Deriving politeness from an extended Lewisian model: The case of rising declaratives

Abstract

This paper examines one systematic way in which inferences about politeness are derived from linguistic expressions. Focusing on the complex connection between English rising declaratives (RDs) and politeness, it proposes an analysis that combines aspects of the Lewisian/Stalnakerian context-update framework with pragmatic theories of politeness. The analysis generates certain context-sensitive predictions, which are tested and confirmed experimentally. The resulting account is able to capture why assertive uses of RDs often sound like more polite assertions, why inquisitive uses of RDs often sound like less polite questions, why assertive RDs can sometimes convey particular presumptions about the common ground, and why all of these inferences are ultimately heavily context-dependent. The emerging proposal is shown to have broader implications for analyzing the role of semantic convention in deriving politeness and associated inferences, and for determining the division of labor between semantics, context, and general pragmatic reasoning. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.