Cortesia i entonació: les preguntes

d’oferiment i petició

Lluïsa Astruc, The Open University & The University of Cambridge

Maria del Mar Vanrell, Universitat Autonònoma de Madrid

Pilar Prieto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra & ICREA

Offers and requests within the politeness theory

framework

• Politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987):

• Certain speech acts (orders and requests, but also

suggestions and advice, offers and compliments) threaten this

public face

• Offers and requests are both potentially face-threatening to

both the hearer and the listener

– Offers are less so than requests

• Risk can be mitigated by means of appropriate linguistic

strategies such as:

– the use of indirect language

– insertion of softening expressions

– or with the intonation

Politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987)

• Speakers choose strategies by assessing the weight of the Face

Threatening Act (W):

– W= Distance + Power + Cost

• Weight of FTA (W) is computed as:

– the social distance (D) between hearer and speaker

– plus the measure of power (P) that hearer has over speaker

– plus the cost of the action (C), the degree to which the act is

considered as an imposition in the culture that the speaker and

the hearer belong to

• “X is my boss”; “I don't know X well”; “to ask someone like X to

do this is a big deal”

Intonation of yes-no questions in Catalan

• (Bonet 1984; Prieto 1998, 2002; Fernández Planas et al 2004;

Martínez-Celdrán et al 2005; Prieto & Rigau 2007)

{ Vols ve n i r ? }

L*+H L* H%

{ (Que) vols ve n i r ? }

H+L* L%

Intonation and politeness - Catalan

• 1 The descending pattern (H+L* L%) is perceived as more

polite than the ascending pattern (Payà 2003, Astruc 2009)

• 2 The ascending pattern (L* H%) is the most polite (Payrató

2002, Prieto 2002, Prieto & Rigau 2007)

– The descending pattern only appropriate in neutral information-

seeking questions and when the cost is minimal for the hearer

(Payrató 2002, Prieto & Rigau 2007)

• 3 Both patterns are perceived as equally polite, at least in low

cost situations (Nadeu & Prieto, 2011)

Research goals (1)

• Thus, offering and requesting questions in Catalan present a

choice of at least two intonational contours which can be

associated with different degrees of perceived politeness

• We ask the following research questions:

– (i) overall, is there a preference for a falling or rising pattern?

– (ii) which pattern is used in the most face-threatening

situations?

– (iii) what is the influence of each factor (power, distance,

cost) in the choice of intonational pattern?

Method

• Participants: 15 Central Catalan speakers

• Questionnaire: 8 offers + 8 requests = 16 situations (DCT)

• Procedure: 1st free response, 2nd question

• Materials:

– Cost (C) of the offer

• (-) passing over small items > (+) a car ride

– Social distance (D) between participants

• (-) sibling > (+) stranger

– Power (P) of hearer over speaker

• (-) colleague > (+) boss

• Imagina’t que dines a la cafeteria de sempre, que acostuma a

estar molt plena al migdia. El primer plat és una amanida. No

t’han portat les setrilleres i a tu t’agrada l’amanida amb un xic

més de vinagre. Mires i veus que les setrilleres són a la taula

del costat, on hi ha assegut un senyor d’uns 70 anys i cabell

blanc que pren un cafè. No vols esperar que torni el cambrer i

li demanes les setrilleres.

- 1- Com les hi demanaries? (Digues tot el que diries)

- 2 - Com les hi demanaries? (Fes una pregunta)

Materials (1)

• Ets a casa del teu germà o germana. Heu fet un sopar per un aniversari familiar, que ja s’ha acabat. Tothom viu a la vora menys tu. S’ha fet tard i has de tornar a peu. Altres vegades et porta/el portes en cotxe però avui ha begut una mica i tu decideixes demanar-li les claus del cotxe, i ja l’hi tornaràs l'endemà.

- 1- Com li ho demanaries? (Digues tot el que diries)

- 2 - Com li ho demanaries? (Fes una pregunta)

Methodology (2)

Analysis: intonation, sentence type, morpho-

syntactic markers

• Intonational analysis + labelling using Cat-ToBI

• Codification, SPSS:

– Form of address

• tu (0), vostè (1)

– Verbal form (tense, aspect, mood)

• future, imperative (0)

• present indicative (1)

• imperfect indicative, conditional (2)

Form of address + Verbal form = Indirectness index

Results (1) Free response vs. question

• Corpus: 462 responses by 15 speakers

• Free response: 75% questions + 22% decl + 3% imp

• Question only: 98% questions + 2% decl

• No statistically significant differences between free response

and question in the distribution of the different patterns

Results (2) Sentence type

• Differences

• With requests:

• More questions (84%) than with offers (67%)

• Less imperatives and declaratives

Results (3) Use of indirect language

• Robust correlations between the use of indirect language Distance

and Power

• Requests show the strongest correlation with Distance

Requests to strangers elicit the most indirect language

• Cost: weak correlation with the use of indirect language

Correlations

Distance Power Cost

Indirectness

Offers

Pearson Correlation

. 593** . 549** -.116*

Requests

Pearson Correlation

.704** . 548** .196**

Intonational patterns (1)

• L* H% ... Request to a colleague

• Speaker 10, 3b Would you mind passing me the salad?

