Politeness as a way to encourage conversation

Abstract

The empirical material is the novel of the German-speaking writer B. Schirmer Schlehweins Giraffe. The research focuses on speech strategies and tactics of politeness as one of the components of verbal communication addressed to the Giraffe. Recorded in a text, the model of verbal and non-verbal behavior of a person, the author, trying to encourage a conversation with an animal is analysed. The category of politeness, thus, appears in a single discursive space with the direction. The relevance of the study is explained by the communicative and pragmatic approach applied to the analysis of speech addressed to an animal. The narrator treats the animal with great care. He also asks various questions to the Giraffe as he believes the Giraffe is able to communicate. However, the author fails to establish communication. The Giraffe is silent. The narrator uses directive linguistic means in the colloquial style of speech: brief questions, accentual particles, lexical and syntactic repetitions, appeals to the Giraffe and so on. The author-narrator repeatedly corrects his verbal behavior, uses various strategies, but, eventually, comes to the conclusion, that the Giraffe is incoherent. Finding herself in a usual natural environment, the Giraffe unexpectedly reproduces a phrase which belongs to the group of precedent texts, to the surprise of the narrator. The narrator understands the reasons for the Giraffe’s persistent silence. The communicative strategy of the author-narrator changes, his speech becomes rude and impolite. Thus, the language material illustrates the widest spectrum of politeness pragmatics and deviations from this speech strategy.