Abstract
The aim of this article is to explore how politeness is conceptualized in modern Russia. The study adopts a bottom-up approach and gathers conceptualizations of different aspects of politeness by lay native Russian speakers. This study uses an open-ended questionnaire to elicit the concepts people generally associate with politeness, descriptive labels for polite people, as well as individual experiences of polite and impolite behavior. The data for the research was gathered through 50 questionnaires composed of five questions. In total, 217 metapragmatic comments and 155 recollections of past experiences were obtained. The results of this study suggest that politeness is understood mostly in terms of expectable social behavior and serves a regulatory function. It indicates that culturally-specific concepts can fit into the framework of personal, relational and social underpinnings of politeness. This vision embraces a holistic view on politeness as a social tool of efficient interaction.
Funding source: RUDN University Strategic Academic Leadership Program
Award Identifier / Grant number: 0561092000
About the author
Victoriya Trubnikova holds a master’s degree in Italian language and culture for foreigners from the University of Bologna (Italy) and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Padua (Italy). She has worked as a translator and interpreter, and held university appointments as a lecturer of English language in Italy. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (Moscow, Russia) and as a lecturer in Didactics of Modern Languages at the University of Aquila (Italy). She has published a dozen articles and reviews in applied linguistics, and one volume on pragmatic competence enhancement in school. She has also given presentations at international conferences and guest lectures in language teaching and pragmatics courses. Her research interests are in Intercultural Pragmatics and Foreign Language Teaching, in particular speech act realization and assessment.
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Research funding: This work was supported by RUDN University Strategic Academic Leadership Program (0561092000).
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