Cover not available

Article published In: Language and Dialogue
Vol. 14:1 (2024) ► pp.33–59

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

(Im)politeness mismatches in the multi-dialogic pragmatics of telecinematic satire

 | Technion – Israel Institute of TechnologyHaifa, Israel
 | University of British Columbia, Canada
 | MGIMO UniversityMoscow, Russia
Published online: 10 August 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00153.dru
Abstract
The paper addresses the problem of (im)politeness in light of mismatches between what we/others say and what we/others mean in a multi-dialogic search for meaning where humans integrate all their competence-in-performance and co-construct situated relationships in a more or less sustainable way. We examine how these processes occur by analyzing (im)politeness mismatches in telecinematic satire using dialogic speech act typology and methods of the Mixed Game Model to describe and explain the communicative meta-meaning of (im)politeness. We demonstrate that in satire the dialogic semantics of (im)politeness is polyvalent, interactant-relative, temporally variable, scalar and self-reflexive because it is part of integrational language-in-use engagement with the world through which humans construct multiple relational domains and relationships in them.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: (Im)politeness mismatches and dialogue
  • 2.Multiple dialogicality of language
  • 3.Telecinematic discourse as a dialogue of dialogues
  • 4.Telecinematic satire and (im)politeness
  • 5.Data and method: (Im)politeness mismatches from the perspective of Mixed Game Theory
  • 6.Analysis
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (62)
References
Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge. 2006. Forbidden Words. Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 2019. “Different prominences for different inferences.” Journal of Pragmatics 1541: 103–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Michail. 1997. Problema teksta [The problem of text] (in Russian). In Collection of works by M. Bakhtin, Vol. 51, 1–732. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskikh kultur.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bibler, Vladimir S. 1975. Myshlenie kak tvorchestvo: vvedenie v logiku myslennogo dialoga [Thinking as creativity: an introduction to the logic of mental dialogue] (in Russian). Moscow: Politizdat.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brock, Alexander. 2009. “Humour as a metacommunicative process.” Journal of Literary Theory 3(2): 177–193. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “The borders of humorous intent: the case of TV comedies.” Journal of Pragmatics 951: 58–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Lucien. 2013. “‘Mind your own esteemed business’: Sarcastic Honorifics Use and Impoliteness in Korean TV Dramas.” Journal of Politeness Research 9(2): 159–186. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bubel, Claudia. 2008. “Film audiences as overhearers.” Journal of Pragmatics 401: 55–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bunnell, Pille and Alexander Riegler. 2022. “A plurality of perspectives: Maturana’s impact on science and philosophy.” Constructivist Foundations 18(1): 1–4.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chernigovskaya, Тatiana V. 2020. “Biology, environment, and culture: from animal communication to human language and cognition.” Vestnik of Saint-Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies 11: 157–170. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cowley, Stephen J. and Gahrn-Andresen Rasmus. 2022. “Languaging in an enlanguaged world.” Constructivist Foundations 18(1): 54–57.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2008. “Reflections on impoliteness, relation work and power.” In Impoliteness in Language. Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice, ed. by Derek Bousfield and Miriam A. Locher, 17–44. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Jongste, Henri. 2017. “Culture and incongruity in the office (UK).” Language and Communication 551: 88–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Druzhinin, Andrey S. 2021b. “X-phemisms and radical constructivism: From world-view to whirled-views.” Constructivist Foundations 17(1): 29–32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2021a. “Euphemisms vs. Dysphemisms, or how we construct good and bad language.” Constructivist Foundations 17(1): 1–13.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Nancy. 2000. “Empathy and sympathy.” In Handbook of Emotions, 2nd edition, ed. by Michael Lewis and Janette M. Haviland-Jones, 677–691. NY: Guilford Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eelen, Gino. 2001. A critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hagh, Michael and Wei-Lin M. Chang. 2019. “The apology seemed (in)sincere: Variability in perceptions of (im)politeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 1421: 207–222. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael and Derek Bousfield. 2012. “Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1099–1114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael and Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini. 2010. “Face in interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 421: 2073–2077. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2010. “When is an email really offensive?: Argumentative and variability in evaluations of impoliteness.” Journal of Politeness Research 6(1): 7–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Im/politeness, social practice and participation order.” Journal of Pragmatics 581: 52–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hermans, Hubert J. M., Harry J. Kempen, and Rens van Loon. 1992. “The Dialogical Self: Beyond Individualism and Rationalism.” American Psychologist 47(1): 23–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
