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Focus and the interpretation of quantifiers in face-threatening contexts

Tanja Gulan ; Linguistics Department, University of Zadar
Pavle Valerjev ; Department of Psychology, University of Zadar
Igor Bajšanski ; Department of Psychology, University of Rijeka

Sažetak

Politeness theory defines face as a sense of positive identity or desired public image that people are motivated to maintain during social interaction. Many actions or utterances are possible threats to the face, so speakers often use linguistic politeness strategies that mitigate these threats. One of politeness strategies is hedging, or weakening a statement that a speaker knows to be true and which could present a threat to the face of the hearer. Bonnefon, Feeney, & Villejoubert (2009) showed that in face-threatening contexts expression some X-ed may be interpreted as all X-ed. The study aimed to investigate the interpretation of quantifiers some, few, and a few in face-threatening contexts. We expected that interpretation of few would differ from interpretations of some and a few due to the
property of focus. One hundred and seventy-one participants read three scenarios and judged the appropriateness of quantifier use in different contexts. We replicated the results reported by Bonnefon et al. (2009): participants were more likely to endorse the inference from some X-ed to all X-ed in a face-threatening context than in a face-boost context. Similarly, few X-ed was more likely to be interpreted as no one X-ed in a face-threatening context. For a few
there were no differences between the two contexts.

Ključne riječi

quantifiers; focus; politeness; face-threatening contexts

Hrčak ID:

128167

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/128167

Datum izdavanja:

1.9.2014.

Posjeta: 893 *