11.2. Politeness
Catalan Deaf native signers mitigate their discourse to avoid or repair acts that may threaten their social image in face-to-face interactions. In LSC different polite strategies may be observed at least both at the prosodic and at the discourse level. Also, diverse sociocultural factors can affect politeness performance, such as social power, or the Deaf or hearing condition of the addressee. Moreover, the gender of the communicative situation may require a specific behaviour regarding politeness, since the context may define what is allowed in a particular interaction.
On the one hand, in LSC, different non-manual markers may be used to attenuate a representative speech acts [PRAGMATICS 3], namely raised or furrowed eyebrows -that operate at prosodic level, specifically in intonation-, head tilt or tight lips. We can also find head lean, squinted eyes, avoiding eye contact or smiling.
On the other hand, multiple discourse attenuation strategies are used. For instance, concession, indetermination of the quantity or quality of something, expression of uncertainty, or restriction in the opinion are the more frequent strategies. We further develop and illustrate some ofthese concepts below.
The first example is a sentence that appeared in a spontaneous conversation in LSC. Concretely, the context of this communicative situation is a face-to-face interaction in a gastronomic TV Show. The conductor asked one participant the opinion about the food she was eating, and the answer she gave was a negative critique of the food, which is a clear threatening act for the image of the cooker. Therefore, the signer mitigates her discourse with a concession strategy discourse. This strategy consists of saying positive things, before the negative opinion introduced with structures as “yes, but…” or “ok, however…”. Also, in this case, the signer used raised eyebrows as a non-manual marker just before starting the negative part (indicated in the glosses with the subscript re). This non-manual operates at prosodic level, hence this particular intonation also mitigates the threatening act. Note that she did not finish the sentence, which reveals that she did not know how to introduce the negative critique without offending.
re
although good but little bit...
‘It was good, but a little bit…’
In the following example, you can observe the mitigation strategy consisting of restricting the opinion to oneself, not as absolute truth. The context of this communicative situation is the same that the previous example. That is, one signer wanted to express to another participant his opinion about the food he was eating without offending the person that cooked it. Also, the signer simultaneously avoided eye contact as a polite non-manual maker (indicated in the glosses as "a.ec"). The addressee in the utterance below was another participant of the TV Show with the same social power.
a.ec a.ec
ix1 opinion ix(poss)1 first salad better change this.
‘In my opinion, it could be better to change this for the salad we ate in the first place’
In contrast, when the addressee has higher social power than the sender, avoiding eye contact is simultaneously spread in more signs in the speech act that contains the threatening part, as shown below. In this particular case, the conductor of the TV Show asked the same signer his opinion of another plate. Even though the participant used the same attenuation discourse strategy than before, the use of non-manual markers clearly differs from (a) above.
a.ec
ix1 think ix1 see, my point of view as second plate this appropriate not.
‘I think… What I see… From my point of view, this is not appropriate as a second plate’
In the case of rejections, i.e. directive speech acts, differences regarding the Deaf or hearing condition of the addressee may be observed in LSC discourse. The communicative situation of the following examples is a spontaneous face-to-face interaction in a room of the Pompeu Fabra University, where different Deaf and hearing people were gathered to shoot a short film. They were discussing the organization and details of the shooting session. Both the examples (a) and (b) are rejections by the same Deaf signer to different proposals, but in (a) the addressee is Deaf, and in (b) the addressee is hearing, concretely a sign language interpreter.
In (a), one Deaf signer proposed to film two clocks at the same time, and another Deaf person disagreed with the proposal because she wanted to film just one. She simultaneously furrowed her eyebrows, which helps her to express the rejection. In (b), a hearing person proposed to zoom in a particular scene, but the same Deaf person disagreed. However, in this case, the signer avoided eye contact and smiled at the same time to express the rejection.
fe
a) must two not, can one[ipsi] one[contra].
‘It doesn’t have to be two, it can be one and one.’
a.ec
smile
b) doesn’t-matter, is is, easy.
‘Doesn’t matter, it’s like this, it’s easy.’
The above examples show how the strategies to reduce the force of similar threatening acts change regarding whether the addressee is Deaf or hearing. It seems that more polite strategies are used when an addressee is a hearing person, due to socio-cultural factors [SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 2].