A redressive act (which we sometimes also label a “politeness behavior”) is a verbal, non-verbal (e.g., gestural, postural, etc.) or extra-verbal (e.g., prosody, tone or volume of voice, etc.) behavior which, in a given culture, has the potential to mitigate or “redress” some degree of face threat. Redressive acts are what are typically thought of as “polite” behaviors: e.g., saying “please” and “thank you”, taking off a hat before speaking, etc. Specific redressive acts (e.g., taking off one’s hat vs. bowing vs. kissing a ring, etc.), as well as their redressive values, are culturally defined and are not universal, though Brown and Levinson (1987) have identified and reported broad classes of redressive “strategies” (e.g., apologies, honorifics, etc.) which they have found recurring across multiple cultures.
Published in Chapter:
Politeness and Etiquette Modeling: Beyond Perception to Behavior
Christopher A. Miller (Smart Information Flow Technologies, USA), Tammy Ott (Smart Information Flow Technologies, USA), Peggy Wu (Smart Information Flow Technologies, USA), and Vanessa Vakili (Smart Information Flow Technologies, USA)
Copyright: © 2011
|Pages: 25
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-883-8.ch017
Abstract
If culture is expressed in the patterns of behavior, values and expectations of a group, then a central element in the practical modeling and understanding of culture is the expression of politeness and its roles in governing and influencing behavior. The authors have been developing computational models of “politeness” and its role in power and familiarity relationships, urgency, indebtedness, etc. Such a model, insofar as it extends to human-machine interactions, will enable better and more effective decision aids. This model, based on a universal theory of human politeness, links aspects of social context (power and familiarity relationships, imposition, character), which have culture-specific values, to produce expectations about the use of polite, redressive behaviors (also culturally defined). The authors have linked this “politeness perception” model to a coarse model of decision making and behavior in order to predict influences of politeness on behavior and attitudes. This chapter describes the algorithm along with results from multiple validation experiments: two addressing the model’s ability to predict perceived politeness and two predicting the impact of perceived politeness on compliance behaviors in response to directives. The authors conclude that their model tracks well with subjective perceptions of American cultural politeness and that its predictions broadly anticipate and explain situations in which perceived politeness in a directive yields improved affect, trust, perceived competence, subjective workload, and compliance, though somewhat decreased reaction time. The model proves better at accounting for the effects of social distance than for power differences.