Use of politeness markers with different communication partners: An investigation of five subjects with traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Politeness is a complex interpersonal phenomenon which has received considerable attention by linguists over recent years. This paper presents preliminary work which examines some methodological and theoretical issues related to the concept of politeness using the systemic functional approach. Results are presented for five traumatically brain injured subjects and five matched controls during telephone interactions with four different interlocutors. The results indicate that TBI subjects are able to access a wide variety of politeness strategies; however, their ability to manipulate these across the four different tenor relationshps is impaired when compared with control subjects. The richness of this approach in highlighting the unique features of communication disorders following traumatic brain injury and new ways to approach their managementis discussed.