Linguistic Impoliteness in (Translated) Children’s Fiction

One of the reasons for this lack of research might be the understanding of impoliteness in the wider field of linguistic pragmatics. For much of the research into the history of impoliteness and its related field politeness, impoliteness was conceptualised as a communicative failure. For instance, Leech (1983: 105) claims that “conflictive illocutions tend, thankfully, to be rather marginal to human linguistic behaviour in normal circumstances.” Yet, impoliteness can be described as more than marginalised behaviour. Thus, starting with a first strategic paper in the 1980s (Lachenicht 1980), impoliteness research has sparked three waves of research focusing on theoretical notions (e.g. Culpeper 1996; Kienpointner 1997) on the one hand, and participant evaluations on the other (e.g. Locher 2004; Watts 2003). Recent publications also include analyses of impoliteness in a variety of contexts, such as different cultural settings (e.g. House 2005; Stewart 2005), online communication (e.g. Kleinke & Bös 2015), television discourse (e.g. Bousfield 2007a; 2008a; Culpeper 2005; Dynel 2012), and literary texts such as Early Modern (e.g. Bousfield 2007b; Rudanko 2006) and contemporary plays (e.g. Culpeper 1998). At the time of writing, a search for the keyword ‘impoliteness’ turns up over 550 research articles in the Journal of Pragmatics alone – this is surely a better picture than the merely five papers Locher and Bousfield (2008: 2) refer to in their introduction. This further confirms the importance of understanding and describing impolite behaviours in a variety of contexts. In this light, one of the aims of my research is to further an understanding of impoliteness, both as a theoretical concept and as a tool to investigate a specific context. In doing so, I hope to help rectify “the enormous imbalance that exists between academic interest in politeness phenomena as opposed to impoliteness phenomena” (Locher & Bousfield 2008: 1).

The analysis of impoliteness in children’s fiction is further relevant, in that it can shed light on how impoliteness is used and conceptualised for a young audience who lacks pragmatic abilities and contextual awareness, that is, an audience who needs to be socialised into their Community of Practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992). Fictional texts have been shown to serve this function, which is even more pronounced in texts written for children (e.g. Metcalfe 2003). First, a simplified use of language in terms of syntax and lexis (e.g. Gamble & Yates 2002; Kümmerling-Meibauer 1999a; Kullmann 2008; Stephens 2004; 2009) helps the child understand pragmatic strategies which, in addition, are commented on using impoliteness metalanguage. Second, the narration is set in special narrative spaces such as the school, or the family home (e.g. Alston 2000; Avery 2004; Grenby 2008; Ray 2004), in short, narrative spaces the child is familiar with from her own embodied experiences. These, then, are spaces whose norms the child is familiar with, so that violations of contextual expectations, and thus an understanding of impolite language use, are made easier for the reader. How exactly the use of both simplified language and narrative spaces furthers impoliteness has not yet been investigated.

In a globalised world, though, children’s fiction is read not only in its country of origin, but popular books and series such as the Harry Potter series are read widely as translations. The target culture(s) into which the series has been translated, however, might not share the same communicative preferences as the British source culture. These differing preferences, such as different levels of directness in request formation, have been explicated in cross-cultural pragmatics (e.g. House 2005; 2010). Yet, while translation studies have focused on the translation of specific elements of children’s fiction, such as the use of dialect or humour in translation (e.g. Davies 2003; Lathey 2005), the translation of impoliteness has so far remained a research desideratum.

From the above discussion follow two questions that have, so far, not been sufficiently answered in impoliteness research:

Answering these questions necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, drawing together and adapting existing frameworks and models from different fields, including linguistic pragmatics, literary studies, and translation studies; my study thus places itself firmly at the interface of multiple disciplines. In doing so, I attempt to do justice to impoliteness as a multifaceted field of study. This approach further highlights the important position of children’s fiction as a data set, a position which has been previously ignored in research.

