La «distanciation» (hedge) comme politesse négative

Repris et augmenté le 16 février 2007

 

L'analyse du procédé de langage qu'on nomme hedge dans la littérature spécialisée, et plus précisément dans les recherches sociolinguistiques sur la Politesse puis dans les Grammaires de Constructions, est une voie d'approche très pédagogique de ce domaine situé à l'interface de la linguistique cognitive, de la philosophie (Searle et Grice) et de l'anthropologie sociale (paroles rituelles, étiquette).

Comment traduire le mot hedge dans la littérature spécialisée de la pragmatique?

Chez Lakoff, comme l'a montré Michel de Fornel au séminaire du 14 février 2007, les hedges sont des «délimitateurs», au sens où des adverbes tels que approximativement, techniquement, à strictement parler, etc., servent à sélectionner le prototype d'une catégorie.

Voici un exemple, extrait de George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago, UCP, 1987, p. 123 où Lakoff s'inspire de Putnam et Kripke:

“Technically” assumes the following folk conception of the relation between words and the world…

There is some body of people in society who have the right to stipulate what words should designate, relative to some domain or expertise. Sometimes these people are taken to be experts who know better than the common man what the world is like, as in the example:

Technically, a dolphin is a mammal.

Here professional biologists have the relevant expertise.

Le délimitateur (hedge) qu'est ici l'adverbe technically introduit dans l'énoncé un élément contextuel, une part d'indexicalité, une indication concernant la situation d'énonciation.

Plus largement en pragmatique et sociolinguistique, les hedges sont des «atténuateurs» (Michel de Fornel), des adoucisseurs, des distanciateurs. Ce sens technique du mot retient en partie l'image véhiculée par ses emplois dans la langue courante en anglais. Au sens courant, hedge désigne une «barrière». Nous trouvons aussi dans les dictionnaires bilingues anglais-français:

Hedge, «esquive»

to hedge, «répondre à côté, se dérober»
to hedge the issue, «esquiver la question, botter en touche»
a hedge against inflation, «une couverture, un parapluie contre l’inflation»

Les exemples proposés dans la littérature spécialisée nous aident à cerner le sens du mot:

Exemple de cumulative hedging: “I have to ask you to kindly open the door”
Exemple de hedged performatives: «Je voudrais te demander de bien vouloir déplacer ta voiture»

Ce qui nous conduit à traduire hedge par «atténuateur» ou «distanciateur».

Selon Richard J. Watts, Politeness, Cambridge, CUP, 2003, chapitre 7 (Structures of linguistic politeness), p. 169, la distanciation (hedge) en sociolinguistique est un énoncé semi-stéréotypé destiné à être perçu par le destinataire comme une formule polie:

(169) In the context of an interaction, linguistic expressions are also open to potential interpretation as ‘polite’, i.e. as being in excess of politic behaviour. While some of them may be formulaic, ritualised utterances, the majority are what I shall call semi-formulaic utterances. These can be defined as follows:

conventionalised utterances containing linguistic expressions that carry out indirect speech acts appropriate to the politic behaviour of a social situation. They may also be used, in certain circumstances, as propositional structures in their own right.

Examples are:

a. hedges of different kinds, i.e. linguistic expressions which weaken the illocutionary force of a statement: by means of attitudinal predicates (I think, I don’t think, I mean) or by means of adverbs such as actually, etc.
b. solidarity markers, i.e. linguistic expressions which appeal to mutual knowledge shared by the participants, or support and solidarity from participants, e.g. you know.
c. boosters, i.e. linguistic expressions enhancing the force of the illocution in some way, e.g. of course, clearly, etc.
d. sentential structures containing specific modal verbs, e.g. may I ask you to accept.

In the flow of conversation, structures such as these are generally not perceived by participants as overt expressions of politeness, even though they all make supportive contributions towards the facework being negociated among the participants and thus contribute towards the politic behaviour of the interaction. On the other hand, if they are missing, they tend to lead to an evaluation of a participant’s behaviour as ‘impolite’, ‘brash’, ‘inconsiderate’, ‘abrupt’, ‘rude’, etc. Because of their frequent lack of salience for the participants, they are structures that form part of the politic behaviour of the social interaction rather than expressions of politeness. However, if they are used in excess of what is necessary to maintain the politic behaviour of an interaction, they are open to evaluation as ‘polite’.

Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson, Politeness. Some universals in language usage, Cambridge, CUP, (1978), 1987, classent les hedges dans la catégorie des politesses négatives.

(Brown & Levinson, p. 129) Negative politeness is redressive action addressed to the addressee’s negative face: his want to have freedom of action unhindered and his attention unimpeded. It is the heart of respect behaviour, just as positive politeness is the kernel of ‘familiar’ and ‘joking’ behaviour. Negative politeness corresponds to Durkheim’s negative rites’, rituals of avoidance. Where positive politeness is free-ranging, negative politeness is specific and focused; it performs the function of minimizing the particular imposition that the FTA [face-threatening act] unavoidably effects. When we think of politeness in Western /130/ cultures, it is negative-politeness behaviour that springs to mind. In our culture, negative politeness is the most elaborate and the most conventionalized set of linguistic strategies for FTA redress; it is the stuff that fills the etiquette books… Its linguistic realizations — conventional indirectnesses, hedges on illocutionary force [1], polite pessimism (about the success of requests, etc.), the emphasis on H’s [the hearer’s, the addressee’s] relative power — are very familiar and need no introduction.

[1] hedge “a linguistic expression that enables the speaker to avoid being too direct in her/his utterance” (Watts) — illocutionary force “the intended act carried by an utterance, which may differ from the actual illocutionary act itself” (Watts).

Brown et Levinson donnent de hedge la définition suivante:

(Brown & Levinson, 145) In the literature, a ‘hedge’ is a particle, word, or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or noun phrase in a set; it says of that membership that it is partial, or true only in certain respects, or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected (note that this latter sense is an extension of the colloquial sense of ‘hedge’).

Voir le détail dans le document .pdf référencé ci-dessous.

Le Tableau (p. 131) inventoriant les stratégies de politesse négative et les pages 142-172 de l'ouvrage classique de Penelope Brown et Stephen C. Levinson, Politeness, consacrées à l' analyse des hedges ont été scannés et placés dans le dossier ‘Politesse’ de l'espace Documents de la liste de diffusion anthropologie-linguistique, sous le nom: brown_levinson_politeness.pdf.