Chapter Five - Clichés as Politeness Strategies in Evaluation

Summary

This chapter focuses on the use of clichés for negotiating interpersonal relationships in organisational spoken discourse. The chapter conceptualises clichés as im/politeness strategies in the expression and management of evaluative meanings regarding an interactant either directly or indirectly. The study of clichés as interpersonal devices as explored in this chapter encompasses a multidimensional investigation co-deploying two complementary approaches: a systemic functional approach, utilising the appraisal framework, and socio-pragmatic approaches, namely im/politeness and face theory. These are applied to spoken data collected in an organisational setting. The findings demonstrate that, given their reliance on socially shared knowledge as carried by their formulaic nature, clichés allow the conveyance of evaluation of people or situations whilst also enhancing or mitigating the impact of such evaluation on facework.