamlet's mother, the queen, urges "cast thy nighted color off," Hamlet speaks only of the intensity of his grief. From what he says to them, Claudius and Gertrude could not infer his thought:

0, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! (I, ii, 156-157)

which is expressed in the soliloquy that immediately follows upon their exit, and which ends:

But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. (I, ii, 159)

That is strategy (4): Don't do the FTA.

THE FOUR PLAYS

Brown and Levinson (1978, I987) developed politeness theory with contin- ual reference not only to British and American English, but also to Tamil and Mayan Tzeltal and occasional reference to several other languages. It cannot be said that they tested their theory on any language but, rather, that they paid attention to a variety of languages in their constructivist task so as to have a good idea what things might be universal and what things were likely to be culture specific. In this article we extend the theory to Early Modern English (1500-1700) and, to a limited extent, even test the theory against this "new" language.

Why use Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello as the corpus for a study of politeness in Early Modern English? Or - to put a prior question - why use plays? Primarily because there is nothing else. There are letters, but letters cannot inform us about the colloquial spoken language. The only possible source is "the language written to be uttered as though spontane- ously arising from a given situation which we find in dramatic texts." Salmon (I987:265) said that in justifying her use of plays to work out the sentence structures of colloquial Elizabethan English. If it is granted that plays are the only possible source, the question is whether it is wise to use plays by Wil- liam Shakespeare. Salmon did use them and her argument was: "the more skilful the dramatist the more skilful he will be, if presenting the normal life of his time, in authenticating the action by an acceptable version of contemporary speech" (I987:265). The word skilful points us toward Shakespeare, and authorities (e.g., Blake I983; Hulme I962) are agreed that what made his Early Modern English special was skill or genius rather than the use of constructions not shared with his contemporaries. Still, one would hardly claim that Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello constitute a represen- tative sample. We claim, instead, that for a study of politeness theory, they are just about ideal.

Politeness theory is a very psychological theory that cannot be tested with

170


a speaker's words alone; it is sometimes necessary to know unspoken thoughts. If an FTA is too risky to be expressed at all (super-strategy (4)) or so risky that it can only be expressed off record (super-strategy (3)), an out- sider cannot know what is going on without access to the speaker's inner life. And in the four major tragedies, Shakespeare provides such access.

In Elizabethan England, interest in psychology was high and Elizabethan dramatists developed techniques for exploring psychology, especially the soliloquy and aside. Shakespeare, in his earlier plays, used the soliloquy prin- cipally for exposition. As a technique for revealing true feelings and inten- tions, he brought it to a level of incomparable truth and subtlety in Hamlet and Macbeth. In Othello, lago has great soliloquies but Othello has, strictly speaking - which means alone on stage - just one. Instead, Othello speaks his inner thoughts in the presence of others and Shakespeare indicates by one means and another, including an incoherent telegraphic syntax that might pass for the language of thought itself, that the others are not addressed but disregarded. In King Lear, Edmund keeps us advised of his Machiavellian plans in soliloquy. Lear himself does not soliloquize, in the strict sense, but sometimes speaks in half-mad unconcern for hearers, and his Fool "serves to some extent as a screen on which Shakespeare flashes, as it were, readings from the psychic life of the protagonist" (Mack I963:206).

The period of Early Modern English, the period of Elizabethan and Jaco- bean England, is a good period for the study of politeness. Ascribed status was still the basis of social structure and there were elaborate politeness rituals for each gradation of hereditary aristocracy. In addition, however, the period from 1540 to I640 was a period of increasing social mobility and has been characterized by Stone as "a seismic upheaval of unprecedented mag- nitude" (I966:48). There was a great scramble to achieve position in a noble court and great uneasiness among the nobility at this pressure from below. Ambition and insecurity created a heightened concern for the signs of true gentility, verbal and nonverbal politeness. And a special genre of literature came into being; courtesy books, which were guides to advancement for the lowly and assurances of superiority for the lordly (Whigham 1984). Alto- gether, then, it seems an interesting time for a theory of politeness with claims on universality.

Shakespeare's four major tragedies were written in the middle of this period, from 1540 to I640, and in them we find the whole range of his society and of human experience painted, as Bradley says, "with entire fidelity" (1905:25). The plays represent a social span from great kings through all the levels of court society to the gentry and the lowliest of the "ungentle" as well as a familial span that includes parents, adult offspring, married and unmar- ried, and even children. There are a good number of have-nots aspiring to high station. Edmund in King Lear is the bastard son of the Earl of Glou- cester; lago is an experienced soldier who has been passed over for promo-

171


tion; Othello is a Moor who has won the daughter of a Venetian Senator; and even Claudius in Hamlet is a younger brother. There are two plotting Machiavels, lago and Edmund, whose schemes and true feelings can only be expressed in soliloquy. There is an inept courtier, Osric in Hamlet, who might have become the caricature he is from too much reading of courtesy books. The four tragedies, in sum, seem ideal for our purposes because they are "skilful" versions of colloquial speech in conjunction with subtle and true representations of inner life for characters over a wide span of society in a historical period of exceptional interest for politeness theory.

The tragedies are written in a combination of verse and prose. The norm in these plays is clearly blank verse, and the authoritative figures - kings, nobility, leaders - use it mainly. But these same characters sometimes use prose, and lower-class characters sometimes speak verse. Hamlet speaks prose to everyone but Horatio, the Ghost, and his mother in her closet; his soliloquies are verse. Ophelia in her madness speaks prose, except for doggerel verse; Lear in his "madness" speaks both prose and verse. Salmon (I987), because she was trying to reconstruct the rules of colloquial speech from dramatic texts, confined her study to the prose speeches. Burton (I973),

because she was interested in the expression of character in syntax, a stylistic topic, used only the blank verse. We, because we are concerned with the whole range of politeness phenomena and character creation, have used both prose and verse, the full text. There is one major risk in this procedure and we have tried to allow for it: The metrical aspect of verse might influence lexical choices (e.g., an optional do auxiliary, an elided word), and these choices must not be mistaken for politeness phenomena.

METHOD

The Shakespearean on the team (Gilman) concentrated on readings of speeches, scenes, and entire plays in the critical literature and in available film and stage productions. Gilman also worked at determining the politeness values of titles, salutations, and indirect requests found in Shakespeare's English, but not in contemporary American English. With which noble ranks, for instance, are the titles my lord, your Grace and my dread lord associated? What are the uses of singular thou and ye? What of dame and madam, sir and sirrah? In the tragedies, there are indirect request forms not heard today. Can they be ranked in politeness, that is, in the degree to which they soften the imperative? The principal tools for answering these questions are Shakespeare glossaries, e.g., Onions (I986) and the Harvard Concor- dance to Shakespeare (Spevack 1973), and linguistic descriptions of Early Modern English generally (e.g., Abbott 1925; Barber 1976; Poutsma 1914)

or of Shakespeare's English specifically (e.g., Blake I983; Burton I973; Doran 1976; Hulme I962; Joseph I966; Quirk I987; Salmon I987).

The psycholinguist on the team (Brown), in an effort to improve upon the

172


usual method of selective quotation, searched the plays for politeness- relevant content under the discipline of an explicit procedure. The difference in politeness in the two speeches from Macbeth quoted at the start of this article cannot be attributed to any single weightiness variable because, in the dyads involved, P, D, and R vary together in defining the messenger-to-Lady Macduff as the riskier FTA. To test politeness theory, the effect of each variable in isolation needed to be known.

The plan was to find pairs of speeches involving the same two characters such that the relationship between the characters would be the same on the occasions of the two speeches with respect to two out of three weightiness variables (P, D, and R) but clearly different on the third. Politeness theory makes explicit predictions as to the effect of each weightiness variable on the relative politeness levels of such paired speeches. If, therefore, the speeches are scored for politeness, it would seem to be possible to make an empirical test of the theory. Psychologists would call the method quasi-experimental; for linguists and some ethnographers, it is a search for contrasts. The logic is unimpeachable, but in practice it proved impossible to make all the scor- ings objective and independent. Still, a good-faith effort was made and so the method will be described in detail and the results reported, but we shall not take any numbers so seriously as to report tests of statistical significance.

In order to find speeches that may be regarded as minimal contrasts and score them for politeness, a performance of the text must be created - in the mind of the person scoring. It follows that the intonation or expressive quality of a line, as the scorer imagines it, might be otherwise executed in some actual performance and with a difference relevant to politeness. There is no escaping the epistemological position since only a performance can be scored. However, the prime determinant of any performance is the text itself and so imagined performances, within a given time and tradition, should be much alike.

Since the occasion for politeness (in the Brown/Levinson theory) is always and only a face-threatening act, attention is limited to these. There are many kinds of FTA, both positive and negative, but some are rare and some are difficult to identify. Of the FTAs that threaten negative face, the most common and the easiest to identify are directives - including commands, requests, and advice. Directives are defined as speeches intended to induce the hearer to take some action. Of FTAs that threaten positive face, the most frequent and most easily identified are criticisms, insults, disagreements, and corrections. Positive FTAs always threaten to damage, directly or indirectly, the hearer's self-esteem. With attention limited to just the obvious and frequent FTAs, one proceeds a step at a time.

i. In each play for each pair of characters, record the first FTA - either positive or negative. In King Lear for the Duke of Albany and Edgar, the son of the Earl of Gloucester, in disguise, that would be

173


Edgar: If e'er your Grace had speech with man so poor,

Hear me one word. (V, i, 38-39)

The length of the FTA, the amount of text recorded, is defined as all the text necessary to specify the FTA plus all continuous antecedent and subsequent text that does not belong to a new speech act.

2. Code the FTA for the three variables defining its intrinsic weightiness: P, D, and R. Power was coded as equal or as hearer higher than speaker, or as speaker higher than hearer. The Duke of Albany has a much higher station than the disguised Edgar and so the value of P in the example is hearer higher. Distance was simply coded as high or low and since Albany and Edgar were little acquainted, the value of D was low. The intrinsic extremity (Rx) of the FTA was coded as low (routine), moderate, or high. A request to be heard would be but a slight imposition, and so Rx was coded low.

3. Score the total speech for politeness. This is done by first identifying the super-strategy employed, and in the present case that would be (2):

On record with redressive action. When the super-strategy involves redressive action, the speech is scored further by assigning one point for each instance of any of the 15 substrategies of positive politeness and one point for each instance of the io substrategies of negative politeness and totaling the points. For two negative politeness strategies involving deference, (i) and (5), a wider scoring range was used: from - i to +2. This decision is explained later. In Edgar's speech, there are four instances of negative politeness redressing the request. The request itself is indirect (i); "Your Grace" gives deference (5); "man so poor" is self-abasing (5); and "one word" minimizes the imposition (4). So we have super-strategy (2) with a politeness redress score of +4.

4. Search for a second FTA involving the same two characters as the first (e.g., Edgar and Albany) such that the two FTAs are matched with respect to two out of three of the variables: P, D, R. This kind of near-match often appears very near the first speech but it need not; the near-match may be widely separated in the play as, often, when two characters who are friendly at the start (low D) fall out later on (e.g., Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). In the present example, the second FTA is immediately responsive to the first:

Albany: Speak. (V, i, 39)

Distance (D) and extremity (R) are unchanged but since it is now Albany who speaks, the P value for the hearer (Edgar) is now lower than the value for the speaker. The politeness super-strategy is (i): On

174

POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE 'S TRAGEDIES

record without redressive action. The command "Speak" says all and only what is necessary to communicate the speaker's intention. Polite- ness theory predicts that, for two FTAs matched with respect to D and R but not P, the speech from the lower to the higher will be the more polite. Edgar is much more polite than Albany and so this example counts as one confirming case for politeness theory.

Passages matched with respect to everything but P are more frequent in the plays than critical pairs that isolate D or R for the reason that a contrast in P often involves only a switch in the persons speaking and hearing. How- ever, clear cases of the other sorts are numerous enough to test politeness theory predictions for distance (D) and extremity (R). Examples of D and R contrasts are presented in the section called Results.

