Impoliteness or underpoliteness: An analysis of a Christmas dinner scene from Dickens’s Great Expectations

This is a stylistic analysis of an extract from Dickens’s Great Expectations. The focus is on impoliteness incurred in a convivial setting of a Christmas dinner among low class people. As a result of the analysis of the text, I propose to establish another variety of impoliteness, namely “underpoliteness”. This is impoliteness exercised without malice or spite which occasionally appears to be incidental and a result of socializing habits. Nevertheless, similar to other types of rudeness it creates feelings of discomfort, disharmony and even revenge.

The analysis is made at the micro level of single utterances. Occasionally, more than one utterance is taken into consideration for the reconstruction of the speech activity to assist determining the exact degree of offense incurred. The method of analysis depends on positive and negative impoliteness strategies as proposed by Culpeper (1996, 2003). This is complemented with a reversal of Leech’s 1983 politeness maxims.

The heart of this paper comprises analysis of interaction in the Christmas dinner in Great Expectations.