25th Annual Student Research Conference
Online Requests and Politeness Approaches
Andrew J. Kaizer
Dr. Mary Shapiro, Faculty Mentor
Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) is applied to 202 online requests sent over 3.5 years to a Teaching Assistant or to a coed honor fraternitys organization officer, showing that the emails utilize more negative than positive politeness strategies and patterns to lessen the imposition of the request. Gender and status of requester, length and type of prior relationship are analyzed with status and relationship found to be significant while gender is not. Future applications for pattern matching and machine learning are explored, along with social applications of patterns.
Keywords: negative politeness, positive politeness, email requests, politeness patterns, Politeness Theory
Topic(s):Linguistics
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 412-2
Location: VH 1324
Time: 2:45