Understanding Politeness Strategies and Categorization in Linguistics
1. Face
Face is the public self-image that every person tries to protect.
Brown and Levinson defined positive face in two ways: as “the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others executors”, or alternatively, “the positive consistent self-image or personality.”
A distinction is made between negative face, a person’s need to have freedom of action, and positive face, a person’s need to be treated as an equal or insider. Any act that puts face wants at risk is a face-threatening act or FTA.
2. Bald On-Record
Bald on-record strategy does not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer’s face, although there are ways that bald on-record politeness can be used in trying to minimize face-threatening acts implicitly, such as giving advice in a non-manipulative way.
3. Negative Politeness
Negative politeness strategies are oriented towards the hearer’s negative face and emphasize avoidance of imposition on the hearer.
4. Positive Politeness
Positive politeness strategies seek to minimize the threat to the hearer’s positive face.
5. Prototype
A prototype is a mental and abstract concept which owns all the main characteristics or features that are usually associated to a specific category. Thus it is the concept that best represents a determined category.
6. Classical Theory of Categorization
The classical theory of categorization was the prevalent model since Aristotle’s time. This theory claims that conceptual and linguistic categories have a definitional structure. That is, a concept represents a category using a group of necessary and sufficient conditions. These conditions need to be together in order to be sufficient to define the category. If we consider these conditions separately, they would not be sufficient to define the category but they would be considered as necessary to define the category. The conditions were thought to be sensory or perceptual in nature and the categories were considered to have definite boundaries.
7. Problems with the Classical Decompositional Theory of Word Meaning
- The Definitional Problem: The classical theory claimed that categories have a definitional structure. But the truth is that it is not possible to establish a set of conditions that are enough or sufficient to define a category. For example, we could say that a pen is a tool that we use for writing. What happens if the pen has no ink? It does not stop being a pen. And what about a pen drive? These problems and contradictions make this theory less credible.
- The Problem of Conceptual Fuzziness: The classical theory considers that the conditions that define a category determine its own definite boundaries. I.e., that a term is simply part of a category or not, there is no fuzziness. For example, there are a lot of people who consider “chess” as a sport, but it does not share the typical features a sport shares and it is not very clear whether it could be considered a sport or not.
- The Problem of Prototypicality: The classical theory considers that each member of the category shares the same definitional structure, by analogy with this statement; the category should also share the prototype. But, in actual fact, the categories do not share the same prototype; there is more than one possibility. For instance, if we think about sport “football” or maybe “tennis” could come up to our minds. But what about chess? It is considered a sport by a lot of people, but it may not be the idea of sport everybody would think about.
8. Principle of Cognitive Economy
The principle of cognitive economy claims that human beings tend to store all the information they can get about their environment but reduce the effort to do so. I.e., they group similar stimuli into categories, this process maintains economy in cognitive representations.
9. Principle of Perceived World Structure
The world has a correlational structure, i.e., we connect conditions that have a relation and usually work together. That is the case of the words scale, gill or fin. They are usually related to fishes. This principle shows a way of organizing categories.
10. Basic-Level Categories
Basic-level categories are the ones that give us generic information, the most expected condition of a category, we could say it is close to the prototype. These categories are the first that humans constitute during the perception of the environment, they give us generic information. There are two more categories, they give abstract information. Lastly, the subordinate categories are specific, they do give us more information and they have a low degree of class inclusion.
11. Problems with Prototype Theory
- The Definitional Problem: The classical theory claimed that categories have a definitional structure. But the truth is that it is not possible to establish a set of conditions that are enough or sufficient to define a category. For example, we could say that a pen is a tool that we use for writing. What happens if the pen has no ink? It does not stop being a pen. And what about a pen drive? These problems and contradictions make this theory less credible.
- The Problem of Conceptual Fuzziness: The classical theory considers that the conditions that define a category determine its own definite boundaries. I.e., that a term is simply part of a category or not, there is no fuzziness. For example, there are a lot of people who consider “chess” as a sport, but it does not share the typical features a sport shares and it is not very clear whether it could be considered a sport or not.
- The Problem of Prototypicality: The classical theory considers that each member of the category shares the same definitional structure, by analogy with this statement; the category should also share the prototype. But, in actual fact, the categories do not share the same prototype; there is more than one possibility. For instance, if we think about sport “football” or maybe “tennis” could come up to our minds. But what about chess? It is considered a sport by a lot of people, but it may not be the idea of sport everybody would think about.
The Problem of Compositionality: The complex categories do not show the prototypical conditions of the concepts that contribute to them.