Politeness, As One of The Main English Features
Dear friends, teachers, let me introduce to your attention, results of the
researching of the category of politeness in English at the linguistic and
grammatical aspects.
No doubt, communication is one of the main human activities. And
politeness is its obligatory element, providing equal and successful process.
We study means of expression of polite communication in English,
observing them from the point of lexicology and grammar.
The relevance of our research is in its important pragmatic interest, because
of an expansion of borders in the international collaboration and increasing role of
multicultural communication.
The object of our research is politeness, as a communicative category in
English culture.
The subjects of the research are means of expression of politeness in
English.
The aim of the research is to study ways of expression of politeness in
English and using them in different situations and among different strata of
population.
We analyzed polite expressions in different communicative situations
(apology, gratitude, compliment, sympathy, greeting, parting) and concluded that
the most common lexical mean is a language cliché, such as
How do you do?
Welcome!
Nice to meet you!
Excuse me.
I'm sorry.
Thank you. and etc.
We notice that positively stain words such as fine, nice, good, please, kind,
happy, very well are also very important in polite expressions.
Often we use enhances really, very, so to make our speech more polite. It’s
incredible, but such negative adverbs as awfully, dreadfully, terribly using to
enhance apology, became positive.
I am terribly sorry.
We analyzed polite expressions from the grammatical point of view and
concluded:
Common polite sentences may be negative, interrogative and positive. What is
more, positive one are often realized in the form of the subjunctive mood.
It would be nice if you go with me!
Modal verbs are commonly used in polite sentences. And they are often used in
requests and addresses.
Can I speak to Mr Brown, please?
Could you make me a coffee, please?
May I come in?
I would also like to mention a grammatical phenomenon – transposition, when a
sentence is used in atypical meaning. For example, interrogative sentence
How do you do? is used in the meaning of greeting and the polite answer for it is
the repeating of this question.
In the second part of our research we analyzed two English textbooks: New
Millie-4 (my twin-sisters study at it) and New Millennium English-11 (I study at
it). We wanted to know, which means of expression are used to show the
politeness in primary school and which one are used in high school.
Having analyzed 45 polite sentences contained in Millie-4, we concluded:
 58% of them are used on the lexical level (language cliché,
positively stain words)
Tell me please…
Welcome to our class!
Happy birthday to you!
 42 % are used on the grammatical level (modal verbs, subjunctive
mood)
Can I have one lollipop, please?
Would you like some coffee?
From 78 sentences contained in New Millennium English-11
 67% formed by grammatical meaning(language cliché, positively
stain words)
Can I have your attention, please?
 33% formed by lexical meaning
Oh, dear, I’m really sorry!
The percentage ratio of containing lexical and grammatical meaning of
politeness we represent in the diagrams.
Thus, the most important source of enriching polite etiquette dialogs are
lexical meanings at the initial stage of studying English and grammatical meanings
at the advanced stage, nevertheless, lexical meanings are very important for the
whole course of studying English. And I think we should know different ways of
polite behavior and communication to be a real expert of foreign language and
foreign culture.