Politeness Theory: Compliance and Paralinguistic Cooperation

Abstract

This manuscript is comprised of three research studies focused on politeness, shame, and cooperation. Study one is a pretest to develop stimuli for the subsequent experiment. The stimuli are comprised of messages that vary by both the type and degree of politeness. There are two types of politeness: regard for another’s identity and regard another’s independence (autonomy). There are also two degrees of politeness: presence and absence of regard. Presence of regard is considered politeness and absence of regard is considered impoliteness. This creates four conditions: identity politeness, autonomy politeness, identity impoliteness, and autonomy impoliteness. This study included exemplars of politeness strategies and used a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to create a model of politeness and utterances that indicate each type of politeness. This study also collected data on paralinguistic cooperation to begin the development of a scale through an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Study two was used to gather data to create a model of paralinguistic communication to be subjected to a CFA. The model supports paralinguistic communication as a two-factor measure: non-cooperative communication and cooperative communication. Study three was an experimental design to test a model positing politeness exerts causal force on experiences of shame, which in turn, exert causal force on both behavioral and paralinguistic cooperation. The model was not supported. Results suggest some association between politeness and cooperation. These results support politeness theory’s claim that politeness does have a relationship with cooperation, however no support for the notion that the politeness—cooperation relationship is mediated by shame was provided due to the inability to test the path model.