DEFERENCE IN SHAKESPEAREAN ENGLISH

Two strategies of negative politeness, (i) and (5), involve giving deference to the hearer. Explicit acknowledgment of the higher power of the hearer serves, Brown and Levinson reason, to soften the imposition of a request by expressing the speaker's reluctance to make it and by assuring the hearer that coercion is out of the question. For the Elizabethans, expression of proper deference in conversation was a vital concern, subtle, complex, and never- ending, and so it is also in the four tragedies. It was accomplished then, as now, in two ways: forms of address, including titles (5), and the formulation of requests in conventionally indirect ways (i). The forms of address available to Elizabethans as well as the types of indirect request were not the same as those employed in English today and so it is necessary to discuss them briefly. In addition, the scoring of just these two substrategies departs from the usual zero or + I. Because expressions of deference are especially important and diverse, we scored them from -I to +2.

Names and titles In the four tragedies, more than ioo different forms of address are used, aside from Christian names and pronouns. There are names with honorific adjectives: valiant Othello, worthy Macbeth, good Hamlet, good Iago, and so on. There are unadorned titles: general, captain, sir, madam, my lord, your Grace, your Majesty. There are adorned titles, that is, titles with honorific adjectives: good my lord, gentle lady, my dread lord, sweet lord, good my liege. In scoring speeches for politeness substrategy (5): Give deference, we treat the name alone (e.g., Desdemona, Iago, Macbeth, Laertes) as the neutral level, scoring no points for deference. We treat unadorned titles (e.g., sir, madam, my lord, signior, your Grace) and names with one honorific adjective (e.g., worthy Montano, good Hamlet) the same way: Any such scores one point for deference. Titles adorned with honorific adjectives (e.g., my dread lord, good your Grace, good madam, etc.) score two points.

175


In assigning one point for any single deferential term and two points for two terms, we are following Brown and Levinson's reasonable suggestion that "the greater the number of compatible outputs the speaker uses the greater the politeness he may be presumed to intend" (I987:143). In determining what should count as honorific, we are guided by studies of Shakespeare's language (e.g., Brook 1976; Quirk I987; Replogle I987; Salmon I987), as well as a Shakespeare glossary (Onions I986) and the Oxford English Dic- tionary.

We could make the scoring of address forms more differentiated if we chose. We know, for instance that your Grace is addressed only to a duke and that your Majesty, my liege, and the adjective dread were for the king only (Replogle I987). The scoring is, however, more sensitive than our summary statement indicates. For one thing, titles such as captain, general, and lieutenant only count as deferential when used by a person of lower rank. Another fine point: To address Prince Hamlet as Hamlet is certainly not deferential, but neither is it neutral. Only the king, the queen, the ghost of Hamlet's father and Laertes at the point of death use the Christian name, and so this use was scored one point for positive politeness as an instance of strategy (4): Use in-group identity markers. Finally, there is one form that is neither neutral nor deferential but usually depreciative and that is sirrah, said to an adult by a person of higher status; to a child, sirrah was affectionate. Use of sirrah to an adult caused us to subtract one point (- i) for (5): Give deference.

Anyone reading Shakespeare, especially the speeches in blank verse, might reasonably doubt that the many titles and especially the many reiterations of the same title to the same person in a single conversation could possibly represent colloquial Elizabethan English. Certainly, most of the population would have had no occasion in all their lifetimes to use the noble titles, but we count it an advantage for our purposes that the tragedies represent speech across the full social range from king to clown (rustic). With respect to the nobility, Replogle (I987) says that, in everyday speech, it was the custom to use first the form corresponding to the highest honor (of many) that a person might claim and that it was good manners occasionally to repeat or ele- gantly vary a title in a single conversation. In letters of the period there might be as many as i i forms, varying in length from a simple your lordship to my honorable good lord. And that is just the way it is in the courts represented in Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello.

Pronouns of address

In Elizabethan English and in Shakespeare's plays there were two possible pronouns of address to a single person: thou and you. Thou was the nominative case form and thee, thy/thine were accusative (or oblique) and genitive. Ye appears to have been a less common, free variant of you in either the

176


nominative or the accusative (Mulholland I987). The important thing is the principle or principles governing the choice between thou and you as forms of address to one person. Casual grammars say that you was the "polite" form and thou the familiar form, and that characterization suggests that the two singular pronouns of address are relevant to the present study.

Ordinary unemotional use of thou (or its variants) and you (or ye) in the singular was governed by social station (Barber I987; Brown & Gilman I960; Byrne I936). Upper-class speakers said you to one another; lower-class speakers said thou to one another; the between-class rule was you to the upper and thou to the lower. Who counted as upper class? Members of the king's court, nobility generally, country gentlemen, professionals, some trades people. In the tragedies, dyads of you exchange included spouses (e.g., Othello and Desdemona), adult brothers (Edmund and Edgar in King Lear), adult sisters (Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril in King Lear), parents and adult offspring (e.g., Polonius and Laertes), and such gentle-born friends as Ham- let and Horatio. The lower, or ungentle, classes included servants, shepherds, farmers, seamen, and lesser clergy. In the tragedies, the lower classes are mainly represented by anonymous retainers, messengers, murderers, and, of course, the two gravediggers in Hamlet. Reciprocal thou was usual between members of the ungentle classes and nonreciprocal you upward (murderers to Macbeth) and thou downward (Macbeth to murderers).

The status (or power) rule will not account for all uses of thou and you singular. It is necessary to add an expressive corollary such as: "In cases where you is expected, the occurrence of thou indicates that the speaker is emotionally aroused." This amounts to making you the unmarked or default form and thou a form marked for affect (Mulholland I987). Malcolm (in Macbeth) addresses Macduff with you, the proper form for a Scottish thane, until an emotional moment in Act IV when Malcolm says: "But God above deal between thee and me" (IV, iii, I20-12i). The emotions in this case are positive: gratitude and affection. Emilia, Desdemona's confidante, has always addressed Othello as you and does so still in the confrontation of the last scene until he says that he has killed Desdemona and that she was a whore. Then: "Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil" (V, ii, 132). In this case, the emotions are negative: fury and contempt. Love or affection and anger or contempt are the emotions that account for most expressive shifts.

Jespersen (1972) believed that English thou and you in Shakespeare's time were more often shifted to express mood and tone than were the cognate pronouns in continental languages, and that was certainly true for French and German and possibly for all. In French and German, then as today, the power and status rule was supplemented by a rule of solidarity (Brown & Gilman I960) or affectionate intimacy. Two individuals who are close to one another in the sense of intimacy or camaraderie or just kinship will recipro- cally exchange a T-type pronoun (of which thou is one), whereas two rela-

177


tively unfamiliar individuals will exchange a V-type pronoun (of which you is one). A relationship between adult strangers that begins as a reciprocal exchange of V may with time, and the discovery of mutual interests and liking or affection, progress to a reciprocal exchange of T. This is true for very many languages, and the progression from V to T on the basis of positive feelings resembles the expressive use of thou (for positive feelings) where you would be expected in Elizabethan and Shakespearean English. There is, however, an important difference. When two speakers of French or German or whatever language advance to mutual-T, they will never again say V to one another or will do so only to sunder the relationship. The expressive thou works differently. Malcolm (in Macbeth), when the emotional moment has passed, resumes saying you to Macduff and there had been no falling out between the two of them.

The identifying feature of an expressively affectionate pronominal shift, as opposed to a relational shift to intimacy, is easy retractibility. There are some good examples in the four tragedies. Hamlet, on first meeting and for a short time afterward, addresses Horatio as you. Later on:

Hamlet: Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay in my heart of heart, As I do thee. (III, ii, 73-76)

In a less confidential mood, Hamlet returns to you and still later it is thou again. Hamlet also moves back and forth between you and thou in his address to Ophelia, as does Macbeth to his lady and Othello to Desdemona. This kind of easy expressive shift, apparently responsive to fleeting moods, is, so far as we can tell, very unusual among world languages.8

The status rule and the expressive rule in combination and very sympathet- ically applied still cannot explain all instances of thou and you in Shake- speare or even in just the four tragedies (Barber I987; Byrne 1936). For example, the two gravediggers in Hamlet, V, i, mostly say thou to one another but each also says you once and, indeed, there is a shift within a single speech. Someone really devoted to the principle that "motive-less anything is un-Shakespearean" (Kittredge I9I6:49) could perhaps think of subtle gravediggerly moods that would explain these shifts, but that does not seem to be the right way to go. We think it wiser to assume that a simple pair involves a simple contrast (in this case, distance) and assign complications to context.9 One form (thou) always expresses less distance, the other (you) more, in relation to each other, but, in context, there are many uses we cannot explicitly account for.

The fine tuning of thou and you in Shakespeare is analogous to something we fine tune in English today: the definite and indefinite articles the and a. We can explain the basic semantic contrast and illustrate it with clear cases,

178


but there is also a large residue of cases on which native speakers agree but which no one can explain to a non-native - to, for instance, a speaker of Japanese. Shakespeare surely used thou and you with a confident intuition that mirrored general Elizabethan usage, but it is not always possible to say what the distance contrast is doing in a given case.

Thou and you are not very important in scoring speech for politeness. This is partly because there are quite a few shifts that we cannot confidently account for and it is partly because, in many of the clear cases that follow the status rule, the pronoun of address, an obligatory aspect of speech, is automatic and ever-present and so does not function to redress an FTA. What we are left with is a small number of unusual uses and shifts that can be confidently interpreted. An isolated thou of contempt scores - I; an isolated deferential you scores + i for negative politeness; and an isolated thou of affection scores + i for positive politeness (strategy (4): Use in-group identity markers). From this scoring it is necessary to exclude all speeches to and from nonnatural beings (e.g., ghosts, apparitions, witches) as the practice was invariably to employ thou.

Indirect requests There are good studies of the forms and uses of the imperative in Elizabe- than English (Poutsma 1914; Salmon I987) and in Shakespeare (Abbott 1925; Burton 1973; Doran I976; Hulme I962; Hussey I982; Joseph I966; Quirk I987), but we have found no discussion that separates the grammatical imperative from directive speech acts and so no discussion of politely indirect requests. These turn out to be, at least in the tragedies, of high interest for speech act theory.

Brown and Levinson (following Gordon & Lakoff 197I; Labov & Fanshel 1977; Sadock 1974) show that polite indirect requests can be derived in a systematic way from the simple imperative and claim: "Most of these ways of making indirect speech acts appear to be universal or at least independently developed in many languages" (I987:136). The indirect requests of the four tragedies constitute an excellent test of the claim because the common forms are not the same as those in English today and yet they are near enough to us so that we can have good intuitions about their meanings.

Consider the simple imperative: Shut the door. It threatens to impose on the hearer's negative face and, when expressed thus baldly and on record, the threat is evident. English today is rich in circumlocutious alternatives: Could you shut the door? Will you shut the door? Is the door open again? I wish you would shut the door. Grammatically, these alternatives are not imperatives; they are syntactic interrogatives or declaratives.

The paradigmatic direct function of imperative syntax is to command or request and the direct function of interrogative syntax is to question and the direct function of declarative syntax is to assert. Each syntactic type has,

179


however, other possible uses, indirect uses, and so functions or speech acts must be distinguished from syntactic types. When this distinction is made, it turns out that the request or directive speech act can be unambiguously made in many syntactically diverse ways. There is no doubt that the speaker's directive intention is clear when she says: Could you shut the door? since Yes or No, which are answers responsive to the grammar, would be either rude or a joke. There is similarly no doubt of the intention behind the declarative I wish the door were shut since Do you? or That's interesting are understood to be playful. Even very young children do not make mistakes of this kind.

Indirect requests in English today, in Tamil, Tzeltal, Malagasy, and other languages are constructed in a principled way. The simple imperative Shut the door will not accomplish its purpose unless certain contextual requisites are satisfied: (i) the hearer should be able to shut the door; (2) the hearer should be willing to shut the door; (3) the door should not be already shut; (4) the speaker should sincerely want the hearer to shut the door; and so on. If such circumstances are satisfied, then the world is ready for Shut the door to have its intended effect. The circumstances that comprise a happy setting for Shut the door are called felicity conditions (Searle I969; after Austin I962). Indirect requests more polite than the imperative are constructed by questioning a felicity condition or calling attention to a felicity condition by asserting it.

Could you shut the door? questions the hearer's ability to comply and Would you shut the door? questions the hearer's willingness. Is the door open again? asks about a necessary precondition in the world and I wish you would shut the door asserts what the speaker wants. All polite forms by questioning or calling attention to a felicity condition seem to leave the hearer an out. Perhaps, after all, he or she simply cannot shut the door or has a fixed objection to doing so or finds the door already shut or doubts that the speaker really wants to have the door shut.

