Politeness strategies in verbal interaction:

An analysis of directness and indirectness

in speech acts
Η ΕΝ Κ Η AVER KATE

Introduction

While it is generally accepted that politeness represents a form of human

behavior which is controlled by certain principles of rationality, these
principles do regulate interactional activities with the ultimate purpose of
getting things accomplished.
As a basic strategy for carrying out the corresponding means-end
operations, politeness manifests itself in both communicative and non-
communicative actions. In the latter case, the polite actor performs purely
instrumental acts, such as opening a door for someone or helping a blind
person cross the street. Normative descriptions of these forms of
politeness are found in etiquette manuals. The study of politeness in
communicative interaction calls for an approach that takes different levels
of analysis into account. The first distinction to be made is that of
metalinguistic and linguistic categories of politeness.

Metalinguistic politeness

Metalinguistic politeness serves two purposes: creating or preserving

sociability, and observing the rules of discourse etiquette.1 In the former
case, the primary aim of the speaker is to avoid the type of interactional
tension that arises when, in a potential communication situation, no
verbal exchange takes place. In order to avoid silence, speakers often have
recourse to the kind of verbal behavior which Malinowsky called 'phatic
communion'. For present purposes, the following observation by Leech is
worth quoting:

We may, indeed, argue for an additional maxim of politeness, the metalinguistic

Thatic Maxim' which may be provisionally formulated either in its negative form
'Avoid silence' or in its positive form 'Keep talking'. It is the need to avoid silence,

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with its implication of opting out of communication, which accounts, at a rather

trivial level, for the discussion of stock subjects such as the weather, and less
trivially, for the occurrence of uninformative statements such as You've had your
hair cut (1983: 141)
It follows that keeping silence implies the performance of a face-
threatening act in that it is associated with lack of consideration or
negative feelings toward the interlocutor. Phatic communion, then, is a
polite strategy for saving or maintaining face.2
The second form of metalinguistic politeness bears upon discourse
etiquette — that is, the set of normative rules that govern conversational
interaction. Corresponding communicative behavior is reflected by such
maxims as: don't shout, don't show a lack of attention, and don't
interrupt.3 Obviously, the latter maxim underlies the system of turn-
taking in conversation; it is verbally expressed by such formulas as
'Pardon me for interrupting, but ...', which indicate the speaker's
awareness that he/she potentially threatens the hearer's face. As a matter
of fact, conversational interruptions are face-threatening acts if they
prevent the interlocutor who is speaking from achieving his communica-
tive goal. The maxim 'don't show a lack of attention' refers to both
conversational-internal and conversational-external behavior. In the
latter case one may think of the speaker mentioned in note 3, who violates
the maxim because he whistles for his dog while his interlocutor is
speaking. The rules involved are general rules which do not bear
specifically upon conversational structure. In the former case, we are
dealing with what Stati (1982: 193) calls ΊΙ codice deWinterscambio
verbale\ which is centered upon the conversation partners' obligation to
react properly to each other's speech acts, such as reciprocating a
greeting, answering a question, and indicating one's reason(s) for not
complying with a request.
To summarize, metalinguistic politeness manifests itself in two basic
types of interactional behavior: phatic communion and observance of
discourse etiquette. Phatic communion is the verbal realization of the
maxim 'Avoid silence' or 'Keep talking'. Discourse etiquette is based
upon conversational-external maxims such as 'don't shout', on the other
hand, and upon conversational-internal maxims such as 'reciprocate a
greeting', on the other.

Linguistic politeness

Our next level of analysis is the level of linguistic politeness, where a

primary distinction must be made between macro and micro speech acts.

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 Politeness strategies in verbal interaction 61

A typical example of a macro speech act is a request preceded and/or

followed by a presequence and postsequence which respectively serve to
motivate the directive core act. It is interesting to add that presequences
may also consist partially or entirely of phatic communion. In this case,
perhaps, it is more proper to speak of pseudophatic communion, since the
speaker pretends to achieve no other aim than displaying a socially
appreciated form of interactional behavior, whereas in actual fact his/her
behavior serves to reduce the negative face involved in the ultimate
request. The following example from Holmes illustrates a typical instance
of the strategy at issue:

(One friend to another):

Oh you've had your hair done — it looks great (three turns intervene) oh that
reminds me are you free to babysit tonight?' (1984: 362)

