DISTANCING AS A STRATEGY OF NEGATIVE POLITENESS (BASED ON THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERARY DISCOURSE)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to distancing as a negative politeness strategy, which involves the use of a diverse range of lexico-grammatical means to create a certain emotional and social distance between interlocutors. This strategy, closely linked to the category of modality, acts as a mediator in the interaction between participants of a communicative act, the content of their statements, and the objective reality. Modality, reflecting the speaker’s subjective attitude towards what is being reported, their assessment of the probability, necessity, or desirability of an action or state, plays a key role in the implementation of the principles of communicative politeness and acts as an important regulator of interpersonal relations.
Grammatical phenomena such as the conditional mood of verbs and the shift in tense create an effect of a certain detachment of the speaker from immediate reality in the utterance. The use of conditional constructions allows presenting a situation as hypothetical, possible, softening the statement’s categorical nature and making it less intrusive. Similarly, a shift in tense, such as the use of the past tense to express a request, can create an impression of greater formality and respect for the interlocutor.
In addition, modal verbs, interrogative constructions of various types, and modal modifiers directly reflect the speaker’s attitude towards the content of the message or are oriented towards the listener’s reaction. Interrogative forms are often used not only to obtain information but also for the indirect expression of requests or suggestions, which also contributes to the creation of a less direct and more polite tone of communication.
Based on the analysis of specific lexico-grammatical tools employed for the realization of the distancing strategy, two primary tactics have been identified. The first tactic is related to the shift in tense, which allows presenting an action or event as distant in time, and therefore, less relevant or categorical at the moment of communication. The second tactic is based on the active use of modal verbs and the conditional mood, which express the speaker’s degree of certainty, their attitude towards the necessity or possibility of carrying out a particular action, thereby regulating the level of directness of the utterance and influencing the listener’s perception of the communicative intention.