Impoliteness in English Tourist Documents – Is it real or not?

This paper examines the validity of Brown and Levinson‟s politeness theory as a theoretical framework for explaining the direct and indirect speech acts of suggesting found in tourist documents. Brown and Levinson suggest that certain speech acts are inherently face-threatening and that the need to redress the threat is the main reason for employing various politeness strategies, which increase the indirect of speech acts in proportion to the seriousness of face threat. Tourist documents, being a type of persuasive discourse, are loaded with utterances that directly or indirectly make suggestions to the reader, ranging from visiting a certain destination to trying a certain local dish. This speech act of suggesting is a kind of directives, speech acts that Brown and Levinson label as inherently face-threatening. So, it can be assumed that the inherent face threat of this act will motivate use of politeness strategies and, consequently, indirectness in the enactment of the speech act. The paper puts this hypothesis to the test by analyzing data collected from tourist documents published in the US. The analysis shows that the Brown and Levinson model is inappropriate for explaining the directness and indirectness of speech acts in tourist brochures. This is more rationally accounted for by viewing the variety of direct and indirect speech act forms as rhetorical devices designed to reinforce the power of persuasion. The paper concludes by suggesting an alternative account of these forms on the basis of Fraser‟s Conversational Contract concept.