The present paper will be concerned with the category of micro speech
acts, its object of analysis being the different ways in which the expression
of politeness correlates with the internal structure of directive speech acts.
The model used is based on the componential analysis of the speech act,
which is split up into four integrated sub-acts: articulation, illocution,
reference, and predication.4
The focus will be on the illocutionary and the referential sub-act, with
particular attention paid to direct and indirect manifestations of the
speech act as strategies for expressing politeness.
The relevance of the remaining sub-acts — articulation and predication
— may be briefly illustrated by the following examples. At the level of
articulation, intonation is found to be a major device for conveying
politeness. Thus, the imperative sentence 'Close the door!' which is often
uttered with the reinforcing rise-fall intonation contour characteristic of
categorical or authoritarian orders, may also be marked for requestive
intonation, as illustrated by the following discussion by Rintell:

Suppose, for example, someone has indicated to a co-worker that he has an

interesting piece of gossip to relate and invites the co-worker into his office. When,
upon entering the office, this person is told by his colleague, 'close the door', the
request will be heard as sufficiently polite, since the hearer will recognize the
reason for the request: i.e., to establish privacy for the benefit of both parties.
(1981:33)

Politeness strategies developed at the level of predicate selection typically

lead to the use of euphemisms. Compare the following observation by
Leech:

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62 H. Haverkate

One can disguise unpleasant subjects by referring to them by means of apparently

inoffensive expressions (e.g., workers are 'made redundant' instead of being
'dismissed'). (1983: 147)

It is clear, then, that if euphemisms are selected for the specific purpose of
suppressing unwelcome connotations of predicative expressions, the
speaker displays a form of behavior characterized by what nowadays is
called 'negative politeness'.

Direct versus indirect speech acts

I now wish to turn to the illocutionary and referential sub-act, which will
be shown to play a central role in the performance of indirect speech acts.
It has often been pointed out that politeness is the chief motivation for
speakers to express themselves indirectly. What is less clear, however, is
how directness and indirectness of speech acts should be defined. A glance
at the literature on the subject shows that the problem has been studied
from a wide variety of perspectives. Gordon and Lakoff (1975), for
example, operate within the framework of generative semantics. They
claim that a certain set of so-called 'conversational postulates' predicts in
a hypothetico-deductive way the structure of the different realizations of
indirect speech acts. Grice (1975) discusses indirect speech acts in terms of
'conversational implicatures', which he considers exploitations of the
different kinds of maxims underlying the general 'co-operative principle'.
Searle (1975) focuses his attention on the relation between illocutionary
intention and illocutionary interpretation. He puts forward the hypothe-
sis that in order to arrive at the proper interpretation of an indirect speech
act, the hearer has to reconstruct the meaning of the utterance by means
of a ten-step procedure.
Leech (1983) adopts a rather extreme point of view, claiming that all
speech acts, even those realized by imperative utterances such as 'Switch
on the heater!', are indirect to a greater or lesser degree.
As an introduction to the model I have elaborated on in Haverkate
(1979, 1984) I would like to discuss Searle's classic example:

(1) Can you pass the salt!

For Searle and many others, this request is a typical instance of an

indirect speech act, because the speaker performs two illocutionary acts at
the same time: he/she explicitly formulates a question, and, by implica-
tion, intends that question to be taken as a request. Although multiplicity

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 Politeness strategies in verbal interaction 63

of force is certainly at issue here, it is difficult to see why that would

account for the indirectness of the speech act. As a matter of fact, the
prepositional core of the utterance not only specifies the act to be carried
out by the hearer, but it also contains an explicit reference to the hearer.
Consequently, the latter will have no difficulty in recognizing the ultimate
illocutionary purpose of the speaker. In more general terms, any compe-
tent speaker of the language has mastered the pragmatic rule that
questions concerning the hearer's ability to perform a certain action
conventionally count as requests.
What we are dealing with here is a characteristic instance of the
category of Gricean conventional implicature. This is tantamount to
saying that the hearer need not have recourse to particular background
information in order to get at the proper interpretation of the speech act.
The alleged indirectness of speech acts such as (1) cannot therefore be
motivated either from a syntactic or from a pragmatic point of view.
Take the following example:

(2) It is cold in here.

