This aspect of face and facework was investigated mainly based on theories of Brown and Levinson ( 1987). Positive politeness: Brown and Levinson (1987) list 15 positive politeness strategies. With first eight of the strategies, the speaker claims common ground, “indicating that S and H belong to the same set of persons who
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share specific wants, including goals and values” (p. 103). The latter strategies are used to convey that speaker and hearer are co-operators and have the same goals.
Consequently, if speaker requires something from the hearer, he can use the strategies to hint that by attending to the speaker, the hearer is acting in his own interest as well.
1. Notice, attend to hearer
2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with hearer) 3. Intensify interest to hearer
4. Use in-group identity markers 5. Seek agreement
6. Avoid disagreement
7. Presuppose/raise/assert common ground 8. Joke
9. Assert or presuppose S´s knowledge of and concern for H´s wants 10. Offer, promise
11. Be optimistic
12. Include both S and H in the activity 13. Give (or ask for) reasons
14. Assume or assert reciprocity
15. Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation) (Brown
& Levinson, 1987, p. 102)
Negative politeness: Brown and Levinson list following 10 strategies that make use of negative politeness:
45 1. Be conventionally indirect 2. Question, Hedge
3. Be pessimistic
4. Minimize the imposition 5. Give deference
6. Apologize
7. Impersonalize S and H, avoid the pronouns “I” and “you”
8. State the FTA as a general rule 9. Nominalize
10. Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H (1987, p. 131).
The data analysis shows that, firstly, some advertisemts use both negative and positive politeness strategies. Seconly, while VPAs tend to use more positive politeness strategies , negative politeness strategies are employed more in APAs.
The results are reflected in the following table.
Table 8: Distribution of positive & negative politeness strategies in APAs and VPAs
Advertisements VPAs APAs
Number of Advertisements using only positive politeness strategy
9 9
Number of Advertisements using only negative politeness strategy
6 14
Number of Ads using both positive & negative politeness strategy
4 9
Number of Ads not using both positive & negative politeness strategy
24 11
a. Negative and positive politeness strategies are mixed in an advertisement In commercial communication, politeness is usually considered to be an important issue that has great impacts on the success of business. Consequently,
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advertisers always have to take politeness strategies into careful consideration in order to apply suitable strategies to their advertisements. In some cases, both direct and indirect politeness strategies are intermingled in an advertisement. For instance,
Viettel sẽ cùng bạn khởi tạo nên Thực tại mới… Hãy nói theo cách của bạn (Exhibit 1.11)
Positive politeness strategies: Use reciprocal pronoun “ cùng” ( strategy No.12) and promise (strategy No.10) in order to convey the cooperation between the writers and the readers and express the same goal of them.
Negative politeness strategy: minimize the imposition on the readers ( strategy No.4)
“Hãy nói theo cách của bạn”.
OCB triển khai gói ưu đãi lãi suất3,000 tỷ đồng dành cho khách hàng doanh nghiệp… quý khách vui lòng liên hệ… (Exhibit 1.31)
Positive politeness strategy: use offering strategy ( strategy No.4) “triển khai gói ưu đãi lãi suất3,000 tỷ đồng”
Negative politeness strategies: give deference to raise the position of the readers
“quý khách”; use hedging device “vui lòng”to soften the request.
Play just got serious in the all-new Toyota Avalon… it sounds as good as it looks… Let's Go Places.” (Exhibit 2.33)
Positive politeness strategy: set the common ground, both addresser and addressees take part in the same activity “Let's”.
Negative politeness strategy: use hedging devices “ just” and “ sounds”
Generally, in a advertisement, people can use both positive and negative politeness strategies to reach to the goal of communication.
b. Negative politeness strategies
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Although both VPAs and APAs employ negative politeness strategies, these strategies are more common in APAs. There are six out of ten negative politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson used in all collected advertisements such as minimize the imposition, question and hedge, give deference, impersonalize writer and reader, nominalize, and be pessimistic. In which, using hedging devices is the most popular in the data with 3 VPAs applying them and 17 American advertisements appying them. Here are some examples for illustration
Minimize the imposition:
Sản Phẩm Được Các Chuyên Gia Khuyên Dùng (Exhibit 1.35)
In this statement, instead of requesting readers to buy product, the writer states that this product is recommended to use by experts. Writing in the form of professional‟s advice moderates the request.