There seems to be a contradiction in the argument. Many indirect (not imperative) requests are, in situational context, unambiguously interpreta- ble as requests and never responded to as anything but requests. What can it mean, therefore, to say that by calling attention to felicity conditions they leave the hearer an out? It is the literal meanings, the grammatical meanings, that do that, but the literal meanings cannot do that unless the hearer on some level takes them in. There is now good evidence (Clark & Lucy 1975;

Clark & Schunk I980) that hearers process both the literal meaning and the directive or speech act meaning. It is clear why the directive meaning is needed; it identifies the response to be made. Why is the literal meaning pro- cessed? It adds the politeness.

In English today, indirect requests vary greatly in how much politeness they convey. Brown and Levinson make the general suggestion that the more

180


elaborated the request is, the more polite it is, but this principle does not make fine distinctions. Stanford psychologists Clark and Schunk (I980) had subjects rate the politeness of 54 requests of i8 types. The speech act meaning was the same in all: "Tell me where Jordan Hall is," but there were 54 varieties of literal meaning or politeness. The form rated most polite was "Might I ask you where Jordan Hall is?" - a request for permission. Least polite was "Shouldn't you tell me where Jordan Hall is?" - a statement of unexplained obligation. Fraser and Nolen (I98I) asked native speakers to rate for deference, rather than politeness, some 25 requests with the generic speech act meaning "Do that." Most deferential was: "I'd appreciate it if you'd do that" and least deferential: "You have to do that." It is worth not- ing that "Might I ask?" and "Shouldn't you?" and "You have to" all question or assert felicity conditions in the hearer: permission or obligation. "I'd appreciate it," by contrast, asserts the sincerity of the speaker's wish. All forms used are derivable from felicity conditions.

The world of Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear is far from Jor- dan Hall. In the tragedies, indirect requests use such phrases as: I do beseech you, I entreat you, I pray you, Pray you, Prithee, I do require that, So please your Majesty, If you will give me leave, and "Get thee to a nunnery. " Completely absent from the tragedies are the polite forms most often heard today, the subjunctive interrogatives such as Could you and Would you. They were not invented until the igth century (Millward, personal communication). If I do beseech you tell me where Jordan Hall is sounds odd, so do Could you wake the king? and Would you a little disquantity your train? In spite of the surface differences, however, Shakespeare's indirect requests are created on the same principles as the indirect requests of English today, and these principles may be universal.

One large set of indirect requests asserts the speaker's sincere wish that the hearer do X and that is a major felicity condition for the direct imperative: Do X. I beseech you, I pray you, Prithee, I would that, I require that, and so on, though they vary in the amount of deference shown the hearer, all essentially say: "Speaker sincerely wants hearer to do X." Also included in this first class is a collection of what Burton (I973) calls optative imperatives, such as, from the tragedies: "Let not light see my black and deep desires" (Macbeth, I, v, 5 i); "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt" (Hamlet, I, ii, 129); "May his pernicious soul/Rot half a grain a day!" (Othello, V, ii, 152-153). Optative in grammar means expressive of wish or desire, and an optative imperative asserts a speaker's wish. Whether the operative word is may or let or that, the sense is always the same and, except for the levels of deference expressed, equivalent to "I would that X be done."

There is a second large class of indirect requests in the tragedies and these concern a felicity condition in the hearer. They ask not whether the hearer could or would do something, but rather if the hearer is willing, sees fit, or

181


is pleased to do something. It comes to the same thing. Unless the hearer is willing or sees fit or is pleased to or could or would do X, then a request to do X will not work; willingness on the part of the hearer is a felicity condition for the direct imperative and asking about such willingness is a way of saying Do X indirectly. It is, incidentally, interesting that the modern par- ent's magic word please did not exist in the 17th century, but such forms as If it please you and May it please you did, and it is from these phrases, which had the same magical function, that the word in isolation derives (Millward, personal communication).

Even a very incomplete analysis of the forms of indirect request in Shakespeare adds a little something to our understanding of the plays. Con- sider the scene in Act I of King Lear when the king requires his three daughters to make competitive protestations of love. To Goneril, his eldest born, he uses the simple imperative "Speak," and he says the same to Regan. How- ever, to Cordelia, "our joy, although our last and least," he first asks: "What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?" And, only then: "Speak." The question "What can you say?" is only grammatically interrogative. As a speech act it is a directive or command having the exact sense of the subsequent imperative "Speak." The question asks about a felicity condition on speaking-so-as-to-win-a-more-opulent-third. Is there something that can be said and if so, what? In inquiring about a felicity condition, it becomes an indirect or polite request. To respond not to the request but to the literal meaning of the question with "Nothing, my lord" is shockingly rude - a bit like asking someone: "Is there any salt down there?" and receiv- ing as your only response: "Yes." The king reflects the shock with "Noth- ing?" And "Nothing will come of nothing." Everyone reading or seeing the play feels the shock. The cause of the shock is Cordelia's choosing to speak as if she did not understand what every child understands about indirect requests. It demonstrates beyond an inability to "heave up my heart into my mouth" an unwillingness to do so and anger at the foolish game the king would have them play.

In addition to the two kinds of polite request based on felicity conditions, the tragedies include many simple imperatives (Go, Come, etc.) and many simple imperatives followed by the 2nd person subject (Go you, Retire thee, Take thou). Barber (1976), Poutsma (1914), and Salmon (I987) agree that the second form is the more polite, but it is not quite clear which should be considered the neutral baseline, and we have treated both as neutral in that neither scores a point for deference. The case of the pronoun in the archaic form is sometimes nominative (thou or ye) and sometimes oblique (thee or you). Millward (I987) finds that the choice between the cases is not governed by age, sex, status, or any other social variable. There is a lot of free vari- ation and some verb-class selection. For instance, a closed class of nine action verbs (aroint, haste, get, hie, etc.) always take thee, and so we can be

182


sure now, if we were not before, that Hamlet's: "Get thee to a nunnery" is not a softened command. Finally, there is what Burton (1973) calls the verb- less imperative as in "Peace, Kent!" (King Lear), "Thy story quickly" (Mac- beth), and "Peace, sirrah" (King Lear). We unhesitatingly agree with Burton that these are not polite and not neutral but rudely brusque and we have scored them, like sirrah, among forms of address, as -I.

We cannot, as Clark and Schunk (I980) did and as Fraser and Nolen (I98I) did, ask native speakers to rate Early Modern English indirect requests in terms of politeness or deference. However, the Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Spevack I973) offered another possibility. Entering the book with, for instance, the word beseech and starting at an arbitrary point in the citations (which are ordered as the plays are ordered in the First Folio), we selected the first one hundred entries having the sense of "I beseech someone to do X" and recorded the form of address, if any, that co-occurred with the request in the entry. In the case of beseech, 40 percent of the entries included some honorific title: your Majesty, your Grace, your Highness, your lordship, my lord - down to sir and madam but not below. The remain- ing 6o percent of the entries included no form of address. The pronoun in 96 percent of the cases was you rather than thee. Entering the book at another random point with pray and examining the first one hundred entries with the sense "I pray you," only io percent have co-occurring honorific titles and these do not go higher than sir; the familiar pronoun thee now accounts for 17 percent of all cases. Conclusion: "I beseech you" is more deferential than "I pray you" and it seems to be reasonable to assign two deference points for beseech you and just one for pray you. A comparison of "I pray you" and abbreviated "Pray you" reveals no difference, and so they are scored the same.

"By your leave" accessed with leave and "if you please" or "so please you" accessed with please almost exactly match one another and beseech with about 40 percent honorific address forms from sir to your Majesty, and so these also were scored +2. Entreat in the sense of "I entreat you" was less deferential than beseech but nearer beseech than pray, and so scored +2. "I do beseech you" is automatically emphatic in English today and so one might think it would be more deferential than the phrase without do, but it is not clearly so, using the Concordance analysis. Authorities on Elizabethan English agree that the auxiliary do did not reliably take on an emphatic sense until later than the 17th century. We would not like to have had to score do forms distinctively for the reason that metrical considerations could affect their occurrence in blank verse and so we are glad that there is no reason to do so.

Before making a Concordance analysis of prithee, we thought the form would be on a continuum with pray you but less deferential. It did not prove to be so. The address forms with which prithee co-occurs are: boy, my son, daughter, good friend, fellow student, shepherd, and various Christian

183


names - not honorific forms at all but terms of friendship, affection, and intimacy. We scored prithee for positive politeness strategy (4): Use in-group identity terms.

The full procedure can now be summarized. The four plays were systematically searched for pairs of minimally contrasting discourse dyads where the dimensions of contrast were power (P), distance (D), and the intrinsic extremity of the FTA (R). Whenever such a pair was found, a pair contrasting only in P or only in D or only in R, there would be two speeches to be scored for politeness and a prediction from theory as to which of the two ought to be more polite. The stretch of speech scored was to be long enough to specify the full FTA but not so long as to include more than one speech act. In scoring the politeness of a speech, belonging to super-strategy (2), one point (+ i) was usually given for each instance of any substrategy, positive or negative. With negative politeness strategy (i) (Be conventionally indirect) and strategy (5) (Give deference) the scores ranged from - i to +2. The total politeness score for a speech was the sum of its points. If the speech in a pair predicted to be higher turned out, in fact, to be higher, that counted as a strongly confirming instance for the relevant aspect of politeness theory. If the outcome was reversed, that counted as a strong contradiction, and if there was no difference or a difference difficult to score but possibly contradictory, that counted as a weak contradiction.

RESULTS

Two qualitative principles

It would not be a fair test of politeness theory to go blindly into the plays scoring every speech that met the criteria of minimal contrast in terms of P, D, or R. There is an overriding principle stated by Brown and Levinson: "The prime reason for bald-on-record usage may be stated simply: in general whenever S wants to do the FTA with maximum efficiency more than he wants to satisfy H's face, even to any degree, he will choose the bald-on- record strategy" (I987:95). When will a speaker care nothing about protect- ing a hearer's face? This can happen when a message is very urgent or when communication channels are noisy, but in the tragedies it happens most often when a speaker is in a rage and not simply indifferent to the hearer's face but intent on cutting it up.

Rage. The enraged character in the tragedies always ignores P, D, and R and proceeds with maximal efficiency.

Darkness and devils! Saddle my horses; call my train together. Degenerate bastard, I'll not trouble thee.

184


That is King Lear to daughter Goneril (I, iv, 258-260). "Come, swear it, damn thyself" (Othello, IV, ii, 34). That is Othello to Desdemona, and this is Roderigo to lago: "O damned lago! 0 inhuman dog!" (Othello, V, i, 62).

And Hamlet to his mother in her closet: Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty-(III, iv, 92-95).

And Macduff, his lady and little ones slain, when at last he comes upon Macbeth: "Turn, hell-hound, turn!" (V, viii, 3). We have not scored these speeches for politeness.

Speeches produced in a rage, though dense with FTAs, are always baldly on record. Politeness is wiped out. Everything goes, every last substrategy - in-group identity terms, common ground, empathy, approval, reciprocity, indirection, hedging, deference, apology - they vanish together. It is important that the pieces move together since that is what should happen if they are parts of one system, the politeness system. In the tragedies, politeness is like a veil which lifts as a whole from the contorted face beneath. That is as it should be if the details are all generated by a single deep concern: the feelings of others; a concern felt no longer when enraged.

Furious speech is not shaped by P, D, and R values. It is not off record and not redressed. If it were scored in the usual ways for politeness, it would contradict the usual predictions. We exempt all such speech from scoring and from tests of the theory. Does this decision make the theory impossible to disconfirm? It would if the grounds for exemption were noncompliance with the theory, but they are not. Furious speech is identified independently of its relation to politeness in terms of content (e.g., "degenerate bastard") and accompanying actions (e.g., lago has just treacherously stabbed Roderigo). This is a very easy thing to do with these great dramas because when someone is in a rage the reader knows it.

It is specifically anger and rage that disengage the machinery of politeness and not emotion generally. Desdemona dying says: "Commend me to my kind lord" (Othello, V, ii, 124). Cordelia, with pity and love, says to her father: "How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?" (King Lear, IV, vii, 44). It is just those emotions that entail unconcern for the feelings of others that erase politeness.