To be more precise, the objective of the present study is to analyse impoliteness in English-language children’s fiction and German translations. To do so, I propose a descriptive qualitative model that contains three analytical steps:

In my application of analytical criteria of impoliteness to children’s fiction I seek

In my second analytical step, I seek to fill the gap of research into impoliteness metalanguage in fictional texts. I establish analytical criteria that are tailored to the data set at hand to understand how characters and the narrator comment on, and evaluate, impolite behaviour, in short, how they conceptualise impoliteness. Further, it is my aim to gain insights into how this metalanguage can help the reader understand how and why a given utterance is salient and open to an interpretation as impolite.

In conducting these three analytical steps and providing answers to the research desiderata postulated above, the present study will be a significant contribution to existing research on impoliteness.

The present study is organised in 13 chapters. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 presents a close description of my data; I focus especially on the selection criteria and offer a brief summary of the texts that make up my corpus to illustrate the reasons for my choice.

In Chapter 3 I explore the linguistic concept of ‘impoliteness.’ As the term has proven difficult to define (see, e.g., Culpeper 2011a), I establish a definition of the scientific term (Section 3.1) by first looking into what impoliteness is not, that is, it is not failed politeness, and not inherent in linguistic forms. The section ends with an in-depth discussion of how impoliteness has been conceptualised in first- and second-wave approaches. I then provide reasons for my own third-wave approach and select a definition. Following this, I describe several aspects that influence a participant’s understanding of impoliteness; these include contextual norms, intentionality, power, and identity (Section 3.2).

Chapter 4 addresses impoliteness in fiction. First, I discuss the validity of using fictional data for linguistic analyses, a point often criticised in older research (Section 4.1). Then I explore the relationship between impoliteness and entertainment (Section 4.2), as well as the link of impoliteness and character and plot development (Section 4.3). Both these factors help explain why impoliteness is especially prevalent in modern (children’s) fiction.

Chapter 5 concentrates on children’s fiction as a special case of fiction. As the terms ‘literature’ and ‘children’ have proven conflictive in previous research, I will first approach a definition and give reasons for my use of the term ‘children’s fiction’ instead of ‘children’s literature’ (Section 5.1). I then focus on the acquisition of pragmatics, and how this is scaffolded by the specific characteristics of children’s fiction, such as the language used, and shared experiences that are expressed in narration (Section 5.2). I further discuss the acquisition of impoliteness, and how the specific settings of children’s fiction may scaffold this acquisition process (Section 5.3), which may provide cues as to how and why impoliteness is used.

In preparation for the study of impoliteness in translation, the focus of Chapter 6 is on the realisation of impoliteness in cross-cultural analyses. I especially address dimensions in which German and English impoliteness preferences can be contrasted (Section 6.1) and how these different preferences are perceived by members of the other culture (Section 6.2).

Chapter 8 remains in the field of translation studies and focuses on translating Harry Potter as a case study, with special emphasis on the translation process (Section 8.1). It further considers research into the translation of individual phenomena, such as cultural artefacts, names, dialect and humour (Section 8.2) that provide the basis for my own analysis in Chapter 12.

Chapter 9 draws together the implications from the previous chapters; here, I present my methodology and discuss my research hypotheses.

Chapters 10–12 contain my analysis. Specifically, Chapter 10 offers a detailed analysis and description of impoliteness strategies and related linguistic phenomena, such as polite and politic behaviour. I also comment on the structure or progression of conflictive discourse in children’s fiction. In Chapter 11 I present my analytical criteria for the analysis of impoliteness metalanguage in children’s fiction; I comment on how metalanguage can help the child understand the usage of impoliteness. Chapter 12 focuses on a case study of impoliteness in the German translation of Harry Potter; here I show global translation tendencies and discuss how impoliteness is translated and conceptualised for a German audience. Finally, in the conclusion (Chapter 13), I draw together insights from impoliteness research, research into the nature of children’s fiction, and translation studies, and point out areas for future research.

A final remark on my use of language: whenever I refer to persons in the singular, such as ‘the child,’ ‘the reader,’ ‘the speaker,’ or ‘the hearer,’ I use the feminine ‘she’ as a generic pronoun.