The Importance of Expression and Politeness for Communication | Sociolinguistics

Communication means as the main function of language, which requires the language users to always obey cooperative principles in order to avoid misunderstanding or communication breakdown between two or more people. We also must be aware of the politeness strategy to make our communication more acceptable by the others. Besides, in social relationship, we need to adapt any communication to suit the audience and talk differently to children, customers, even colleagues. Furthermore, know how to use language differently either formal or casual contexts means we know how to communicate.

In daily communication, to have a polite conversation we need to consider appropriate strategies. Politeness means to involve taking account of the other’s feeling and being a polite person means that we should make others feel comfortable in the situation context. Being polite is complicated matter in any language since there are vary cultures. Being polite means to act with consideration of norm applied in the society environment. We can show our feeling toward others, such as solidarity power, distance, respect intimacy, and etc, and our awareness of social customs. Yule (1996: 60) defines politeness as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s expression and it refers to situations of social distance or closeness. Being polite is important things, it must be learnt and applied in our conversation to build social interaction in the society. In formal condition, speaker should speak more polite to show his or her respect to the audience. So being polite depends on how the speakers use the words or clauses to deliver the ideas to the listeners.

Moreover, expression refers to the respect that an individual has for him or herself, and the maintaining of “self esteem” in public or in private situations. Expression comes in two varieties, positive expression and negative expression. Brown and Levinson (1987) state that positive expression is the want of every member that the wants be desirable to at least some others. Meanwhile, negative expression is the want that every ‘competent adult member’ that the actions be unimpeded by others. So, expression strategies are used to ensure a smooth communication and harmonious interpersonal relationship in non-hostile social communication. In daily conversation, there are many ways to go about getting things we want. For instance, a speaker usually try to avoid embarrassing other person, or making him feels uncomfortable.

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