Madness. There is one other major circumstance in which a speaker is unconcerned with the face needs of hearers and that is madness. In mad speech, however, there is not the concern for efficient communication found in urgent and angry speech. There is reason to expect the feelings of others to be disregarded but no reason why mad speech should be consistently bald and on record. The disturbance goes deeper, overthrowing the maxims of

185


cooperative conversation (Grice 1975) which make it possible to follow strategy (i) and be maximally efficient and clear. Mad speech may be spurious (violating the maxim of quality), may be elliptical or repetitive (the maxim of quantity), may be irrelevant (the maxim of relevance), and it may be ambiguous or obscure (the maxim of manner).

The madness represented in Shakespeare's tragedies is as various as the persons who are mad, and that is exactly what truth requires. Psychiatry for its purpose creates diagnostic categories but the mad are as unlike one another as the sane. The categorical difference is that the sane pay more attention more of the time to both the maxims of conversation and the requirements of politeness.

Ophelia's "distraction" is manifest in a change from blank verse to prose and in doggerel songs and poems which violate all Grice's maxims and are unmaidenly to boot. Her politeness also vanishes. For three acts, Ophelia has used deferential forms in almost every speech, but Ophelia, mad, uses none at all even to the king and queen. We do not count the mad scenes as sudden failures of politeness theory but rather exclude them from scoring. Mad speech, like enraged speech, is easily identified by content and the reactions of others.

Othello's "epilepsy" or "seizure" (lago's terms) in Act IV is very unlike Ophelia's distraction:

Lie with her? Lie on her? - We say lie on her when they belie her. - Lie with her! Zounds, that's fulsome [foul]. - Handkerchief - confessions - handkerchief! (IV, i, 36-39)

Ophelia in Act IV of Hamlet can be said to violate the maxims of conversation because she seems to be in conversation. We infer conversation from the fact that she takes turns speaking with the king and queen and speaks in complete sentences which are related to one another. However, each "turn" Ophelia takes is irrelevant to the "turns" taken by the king and queen and obscure as a total speech act because we cannot tell what she intends. Othello's seizure does not violate the maxims of conversation because there is no conversation. It is speech for himself. lago is physically present; so the seizure is not a soliloquy. But lago is not addressed, so his hearing of the speech does not make him a hearer whose feelings must be considered. There- fore, politeness does not come into it. The seizure is a representation of inner speech and it has the telegraphic quality that characterizes inner speech (Vygotsky I962). It is also completely sincere, serious, relevant, and clear to its only addressees - Othello and ourselves.

"Reason in madness!" Edgar says of King Lear (IV, vi, 177). The Elizabe- thans thought any passion in extremity was akin to madness and Lear runs the gamut from rage through obsession, hysteria, and delusion to, finally,

186


lunacy. But always there is some reason in his madness. Some of his speeches were excluded from scoring because they were spoken in fury or were addressed to the elements or to no one at all. In what is called the "joint stool" scene (III, vi), Lear brings to phantasy trial his daughters Goneril and Regan to find out what stuff their hearts can be made of, and his justices are the Fool and Poor Tom. He addresses them reverently as "sapient sir" and "robed man of justice." This is not a disconfirmation of politeness theory but a world turned upside down.

Hamlet's madness is feigned. Polonius says: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" (II, ii, 207-208). Method not reason, as was said of Lear's madness. It is a selective madness put on for the king and all who serve him but never for Horatio or the Players, and a madness put on with a purpose. The "mad" speeches are off record expressions of the accusations he cannot make plainly. The fact that Hamlet speaks off record when the face risk is great is what politeness theory predicts. Contrasts of power (P) alone Two speaker-hearer FTAs are compared for politeness scores. The persons are of clearly different power and they switch roles (speaker and hearer) in the comparison cases, with D and R constant. For instance, Cordelia and the doctor exchange directives in Act IV of King Lear.

Doctor: So please your Majesty That we may wake the King; he hath slept long.

Cordelia: Be governed by your knowledge, and proceed I' th' sway of your own will. (IV, vii, 17-20)

Both speeches are polite, but Cordelia, now queen of France, has the greater power, and so politeness theory predicts that the doctor will be more polite than she; and he is. The "So please . . ." indirect request scores +2 and "your Majesty" scores +i for deference; in addition, there is an inclusive pronoun (we), which scores + I, and a reason why (positive politeness strategy (13)), which scores another point, for a total of +5. Cordelia's response scores + i because it expresses respect for the doctor's knowledge and + i for the passive voice, making a total score of +2. Stripped of redress, the speeches would reduce to: "May I waken the king?" and "Use your own judgment." As spoken, with politeness added in unequal amounts, the matched speeches yield a result that is congruent with politeness theory.

Table 3 reports the numbers of congruent outcomes, outcomes strongly contradictory to theory, and outcomes weakly contradictory to theory. An outcome is congruent when the person with less power speaks more politely. An outcome is strongly contradictory when the person having greater power speaks more politely. An outcome is weakly contradictory to theory when the two persons, unequal in power, speak with what seems to be equal politeness but might conceivably be read as unequal politeness. In short, there is

187


TABLE 3. Contrasts of power alone

Strongly Weakly Congruent contradictory contradictory

Play with theorya to theoryb to theoryc

Hamlet 10 2 King Lear 18 3 Macbeth 6 1 Othello 16 1 Total 50 4 3

aThe person with less power is more polite. bThe person with more power is more polite. cThe two persons of unequal power are equally polite.

Locations in text (ordered by first citation in each matched pair)

Congruent with theory Hamlet [I,ii,50-51/I,ii,62] [I,ii,67/I,ii,92-941 [I,ii,68/I,ii,76]

[1, iv,79/1, iv,801 [II, i,1-2/11, i,351 [Il, ii,95/II, ii,96] [II,ii, 174/II,ii,175] [II,ii,242-243/II,ii,2521 [V,i,121/V,i,124] [V,ii,91-92/V,ii,94]

King Lear [I,i,28-29/I,ii,30] [I,i,122/I,i,123] [I,ii,27/I,ii,28-29] [I,iv,41/III,ii,61-63] [I,iv,57-60/I,iv,76-77] [I,iv,99/I,iv,131] [I,iv,110-111/I,iv,113] [I,iv,195/I,iv,225-229] [II,ii,66-67,II,ii,70] [II,ii,142/II,iv,307] [II,iv,90-93/I1,iv,97] [III,vii,73-77/III,vii,79] [IV, v, 16-17/IV,iv,17-18] [IV, vi, 190-191/IV,iv,193] [IV, vi,234-235/IV, vi,238] [IV, vii,6-7/IV, vii,8-11] [IV,vii,17-18/IV, vi,19-20] [V,i,38-39/V,i,39]

Macbeth [I, v,63-64/I, vii,28] [III,iv,21/III,iv,32] [IV,i,137/IV,i,135] [V,i,15-16/V,i,17-18] [V,iii,33/V,v,16] [V,v,29/V,v,30-32]

Othello [I,i,5-6/I,i,35] [I,i,75/I,i,94-95] [I,ii,29/I,iii,121] [I,ii,35-37/II,iii, 1] [I,ii,59-60/I,ii,84-86] [I,iii,52/I,iii,106] [I, iii,176/l, iii,178-1791 [Il, i,116/Il, i,117] [Il, i,160/III, iii,3] [III,iii,31/III,iii,32-33] [IV,i,242-243/IV,i,250] [IV,i, 105/IV,i, 106-107] [IV,ii,97/IV,ii, 101] [IV,ii,3/IV,ii,6] [V,ii,295/V,ii,296]

Strongly contradictory to theory King Lear [I,i,84-88/I,i,89] [I,iv,79-80/I,iv,81] [II,ii, 158/III, vi,87] Othello [II,iii,148-149/II,iii,150-151]

Weakly contradictory to theory Hamlet [I,iii,3-4/I,iii,46-51] [III,i,93/III,i,951 Macbeth [IV,ii,30-3 1/IV,ii,37]

an element of scoring ambiguity with "contradictory" being more likely than "congruent." There are fewer outcomes for Macbeth than for the other plays because Macbeth is only about two-thirds the length of the others. Table 3 shows that the outcomes are mostly congruent with politeness theory. The preponderance is so great as to make any tests of statistical significance supererogatory. The predictions of politeness theory for the P variable are confirmed.

188


The number of outcomes in Table 3 is very much smaller than the number of speeches in the play that have some relevance to power and politeness. An "outcome" is a minimal contrast in P, with D and R constant. In addition, both speeches must be FTAs. Furthermore, only the first such minimal contrast for any pair of characters is scored. All of these constraints oper- ate so as to select the most critically important instances to test, but such instances are not, in the nature of things, very numerous. With respect to power (P), and also D and R, all the relevant evidence supports the outcomes we document.

The effect of the P variables is so consistently in agreement with theory as to make one curious about the few strongly contradictory outcomes. One of these is a speech King Lear addresses to Oswald, steward to Goneril, who is entertaining the king with scant ceremony or affection.

Lear (to Oswald): 0, you, sir, you! Come you hither, sir. Who am I, sir? (I, iv, 79-80)

Our scoring system allocates + i for each deferential sir and we (obtuse but honest) assign it a total score of +3, whereas Oswald's reply scores no points at all for politeness.

Oswald: My lady's father.

Oswald's reply is an FTA, a threat to positive face, because identifying a king ("Who am I?") in terms of his relation to someone else is to make him an appendage; an effect not lost on Lear.

Lear: "My lady's father?" My lord's knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur! (I, iv, 82-83)

It is, of course, a mistake to score Lear's sirs to Oswald as deferential. Taking into account the mood established by what has preceded as well as the extreme incongruity of a king's saying sir to a steward, we know for sure that these sirs are not deferential but imperious and challenging and that is the way an actor would pronounce them.

One other seemingly contradictory-to-theory outcome is actually a result of insensitive scoring. Montano, governor of Cyprus, to Cassio, Othello's lieutenant:

Montano: Nay, good lieutenant! I pray you, sir, hold your hand.

And Cassio in reply:

Cassio: Let me go, sir, or I'll knock you o'er the mazzard [head]. (II, iii, 148-I51)

The governor's speech is too polite and Cassio's is not polite enough. But Cassio is drunk and that accounts for his incivility. However, drunkenness

189


was overlooked in the scoring. And Montano is attempting to pacify Cas- sio, which accounts for the excessive politeness, but pacification also was not considered in the scoring. So, the outcome was scored as contradictory to the power relation, but it ought not to have been. The scorer ought to have imagined the lines spoken, respectively, in a pacifying and drunken manner, and the scoring system should have allowed for these possibilities.

For every speech in the plays, and not just the two discussed here, the scorer supplies an intonation implied by the full text. However, on a first pass through the pairs contrasted for power, the reader actually made the mistakes discussed because of a too-exclusive attention to codable forms in the speeches as print on the page. The two instances entered in Table 3 as "strongly contradictory" would have been rescored on subsequent readings, but it was instructive for us to see them briefly as contradictions and we thought it might be so also for the reader.

For most of the critical contrasts in power, the politeness difference is within super-strategy (2) and is a matter of the number of points (few-many) of redress. However, for one pair of characters the contrast, in a sequence of speeches, is between two super-strategies: (i): Do the FTA on record without redress, baldly, and (3): Do the FTA off record. The characters are the Earl of Gloucester and his younger and illegitimate son, Edmund. In I, ii, of King Lear, Gloucester, the more powerful, consistently speaks on record baldly and Edmund consistently speaks off record. This outcome is consistent with theory, but why should the difference in politeness be greater than in most other cases? It must be greater because, in the first place, the difference in power is extreme; Edmund as a younger son and bastard has no prospects unless Gloucester loves him. In addition, the FTA Edmund has in mind is to turn Gloucester against his legitimate elder son, Edgar. This is an FTA almost as risky as telling Othello, untruly, that Desdemona is Cassio's lover. The two Machiavels, lago and Edmund, not only have very similar FTAs in mind; they also go about their intrigue in similar off record ways.

Edmund's true intention is to disgrace his brother and inherit everything in his place, but he dare not let this be found out. Therefore, he cannot assert on record that Edgar plans to murder Gloucester. The assertion would suggest the motive and Edmund would be undone. No amount of redressive deference and indirection would disarm suspicion. Therefore, Edmund has created false evidence even as lago did with Desdemona's handkerchief. Edmund's evidence is a forged letter purportedly written by Edgar inviting Edmund to join in a conspiracy against Gloucester's life. Much depends, however, on the manner in which this letter shall come to Gloucester. It cannot be delivered by Edmund because that would suggest deliberate intent. It must seem to be forced from him by Gloucester.

