Politeness, invitations, and discourse structure: A sociolinguistic approach to the novels of E. M. Forster

Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness model provides a basis for understanding how the notion of face-threatening act (FTA) constrains linguistic choices made at the level of the sentence. A major criticism of the model is that it fails to reveal how FTAs and politeness strategies interact sequentially with other acts in large segments of extended discourse. In my study, I adapt Brown and Levinson's model to accommodate the strategic use of face actions in extensive units of discourse. I argue, however, that applying single discourse models of natural language to an analysis of literary text yields short-sighted views of the dynamic complexity that is characteristic of discourse in general. I propose rather a methodology which integrates various aspects of our discourse knowledge.;In a discourse analysis of selected dialogue between non-intimate characters of unequal power relation in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, Howards End, and Maurice, I examine the interaction of Brown and Levinson's social principle of face action with speech acts and with the cooperative principle, and I use Coulthard and Montgomery's (1981) exchange structure theory to study the impact of this interaction on conversational and dialogic structure. I also investigate how still larger discourse structures such as the communicative event--the invitational ritual as example--interact with the principle of face action at the local level of discourse. I conclude that the notions of face act and speech act must be kept distinct, and that a social principle of face action not only directs and constrains the linguistic choices made at the level of the sentence but also explains how and why linguistic utterances cohere.;My analysis illuminates how readers use their knowledge of the communicative principles which operate on ordinary conversation to make sense of the linguistic choices made by Forster's characters. I argue that Forster's texts presume an understanding of this abstract knowledge, and I explain how readers make inferential social judgments based on this knowledge. My study thus claims that writers and readers share mutual knowledge of these abstract conventions of language use, that writers use and exploit this knowledge, and that natural language models can explain how we, as readers, arrive at varying interpretations of literary dialogue.