RT Journal Article
T1 The use of please in the expression of (im)politeness in the language of London teenagers and adults
A1 Núñez Pertejo, Paloma
A1 Palacios Martínez, Ignacio Miguel
K1 Teen talk
K1 Pragmatic/deontic reversal
K1 (Im)Politeness
K1 Please
AB This paper explores the expression of (im)politeness in the language of teenagers and adults, looking specifically at cases of so-called ‘pragmatic reversal’ (Mazzon, 2017; Fedriani, 2019), in which a politeness marker is used with a confrontational meaning to threaten face. We focus on the use of please, traditionally a courtesy marker, in contexts where it expresses either positive or negative (im)politeness (Culpeper, 2011; Leech, 2014; Aijmer, 2015; Taylor, 2016), drawing on data from the London English Corpus and the spoken component of the British National Corpus 2014. Our analysis of teen talk suggests that please is sometimes used by adolescent speakers when there is a clear mismatch between polite and impolite formulae (e.g., ‘What's that shitty thing please?’). Such processes of pragmatic reversal seem to contribute to harmonious relationships among teenagers, consolidating mutual bonds, which is of key importance during the teen years, in that the discourse of these young speakers is governed by socio-pragmatic norms which differ markedly from those of adults. The paper concludes by noting the significant role of speaker age in the study of (im)politeness, and hence the need to address this issue both in terms of definitions of (im)politeness theory and in the application of these to real data.
PB Elsevier
YR 2025
FD 2025-03
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40819
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40819
LA eng
NO Núñez Pertejo, P., & Palacios Martínez, I. M. (2025). The use of please in the expression of (im)politeness in the language of London teenagers and adults. Language Sciences, 108. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.LANGSCI.2024.101703
NO The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grants PID2020-114604GB-I00 & PID2021-122267NB-I00) and the Regional Government of Galicia (Consellería de Cultura, Educación, Formación Profesional e Universidades, grants ED431B2021/02 & ED431B2023/03).
DS Minerva
RD 28 abr 2026