The scene opens with Edmund quickly putting away a paper he has been reading.

190


Gloucester: What paper were you reading? Edmund: Nothing, my lord. (King Lear, I, ii, 31-32)

The answer contradicts the evident facts and so violates the Gricean maxim of quality ("Be truthful") and functions as a trigger serving notice to the hearer that the speaker's meaning must be worked out by inference as it will not be unambiguously expressed (Brown & Levinson I987:21 I). lago acti- vates inference with just the same trigger.

Iago: Ha! I like not that. Othello: What dost thou say? Iago: Nothing, my lord. (III, iii, 35-36)

With the trigger there came a nonverbal hint: Edmund had hastily put the letter away as Gloucester approached. A hint violates the relevance maxim and so, of course:

Gloucester: No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. (King Lear, I, ii, 33-35)

Gloucester commands Edmund to give up the letter and believes what he reads. Once Gloucester has been worked into a passion of indignation, Edmund adroitly pivots and pleads with him to be temperate. Edmund then becomes his brother's seeming advocate and advises Gloucester to suspend judgment until he has better evidence: "I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance [proof heard by your own ears] have your satisfaction" (I, ii, 97-99). The "assurance" when it comes in II, i, has been rigged.

lago's deception of Othello is a longer sustained, much elaborated, and subtler process than Edmund's deception of Gloucester, but the major moves are so similar as to suggest a rhetoric manual for Machiavels. After the clear violation of truthfulness that initiates the inferential process comes a succession of hints to help inference along and then, when the deceived man has been worked into a passion, the beautiful pivot:

Iago: 0, beware my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on. (III, iii, I65-I67)

And eventually the test:

Iago: Do but encave [hide] yourself And mark the fleers [mocking looks or speeches], the gibes, and notable

scorns That dwell in every region of his face. (IV, i, 83-85)

lago's test, like Edmund's, is rigged.

191


TABLE 4. Contrasts of distance alone with distance interpreted as affect



Hamlet 3 King Lear 2 Macbeth 1 Othello 3 Total 0 9 0

aln the case marked by greater positive affect, speech is less polite. bIn the case marked by greater positive affect, speech is more polite. cIn cases differing in level of positive affect, there is no difference in politeness.


Strongly contradictory to theory

Hamlet [I,v,166-167/III,ii,80-82] [III, i,115/III,i,122] [V,ii,301/V,ii,314] King Lear [I,i,306-309/V,iii,67-69] [V,iii, 127/V,iii,168-169] Macbeth [IV, iii,26-28/IV, iii,l 1 4-117] Othello [I,i,5-6/IV,ii,198-199] [I,i,35-37/II,iii,380-381] [I,i,94-95/I,i,177]

Contrasts of distance (D) alone

To make a test of the effect of D we need two FTAs involving the same two persons with each person staying in speaker or hearer role. Power relations must remain the same; the two FTAs must be matched in extremity, but there must be a clear change in D, which could be a change of affection or interactive closeness or both. As it turns out, the clear cases are all changes of affect, with changes of interaction either absent or only implied. There are just nine minimal contrasts.

In Table 4 "distance" is affect and all nine contrasts contradict the predictions made for D in politeness theory because in all pairs the more polite speech is associated with lower D (positive affect) and the less polite with higher D (decreased positive affect).

For D there are few minimal contrasts but, nevertheless, Shakespeare's texts make a clear contribution to knowledge of this variable. This is possible because all the relevant contrasts, including some that are far from minimal, point to a single conclusion, and that conclusion is the one for which the Slugoski and Turnbull (in press) experiments prepared us. Politeness in the plays, insofar as it is governed by D, is governed by feeling; interactive intimacy is of little importance. With the extension of positive feeling (liking or better), the speaker becomes more polite; and if positive feeling is withdrawn (dislike, hostility), the speaker becomes less polite. But this is not

192


the way that weightiness (Wy) is supposed to be affected by the D of the formula W = D (S, H) + P (H, S) + R.

The Brown/Levinson formula says that W, and so politeness, will increase with D and an increase in D means less intimate interaction and less (not more) liking. The formula was, no doubt, written for the kind of familiar case in which acquaintanceship ripens into friendship, interaction grows more intimate and liking increases, but that kind of undramatic progression is not enacted in Shakespeare's tragedies. What is enacted is change of feeling, both positive and negative, often extreme and sudden. Changes of future intimacy may be implied but have not occurred. The quality of future interaction seems to be entirely dependent on what future feelings may be. In these circumstances, the more the speaker likes the hearer, the greater the concern with the hearer's face and so the more polite the speech; the less the liking, the less the concern and also the politeness.

Minimal contrasts in D are few in the texts we have used, partly because of a natural confounding in them between D and R. Othello telling Cassio to look to the guard tonight poses less of a threat to "Good Michael" than Othello stripping Cassio of his lieutenancy. Brabantio, when he bids his daughter Desdemona approach and say whether she loves the Moor, poses a less extreme threat than when he relinquishes her to the Moor. We have not counted these contrasts (plus one other) as "minimal" and they are not represented in Table 4, but we do give them weight as evidence because, in all three cases, relative politeness is predicted by the extension or withdrawal of affection and this result is not the result predicted by R. In effect, the confounding in the three cases described does not really matter.

In Shakespeare's tragedies, there are more passions than feelings, and many potential pairs are not minimal because the higher R speech expresses rage. We cannot make a pair out of King Lear saying in I, i, 55-56:

Lear: Goneril, Our eldest born, speak first.

and in I, v, 269:

Lear: Detested kite, thou liest.

Nor can we make a pair of:

Othello: I prithee good lago. (II, i, 205)

and

Othello: Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! (III, iii, 356)

Nor of many more which are ruled out, not only because R values are not matched, but because we prefer to treat rage as a state in which the entire apparatus of politeness is eliminated. Notice, however, that if rage is simply regarded as an extreme in the withdrawal of affection, even into hatred,

193


then speeches which can be matched except for fury, and such speeches are numerous, count as evidence for the affect theory because high values of R in politeness theory call for high levels of politeness, not its elimination.

Bad feeling so strongly implies the absence of politeness that when the two are combined, the reader computes interesting speaker meanings. Regan (in King Lear), unwilling to leave Goneril with Edmund, whom both love, says:

Regan: Sister, you'll go with us? (V, i, 34)

and

Regan: Tis most convenient [fitting]; pray you, go with us.(V, i, 36)

This is clenched-teeth courtesy. Regan, seething with anger, couches a directive as a rare polite interrogative with in-group blandishments. The politeness here is not primarily a matter of deference, but rather of demeanor, not primarily a matter of what is owed to another but of what is owed to oneself (Goffman 1956; Hymes I983). Regan owes it to herself, with both Al- bany and Edmund present, to maintain composure.

We have just nine good minimal contrasts, but they all come out the same way, that is, not in accordance with D in the Brown and Levinson formula but in clear accordance with the affect formulation of Slugoski and Turn- bull. There is a good example in Macbeth. Malcolm, Duncan's son, first reproaches Macduff.

Malcolm: Why in that rawness [unprotected condition] left you wife and child. (IV, iii, 26)

Then comes a lengthy test of Macduff's loyalty, which, being passed, we have:

Malcolm: Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples [suspicions], reconciled my thoughts To thy good truth and honor. (IV, iii, I 14-I I7)

The FTA in this speech is the confession of unwarranted suspicions, and the politeness level is very high as the extension of affection predicts.

In King Lear, we have a pair of speeches matched for R but not for R at a low-to-middle level, as is usually the case, but at a rather high level. Edgar, confronting at last the brother who has so greatly abused him, speaks to Edmund.

Edgar: Draw thy sword. (V, iii, 1 27)

Edgar here is intense but not furious. Then, having wounded Edmund unto death, he speaks softly.

194


Edgar: Let's exchange charity. I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund. (V, iii, I68-I69)

With the advent of good feelings comes, as always, a heightened politeness. A final example illustrates the withdrawal of good feeling. In King Lear

I, i, 306-307, Goneril, wishing to make common cause with her sister Regan, begins politely: "Pray you, let's hit [agree] together." In V, iii, however, the sisters have become competitors for Edmund's love, and when Regan proclaims that she honors Edmund as her equal, Goneril breaks in with: "Not so hot" (line 67), which may be translated as "Not so fast" - a verb- less imperative scoring -i for politeness.

Searching for contrasts relevant to distance or D, we have found only contrasts of feeling, with contrasts of interactive intimacy only implied and seemingly fully dependent on future feelings. Why, in our texts, have we not found changes of interactive closeness with changes of feeling, linked in the way that the Brown and Levinson D presupposes, intimacy with liking and distance with dislike or indifference?

Our sources are dramas - Shakespearean tragedies - and the changes of feeling enacted in them are sudden and so dramatic. Suppose that Braban- tio and Desdemona, instead of breaking when she said she loved the Moor, had "drifted apart" after her marriage over several years with visits and letters less and less frequent. It would not make a play. It could be put in a play; most easily as narration, but it would be poor material for enactment. The love that developed between Othello and Desdemona was, in fact, a gradual process developing over many occasions as he unfolded to her the tale of his life, but this is not a change we witness. It is told by Othello (I, iii, 127-I65).

There are some changes enacted in the tragedies that require more than a few moments of performance time, but these changes are not enacted as smoothly graded. Othello does not in an instant pass from his great love for Desdemona to murderous hatred of her. Neither does he drift into hatred. The change is enacted as a sequence of discontinuous moments; each one intensely dramatic within itself: not understanding lago's meaning, forcing lago to be more clear, wanting proof, not wanting to know, resisting Desde- mona's pleas for Cassio, yielding, frightening her, striking her, murdering her. There is movement back and forth and there is escalation from one moment to another, but the curve described over the course of five acts is not a smooth one and politeness comes with the return of affection and goes with its withdrawal.

There is, in principle, another kind of contrast that might be used to test the predictions of politeness theory for D; instead of changes over time within one relationship it should be possible to compare two varieties of stable relationship: low distance relations, such as those between husband and

195


wife, close kin, good friends; and high distance relations, such as equal- status contacts between near-strangers. Politeness theory predicts, probably correctly, more politeness with high distance. There are in the tragedies stable low-D relations between man and wife, close kin, and friends, but where are the high-D relations to contrast with them? For the most part, they would be between the nameless supernumeraries - the lords and ladies, attendants, gentlemen, soldiers, and officers, who are given no lines to speak and so no opportunity to be either casual or formal. When one is given lines - the porter in Macbeth, the first senator in Othello, the clown in Hamlet - they speak with a principal character of higher or lower status than themselves. Tragedies have no use for the formal exchanges of near strangers, and so Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are not good sources for the study of high-D politeness.

To summarize, in the tragedies we find nothing relevant to D except changes of feeling that occur suddenly rather than gradually and are not accompanied by changes of interactive closeness. The outcomes for the changes of feeling exactly reverse the outcomes predicted by the D of politeness theory, following instead the rule that increase of affection is associated with increase of politeness and decrease with decrease. We conclude, in agreement with Slugoski and Turnbull, that the Brown/Levinson model requires an additional parameter - "relationship affect." No one as yet has shown how such a new parameter ought to be fitted into the present model.

Contrasts of extremity (R) alone In order to test for the effects of the extremity of the FTA, a given speaker must make two face-threatening speeches, of clearly unequal extremity, to a given hearer. There are 20 such contrasts in the plays and I9 of them are congruent with theory; one is weakly contradictory. This is a clear confir- mation, for R, of politeness theory (see Table 5).

There are many nicely minimal contrasts in R. Horatio, who usually addresses Hamlet as "my lord," says "Good my lord" when attempting to pre- vent his Prince from grappling with Laertes - a serious physical intervention. Ophelia, having addressed Hamlet as "my lord" in reminding him that she has "remembrances" of his, when he denies having given her "aught," comes back:

Ophelia: My honored lord, you know right well you did. (III, i, 97)

Venturing a contradiction calls for an increased redress. lago, speaking to Othello, criticizes at one time and another Brabantio

(Desdemona's father), Cassio (Othello's well-loved lieutenant), and Desde- mona herself. Since these people are varyingly close to Othello's heart, the attacks pose varyingly extreme dangers to Othello's positive face and lago's politeness is nicely graded. Of Brabantio he says:

196


TABLE 5. Contrasts of extremity alone



Hamlet 5 1 King Lear 8 Macbeth 3 Othello 2 Total 18 0 1

aThe more extreme face threat is more politely expressed. bThe more extreme face threat is less politely expressed. cTwo face threats, differing in extremity, are expressed with equal politeness.