Intonational patterns (2a)

• H+L* L% ... Small cost offer to a stranger

• Speaker 10, 10b Do you want the oil and vinegar? I’ve

finished and I don’t mind giving them to you (to a stranger)

Intonational patterns (2b)

• H+L*H% Requests, low power

• Speaker 3, 4b Could you give me the jam, please? (to a

colleague)

Intonational patterns (2b)

• H+L* H% High cost offer to an equal

• Speaker 4, 16a Do you want a lift? (to a colleague)

Intonational patterns (3) • L+H* H% Offers to siblings

• Speaker 3, 9a: Do you want the lemons and I’ll pass them on?

(to a sibling)

• Speaker 8, 13a I can drive, shall I give you a lift? (to a sibling)

Intonational patterns (4)

• L+¡H* L% Small cost request to a stranger

• Speaker 10, 2b Excuse me, would you mind if I borrow the oil and

the vinegar for a moment as I need to use it, I return it ... right

now?

Summary: intonational patterns

Ascendent

1- Ascendent L* H%

3 - High rise L+H* H%

Descendent

2a- Descendent H+L*L%

2b- (variant) H+L* H%

4 - Circumflex L+¡H* L%

94%

Intonational patterns

No statistically significant differences in the distribution of the

different patterns between the free response and the question only

response

All responses will be analysed together

Results (2) Offers vs. requests

• Statistically significant differences in the distribution of the

phonological patterns (chi-square, p = .001)

**

Results (3) Inter-speaker differences

• 3 participants (1, 7, 15) use 90% of times L* H%

• 3 participants (2, 5, 11) use 90-100% of times H+L* L%

• 9 participants show no marked preference for any specific

pattern

• One participant (14) shows much more variation than anyone

else, producing:

– 6/8 of the occurrences of L+H* H%

– 10/15 of the occurrences of H+L* HH%

• The following round of analyses will show only the main two

patterns (which make 94% of the total)

Results (6) Effects of Cost

Both offers and requests: statistically significant effects

Offers: chi-square = 9.201, p = .002

Requests: chi-square = 4.649, p = .022

Results (4) Effects of Social Distance

Requests: statistically

significant effects of Distance

(chi-square = 4.168, p = .031)

Results (5) Effects of Power

Tendency to use L*H% with requests, but not statistically

significant

OFFERS REQUESTS

Conclusion

• We have examined the main patterns, which make 94% of the data

– descending (H+L* L%) and ascending (L* H%)

• General tendency: more descending contours in offers and more

ascending contours in requests (more face-threatening)

• What is the influence of each factor (Power, Distance, Cost) in the

choice of intonational pattern?

– **Cost: the cost (real or psychological) of the thing offered or

requested influences use of high rise, L+H* H%

– *Distance: preference for L* H% when requesting anything from

a stranger

• No statistically significant effects in offers

– Power: preference for L* H% in requests (no statistically

significant effects of low vs. high power)

Conclusion (1)

• The most face-threatening situations are resolved by:

– morphosyntactic means:

• using indirect language (the V form and/or conditional or

imperfect)

• P: Offers and requests to your boss elicit indirect language

– and/or prosodic means

• C: preference for L* HH% with high cost offers and requests

– but mostly by a combination of morphosyntactic and prosodic

means

• D: preference for H+L*L% with offers and requests to

strangers, indirect language (.704**)

Conclusion (2)

{ Vols ve n i r ? }

L*+H L* H%

{ (Que) vols ve n i r ? }

H+L* L%

low Cost offers high Cost requests

low Power offers high Power requests

low Distance requests high Distance offers

We are grateful to our participants. Warmest thanks to Nuria

Gilabert for organsing the recordings.

This study has been funded through the grant

HUM2006=01758/FILO “Estructura prosódica y adquisición de la

prosodia”

Many thanks!

Any questions?

Offers and requests

• Offers and requests are speech acts

• Speech acts can be formulated with a:

– Yes/no question (‘Shall I help you?’)

– Wh- question (‘How can I help you?’)

– Declarative question (‘You are ok there?’, ‘You need help?’)

– Declarative (‘I’ll help you’)

– Imperative (‘Let me help you’)

Politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987)

• Speakers assess the cost of face threatening acts (FTAs) before

deciding whether to go ahead (Brown and Levinson 1978: 74):

Risk the FTA

5. Don’t risk the FTA

on record

4. off record

1. without mitigation

with mitigation

2. positive

politeness

3. negative

politeness

(“solidarity”)

(“deference”)

(“indirect”)

(“direct”)

1- Open the window

2- Open the window for us, mate

3- Could I trouble you to open the window?

4- It's hot in here…

5- (nothing)