Politeness, speech acts and socio-cultural change

Abstract

This paper studies the long-term diachronic development of the speech act of expressing gratitude in the history of English in Britain. The speech act underwent a considerable transformation from a religious-devotional practice and an expressive act with a high illocutionary weight addressed to a fellow human being towards a predominantly phatic routine in everyday conversation. Based on empirical data it is suggested that this development is characterised by the interplay of four processes: recontextualisation, functional expansion, attenuation/reduction of illocutionary force, and routinisation. Since, as will be shown, these changes run parallel to major changes in the organisation of society in the social history of Britain, they appear to be part of more general socio-cultural transformational processes that affected behavioural conventions, including politeness conventions and communicative routines.