Understanding Context, Deixis, and Politeness in Language

Context

Context is understood as the extralinguistic circumstances that influence the linguistic form of an utterance. It is formed by all the ethnographic knowledge that is necessary to interpret the statement. It is something dynamic, and those who participate in a communicative exchange have to build it.

Dimensions

• Location
• Nonverbal behavior
• Language as context
• Extra-situational context

Levels

• Spatio-temporal: The environment in which the communication takes place.
• Situational: What happens around the speakers as they converse is also influential.
• Sociocultural: The social characteristics of the participants that determine the form and interpretation of a message.
• Cognitive: General knowledge of the world, as well as the intentions of a participant.
• Cotext: All the other words that are part of the phrase or sentence. It helps us to understand the specific meaning of a word in a specific context.

Deixis

Deixis refers to words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information.

• Personal: Points out the participants of the speech.
• Spatial: Organizes the places where the communicative event is developed. Metaphorical function.
• Temporal: Indicates temporal elements, taking "the now" as a reference.

Politeness

Politeness is the intentional behavior of an individual meant to satisfy self and other face needs in case of threats, enacted via positive and negative strategies of redress.

Face is the public self-image that participants portray in interaction.

Positive Face is the person's concern to be appreciated and liked. Well-perceived image.

Negative Face is the person's desire to have freedom and not to be imposed upon. Preservation of autonomy and space of speakers.

Social interaction is based on balancing the satisfaction of our own face and the face needs of other interactants.

Strategies

• Bald-on record
• Positive politeness strategies
• Negative politeness strategies
• Off-the-record strategies
• Opting out

The choice between the five options will depend on the familiarity between the speaker and the hearer, their relative power, and the absolute ranking.

Impoliteness is engaging in aggressive face work in a particular context to cause social disruption.