This assertion receives a directive interpretation if the speaker intends it

implicitly to convey a request, such as closing the door, shutting the
window, or turning off the fan. Obviously, any of these interpretations
involves a twofold illocutionary force. However, the difference from the
foregoing example is evident: as indicated by the variety of possible
interpretations — three have been suggested, but others could easily be
added — the hearer needs to have relevant background information in
order to find out which particular action the speaker wishes him/her to
carry out. The relative complexity of the interpretive act of the hearer is
reflected by the linguistic structure of the utterance. That is, (2), unlike (1),
contains neither a formal reference to the hearer nor a specific description
of the action to be performed. The assertion explicitly formulated indicates
only the reason the speaker has for uttering the directive. This means that
utterances such as (2) are characteristic manifestations or indirect speech
acts; they belong to the category of Gricean conversational implicatures.5
Further, note that the pragmalinguistic difference between (1) and (2)
derives from the speaker referring to particular preconditions underlying
the performance of directive illocutionary acts, that is, a reference to the
ability of the hearer to perform the act in the former case, and a reference
to the reason the speaker has for having the act performed in the latter.
In addition to manipulation of the preconditions of the illocutionary
act, implicatures may be brought about by manipulating the referential
act. For illustration purposes, compare:

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64 H. Haverkate

(3) Such remarks ought not be made in public.

Using the interpretation that the speaker makes this assertion with the
intention of implicitly directing a prohibition to the hearer, his not
making explicit reference to the latter is a strategic device for mitigating
directive content. As to linguistic representation, the expression of the
forbidden act is explicit, while reference to the actor is implicit.
The comparative analysis of the three examples discussed above makes
it possible to set up a three-point scale indicating formal boundaries
between directness and indirectness in directive speech acts. Directness is
involved in utterances such as (1), which contain a full specification of the
act to be performed as well as an overt reference to the hearer.6
Indirectness is involved in utterances like (2) which lack any formal
specification of both the act and the actor (the hearer). An intermediate
position is occupied by utterances such as (3), which specify only the act,
and not the actor.
The scale model outlined above is the framework within which the
central problem of this paper will be investigated. This problem can be
formulated as follows: how is verbal politeness conveyed by directness
and indirectness in speech acts?
The first point to be made concerns the fact that politeness is not a
property of certain classes of sentences, but a property of utterances
produced in a concrete communication situation — or, as it has been put
by Fräser and Nolen:

... no sentence is inherently polite or impolite. We often take certain expressions

to be impolite, but it is not the expressions themselves but the conditions under
which they are used that determines the judgment of politeness. (1981: 96)

This means that even a flat imperative need not necessarily be interpreted
as a categorical order. Thus, as we have seen before, in an appropriate
context the imperative utterance 'Close the door' may sound polite. On
the other hand, sentence types expressing hearer-based preconditions;
such as those introduced by 'Can you ...?' and 'Would you be so kind
...?', which serve as conventional frames for conveying polite requests,
cannot be automatically employed for that purpose. Thus 'Can you lend
me $50,000?' directed to a stranger will not be regarded as sufficiently
polite, because such a delicate and confidential appeal to the interlocutor
requires ample motivation by specific pre- and/or post-sequences.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that politeness forms based on the
expression of illocutionary preconditions can be used ironically, in which
case the utterance is intended to be interpreted as a categorical or

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 Politeness strategies in verbal interaction 65

authoritarian order. This may be seen from examples like 'Would you
kindly get off my foot?' and 'Would it be too much if I suggested that you
could possibly make a little less noise?' (Searle 1975: 65, 67).7

Negative politeness and directness and indirectness of speech acts

In the ensuing analysis of the three examples under consideration, the

basic parameter applied will be that of the concept of negative politeness.
Remember that (1), (2), and (3) are members of the class of directives, so
that they represent inherently face-threatening acts. Therefore, the
politeness formally expressed serves to reduce the risk of bringing the
interactional relation between speaker and hearer out of balance. In
example (1), the speaker avoids imposing his will upon the hearer by
making explicit the illocutionary precondition bearing upon the ability of
the hearer to perform the action. Note that a similar perlocutionary effect
can be produced by making explicit the precondition bearing upon the
willingness of the hearer to do the act. Compare, for instance:

(4) Would you be willing to lend me these books!

