What are common politeness strategies in Italian conversation

Common politeness strategies in Italian conversation include several verbal and non-verbal tactics aimed at maintaining harmony, showing respect, and managing social relationships smoothly. Italians often use formal greetings and honorifics, such as Signore (Sir) and Signora (Madam), especially in initial or formal interactions. The use of Lei instead of the informal tu pronoun is a key marker of respect and politeness in many contexts.

Other strategies involve indirectness to avoid confrontation, minimizing imposition by softening requests or criticisms, and using appropriate polite expressions like per favore (please), grazie (thank you), and mi scusi (excuse me). Italians also employ positive politeness strategies, such as complimenting, showing interest in the interlocutor’s opinion, using inclusive language, and engaging in light joking to build rapport.

Expressing courtesy through giving gifts, showing attentiveness to others, and maintaining appropriate body language (like eye contact and smiling) are also common. Furthermore, discourse markers like allora, quindi, and però help convey nuanced politeness, hesitation, or agreement in conversation.

Overall, Italian politeness strategies balance directness with warmth and respect, relying heavily on context, tone, and social distance between interlocutors to choose appropriate forms of address and language softening. ^{1, 13, 16}

References

• STRATEGIES OF POLITENESS

• The Realization of Positive Politeness Strategies on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

• Politeness Strategies of Commenters in Online News Portals

• Politeness strategies used in “Taylor Swift’s songwriting process on Evermore” interview

• Positive Politeness Strategies Performed by International Guest Speakers in Mata Najwa Exclusive Interview

• ANALYZING THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE POLITENESS STRATEGIES PERFORMED IN ELT CLASSROOM INTERACTION

• Students’ Politeness Strategies to Lecturers in Sending Messages through WhatsApp

• Negative Politeness Strategies in Collen McGuire’s Utterances in the Novel Savage Land

• Code-switching as the Positive Politeness Strategies in Indonesian 4th Grade Students’ Conversation

• HEDGES AS A PRINCIPAL MEANS OF NEGATIVE POLITENESS: EVERYDAY SPOKEN DIALOGUE

• The doctrine of the mean. Conversation in courtesy manuals from early modernity to the present

• Comparing Styles across Languages: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Politeness

• Italian ma ‘but’ in deverbal pragmatic markers: Forms, functions, and productivity of a pragma-dyad

• A Pragmatic Analysis on Politeness Strategies Used in Online Class

• TyDiP: A Dataset for Politeness Classification in Nine Typologically Diverse Languages

• Italian Phrasemes as Constructions: How to Understand and Use Them

• I segnali discorsivi “allora, quindi, però, ma” in apprendenti di italiano L2

• GenPADS: Reinforcing politeness in an end-to-end dialogue system

• TyDiP: A Dataset for Politeness Classification in Nine Typologically Diverse Languages

• Conversational Analysis of Daily Dialog Data using Polite Emotional Dialogue Acts