Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 41

TEASING AS A POLITENESS STRATEGY

Ekaterina Rudneva
Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
9 Tuchkov Lane, St Petersburg, Russia
European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
erudneva()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: The article focuses on teasing in one workplace and investigates how people joke with each other while dealing with job-related issues. The data comprises recordings of natural interactions in a group that was also observed by the researcher. The data is analysed using an interactional approach which combines Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework, conversation analysis, and ethnography of speech. The organization of the teasing sequence in the observed workplace follows certain regularities. The registered forms of teasing include repeating other people’s words with ironic or questioning intonations, finishing each other’s turns with ironic intonations, and referencing in-group anecdotes. Through strategies such as teasing, participants work on their common identity, maintaining each other’s positive faces. Teasing can also play a role in mitigating the facethreat intrinsic to certain situations, such as the rejection of a request.

Keywords: teasing, linguistic politeness, ethnography of speech, naturally-occurring data, communication in the workplace.

To cite: Rudneva E., ‘Podtrunivanie kak strategiya vezhlivosti’ [Teasing as a Politeness Strategy], Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 41, pp. 97–120.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2019-15-41-97-120

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/041/rudneva.pdf