Congruent with theory Hamlet [I,ii,61/III,i,183-186 [lI,ii,67/III,ii,240-2411 [I,ii,192/V,i,2671

[II,ii,10-14/III,i,26-27] [III,i,93-94/III,i,96] King Lear [I,ii,27/I,ii,311 [I,i,70/II,iv,154-155j [I,ii,171-172/II,i,22]

[II,iv,137/II,iv,145-149] [III,v,15/III, vii,7-8] [IV,v,16-17/IV,v,21-22] [V,i,6-9/V,iii,75-79j [V,iii,42-44/V,iii,60-62]

Macbeth [1I,iii,153-155/II,i,22-24] [I, vi,24-25/I,vi,28-291 [IV, iii, 193-195/IV, iii,201-203]

Othello [I,ii,6-9/II,iii,220-221] [I,ii,6-9/III,iii,94-95]

Weakly contradictory to theory Hamlet [I,ii,192-193/I,iv,811

Iago: Nay but he prated, And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms Against your honor, that with the little godliness I have I did full hard forbear him. (I, ii, 6-9)

This is richly redressed, but when the target of criticism is Cassio, lago changes super-strategies and speaks off record.

Iago: For Michael Cassio, I dare be sworn, I think that he is honest. (III, iii, 124-125)

No criticism in that. But where's the relevance? No one ever thought Cas- sio not honest. What can lago have in mind? When he speaks of Desde- mona, we have already seen that he begins several leagues from his target.

Excessive redress in extremity. Two examples do more than confirm theory; they demonstrate that a politeness too great for the speaker's surface

197


meaning communicates a deeper meaning that carries a more extreme risk. On record speech that is very elaborately redressed, too elaborately redressed, approaches the off record super-strategy (see Figure i). There is a little ambiguity; more than one speaker's intention is possible and yet the communication is not off record because the hearer, taking in all the redress, is clear that the riskier meaning is the intended one. "Excessive redress" is a super-strategy not found in the Brown/Levinson theory but discovered in this study. In form, excessive redress falls between "on record with many redressive acts" and "off record" and it also falls between these strategies in riskiness and in ambiguity and deniability. This co-occurrence of systematic properties, consistent with the postulates of politeness theory, is good evidence for the theory as a whole.

In I, iii, of Macbeth, following the Witches' prophecies and the fulfillment of the first (Thane of Cawdor), Macbeth in an aside to Banquo says:

Think upon what hath chanced, and at more time, The interim having weighed it, let us speak Our free hearts each to other. (153-155)

The speech is unambiguous and only slightly polite (an indirect imperative); it means just what it says. In II, i, after Macbeth and his Lady have plotted the murder of Duncan the king, Banquo observes to Macbeth that the weird sisters have spoken some truth, and Macbeth responds with a speech that closely matches the one just cited in surface meaning but not in politeness.

Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, We would spend it in some words upon that business, If you would grant the time. (22-24)

This very indirect request with its deferential entreat and grant, its subjunctives, nominalizations, and minimization is scored +8, which makes it one of the politest speeches in the play. Why this tremendous addition of redress to a request that is almost the same as the earlier one? It suggests that Mac- beth has in mind a more extreme request than he has directly expressed.

The conversation continues:

Macbeth: If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis, [join my cause when the time comes]

It shall make honor for you. Banquo: So I lose none

In seeking to augment it. (25-27)

And now we know the more extreme request - that Banquo should join his cause when the time comes, a cause linked to the prophecy that Macbeth shall be king, a cause possibly risking dishonor. Banquo's answer shows that he perfectly understands the deeper meaning, which is foreshadowed at the start by an aura of excessive politeness.

198


In Hamlet, there is another example of excessive politeness communicat- ing a riskier meaning than appears on the surface. Rosencrantz and Guilden- stern have been sent for to Elsinore to keep Hamlet company:

King: I entreat you both That, being of so [from such] young days brought up with him, And sith so neighbored to his youth and havior, That you vouchsafe your rest [consent to remain] here in our court Some little time. (II, ii, 10-14)

The request, baldly put, is to stay a while. However, the verbs entreat and vouchsafe express deference; some little time minimizes the imposition; there is much claiming of common ground and nominalization, making a politeness score of +8, which is extravagantly polite for an invitation. Later, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accede to the king's request and he soon ceases to be extravagantly polite, addressing them with routine courtesy (e.g., III, i, 26-27).

The queen is as extreme as the king in seconding his request.

Queen: If it will please you To show us so much gentry [courtesy] and good will As to expend your time with us awhile. (II, ii, 21-23)

Rosencrantz politely says that their dread Majesties might command rather than entreat and Guildenstern adds that they will fully obey and both understand exactly what they are to do. They are to find out what it is that so afflicts Hamlet and report it to the king and queen. They are to play informers to the court on their old schoolfriend. This request is more extreme than the surface invitation to draw Hamlet on to pleasures because it requires them to violate the confidences of friendship and become crea- tures of the king. How do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern know that they are asked to do something so extreme? They are asked too politely.

Politeness in Shakespeare's tragedies increases with the power of the speaker over the hearer and it increases with the extremity of the face threat. Politeness decreases with the withdrawal of affection and increases with an increase of affection. The results for power and extremity are those predicted by theory. If affection is thought of as the D (or distance) of politeness theory, then the results contradict theory. It is more accurate to say that the affect results call for a reformulation of the D parameter.

A student of the tragedies forms normative conceptions of how much politeness is appropriate for various values of P, D, and R. Sometimes it is a consistent attribute of a character to be more than normally polite or less so or to show a deviant pattern of politeness. When this is so, politeness becomes one of the many things defining character. In Hamlet, the characters called Clown and young Osric, a courtier, have one scene apiece talking

199


with Hamlet. These two minor figures are almost exhaustively characterized by their odd politeness styles, but they appear only briefly and their scenes are not central to the play. Kent in King Lear offers a contrast. He is a major figure, characterized in part by a certain politeness style, and this style has deep resonances in the play as a whole.

EXAMPLES OF CHARACTER DELINEATION

A didactic and insolent clown Shakespeare's clowns are not circus clowns but clownish fellows of the lower class: court attendants, artisans, beggars, officials, soldiers, rustics. Clowns are very different from fools, not sophisticated and witty, but broadly humorous. Sometimes the humor arises unintentionally out of their own pricked pretensions and pomposities, out of malapropisms and fastidious but absurd logic. Shakespeare's audiences laugh at clowns as well as with them, whereas fools are almost never laughed at. Yet the clowns have always a kind of sense, either garden variety common sense or street smarts. The gravediggers in Act V of Hamlet are designated Clown and Other.

Clown appears to be the master-gravedigger and Other only a journey- man. In a short scene between the two, Clown manifests the generic char- acteristics of pretension, malapropism, and ironic common sense. Hamlet and Horatio come on the scene and, though not recognized, are clearly identified as aristocrats. In the exchanges that follow, between Hamlet and Clown, the former says sirrah and thou and the latter sir and you. These forms are normative and do nothing to create Clown's character, but there is something in his style that does. His first response to Hamlet involves a contradiction and so violates Grice's maxim of quality, signaling off record speech and the need to use inference to work out meaning.

Hamlet: Whose grave's this, sirrah? Clown: Mine, sir.

Hamlet: I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't. (V, i, I19-12I, I24)

Hamlet's question could be intended to ask either about ownership or future occupancy. "Who is the digger of this grave?" or "Who is to fill this grave?" The linguistic ambiguity is there but, in context, it is clear that the speaker is asking who will lie in the grave and that it is wantonly mischie- vous of Clown to pretend otherwise. But there is no indication that Clown has a face-threatening act in mind, no hint of any risky meaning. He is pretending to find Hamlet's question ambiguous and so pretending that Hamlet has been the first to violate the maxim of quality. It is a challenge to a quick game of off record speech. It is as if he had tossed Hamlet a ball to start a game of catch.

200


Hamlet instantly recognizes the playfully competitive intent. He does not answer: "What! Thine! How can it be thine when thou'rt not dead?" but instead delivers a swift return: "I think it be thine for thou liest in't." The game is continued with the verb lie, which is ambiguous between "speak falsely" and "occupy" and it is witty in telling the gravedigger that if mine is his answer to the intended occupancy question, then it is a false answer and if mine is the gravedigger's answer to the question "Who is the digger of this grave," then it is a redundant answer because there he obviously is - in the grave. And, of course, the quick, clever response reveals Hamlet's esprit.

The two continue with sallies exploiting ambiguities in quick ('alive' or 'fast') and man ('humankind' or 'man not woman'), and Hamlet says to Horatio: "How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card or equivo- cation will undo us" (V, i, 139-140). It seems the age is grown so fastidious that peasants are catching up with courtiers.

Clown is not an aspirant to high status; he simply enjoys trying to score over his superiors. This is deliciously conveyed in his use of the indefinite your, a form that retains today the suggestion of didactic expertise, of pretension and condescension that it had in the 17th century (Gillett 1987). Imagine a scholar discoursing: "Your clown in Shakespeare is not the same as your fool." Your adds to the a rich sense of the insider conveying esoteric knowledge. Clown explains to Hamlet, "Your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body" (V, i, I72-173). This pretension to professionalism offers ironic counterpoint in a scene of death - the leveler. An inept courtier In Elizabethan England, there were many young men attempting to enter the ruling elite, and there was a distinctive genre of books telling them how to go about it. Concern for the feelings of others was evidently not enough to generate the fastidious details of dress, of sitting, walking, and bowing, of elegant locution, graceful posture, deference, and self-deprecation described in Castiglione's The book of the courtier (I966) and in della Casa (1958), Ascham (1970), and Elyot (I962). The code was so intricate that Whigham (I984) has suggested that its first purpose, for the aristocracy, was to repress mobility, and certainly it was a filter that excluded many. Among those in the tragedies who were ambitious to rise are Oswald, Rosencrantz and Guil- denstern, and "young Osric, a courtier," who approaches Hamlet and Hora- tio (in V, ii) with the king's invitation to Hamlet that he try his skill with rapier and dagger against Laertes.

Osric: Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his Majesty. (91-92)

The invitation with its deference, question, subjunctives, and nominalizations scores +6 for politeness, and Osric's speeches, generally, are far above

201


the politeness norm as are Hamlet's replies in which he mocks Osric's style. Politeness theory picks up the special character of the affected courtier and of Hamlet's parody but politeness is not identical with Elizabethan cour- toisie. The primary goal of the courtier was to create a brilliant self that would arrest the gaze and compel admiration. This is not politeness at all but a face threat; it risks the self-esteem of the other. Politeness is required to redress the brilliance, to make the self-presentation agreeable to the other or, at least, tolerable. From the first, Osric is very polite but, from the first, his politeness fails with Hamlet and with Horatio.

Osric's greeting is "Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark," which is surely an agreeable salutation, and yet Hamlet's aside to Horatio is: "Dost know this waterfly?" From this we may conclude that the way Osric looks - his apparel, movement, and gestures - establishes him as a certain type, lightweight and distasteful to Hamlet. Osric would have doffed his hat, using his right hand, as prescribed, and executing the full gesture as the courtesy books recommended. He would have bowed, probably more than once, and the placing of his foot, the exact manner of drawing it back, the angle of the torso would all have been calculated to add to the handsome- ness of his person. But the performance must have been excessive or too obviously practiced because it did not please.

There follows the comedy of the doffed hat.

Hamlet: Put your bonnet to his right use. 'Tis for the head. (V, ii, 94)

This is a sharp directive though the neuter his probably added a playful tone. Wildeblood writes: "Following a salutation it was the accepted practice for a superior to request his inferior to replace his hat, and it was not out of place for the latter, in complying, to show some slight hesitancy in deference to his superior" (I965:I67). But the hesitancy ought not to be overdone. Della Casa (1958) used, as an example of absurd superfluity, a man who could not comfortably put his bonnet back on his head while facing his superior, and Osric was such a one.

Osric: I thank your lordship, it is very hot. (V, ii, 95) Which means: "Pray do not let the doffed hat trouble you; it is for my own comfort."

Hamlet, the master of all language games, now entangles Osric in contradictions of courtliness.

