Abstract
The paper discusses the preliminary results of a pilot exploratory study concerning on-record politeness strategies used by academics to soften criticism of scientific performance of other scholars and deal with judgmental opinions in relation to their own research findings. The study uses the apparatus offered by the politeness theory to get insight into the trans-cultural writer-reader communication in written academic discourse, namely, in reply to/response to articles. Methodologically, the study draws from the classic framework of linguistic politeness (Brown and Levinson [1978]/1987) with reformulations (Bousfield 2008) in order to identify ways of showing polite (dis)agreement in academic writing (Myers 1989; 1992). The paper focuses on the general selection of and preference towards particular on-record politeness strategies used for conflict management (mitigation, resolution) and face redress in replies to.
About the author
Joanna Nijakowska, Associate Professor in the Department of Pragmatics, Institute of English, University of Łódź, Poland (http://ia.uni.lodz.pl/pragmatics/faculty/jnijakowska). She holds a PhD and habilitation in linguistics. A specialist in psycholinguistics, foreign language acquisition and didactics, and learning difficulties (dyslexia), she runs teacher training courses for ELT students and practitioners. She has authored and edited books and papers on EFL and dyslexia and presented her research at European and American academic centers. Her research interests include pragmatics and language learning as well as pragmatic language disorders. Her current focus is on metadiscourse and (im)politeness in written academic discourse.
©[2013] by De Gruyter Mouton Berlin
