A cognitive-semiotic approach to impoliteness: Effects of conventionality and semiotic system on judgements of impoliteness by Russian and Swedish speakers

Abstract The field of (im)politeness studies has been steadily growing and developing but the role of conventionality and the type of semiotic system (e.g., language vs. gesture) for impoliteness perception has not been sufficiently explored. We used a cognitive-semiotic framework combining a reaction-time experiment and in-depth interviews with sixty participants to explore how Russian and Swedish native speakers evaluate and describe highly and less conventional impolite behaviour expressed either through speech or through gesture. The results showed a positive correlation between the conventionality of expressions and how impolite they are judged to be, and that highly conventional expressions lead to faster judgements. Few differences were found between impolite expressions in the experiment, but some were reflected in the interviews. Further, we found that Swedish participants evaluated language and gestures as very impolite more often than Russian participants did. We discuss these findings through the lens of the proposed framework and offer a three-dimensional analysis of the concept of conventionality in terms of frequency, normativity, and encodedness.