ABSTRACT

The study of politeness and impoliteness in the Spanish-speaking world started quite early in the field of linguistics, mainly from a sociolinguistic perspective, however it was not until after the publication of Brown and Levinson’s influential work based on the concepts of image and territory that research began to flourish. Due to its origin in the Anglo-Saxon world and its universal character, this theory was questioned from a theoretical and methodological perspective by investigators from other cultures which included the Spanish-speaking community. In this chapter, we present the fundamental original concepts and those that derived from the theoretical debate. We examine the developments of studies on/about politeness and impoliteness in 240Spanish corpora in a continuum in which, on the one side, we find the study of formal polite and impolite language and, on the other, a critical perspective that focuses on social problems in which politeness and impoliteness have an ideologically loaded social function. The general overview of the state of the art presented here emphasizes the proposals that have arisen in the Spanish-speaking world, the varieties of Spanish spoken in Latin America, Spain, the United States and other countries. The chapter offers guidance on the most relevant approaches as well as methodological considerations that include the objectives (theoretical, descriptive, applied and critical), the dimensions, levels and units of analysis as well as the most used techniques and procedures for data collection. Orientation for research in the future is also provided.