Language in Use - The pragmatically term politeness in reference to the serial Friends

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.7, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: In 1987 Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson¿s book Politeness. Some

Universals in Language Usage was published. They analyzed the pragmatically

term politeness and the concept of face. But it was not only them who worked on

that topic. Other persons who dealt with pragmatics too started to write books

about politeness, mostly in reference to Brown¿s and Levinson¿s theory. Most of

the books that were published are theoretical. Some of them include examples to

underline the expositions and to make them more understandable. But the

question is if pragmatical politeness is a phenomenon that is also noticeable in

everyday language or if it really is a more theoretical term and therefore can

hardly be practiced. To answer this question it is important to first give a definition

of the pragmatical term politeness and to analyze it by using those theoretical

books. Only then is it possible to prove if politeness is either used in everyday

language or not. After that it is necessary to analyze a medium that is

representative of daily situations. In this case one episode of the serial Friends

will be worked on to see if it includes examples of the different parts of

pragmatical politeness. When the analysis of both parts, the theoretical and the

practical, is completed the question if pragmatical politeness is a more theoretical

term or if it is noticeable in everyday language too will be answered.