The Development of Politeness in Children’s Behaviour

The Development of Politeness in Children’s Behaviour

Linguistic politeness is one of the most important abilities that everyone tries to use as proper as possible in order to seem very sympathetic to other people. This essay is dealing with this phenomena. The first half of it consists of a short description of politeness and the second half is about the development of politeness among children.

Pragmatic competence in general consists of communicating and maintaining good interactions; therefore, it has two general rules. According to the first one, people should be clear during the communication, which means the proper usage of Grice’s maxims. The second one is, that people should be polite which means that they ought to avoid imposing and be friendly (Axia & Baroni, 1985).

            Requests and orders are speech acts that may be face threatening, which means that they somehow limit the addressee’s freedom of action. People use politeness in order to keep their interactions alive and reach their goals; therefore, politeness becomes very important in their modes of performance (Axia & Baroni, 1985).

During the usage of politeness the variables of social distance and power, and the cost of the act have to be taken into consideration because the higher the cost of the request, the larger the amount of compensatory politeness. It also means that politeness would increase when the threats of face are raised as well. Therefore, it is used to maintain good interaction with others. However there is a difference between politeness and deference because the latter one implies the reduction of the speaker’s status and in some cases it is out of place and may be impolite as well (Axia & Baroni, 1985).

The cultural background is also very important because different societies have various definitions for the constituents of face-needs and politeness. There are societies that tend to minimize social distance and weight of imposition, this is called positive politeness. Other societies linguistically mark distance, power and imposition, this is called negative politeness (Blum-Kulka, 1990).

In order to produce and understand politeness people must know the linguistic form of polite requests and the pragmatic request rules within a certain social and situational context. Children are capable of using politeness properly if they achieve mastery of both these abilities. Therefore, the development of polite requests begins with the recognition of important social aspects, like participants or status. It is a complex ability, which means that they are only able to use it correctly at a later age (Blum-Kulka, 1990).

In order to acquire politeness, children receive data about the usage from a competent adult who has already achieved an understanding of a set of rules. It is very important for parents to socialize their children, which means that they want them to be relevant, avoid repetitions and speak in an appropriate manner. Parents use both modelling and direct teaching in order to persuade children to use politeness forms. The learning of politeness can be more problematic than the learning of the language because child interlocutors are very limited in the roles they encounter and those they can assume. Here the social context means the family where children possess very little power (Snow, Perlmann, Gleason & Hoosyar, 1990).

Studying the role playing of children, experts determined, that polite address forms, permission requests and the usage of the word please, are noticed by children. During the role playing fathers received fewer orders but they gave more. Fathers got just a few imperatives because they gave the vast majority of them. On the other hand, mothers received six times more imperatives and eight times more sentences with the beginning of the word let’s (Ervin-Tripp, Guo & Lampert, 1990).

There are three stages in the development of children’s linguistic politeness in requests. The first one ends at the age of four. Children produce only direct questions and imperative phrases. They are aware of the addressee’s person because 90% of the requests to mothers do not contain polite markers. The earliest forms of politeness are taught by others as conventionally polite. Children would like to act and talk like other people in their society, they have a desire to appear competent (Axia & Baroni, 1985).

The second stage is between the age of five and six. Children are able to produce all surface syntactic devices of their native language but they still cannot cover the content of their requests in order to achieve their goals. 5-year-olds hardly ever use polite register and they are no longer concerned with maintaining relationship. Their politeness of high-cost control acts is the lowest. The reason can be, that while younger children think that politeness means persuasion; children over six have already learnt that escalating pressure is more effective. Therefore, they try to persuade their environment with urgency (Axia & Baroni, 1985).

The third stage is between the age of seven and eight. In that age children can vary both the content and form of their requests by making indirect requests. Experiments showed that seven-year-olds always increase their politeness whatever the cost is, even when the interlocutor pretends he or she has not heard, or the interlocutor gives a motivated refusal. Children use only from the age nine linguistic politeness as a criterion in judging the appropriateness of a request according to the addressee’s status (Axia & Baroni, 1985). 

In conclusion, linguistic politeness has a very important role in communication because people use it in order to preserve the friendly mood of the conversation, and it also help them reaching their aims by covering the speech acts that may seem to be face-threatening for the addressee. Children need a longer period to acquire politeness but usually by the age of nine, they are able to use it properly.

References

Snow, C. E., Perlmann, R. Y., Gleason, J. B., & Hooshyar, N. Developmental Perspectives on Politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 289-305.

Axia, G., & Baroni, M. R. Linguistic Politeness at Different Age Levels. Child Development, 56, 918-927.

Ervin-Tripp, S., Guo, J., & Lampert, M. Politeness and Persuasion in Children's Control Acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 307-331.

Blum-Kulka, S. You don't Touch Lettuce with Your Fingers. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 259-288.