Both (1) and (4) show that with directives the questioning of hearer-based
preconditions is a strategic device for expressing negative politeness. The
corresponding interrogatives literally specify the speaker's concern with
the physiological and psychological state of the hearer involved in the
performance of the requested action. This form of politeness, therefore,
consists in the speaker's expressing empathy with the hearer concerning
the future behavior of the latter. More specifically, the speaker is
observing what Leech has called the 'tact maxim' (1983: 132) — that is, by
asking questions about the ability and willingness of the hearer, the
speaker suggests being aware of thie energy needed by the latter for the
performance of the requested action.
Furthermore, the interrogative force of the utterance implies a second
form of politeness, because its literal purpose is to indicate that the hearer
is offered the option to cooperate or not with the speaker. A polite
reaction by the noncooperative hearer consists in indicating the reason or
reasons he/she has for not complying with the request. Obviously, this
justification may be preceded by an explicit negative answer to the
question. If the hearer decides to cooperate, his compliance with the
request is often preceded or accompanied by an affirmative answer to the
question.
With respect to the formal realization of the auxiliary, (1) and (4) show

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66 H. Haverkate

an important difference in the sense that the former is inflected for the
indicative and the latter for the conditional mood. The use of the
indicative mood in (1) pragmatically presupposes the performance of an
action to which relatively little energy is supposed to be devoted; the
burden imposed upon the hearer is a light one. In general, this involves
routine actions bearing upon the transfer of so-called 'free goods'.8
The use of the conditional mood in (4), which refers to a nonexistent
state of affairs, pragmatically presupposes that a relatively heavy burden
is imposed upon the hearer.
It is important to point out that the speaker's calculation of cost is not
only determined by the complexity of the action to be performed, but also
directly related to the social distance to the hearer. That is, the greater the
distance, the greater the cost. Note, however, that the above interpreta-
tion of the facts at stake does not necessarily imply that (4) is more polite
than (I).9 What must be emphasized is that a rational correlation holds
true between the formal structure of the polite directive on the one hand,
and the complexity of the action and the social relation between the
interlocutors on the other.
What follows is an analysis of the directive interpretation of example (2).
Due to the cooccurrence of assertive and directive force, this utterance is
prototypical of the class of indirect speech acts; it contains neither a reference
to the hearer nor an explanation of the action to be performed. Conse-
quently, (2) is appropriate in those communication situations where the
speaker wishes to avoid making the slightest impression of imposing his will
upon the hearer. Obviously, the perlocutionary effect intended is produced
by the explicitly conveyed assertive force of the utterance. Note further that
the directive interpretation of the example under discussion implies two
different kinds of rationality. At the level of pragmatic analysis, the behavior
of the speaker should be qualified as rational, because he performs an
indirect speech act in order to display negative politeness; in this way, he
contributes to the correct development of the verbal interaction.
At the level of propositional analysis, rationality manifests itself by
virtue of the fact that the speaker indicates his reason for getting the
hearer to perform the action. This may be seen from the following
paraphrase, which comprises a direct impositive utterance specifying the
act to be performed by the hearer followed by a causal subordinate clause
specifying the speaker's motivation:

(2a) Please close the door (shut the window, etc.), because it is cold in
here.

Comparing the interrogative force of example (1) and the assertive force

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 Politeness strategies in verbal interaction 67

of (2), we find that the literal purpose of the former is to elicit an action
from the hearer (that is, answering the question), whereas the literal
purpose of the latter is not to elicit an action, but to bring about a mental
change on the part of the hearer. As a result, (2) imposes a lighter
interpersonal claim upon the hearer. It is for this reason that indirect
directives such as (2) are typically used to prevent negative face in two kinds
of communication situations. First, the interlocutors are separated by a
relatively major social distance, which may be horizontal or vertical. In
the former case, speaker and hearer do not know each other well or do
not know each other at all. Making use of the parameters applied by
Brown and Oilman (1960) to define the social dimensions of pronouns of
address, we can describe the interactional structure of the communication
situation at issue in the following way: the relation between speaker and
hearer is characterized by equality, but not by solidarity. As is suggested
by the term, when vertical distance is involved, the hearer has power or
authority over the speaker.
In the second kind of communication situation, the speaker acts on the
assumption that the performance of the requested action will not be
regarded by the hearer in terms of the transfer of free goods. Thus, in the
case illustrated by (2), we might think of a hearer known to hate being in
warm or unventilated rooms. It follows that the literal assertive force of
example (2) serves as an efficient tool to protect the hearer's face.
Specifically, the hearer may disregard the implicit directive force by
reacting only to the assertion. As a consequence, a discussion may arise as
to whether or not it is cold in the room in which the verbal exchange takes
place. It is even possible for the hearer to refrain from showing a verbal
reaction to the speech act in question, since the illocutionary point of
assertives is getting the hearer to accept the propositional content
conveyed as the expression of a true state of affairs; the hearer is not
supposed to carry out a particular action or to display a conventionally
prescribed form of behavior.
The foregoing corroborates the conclusion drawn earlier, that indirect
speech acts such as (2) are prototypical instances of conversational
implicatures. The following argument may give some more support to this
point of view. 'Can you pass the salt?' is a conventional request
concerning the performance of not more than one specific action: passing
the salt. 'It is cold in here', however, is not a conventional request for, say,
turning off the fan, since the action to be performed cannot be ascertained
by the hearer without having recourse to his knowledge of the situation
within which the utterance is expressed.
I now wish to return to example (3), which occupies, as far as the
manifestation of directness and indirectness is concerned, an intermediate

