Politeness Some Universals in Language Usage

Face wants as functional pressures on language

This section describes some interrelations between grammar and face redress. We propose (a) that face redress is a powerful functional pressure on any linguistic system, and (b) that a particular mechanism is discernible whereby such pressures leave their imprint on language structure.

Functionalism in linguistic theory. Before we proceed, a few remarks on some trends in linguistic theory should be made. Recently, after a period of suppression by the methodological presuppositions of transformational generative grammar, there has been a resurgence of interest in functionalist explanation — that is, in the search for a source outside the purely linguistic system that might motivate the bulk of grammatical constraints. Most of this work attempts to locate such sources in the principles of cognitive processing, or in the interaction of language with other mental faculties.

In contrast to what we may call ‘internal’ cognitive functionalist explanation, there are ‘external’ pragmatic theories that seek to link linguistic structures to the organization of communication. The theories of Grice (1971) and Searle (1969) are wholeheartedly of this latter sort, but more tentative partial pragmatic functionalisms are to be found in work stemming largely from the Lakoffs and scattered through issues of the Chicago Linguistic Society papers and in Cole and Morgan 1975.