Hamlet: No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly. Osric: It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed. Hamlet: But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion"

[temperament]. Osric: Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry, as 'twere - I cannot tell how.

(V, ii, 96-102)

202

POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE' S TRAGEDIES

The problem is that the courtier must not disagree with his lord's reading of the weather (a face-threatening act), but when contradictory readings are issued in succession, it becomes obvious that the secondings are rule-governed compliance, not sincere agreement. The effect is not brilliant.

The changes of the weather leave Osric no excuse for retaining his hat in his hands and finally Hamlet gestures him to put it on.'0

Osric: Nay, good my lord; for my ease, in good faith. (V, ii, io6)

The poor gentleman is unable to put on his hat while talking with the Prince of Denmark. That is, we shall see, a crucial defect in his performance. But he goes on:

Osric: Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes - believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences [distinguishing character- istics] of very soft society and great showing. Indeed, to speak feelingly [justly] of him, he is the card [chart] or calendar of gentry; for you shall find in him the continent [summary] of what part a gentleman would see. (V, ii, 107-I1I2)

Nothing in Osric's long speech is to the point, the point being the challenge. Brown and Levinson write: "there is an element in formal politeness that sometimes directs one to minimize the imposition by coming rapidly to the point, avoiding the further imposition of prolixity and obscurity" (I987:130). When speaking to a superior, we know that a few extra words may be needed to express deference, but the preliminary "Sir" would here suffice. To what end, then, the prolix praise of Laertes? It does not benefit absent Laertes and it does not benefit Hamlet or Horatio. What is said of Laertes is exactly what Osric fatuously believes to be true of himself. It is self-praise, then, and Hamlet is subjected to all this prolixity so that Osric may make a brilliant effect. The courtesy books enjoin the courtier to be modest and warn that self-praise is only tolerable when very skillfully done. Osric has sacrificed consideration of the hearer for self-presentation. He has not been well or properly "demeaned" - in Goffman's (1956) sense.

The language Osric uses is a part of his self-presentation. He strives for eloquence by using words in uncommon extended ways, inventing figures, varying word order, but the effect achieved is only affectation. The word continent is used in the sense of "sum and substance" not the familiar sense "land mass." The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1590 as the date of the first use in Osric's sense and the second citation (I604) is Osric's speech itself. Probably then continent as "sum and substance" is to be taken in the play as the courtier's invention. What would the point of it have been? Card could mean "map" or "chart" and that suggests an intention to evoke the "land mass" sense and make a kind of geography trope, but it is a trope without purpose and calendar really will not fit in at all. The result is irritat-

203


ing redundancy - more words with no addition of meaning and a vague sense of failed cleverness.

Hamlet's response is a glorious parody not only of Osric but of several kinds of linguistic affectation common in the period. He begins: "Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you." Definement here means "definition" and it is borrowed from French. Young people who had traveled abroad liked to advertise their experience by introducing loan words - usually from French or Italian. Perdition is simply a very long and rare word that can mean "loss" but to use it instead of loss in this sentence is grotesque.

In saying: "Sir, his definition suffers no loss in you" Hamlet not only tells Osric that he has described Laertes well but also says that Osric himself is not a lesser gentleman, which was Osric's own vainglorious thought. The parody is very broad, but Osric, too dull-witted to recognize a parody, continues in the same style: "Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him" (V,

, 122).

What was it that made Osric's performance as a courtier so poor and so distasteful to a prince? It identified him as one of a breed "the drossy age dotes on" who "only got the tune of the time." Osric may have studied courtesy books and learned perfectly the rules in them but the rules alone would never make an ideal courtier. His self-presentation was grossly bad. However, it might have been much better and still lacked an essential quality: spontaneity or sprezzatura (Castiglione I966). It was cruel of the courtesy books to lay down all manner of rules and strategies to be learned and then say (almost) that it was all in vain because the most perfectly prepared performance had no value without effortlessness. And there was some suggestion that effortlessness or sprezzatura might, just possibly, not be teachable. In any case, it was a quality that came naturally to the aristocracy and not easily to others. Presenting themselves as guides to achieved status, the books laid on one requirement that might not be possible to achieve and so there was some comfort in them for those having ascribed status - the aristocracy. Sprezzatura seems to function as the essential quality of redressive politeness if a brilliant self-presentation is to be made agreeable.

Rash but devoted; politeness and true feeling

Kent, in King Lear, like Osric and Clown in Hamlet, is a character with a striking politeness style, but Kent is a major figure throughout the play and the important thing about Kent's style is the way it patterns across characters and changes with their fortunes. The great-change of fortune in the play is the downfall of the king. This changes Kent's behavior and the behavior of everyone - King Lear's most of all.

When King Lear in I, i, intemperately banishes his best-loved and most loving daughter, Cordelia, there is one who protests his folly - the Earl of Kent.

204


Kent: Good my liege - Lear: Peace, Kent!

Come not between the Dragon and his wrath. (I, i, 122-I24)

Kent begins with the deference everyone shows Lear but, having been sharply cut off and warned not to intercede, he blunders on.

Kent: Be Kent unmannerly When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man? (I, i, 147-148)

In our technical sense of politeness, this speech is certainly impolite - an unredressed imposition and insult - which establishes Kent's rash nature. However, the word impolite, in its usual sense, is too feeble for the power of the scene. Kent continues his rash attempt to check the king, though threatened: "Kent on thy life no more." In the end he is banished "turn thy hated back on our kingdom." The impetuous intervention, like Cordelia's too blunt "Nothing my lord," feeds Lear's anger and helps to bring on the terrible events that follow.

Kent, disguised as Caius, is taken as a servant by the king and, in Act II, bears the king's letter to Regan and the Duke of Cornwall. At their court, he draws his sword on the detestable Oswald and when Oswald calls for help a goodly company of monsters comes on the scene: Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund. Asked why he has attacked Oswald, Kent replies, in effect, that he does not like the man's looks, whereupon Cornwall says that Kent may per- chance also not like the looks of Cornwall, Edmund, even Regan. Kent's reply:

Kent: Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain: I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant. (II, ii, 94-97)

He is still not putting things so as to take account of the feelings of others. Cornwall and Regan command: "Fetch forth the stocks!" Only the basest

wretches were put in the stocks. To put the king's messenger there was a vio- lent outrage against the king himself; a nonverbal FTA. When Lear sees his messenger, in stocks by command of his daughter and her husband, he says: "They could not, would not do't." Kent's rash acts and "plain" speech have provided Regan and Cornwall with a pretext for the inhospitality they intend.

Kent's style is not always less polite than the norm. With Lear, in the vio- lent storm on the heath, he is gentle and deferential.

Kent: Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest. (III, ii, 6I-62)

205


And, later on:

Kent: Good my lord, enter here. Lear: Wilt break my heart? Kent: I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter. (III, iv, 4-5)

From the time Lear loses his kingdom and is cast out of doors by "wolf- ish" Goneril and Regan, Kent never once fails to address him with forms of respect: sir, good my lord, your Grace, my good master. This is extraor- dinary politeness - not even matched by Ophelia speaking dutifully to her father. Bradley says: "His love for Lear is the passion of his life: it is his life." And "The King is not to him, old wayward, unreasonable, piteous: he is still terrible, grand, the king of men" (I905:307).

Kent's character is not expressed in a consistent single style, as are the characters of Osric and Clown, but by a pattern across characters and in time: Plain-spoken but rash before the king's downfall, he is immensely respectful afterward. Kent's style is a melodic voice that runs the length of the play and rises and falls in meaningful relation to other voices.

When King Lear falls from the heights to the depths, the behavior of every principal changes. Changes of politeness are important, not in themselves, but because they express changes of power, imposition, and feeling. Goneril and Regan in I, i, bid up the price of the kingdom in professions of love for Lear, but in the last scene of II they compete in cutting the size of his reti- nue. "What need you five and twenty?" "Ten, or five?" "What need one?" Cordelia, who in I, i, could not say more than: "I love your Majesty/Ac- cording to my bond, no more nor less," does in IV, vii, most tenderly say: "How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?"

The greatest change is in Lear himself. His exalted station in the first two acts appears in the differential scores for politeness of speech to Lear and speech from Lear. Gloucester, Kent, Burgundy, and France all speak to the king with elaborate politeness. Even Goneril and Regan retain the forms sir and my lord when their actions have made the forms ironic. And to all, Lear is bluntly imperious or unrestrainedly abusive. The average power differential is almost three times greater for Lear than for any other figure in the four tragedies and the reader feels the grandeur.

In the first acts, Lear is more rash, more choleric than Kent. Wounded by Cordelia's restraint, he is instantly furious and disclaims her forever. When Kent intervenes, Lear becomes a dragon. When his Fool speaks too plainly, Lear warns: "Take heed, sirrah - the whip." How great, then, is the change on the heath after Lear has learned "to feel what wretches feel."

Kent: Good my lord, enter here. Lear: Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease.

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

206


On things would hurt me more, but I'll go in. [To the Fool] In, boy; go first. (III, iv, 22-26)

Kent's change from rash action and plain speech yielding, on the downfall of the king, to a kind of gentle dignity is in tune with the transforma- tion of Lear himself and with Cordelia's outspoken tenderness. The changes in Goneril, Regan, and Edmund are parallel with one another and are dis- cordant with Kent, Lear, and Cordelia. All these reverberations make Kent's manners integral to the play in a way that the styles of Osric and Clown are not integral to Hamlet.

It is not too strong to say that King Lear makes a powerful comment on verbal politeness in general. In Act I, those who feel the greatest consideration for others, if we go by their words, are Goneril, Regan, and Edmund, and those who seem to feel the least are Lear, Cordelia, and Kent. The true case is otherwise: The polite speakers are bent on advancing selfish causes, and those who are blunt, rash, and imperious are also those who love. The play seems to say that politeness does not finally matter. It is deliberate behavior that can be put on in the interests of greed, advancement, and desire. It is also civilized behavior, a late tenuous human achievement that can be overthrown in the instant by animal fury. Passions, the play seems to say, rule men's lives.

But what in the end does anyone care about? Cordelia cares for her father, Lear for his child, Edgar for Gloucester, and Kent for his master. Politeness as a set of practices, as a way of putting things when making a criticism or a request, has been shown to be trivial, but the generative core of politeness - concern for the feelings of others - is itself a passion, and it is always able to generate new, truer practices.

Sampling the scene of reconciliation (IV, vii), we hear immense concern.

Cordelia: 0, thou good Kent, how shall I live and work, To match thy goodness? (1-2)

Kent: Pardon, dear madam. (8) Cordelia: 0 you kind gods! (14) Cordelia: 0 my dear father, restoration hang

Thy medicine on my lips.(26-27) Kent: Kind and dear princess. (29)

Lear: I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. (70)

Doctor: Be comforted, good madam. (78)

The words dear, kind, and good are all terms of positive politeness but, among such terms, they comprise a special set. All of them either directly express concern for another ("dear father," "dear princess") or else attribute concern to another ("good Kent," "kind princess," "kind gods"). In this

207


scene, we have no worthy, valiant, honest, noble, or any of the other terms that separate one person from another but only terms of concern. It is as if an abused politeness system had returned to its wellspring. In this scene, and again in Act V, we hear true politeness, which is as serious as formulas and flattery are trivial. True politeness, because it is directly responsive to feeling, needs no courtesy books to teach it nor any striving after sprezzatura.

CONCLUSION

Dramatic texts offer good possibilities for the study of politeness theory. They offer wide social and characterological scope, and because the speech is not elicited from informants but was invented by authors for purposes of their own, dramatic texts can surprise analysts, as Shakespeare has surprised us, into discoveries they had not envisioned. Studying a dramatic text with politeness theory in mind has much in common with studying protocols of spontaneous child speech with a grammar and a theory of acquisition in mind. You do not control the flow of data. It pours over you and you must cope as best you can. There are many deficiencies in such a naturalistic approach. Data sets are often critically incomplete; analyses cannot be fully objective; tests of statistical significance are seldom appropriate. We think the methodologically looser naturalistic study is a valuable supplement to controlled experimental methods. Both offer the analyst rich opportunities to be deceived, but the naturalist is not likely, at least, to underestimate the complexity of the topic.