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68 H. Haverkate

position between examples (1) and (2). On the one hand, (3) contains a
literal specification of the prohibited action,10 making it more difficult for
the hearer to disregard the partially explicit directive force of this
utterance than it would be to disregard the entirely implicit one of 'It is
cold in here'. On the other hand, the example is characterized by an
agentless passive construction, so that the speaker reduces potential loss
of face by not overtly identifying the hearer as the performer of the
action. The politeness strategy at issue is an instance of what could
properly be called 'defocalization'. I have defined defocalization else-
where (Haverkate 1984: 83-84) in more general terms as a strategy
developed by the speaker in order to minimize his/her own role, or that of
the hearer, in the state of affairs described. In applying this strategy the
speaker suppresses the identity of the agent by making use of construc-
tions which express nonspecific or implicit reference. Evidently, the
utterance under discussion is an instance of a directive which implicitly
refers to the hearer. Nonspecific reference is expressed by the following
paraphrase, which could be used to produce the same perlocutionary
effect:

(3a) One could better avoid making such remarks in public.

It is worth noting that defocalizing politeness can be used to prevent two

sorts of negative face loss where speech acts such as (3) are performed —
to prohibit and to reproach.
Obviously, the reproach potentially implied by (3) bears upon the
hearer's display of an undesirable form of social behavior. To sum up, we
may say that the process of deindividualization discussed above typically
reflects the speaker's intention of protecting the hearer's face. Brown and
Levinson implicitly refer to defocalization by stating: 'In many languages,
agent deletion is allowed not only in imperatives but also in other verb
forms that encode acts which are intrinsically face-threatening acts'
(1978:196).

Conclusion

The major conclusion to be drawn from this paper is that decomposition

of the speech act produces an appropriate model for describing politeness
phenomena at a microlevel. It has been shown that in directives, speakers
manipulate the illocutionary and referential subacts in order to prevent
negative face. The strategies involved can be formally analyzed in terms of
the distinction between direct and indirect speech acts. It has also been

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demonstrated that linguistic form and pragmatic function interact in such

a way that a three-point scale can be established to define empirically
directness and indirectness in directive speech acts. The basic parameter
for carrying out this analysis rests upon the character of the description of
the action to be performed by the hearer. Three different situations have
been distinguished: (1) The description is fully explicit, containing a
referential expression that identifies the hearer as the performer of the
action. (2) The description is fully implicit, lacking any lexical or
referential indication concerning the action to be performed. (3) The
description is semi-explicit or semi-implicit, which means that only the
action is specified, not the actor.
The points on the scale correspond to clearly distinct categories of face
risk which are determined by two dominant factors: the complexity of the
action to be performed and the social distance between speaker and
hearer.11 As to the analysis of the latter factor, Brown and Oilman's
framework (1960) may be expected to provide necessary and sufficient
criteria — namely, power, equality, and solidarity.

Notes

1. This term has been taken from Garvey (1977: 67), who applies it in the restricted sense
of the obligation of the discourse participants to react to each other's speech acts.
2. Note that keeping silent may also have inherently polite implications. Thus, as has been
pointed out by Leech, The adage on which children of a previous age were reared,
"Don't speak unless you are spoken to", reminds us that silence may be the only polite
form of behavior available to someone of little status' (1983: 141). This point is
reflected in an interesting way by the etymology of the Spanish noun infante, which
denotes the non-firstborn son of a Spanish king. Taking into account its Latin origin, it
literally means 'being unable to speak'. In later times, however, it adopted the meaning
of 'not being allowed to speak in the presence of the king, unless the latter had
explicitly given his permission to do so', thus reflecting an institutionalized form of
metalinguistic politeness.
3. Fräser and Nolen mention the following violations of discourse etiquette: The speaker
who insists on speaking unclearly, interrupting, switching languages, or perhaps
whistling for his dog while the other is speaking is violating general terms of the
conversational contract and is viewed by the hearer as impolite' (1981: 96).
4. In the present context no attention will be paid to nonverbal and paraverbal politeness
strategies such as smiling, nodding, and bowing. Logically, paraverbal and verbal
politeness run parallel. Thus, our communicative competence prevents us, for example,
from performing a speech act which at the articulatory level is characterized by a
menacing intonation contour and at the paraverbal level by an affective smile, since
this would create a kind of double-bind pattern. Observe, however, that when we wish
to express ourselves in an ironical way, we may use strategic paradoxes to convey
informative content. Irony is, as far as I can see, the only exception to the rule that the
application of incoherent strategies produces deviant utterances.

