Abstract
As human beings, we move through space and time. Under normal circumstances, our moves are not solitary ones, executed in splendid isolation. On the contrary, our mobility is social: It has a built-in component that tells us to look out for other human ‘movers’ who may be engaged in the same exercise of mobility and are trying to reach their goals, just as we do, within the confines of our respective spatial and temporal affordances and restrictions. It goes without saying that this social movement is only possible within a socially regulated environment; that is why we have traffic rules and speed limits, passenger crosswalks and traffic lights. We have to keep passageways free from encumbrances and adjust our ‘moving manners’ to conform with the environment in(to) which we are moving. Mobile politeness is what I will call the unspoken, mostly not codified collection of customs that facilitate our movements, while coordinating them with the ways our fellow humans move about. Neglecting the unwritten rules of mobile politeness will at a minimum characterize us as boorish and bullyish; in aggravated cases it may lead to serious disruption of the normal ‘moving order,’ to confrontations, accidents and even criminal behavior, when we try to ‘stand our ground’ or ‘stay the course’ without paying heed to other movers. In contrast, from the leisurely strolling pedestrians on the sidewalks to the pilots moving their human cargo above our heads at speeds that are higher by several orders of ten, mobile politeness helps turn what could be a free-for-all unruly stampede into a well-orchestrated suite of moving bodies and artifacts, natural and/or engineered. The present chapter will focus on human mobility as an area of behavior which has been understudied in respect to the pragmatics of politeness. Mobile (im)politeness, then, is seen as dealing with the prerequisites, as well as hindrances, for a hitch-free, easy-flowing, and indeed ‘polished,’ movement in the context of our society.
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Notes
- 1.
According to the Norwegian author, the quote stems from a poem by Mao Tse-tung, “Revisiting Shaoshan.”
- 2.
Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, the rendering of the Greek work pístis as ‘faith’ opens up a vexing ambiguity. ‘Faith’ usually connotes with ‘belief’ and the epistemic verb ‘to believe.’ By contrast, the Greek term relates to the verb pistéuein ‘to have trust in,’ a verb of volition. Keeping this distinction in mind could save the world a lot of hair-splitting theological debate and some gross misunderstandings about ‘correct’ religious behavior.
- 3.
In fairness to the architects and their acoustic knowhow, it should be mentioned that at the time, the Concertgebouw, along with the Zurich Tonhalle, ranked at the top of the world’s superb orchestral venues.
- 4.
‘Nobody freely challenges me’ (Originally the motto of the Scottish Stuart dynasty).
- 5.
Willem Mengelberg fled the Netherlands as soon as the war ended, and died some nine years later, self-exiled in Switzerland.
- 6.
- 7.
The term ‘languaculture’ was originally coined by the late Chicago anthropologist and linguist Paul Friedrich (1927–2016) as ‘linguaculture’ (1989), then adapted by Agar (1995) in its present form. The Danish sociolinguist Karen Risager has used ‘languaculture’ in many of her works, compare: “Languaculture is both structurally constrained and socially and personally variable. It is a bridge between the structure of language and the socially constituted personal idiolect” (Risager, 2006: 191).
- 8.
Based on an actual experience from my Copenhagen student days. The lecture in question was standard, ‘recycled’ stuff—and one that we had heard before. As to the professor in question, being a wise man of the world, he may have felt that a gracious non-committal acknowledgment was the only way to save all the ‘faces’ involved in the inappropriate complimenting.
- 9.
As depicted on a cartoon by John Klossner (The New Yorker 92(36), 7 November 2016, p. 25).
- 10.
Compare: “The distinction between positive/negative face is not seen as useful anymore” (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010: 542). But see also the author’s more careful formulation later on: “Whereas the distinction between positive/negative face in interaction is not always clear-cut and has been problematized, the dropping altogether of this category would seem to merit a bit more discussion” (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010: 542).
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Mey, J.L. (2021). Mobile (Im)politeness: The View from Pragmatics. In: Xie, C. (eds) The Philosophy of (Im)politeness. Advances in (Im)politeness Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81592-9_2
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