Helen. Helen: Ha! (laughs) All of this is done in attempt to avoid imposition on the hearer. Negative politeness is concerned with proceeding towards a goal in the smoothest way and with sensitivity to one's interlocutors. In English, deference ('Excuse me, sir, could you please close the window') is associated with the avoidance or downplaying of an imposition; the more we feel we might be imposing, the more deferential we might be. It is clearly a strategy for negative politeness and the redressing of a threat to negative face, through actions such as favor-seeking. Off-record (indirect) The final politeness strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy; This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to be imposing. The strategy of doing off-record is to express something general or different than the speaker’s true meaning and relies on the hearer's interpretation to have the speaker's purpose get conveyed. The speaker can get credit for not imposing on the hearer or give the hearer a chance to be helpful and generous. This strategy relies heavily on pragmatics to convey the intended meaning while still utilizing the semantic meaning as a way to avoid losing face (see below in Choice of strategy). Situations and examples · Minimizing the threaten toward the hearer’s freedom (S-Speaker, H-Hearer) -S: Do you have a free chair over there? -H: Yes, I do. (grab the chair for the speaker) -S: Are you going out? -H: Yes, but I’ll come home early. Giving the hearer a chance to show good personality in caring for others -S: My head aches a lot. -H: Oh, I’ll get some pain-killer pills for you. Choice of strategy Paul Grice argues that all conversationalists are rational beings who are primarily interested in the efficient conveying of messages. Brown and Levinson use this argument in their politeness theory by saying that rational agents will choose the same politeness strategy as any other would under the same circumstances to try to mitigate face. They show the available range of verbal politeness strategies to redress loss of face. Face-threatening acts have the ability to mutually threaten face, therefore rational agents seek to avoid face-threatening acts or will try to use certain strategies to minimize the threat. In certain situations, an over application of any particular strategy may actually achieve the opposite of the intended effect, as "certain speakers consistently evaluate