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70 H. Haverkate

5. It should be stressed that 'It is cold in here' need not necessarily have requestive force.
It may be intended to convey an order, in which case the utterance is characterized by a
reinforcing rise-fall intonation contour. Note further that the order interpretation may
also be emphasized by certain qualifying expressions. Thus, 'It is terribly cold in here',
uttered with the appropriate intonation, is likely to express the speaker's intention to
impose his will upon the hearer.
6. Imperative expressions, of course, also belong to this category, although it is a well
known fact that in many languages reference to the second-person subject is optional. In
order to account for the corresponding deletion, two independent pragmatic explana-
tions may be given. First, in dyadic face-to-face interaction speakers issuing an order or
making a request cannot but identify their interlocutor as the person who is supposed to
carry out the action described. For this reason, in the normal course of events, referential
ambiguity is excluded. Second, deletion of the imperative subject may be considered a
strategy applied to prevent negative face, since the speaker avoids making use of a
referential expression to identify the hearer as the performer of the requested action.
7. The ironic interpretation of these directives rests upon the fact that the speaker
manipulates the sincerity condition underlying the performance of interrogative speech
acts. That is, the speaker formulates a rhetorical question about the willingness of the
hearer to perform the action. As has been correctly pointed out by Stati (1982: 93), the
ironic politeness involved typically bears upon the hearer's not respecting elementary
forms of good manners. For a more detailed analysis, see Haverkate (1985: 356-361).
8. Compare the following statement by Stati: 'accendere una sigaretta, dire l'ora, passare U
sale a tavola.fornire un indirezzo ecc. sono azioni ehe non costano grande faticha e ehe sono
state designate con I'expressione inglese "free goods'" (1982: 91) ('lighting a cigarette,
telling what time it is, passing the salt at dinner table etc. are acts which do not involve
much trouble and which are indicated by the English expression "free goods'").
9. In this connection, compare: 'Politeness is either present or absent but not present in
various degrees' (Zimin 1981: 42).
10. Note that speech acts such as (3) frequently serve a twofold illocutionary purpose: they
may express both a reproach and a directive. To see this more clearly, it is important to
bear in mind that making a reproach presupposes issuing a directive, which is due to
the fact that an inherent goal of a reproach is to control future actions of the hearer in
the corresponding area of behavior. The opposite, however, does not hold; that is,
speakers uttering a directive do not necessarily presuppose making a reproach. For
present purposes» the focus will be only on directive force.
11. It is interesting to observe that our analysis of negative politeness runs parallel to
Leech's analysis of what he calls the 'tact maxim': 'We can now summarize the way
these various parameters influence tact as follows:
I the greater cost of A to h;
II the greater the horizontal social distance from h to $;
III the greater the authoritative status of h with respect to s;
IV the greater will be the need for optionality, and correspondingly for indirectness,
in the expression of an impositive, if s is to observe the Tact Maxim' (1983: 127).

References

Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language use: Politeness phenomena. In

Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, E. N. Goody (ed.), 56-290.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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 Politeness strategies in verbal interaction 71

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—(1984). Speech Acts, Speakers and Hearers. Reference and Referential Strategies in
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—(1985). La ironia verbal: Un analisis pragmalingüistica. Revisla Espahola de Lingüistica 15
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Henk Haverkate (b. 1936) is a lecturer in modern Spanish linguistics at the University of
Amsterdam. His principal research interests are semantics, pragmatics, and discourse
analysis. Among his publications are Impositive Sentences in Spanish: Theory and Descrip-
tion in Linguistic Pragmatics (1979), 'Strategies in linguistic action* (1983), Speech Acts,
Speakers, and Hearers: Reference and Referential Strategies in Spanish (1984), and 'La ironia
verbal: Un analisis pragmalingüistico' (1985).

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