NOTES

* We are grateful to Celia Millward for guiding us to several sources on Shakespeare's English. I. The four major tragedies are Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. All citations, by act, scene, and lines, will be to the I963 New American Library, Signet Classic editions: Hamlet (E. Hubler, ed.); King Lear (R. Fraser, ed.); Macbeth (S. Barnet, ed.); Othello (A. Kernan, ed.). 2. Parentheses always identify material not in the original text but added by the authors. 3. Wherever the text of the play includes unfamiliar names, allusions, or constructions, the editor is likely to have added footnotes and we reprint the notes from the cited edition, in brackets, following the text. Of course, the more difficult problem is the word familiar to us in form and meaning which, however, needs to be understood in terms of a specifically Elizabe- than context. We discuss these only when they are directly relevant to the politeness level of a speech (Hussey I982). 4. Brown and Levinson dedicate their I987 book to Erving Goffman and so mark what is clearly a great intellectual debt, but they do not map their theory into Goffman's (I956) terms. Hymes (I983) has pointed out the fact that the formulations do intersect but that the intersec- tion seems to leave Goffman's "demeanor" (self-respect or what one owes to oneself) with no equivalent in politeness theory. The present authors believe that the Brown/Levinson theory is almost certainly undercomplicated and underspecified for the whole domain of politeness; it is, however, an explicit and sensitive attempt at synthetic theory. 5. The original, most formal statement of the predicted relationship between face risk or weightiness and strategy selection is: "Given the following set of strategies, the more an act

208


threatens S's or H's face, the more S will want to choose a higher-numbered strategy" (Brown & Levinson I987:60). It is clear that the authors do not think of risk values as algorithms that generate politeness levels, independently of all other considerations, or as stimuli automatically eliciting responses. Empirical research attempting quantitative tests of politeness theory has sometimes used "overt behavior - how speakers actually use these strategies in interaction, in relation to P, D and R assessments - [and sometimes used] subjective ranking of perceived politeness" (ibid., 17). Brown and Levinson, in their 1987 review of research, stress the neces- sity of supplementing quantitative evaluations of polite redress with qualitative analysis, and we have found this to be absolutely essential, because in Shakespeare's tragedies risk levels are not the only important determinants of politeness. It is necessary to know, for instance, when Hamlet is feigning madness and when Ophelia is actually mad, because both states throw off the calibration of risk and politeness that operates in more usual circumstances. When sensitive qualitative analysis precedes the quantitative, we believe, with Brown and Levinson, that: "Controlled experimental tests of the model should, however, be possible, given the specific predictions it makes about the ranking of super-strategies, the ranking of politeness levels within strategies, and the summative nature of P, D and R assessments" (ibid., 22).

6. In the formula for weightiness (Wx), the subscript for power (P) is written "h, s" and the order of the terms is intended to signify that it is the power of the hearer (H) over the speaker that increases the weightiness of the FTA. When the speaker is the more powerful person (Mac- beth addressing his servant), the power variable would have a negative value and would lower weightiness (W). The subscript for distance (D) is written "s, h" and this order is intended to signify symmetry with S's distance from H equal to H's distance from S. 7. We are indebted to Dell Hymes for pointing out that a case can sometimes be made for assigning degrees to both the vertical (power) and horizontal (solidarity/distance) dimensions and summing them. In effect, this procedure creates a single underlying factor: degree of distance. 8. Friedrich (I966) has described subtle expressive shifts in igth-century Russian novels. 9. We are indebted to Dell Hymes for reminding us of this principle, which is an improve- ment over the endless proliferation of doubtful meanings to fit difficult cases. IO. The inclusion in the text of the stage direction. "Hamlet motions him to put on his hat" is an editorial decision and in performance the director decides whether or not Osric does put his hat back on. We think the text favors not putting it back on.

REFERENCES

Abbott, E. A. (1925). A Shakespearean grammar. London: Macmillan. Alrabaa, S. (I985). The use of address pronouns by Egyptian adults. Journal of Pragmatics

9:645-57. Ascham, R. ([I570] 1970). The scholemaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Austin, J. L. (I962). How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press. Barber, C. (1976). Early modern English. London: Deutsch.

([I98I] I987). "You" and "thee" in Shakespeare's Richard III. Leeds Studies in English New Series I2:273-89. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 163-79.

Barnet, S. (ed.). (I963). Macbeth. (Signet Classic Shakespeare.) New York: New American Library.

Baxter, L. A. (I984). An investigation of compliance-gaining as politeness. Human Commu- nication Research 10:427-56.

Blake, N. F. (1983). Shakespeare's language: An introduction. New York: St. Martin's. Blum-Kulka, S. (I985). Indirectness and politeness in requests: Same or different. Paper pre-

sented at the International Pragmatic Conference, Viareggio, Italy. Bradley, A. C. (1905). Shakespearean tragedy. London: Macmillan. Brook, G. L. (I976). The language of Shakespeare. London: Andre Deutsch. Brown, R. (I965). Social psychology. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.

209


Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (I96o). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 253-76.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (ed.), Questions and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(I987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Burton, D. M. (1973). Shakespeare's grammatical style. Austin: University of Texas Press. Byrne, Sister St. Geraldine (1936). Shakespeare's use of the pronoun of address. Its significance

in characterization and motivation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America.

Castiglione, B. ([1528] I966). The book of the courtier. Trans. by Sir Thomas Hoby, I56i. New York: Dutton Everyman.

Clark, H. H., & Lucy, P. (1975). Understanding what is meant from what is said: A study in conversationally conveyed results. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 14:56-72.

Clark, H. H., & Schunk, D. H. (I980). Polite response to polite requests. Cognition 8:111-43. Cody, M., McLaughlin, M., & Schneider, J. (I98I). The impact of relational consequences and

intimacy on the selection of interpersonal persuasion tactics: A reanalysis. Communication Quarterly 29:91-I06.

della Casa, G. ([I558] 1958). Galateo. Trans. by R. S. Pine-Coffin. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Doran, M. (1976). Shakespeare's dramatic language. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Elias, N. ([I9391 I 978). The history of manners. Vol. i, The civilizing process. New York: Ran-

dom House. Elyot, Sir Thomas ([I53I1 I962). The book named the Governor. Ed. by S. E. Lehmberg. New

York: Dutton Everyman. Falbo, T., & Peplau, L. A. (I980). Power strategies in intimate relationships. Journal of Per-

sonality and Social Psychology 38:6I8-28. Fang, H., & Heng, J. H. (I983). Social changes and changing address norms in China. Lan-

guage in Society 12:495-507.

Fraser, B., & Nolen, W. (I98I). The association of deference with linguistic form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 27:93-109.

Fraser, R. (ed.). (I963). King Lear. (Signet Classic Shakespeare.) New York: New American Library.

Friedrich, P. (I966). Structural implications of Russian pronominal usage. In W. Bright (ed.), Sociolinguistics. The Hague: Mouton. 214-59.

Gillett, P. J. ([I974] I987). Me, U, and Non-U: Class connotations of two Shakespearean idioms. Shakespeare Quarterly 25(3):297-309. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. I 17-29.

Goffman, E. (1956). The nature of deference and demeanor. American Anthropologist 58:473-502.

Goody, E. N. (ed.). (1978). Questions and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, D., & Lakoff, G. (I97 I). Conversational postulation. In Papers from the seventh

regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago. 63-84. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and

semantics, III: Speech acts. New York: Academic. 41-58. Grimshaw, A. D. (ig8oa). Social interactional and sociolinguistic rules. Social Forces

58:789-8I0. (ig8ob). Mishearings, misunderstandings, and other non-successes in talk: A plea for

redress of speaker-oriented bias. Sociological Inquiry 50:3I-74.

(I98oc). Selection and labelling of instrumentalities of verbal manipulation. Discourse Processes 3:203-29.

Harris, R. (I984). Truth and politeness: A study in the pragmatics of Egyptian Arabic conversation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University.

Holtgraves, T. (I986). Language structure in social interaction: Perceptions of direct and indirect speech acts and interactants who use them. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51305-14.

Holtgraves, T., Srull, T. K., & Socall, D. (in press). Conversation memory: The effects of

210


speaker status on memory for the assertiveness of conversation remarks. Journal of Person- ality and Social Psychology.

Hubler, E. (ed.). (I963). Hamlet. (Signet Classic Shakespeare.) New York: New American Library.

Hulme, H. M. (I962). Explorations in Shakespeare's language: Some problems of word meaning in the dramatic text. New York: Longman.

Hussey, S. S. (I982). The literary language of Shakespeare. London: Longman. Hymes, D. (I983). Report from an undeveloped country. In B. Bain (ed.), The sociogenics of

language and human conduct. New York: Plenum. Jespersen, 0. (I972). Growth and structure of the English language. gth ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Joseph, Sister M. (I966). Shakespeare's use of the arts of language. New York: Hafner. Kempff, R. (I985). Pronouns and terms of address in Neues Deutschland. Language in Soci-

ety I4:223-37.

Kernan, A. (ed.). (I963). Othello. (Signet Classic Shakespeare.) New York: New American Library.

Kittredge, G. L. (I9I6). Shakespeare: An Address. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Kroger, R. O., Wood, L. A., & Kim, V. (I984). Are the rules of address universal? III Com-

parison of Chinese, Greek, and Korean usage. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 15:273-84.

Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as discourse. New York: Academic.

Lambert, W. E., & Tucker, G. R. (1976). Tu, vous, usted. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Levinson, S. C. (I977). Social deixis in a Tamil village. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Uni-

versity of California, Berkeley. (I982). Caste rank and verbal interaction in Tamilnadu. In D. B. McGilvray (ed.), Caste

ideology and interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 99-235. (I983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lustig, M. W., & King, S. (I980). The effect of communication apprehension and situation on communication strategy choices. Human Communication Research 7:74-82.

Mack, M [(i960] I963). Jacobean Shakespeare: Some observations on the construction of the tragedies. In J. R. Brown & B. Harris (eds.), Stratford upon Avon studies: Jacobean theater Vol. I. London: Arnold. Reprinted in A. Kernan (ed.), Othello. (Signet Classic Shakespeare.) New York: New American Library.

Mehrotra, R. R. (I98I). Non-kin forms of address in Hindi. International Journal of the Sociol- ogy of Language 32:I21-37.

Millward, C. ([I966] I987). Pronominal cases in Shakespearean imperatives. Language 42:I0- I7. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 30I-08.

Mulholland, J. ([I967] I987). "Thou" and "you" in Shakespeare: A study in the second person pronoun. English Studies 48: I-9. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 153-6I.

Ogino, T. (I986). Quantification of politeness based on the usage patterns of honorific expressions. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 58:37-58.

Onions, C. T. ([I9 I] I986). A Shakespeare glossary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paulston, C. B. (1976). Pronouns of address in Swedish: Social class semantics and a chang-

ing system. Language in Society 5:359-86. Poutsma, H. A. (1914). A grammar of late modern English. Groningen. Quirk, R. ([971I] I987). Shakespeare and the English language. In K. Muir & S. Schoenbaum

(eds.), A new companion to Shakespeare studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 67-82. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 3-21.

Replogle, C. ([I973] I987). Shakespeare's salutations: A study in stylistic etiquette. Studies in Philology 70:I72-86. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. IOI-15.

Sadock, J. (974). Towards a linguistic theory of speech acts. New York: Academic. Salmon, V. ([I965] I987). Sentence structures in colloquial Shakespearian English. Transactions

211


of the Philological Society. I05-40. Reprinted in V. Salmon & E. Burness (eds.), A reader in the language of Shakespearean drama. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 265-300.

Searle, J. R. (I969). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (1976). The classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society 5:1-24.

Slugoski, B. R. (I985). Grice's theory of conversation as a social psychological model. Unpub- lished Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University.

Slugoski, B. R., & Turnbull, W. (in press). Cruel to be kind and kind to be cruel: Sarcasm, ban- ter, and social relations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

Spevack, M. (I973). The Harvard concordance to Shakespeare. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Stone, 0. (I966). Social mobility in England, I500-I700. Past and Present 33:17-55.

Vygotsky, L. S. ([I934] I962). Thought and language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Whigham, F. (I984). Ambition and privilege: The social tropes of Elizabethan courtesy theory.

Berkeley: University of California Press. Wildeblood, J. (I965). The polite world. A guide to English manners and deportment from the

thirteenth to the nineteenth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yassin, M. S. F. (I975). A linguistic study of forms of address in Kuwaiti colloquial Arabic.

Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Leeds University.

212

Date post:	21-Apr-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	anneke-vanbrabant
View:	191 times
Download:	9 times

Brown & Gilman

Documents