ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 examines contested politeness and meaning-making as interactants often adopt critical positions regarding TL interactional and transactional practices. This can be described in terms of opposition, resistance, appropriation and ownership. These critical positions towards politeness reflect personal identity. In contesting TL politeness, interactants need to understand the ideologies behind politeness practices especially as they may clash with their own values e.g. ways of showing respect and consideration towards others. To understand contested politeness, this chapter examines relational work through the lens of Halliday’s textual framework especially in terms of activity types, frames and genres. Bilingual interactants may accept, question, resist or even reject behaviour that they are expected to adhere to in the target culture (TC) especially if they find such practices contradictory, overpowering and even more so if they serve to weaken, distance, subdue and exclude them. Bilingual interactants may be notably critical of a mismatch between what is said and actual behaviour. For instance, politeness markers (e.g. please) do not always signal politeness as would be seen in saying ‘Would you please please please be quiet’. Given that there is no one way to be polite, FL users should be given the opportunity to explore and construct their own ways of being polite. This may involve constructing a ‘third place’ which allows bilingual speakers to take ownership of politeness as they express their degree of involvement and engagement. Furthermore, FL users can take the opportunity to see how power and dominance may affect interactional and transactional relationships and observe how politeness does not always produce the expected interactional results.
