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3.
Be pessimistic
Perhaps you’d care to help me.
4.
Minimize the imposition
I just want to ask you if I can borrow a tiny bit of paper.
5.
Give deference
We look forward very much to dining with you.
Communicate Speaker’s
Want to not Impinge on
Hearer
6.
Apologize
I’m sure you must be very busy, but…
7.
Impersonalize speaker and
hearer
I ask you to do this for me
8.
State the FTA as a general rule
We don’t sit on tables, we sit on chairs, Johnny.
9.
Nominalize
You performed well on the examinations and we were
favourably impressed.
Redress Other’s Wants of
Hearer’s
10.
Go on record as incurring a debt,
or as not indebting hearer
I’ll never be able to repay you if you…
Table 2.3 The Negative Politeness Strategy (Brown and Levinson, 1978, pp. 130 – 210)
2.3.5.4
Off Record
Brown and
Levinson (1978) explained that, “a communicative act is done
off record if it is done in such a way that it is not possible to attribute only one clear
communicative intention to the act” (p. 211). The off record strategy
happens when we
do not use a
direct expression to what we exactly mean. Brown and Levinson (1978)
also indicated off record as stated below:
“to construct off-record utterance one says something that is either
more general (contains less information in the sense that it rules out
fewer possible states of affairs) or actually different from what one
means (intends to be understood)” (Brown and Levinson, 1978, p.
211).
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