James, William. 1890. Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z. and Michael Haugh. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keller, Melanie, Phillip Striedl, Daniel Biro, Johanna Holzer, and Kate Burridge. 2021. “Circumnavigating Taboos: A Functional and Formal Typology.” Pragmatics in Cognition 28(1): 5–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krippendorff, Klaus. 2003. “The Dialogical Reality of Meaning.” The American Journal of Semiotics 19 (1/4): 17–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N. 2005. “Politeness: Is there an East-West Divide?” Journal of Foreign Languages 61: 1–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, Per. 2003. What is dialogism? Aspects and elements of a dialogical approach to language, communication and cognition. Lecture at Växjö University. URL: [URL]
. 2005. The written language bias in linguistics: Its nature, origins and transformations. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically. Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Dialogism is an integrationism: Reply to Peter Jones.” Language and Dialogue 8(2): 326–327. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, Per and Ivana Marková. 1993. “Acts in discourse: From monological speech acts to dialogical inter-acts.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 231: 173–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Locher, Miriam A. 2013. “Relational work and interpersonal pragmatics.” Journal of Pragmatics 581: 138–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Locher, Miriam A. and Richard J. Watts. 2005. “Politeness theory and relational work.” Journal of Politeness Research 11: 9–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Locher, Mariam A., Bolander, Brook and Nicole Höhn. 2015. “Introducing relational work in Facebook and discussion boards.” Pragmatics 251: 1–21.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marková, Ivana. 2016. The Dialogical Mind: Common Sense and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maturana, Humberto. R. 2006. “Self-consciousness: How? When? Where?” Constructivist Foundations 1(3): 91–102.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Messerli, Thomas. 2016. “Extradiegetic and character laughter as markers of humorous intentions in the sitcom 2 Broke Girls.” Journal of Pragmatics 951: 79–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mills, Sara. 2011. “Discursive approaches to politeness and impoliteness.” In Discursive Approaches to Politeness, ed. by Linguistic Politeness Research Group, 19–56. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mills, Sarah. 2017. English Politeness and Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morin, Edgar. 1992. Towards the Study of Humankind. Volume 1: The Nature of Nature. Translated by J. L. Roland Belanger. NY: Peter Lang. French original published in 1977.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morreal, John (ed.). 1987. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humour. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Natochin, Yuriy and Tatiana Chernigovskaya. 2020. “From Archebiosis to Evolution of Organisms and Informational Systems.” Biological Communications 31: 215–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Neill, Sean. P. 2021. “Some good words about curses, and a few damning ones about bowdlerization.” Constructivist Foundations 17(1): 18–20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Okazawa, Ryo. 2021. “Resisting categorization in interaction: Membership categorization analysis of sitcom humor.” Journal of Pragmatics 1861: 33–44. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Parvaresh, Vahid and Tahmineh Tayebi. 2021. “Taking offence at the (un)said: Towards a more radical contextualist approach.” Journal of Politeness Research 17(1): 111–131. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Klaus P. and Maria E. Placencia. 2017. “(Im)politeness and regional variation.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Dániel Z. Kádár, 539–570. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scholte, Tom. 2021. “Meta-communicative interactional dynamics and the construction of meaning on screen.” Constructivist Foundations 17(1): 26–29.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 1993. Framing in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tzanne, Angeliki and Maria Sifianou. 2019. “Understandings of impoliteness in the Greek context.” Russian Journal of Linguistics 23 (4): 1014–1038. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vygotsky, Lev S. 1962. Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Russian original published in 1934. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watzlawick, Paul. 1977. How Real is Real? New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weigand, Edda. 2000. “Games of Power.” In Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand and Marcello Dascal. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Sprache als Dialog. Sprechtaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. 2nd revised edition, Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010a. Dialogue: The Mixed Game. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010b. “Language as Dialogue.” Intercultural Pragmatics 7(3): 505–515. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Words between reality and fiction.” Language and Dialogue 3(1): 147–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “The Theory Myth.” Language and Dialogue 8(2): 289–305. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. “Dialogue: The complex whole.” Language and Dialogue 11(3): 457–486. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Noorani, Ayaz
2024. The Role of Politeness Strategies in Enhancing Guest Satisfaction in the Hospitality Industry. Journal of Policy Research 10:2 ► pp. 66 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue