ABSTRACT
Richard Watts’s new framework builds on his earlier distinction between politicmd polite behavior. Politic refers to the appropriate, unmarked, linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior participants use on the basis of how they perceive the social interaction. Discernment and volition would be points along a continuum, with languages that have honorific systems showing “a strong concern for the discernment aspect of linguistic politeness”. Nonetheless, the basic idea that study should focus on the examination of linguistic strategies through which interpersonal relationships are established, maintained, enhanced, or damaged is what is implicit in many politeness studies, and what has been made explicit in Helen Spencer-Oatey’s framework. Another flaw M. Haugh points out is that Watts’s analysis “suffers from an undue focus on linguistic forms, and neglects to explain how the discursive approach could be applied to the analysis of politeness strategies.”
