La politesse et l’indirection
Politeness and Indirectness

Summary/Abstract: Within the research papers focussed on linguistic politeness, the politeness of discourse acts and especially direct discourse acts (requests, orders) are often associated with their more or less direct character. The relationship between the politeness of an utterance and indirectness has widely been analyzed. The aim of this paper is to explain this situation and to resume some arguable issues which arise often. Firstly, we have to outline the fact that it is wise to replace the notion of indirectness which has to do with the linguistic form of the utterance with the term choice of the utterance (cf. C.Kerbrat-Orecchioni ,1992) which refers to the strategy of giving the receiver the alternative to refuse (at least theoretically). However, even if indirectness is without any doubt in relation with politeness of an utterance, one should not mistake one notion for another : it happens that on the one hand the indirect utterance enhances the brutality of the speech act (Dois-tu vraiment faire tant de bruit?), or, on the other hand a direct act has to be optional (Je vous prie de bien vouloir m’envoyer vos documents). Secondly, another question that arises which regards the coreelation indirectness- politeness is represented by the allusive formulae also called non-conventional indirect requests. After S. Blum-Kulka (1987) it is commonly agreed that the most indirect forms would be less polite than the indirect conventional formulae because the former impose an extra interpretation from the part of the receiver. These ideas have to be enlarged a little bit. We will try to prove that the notion of choice implies that non conventional indirect requests have to be considered more polite than conventional indirect requests. However, one cannot deny the fact that due to the vague character of of these formulae the speaker aims at respecting the autonomy of the listener. More than that, resorting to non-conventional indirect requests reveals a discourse strategy which is completely differnt from the one which sustains conventional direct and indirect requests. While conventional forms require the immediate response of the listener ans consequently the making of the action, the situation is not the same with non-conventional forms. Not translating directly the communicative intention of the speaker, these might lead to a negotiation before making the request itself. Hence, the need of adopting a more sequential point of view on interaction which does not replace completely the formalist approach which is indebted to the theory of discourse acts.

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