Linguistic Impoliteness: A Brief Literature Review

Abstract

This paper attempts to briefly review state of the art of the theory of impoliteness. The most notable figure in the field is Jonathan Culpeper whose model of impoliteness was initially introduced as a parallel to Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness. The theory can be traced back to Goffman’s theory of face. Using Goffman’s theory face as a departure, Brown and Lavinson propose politeness principles in terms of conflict avoidance; this is the strategy to maintain face when face attack happens. There are, however, still other times in which people use linguistic strategies to attack face which tend to be impolite. Culpeper refers impoliteness to communicative strategies used to attack face, and thereby create social disruption. He classified five super strategies of impoliteness including Bald on record impoliteness, Positive impoliteness, Negative impoliteness, Sarcasm or mock politeness, and Withhold politeness.