Politeness in the Hartley Library

I want to discuss politeness in the library. Do you actively seek to be respectful of others and follow library rules? Or are you one of those people who leave the library in a mess?

Its peak exam season and Hartley Library is rammed. You need to be in there by 9am to have a seat, 8.30am if you want a seat with a plug. Everyone is feeling stressed out and inevitably this can lead to grouchiness, but one should never take that out on your fellow students; I mean they are in the same predicament as you.

When you are in the library day after day, week after week in exam season it can be easy to be annoyed by the smallest things. Whilst in the library yesterday I interviewed some students the things they find as impolite in the library.

   1)   Alex: The most impolite thing is definitely leave the toilets a mess. The girls toilets are always disgusting, I mean there are only like two toilets on a floor as it is, so we need to keep what we have clean.

   2)   Natasha: I get annoyed when the person next to be is constantly looking at what I am doing. We all when we first sit down, have a sneaky look to see what subject the other person is studying, but constantly looking over is just rude and distracting.

   3)   Tashan: When someone has saved a seat for either their selves or a friend. Fair enough when you have a lecture or lunch and you are back within two hours tops. But some people leave seats for the whole day, whilst others really need to space to do some actual work.

If you see someone saving a seat, how could you go about asking them if you can have it? Brown and Levinson (1987) came up with an influential theory- Face Threatening Acts (FTA). This was part of a wider theory in the area of linguistic politeness. 

This theory had three main notions: face, face-threatening act, and politeness strategies. The theory examines the options one has to express a question/demand and tries to gauge the reaction of the respondent.

You can either ask the person for the seat or not.

1) Yes- You engage in FTA

2) No- You do not engage in FTA

So if you have asked, how do you do this?

-      - One the record: ‘Hi, could I please have that seat as it isn’t being used’

-      - Off the record (ambiguously): ‘Oh, I have a lot of work to do and nowhere to sit’

-      - On the record, baldly without redress: ‘I am going to sit here and work’

-      - On the record with redress: ‘I was wondering if I could possibly sit here and do work, but only if you don’t need it, don’t worry otherwise’

The on the record, baldly without redress would probably not be your first choice as it is quite abrupt and rude, especially as it is a peer in society, you cannot tell someone what to do when you don’t know them, in this type of situation it is quite ‘socially inappropriate’.  A family elder or boss in a work environment can maybe use this form of FTA as that is more appropriate.

The student you may be asking may be from another culture, like China, where social norms are different. They will need a way to be able to refuse politely while ‘saving face’. The student may also be British, but still also need a non-threatening way of being asked as on the record, baldly without redress can be quite intimidating. 

Thus accommodation is important; we must understand that people are different. H Giles in his 2009 work The process of communication accommodation said “In most instances, it is desirable- even necessary – to converge, to adjust our language patterns towards those of our conversational partners” suggesting we should be understanding of the people we talk to and adjust ourselves appropriately.

Whilst revising yesterday evening in the library, a friend who was sat close by turned to me as the guy in the seat next to her left to go home, and said “Wouldn’t it be nice as if you’re leaving to go, you look at the person sat next to you and you say ‘Good luck in your exams, hope everything goes well’”  I laughed and agreed with her, it would be nice, but in today’s day and age, you don’t really talk to people you don’t know. Gone are the days of walking past a stranger in the street and nodding your head with a ‘Good morning’, we all keep to ourselves and our circles now and I am not sure whether that’s more polite or less.

Source:

. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness : some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. 

. Giles, H. (2009). The process of communication accommodation. In N. Coupland & A. Jaworski (Eds.), The 

new sociolinguistics reader (pp. 276-286). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.