O sposobach uzasadniania językowych zachowań nieetykietalnych w dyskursie politycznym

Abstract

The article is an attempt at systematizing the ways of justifying unetiquettal linguistic behaviours by the modern Polish political actors in the conditions of media democracy. The author assumed political correctness as the etiqucttal standard maintained in the postmodern public discourse. For the analysis of the problem the pragmalinguistic theory of politeness by Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson was used as research tool. The author differentiates two types of face threatening acts occurring in the behaviours of public persons - the acts with an overt or covert face threat. Next, he reconstructs a pattern of communicative situation of face threatening in a political discourse which leads him to the conclusion that the situation requires justification of unetiquettal behaviour by an addresser of the act threatening the face of a recipient if the reaction negating the contents of this act becomes necessary on the part of one of the receiving subjects. The author, in the principal part of the analysis, presents two main types of justification undertaken by the authors of the acts threatening the face of the recipients of such acts - expiation or defense. The expiational reaction takes place only when it is possible to prove a face threatening act and its addresser - as a result of the pressure by the recipients acknowledges that he/she transgressed the recognized etiquettal standard. Defensive reaction is more complex and occurs in several varieties: 1. denial of the occurrence of a ETA (when there is no evidence), 2. shifting responsibility for a FTA onto one of the receiving subjects, 3. diminishing a FTA by referring to general concepts, 4. diminishing a FTA by the indication of supreme circumstance justifying unetiquettal behaviour. In the recapitulation, the author regards these techniques as thought-out tools of'influence upon recipients.