A Quick Look at the Grammar of Politeness

*published in Cavite Wisdom Publishing newspaper on 07 to 13 June 2021

As she tours the guests enthusiastically through the museum, museum guide Maddie ensures that her crowd gets a comprehensive backdrop to every artifact while observing house rules. Upon entering the painting section, Maddie forewarns, "Please turn off the flash of your cameras as this can damage the paintings." As they proceed to the ancient handicraft area, she articulates, "Please do not touch any artifact in the museum." When the tour reaches the preserved-items room, our passionate, cautious tour guide warns, "Please refrain from rushing while inside the room. Most of the articles here are sensitive to seismic waves." Comes now the time to enter the busts section. Before anything else, Maddie emphasizes, "Please do not imitate the facial expressions of the busts while taking pictures with them as they represent the artistry of our forefathers." While the guests have a good time with what they see and learn in the course of the tour, they start to feel a growing atmosphere of discomfort and disturbance emanating from Maddie, a tour guide and historian who's just doing her job zealously and happily. It turns out that it all comes from her warnings and reminders that follow a consistent, sturdy pattern—an imperative sentence beginning with "please." Although "please" is the primary politeness word in English, hearing it successively in a consistent format like that employed by Maddie probably results in annoyance and irritation on the part of listeners. The irking sentiment of the crowd should have been avoided had Maddie employed the following grammatical, politeness constructions in addition to her "please"-plus-an-imperative-sentence expressions in asking the guests to act in a particular manner inside the museum.

The first grammatical, politeness structure in a person's communicative arsenal is the possibility construction. Primarily, possibility can be signified via the central modals "can," "could," "may," and "might." In Maddie's case, she could say to the guests, "You may not want to imitate the busts' facial expressions while having pictures with them as these figures embody the artistry of our forefathers," "It might be improper and disrespectful to imitate the facial expressions of the busts as these artifacts represent the artistry of our ancestors," and "Imitating the facial expressions of the busts can be improper and disrespectful as these figures represent the artistry of our forefathers."

The second construction is the passive structure. The passive construction is a way of delivering a statement with an action verb, where the performer of the action is made an object (object of the preposition "by"), is implied, or is even hid, and the direct object or indirect object is given as the subject of the sentence. With regard to phrasal structure, the verb phrase distinguishes the passive sentence: the main verb comes in a participial form and follows an auxiliary "be." A passive sentence inherently conveys an idea with less or even without assertiveness at all. Maddie could express the passive "The flash of your cameras must be deactivated as this can impair the paintings" (if the doer of the action is intended to be implied or hid, which is deemed to be more polite) or "The flash of your cameras must be deactivated by you as this can impair the paintings" (if the performer is intended to be mentioned anyhow). The passive structure is also resorted to whenever the doer is unknown or intended not to be mentioned because of, among other reasons, respect to the person.

Another grammatical method of expressing politeness is using adjectives. These adjectives come in the form of predicative adjectives—those that follow a linking verb. This method is an indirect manner of inciting people to do a specific action or to think in a particular way via giving judgment about the matter at hand. By using adjectives, Maddie could tell the crowd, "To imitate the facial expressions of the busts is disrespectful to our forefathers" and "Rushing inside the room is harmful to the artifacts as they are sensitive to seismic waves."

There is also the employment of a direct address. Often called a "vocative," a direct address is a noun phrase referring to the person to whom the speaker talks. When used as a grammatical, politeness strategy, a direct address is a way of endearing listeners or acknowledging a person as a recipient of the message. These sentences illustrate politeness through a direct address: "Sir, the elevator is currently malfunctioning," "Gentlemen, I need these chairs," "Bro, that's quite inappropriate," and "Elissa, I can't help you right now." In the case of Maddie, she could say to the visitors, "Dear guests, touching an artifact definitely impairs that item" or simply, "Dear guests, please refrain from touching any artifact." Note that a direct address can appear at the beginning—before the subject noun phrase ("Sir, the elevator . . ."), at the middle—between the subject noun phrase and the verb phrase ("The elevator, Sir, is malfunctioning"), and at the end of the sentence ("The elevator is malfunctioning, Sir"). In any position, the direct address is separated from all other parts of the sentence using commas.

The last grammatical, politeness structure we have here is the use of "let us" or "let's." This politeness tool is often a gentle, smooth way of bringing people to action, which works via inviting them to perform or think in a particular manner without directly pertaining to anyone. More importantly, the speaker himself does include himself in the group of people sought to carry out the action. Often, "let us" and "let's" sound like an invitation and encouragement, not an authoritative imperative. If Maddie employed these politeness tools in the course of the tour, she would say, "Let us/Let's turn off the flash of our cameras as this can impair the colors on the paintings," "Let us/Let's not rush while inside the room," and "Let us/Let's not touch any artifact in the museum."

These are but few of the grammatical, politeness structures one can adopt in requesting people to act. As can be seen, the grammar of English offers a good number of politeness constructions: it can transform a statement to another structure whilst keeping the thought, and it is not limited to "please"-plus-an-imperative-sentence configuration. Possibility constructions, passive sentences, predicative adjectives, incorporation of a direct address, and integration of "let us" or "let's" apart from "please" plus imperative sentences can be utilized to form varying requests to people, especially to avoid robotic expressions resulting from a uniform structure of requests, which generally cause annoyance and irritation on the part of hearers. A person's interactive and social skills would be enhanced through these grammatical techniques in signifying politeness.