Hedge:
You could save 15% or more on car insurance. And that would help make the things you love.” (Exhibit 2.24)
Modal auxiliary verbs “ could” and “ would” are used as hedging devices to qualify writer‟s statements to the degree of the writer‟s commitment to the view.
Give deference:
Both American prin advertisemets and Vietnamese advertisements use this strategy to express respect to the readers. Yet, it is employed more by Vietnamese advertisers because of social distance. There are 5 Vietnamese print advertisements using it ( 1.20, 1.24, 1.30, 1.31 and 1.38), and only 2 APAs applying it (2.26 and 2.28). For instance,
D’. Palais Louis sẽ mang đến cho các Quý Chủ Nhân danh giá … nơi trân trọng từng cảm xúc của các Chủ Nhân trong mỗi giây phút quý giá của cuộc sống.(Exhibit 1.24)
In this advertisement, the writer use honorific words like “Quý Chủ Nhân danh giá”
and “Chủ Nhân” to show deference to the readers.
Impersonalize writer and reader:
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Mời Đón Đọc Các Ấn Phẩm Của Báo Báo Phụ Nữ. ( Exhibit 1.20)
Subject and object of this sentence are omited for the purpose of not impinging on the readers.
Nominalize:
For reservations, please call 787-626-1100 (Exhibit 2.14)
In this statement, writer use noun “ reservation” instead of verb “reserve” or “book”
to soften the request.
Be pessimistic: we make worries about your brand’s future a thing of the past (Exhibit 2.25)
c. Positive politeness strategies
The findings reveal that the number of advertisements using only positive politeness strategies in Vietnam is similar to that in the U.S. there are 7 politeness strategies of Brown and Levinson employed in the investigated data, namely giving gifts to readers, offering &promising, giving reasons, reciprocal pronoun, in-group identity marker, raising common ground and including both writer and reader in the activity. Here are some examples
Giving gift to readers:
Quà tặng dành cho khách hàng mua sản phẩm Nhà khu phố N và căn hộ: 37 phiếu mua hàng LotteMart trị giá 50 triệu đồng; 214 máy lạnh DAIKIN Inverter 1HP và 1.5 HP… (Exhibit 1.4)
From the advertisement above the writer uses strategy of giving gifts to readers. The writer may satisfy the readers‟ positive-face want by actually satisfying one of the readers‟ wants.
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Offering
The KPMG Master of Accounting with Data and Analytics Program provides the specialized skills… (Exhibit 2.10)
This strategy is a popular way used to persuade the readers. The writer could use this strategy as a compensative act in cases of happening face threatening acts.
Giving reasons:
Rèn luyện thể chất mỗi ngày. Vì bạn là điểm tựa vững chắc cho những người thân yêu.” (Exhibit 1.4)
The writer gives reason that seems to be reasonable to the readers.
In-group identity marker
Nhận ưu đãi học phí dành cho phụ huynh… giữ chỗ cho con!
(Exhibit 1.39)
The writer use addressing form “phụ huynh” and “con” to convey in-group membership
Raising common ground
Happy hour? More like happy in minutes.” (Exhibit 2.20)
The writer presupposes something when he/she guesses that it is mutually taken for granted.
In short, in terms of negative and positive politeness, VPAs have tendency of using more positive politeness strategies than negative ones in order to enhance their solidarity, seek the common ground. Meanwhile, negative politeness strategies are more common than positive ones in APAs to maintain the sense of distance; As a result, it is probably said that, with regard to using positive and negative politeness strategies, VPAs tend to express COL, conversely APAs perform their individualistic features.
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