An attempt at a proxemic description of politeness from the ethological-evolutionary persepctive

Abstract

The article reflects on different aspects of politeness theory viewed from the ethological and evolutionary perspective. The author offers an explanation of politeness phenomena along proxemic lines – accordingly, politeness is shown to be an essentially distancing mechanism, consisting of three major types of sociofugal (i.e. distance-increasing) strategies – discourse dislocation, cognitive distancing, and personal distancing. These findings are then related to the ethology of territorial behaviours – it is hypothesised that politeness constitutes a verbal means of aggression appeasement. Finally, the author attempts to explain the transfer of spatial behaviours to the domain of discursive interaction by appealing to Donald’s conception of mimesis.