Evaluation as a tool of professional politeness of researchers and experts

Abstract

The researcher is constantly evaluating ideas presented and embedding a certain degree of categoricality in the value-laden statements. On the one hand, the researcher must be categorical and persuasive to defend a personal point of view in a scientific discussion with colleagues. On the other hand, the researcher should maintain a maximal degree of politeness, keeping an open mind for further dialogue by avoiding overly categorical assertions. Otherwise, one may damage one’s professional face by provoking counter-critical reactions. Similar factors determine the communicative behavior of an expert, which balances between striving for an objective appraisal of the work reviewed as a whole not only of its positive and negative qualities and the establishment of respectful relations between the participants of scientific-expert communication. The aim of the present paper is to analyse the axiological aspect of socio-humanitarian research articles and scientific-expert texts in order to reveal the strategies of politeness in interpersonal projection. The research data are two corpora of theoretical articles on sociology in German and Russian and two corpora of German and Russian scientific reviews on Linguistics. The analysis focuses on the linguistic means of expressing the evaluative positions of the communicants and the strategies of polite communication employed by them. The methodology is based on the positions of sociological politeness theories, pragmalinguistics and discourse linguistics. The results fill the gaps in the description of the communicative profiles of scientific articles and reviews in German and Russian and identify linguistic and cultural specificity in the use of professional politeness strategies.