Constructing a revised politeness theory with consideration for the effect of social change

2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21652039
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Kagoshima University
• Principal Investigator: OTA Ichiro 鹿児島大学, 法文学部, 教授 (60203783)
• Research Collaborator: MIYAZAKI Haruhisa 独立行政法人国立病院機構, 鹿児島医療センター
• Project Period (FY): 2009 – 2011
• Keywords: 言語行動 / ポライトネス / インターネット / 掲示板

Research Abstract

This study aims to contrive a revised version of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory by introducing a diachronic perspective. 8908 posts from 2000-2009 on anonymous bulletin board' 2 chan-neru(Channel 2)' were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The results indicated that some changes happened in' the order of discourse' when we saw quantitative differences in discourse function of posts. Then a possibility of suggesting a revised version of Politeness Theory was suggested.