Cross-genre Pragmatics: A Cross-Linguistic Comparative Analysis of Politeness Strategies

Thesis Abstract

Cross-genre Pragmatics A Cross-Linguistic Comparative Analysis of Politeness Strategies This study addresses a gap in cross-cultural pragmatics by examining how politeness strategies manifest and converge or diverge across spoken, written, and digital genres in two typologically distinct languages, English and Japanese, under contemporary communicative norms. The problem rests on the assumption that genre boundaries shape politeness realizations, and that conventional cross-linguistic accounts may overlook genre-specific pragmatic sequencing and social-indexical cues embedded in discourse practices. The aim is to investigate how genre influences the deployment of politeness strategies, and to identify universal tendencies and language-specific patterns that emerge in a cross-genre, cross-linguistic framework. The specific objectives are to (1) categorize politeness strategies across seven communicative genres—personal emails, business emails, academic lectures, everyday conversations, news interviews, social media posts, and parliamentary proceedings—in both English and Japanese; (2) compare the frequency, form, and sequencing of positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record strategies across genres and languages; (3) analyze morphosyntactic and discourse-pragmatic cues signaling politeness, including mitigators, honorifics, and discourse markers; (4) examine genre-mediated shifts in face-threatening acts and their mitigation through address terms, modality, and honorific systems; (5) assess the role of digital vs. face-to-face modalities in shaping politeness choices; and (6) develop a cross-linguistic typology of genre-specific politeness realizations with implications for intercultural communication and language pedagogy. The study employs a mixed-methods design, combining quantitative corpus-based analysis with qualitative interpretive analysis. The population comprises contemporary English- and Japanese-language corpora spanning the seven genres identified, drawn from publicly available sources and institutional repositories. A stratified random sampling approach yields a total of 1,400 dialogues or written passages (100 per genre per language, balanced for modality where applicable). Data collection instruments include genre-tagged corpora, annotation guidelines adapted from Brown and Levinson’s politeness framework augmented with Goffman’s face-work constructs, and a specialized politeness annotation schema capturing indicators of positive and negative politeness as well as off-record strategies. Instrument validity will be established through expert review and pilot coding with intercoder reliability measured by Cohen’s kappa targeting values above 0.80. Analytical approaches comprise both quantitative and qualitative methods. Descriptive statistics will quantify the distribution of politeness strategies across genres and languages. Inferential analyses will utilize mixed-effects logistic regression to model the probability of employing a particular politeness strategy as a function of genre, language, and modality, with random intercepts for speaker identity and discourse context. ANOVA will test genre-by-language interaction effects on strategy frequency. Thematic analysis will be applied to qualitative annotations to elucidate discourse-pragmatic cues, sequencing patterns, and face-threat mitigation tactics. The study will also apply a functional discourse analysis to map strategy functions to genre-specific communicative goals, drawing on indicators such as mitigatory intensifiers, hedge sequences, and stance-taking devices. A convergent parallel design will integrate quantitative results with qualitative insights to produce a robust cross-linguistic, cross-genre interpretation. Key expected findings include (a) genre exerts a stronger effect on politeness realization than language pair, with particular genres showing universal tendencies (e.g., increased positive politeness in collaborative genres) and others revealing language-specific realizations (e.g., Japanese honorific systems strongly shaping politeness in formal genres); (b) digital genres exhibit more hedging and off-record signaling than face-to-face genres across both languages; (c) English tends toward explicit mitigation in business and academic genres, while Japanese demonstrates higher reliance on honorific and syntactic mood markers; (d) genre-mediated sequencing patterns reveal consistent face-enhancement or face-threatening trajectories within each genre across languages. The study contributes to knowledge by offering a comprehensive, genre-sensitive cross-linguistic typology of politeness strategies, informing theories of pragmatics and intercultural communication. It will provide empirically grounded implications for language teaching, professional communication, and natural language processing, particularly in developing genre-aware politeness models for multilingual AI systems. The main conclusion anticipates that genre exerts a decisive, context-driven influence on politeness realization, with language-specific resources modulating but not fully constraining these patterns; recommendations include incorporating genre-aware politeness training in higher education curricula and advancing cross-cultural communication protocols that account for genre and modality in bilingual contexts.