A4

In Measures of Process Monketal claims that first and second-person pronouns are often meta conversational; Meaning that they are used in indirect queries which are usually more polite than direct queries. However I believe that this claim does not correlate well with the theory that one aims to save face when communicating. For example when a person desires to purchase a muffin he may ask “do you have any muffins,” or “are any muffins available”. Both ways mentioned above are indirect queries, and one can easily see how one can be polite without the use of a first or second-person pronoun. It can also be seen that first and second-person pronouns can easily be used to make queries impolite. In the example from above one could easily say “you, are there any muffins available.” I think most people we agree that the addition of the word “you” into the inquiry made the request impolite. Therefore my hypothesis would be that there is no correlation between politeness and the use of first and second-person pronouns. To test my hypothesis I will use two conversations from a class I participated in. In this class, meetings were conducted via a video and chat based system. In the first conversation several other group members and I (all college kids) are discussing how to accomplish a given task. In the second conversation the group is presenting the finding to the professor.


We supposed to get ball outta pipe w/ out break anything. Any Ideas.
We could cut cereal box, roll it up and suck ball out
May work, any other ideas.
3. Urinate in pipe
1. Yeah about that…
3. It’s a legit idea
2. Don’t think the professor would like that
3. What ev I think it wil work\
1. It will work, but we are graded on safety, efficiency… and I don know…
3. Think of something better.
4. Could use cereal box, roll it up, push around ball and pick it up
3. Ain’t that what James said.
1. No, james wanted to suck it out.


Professor: So methods were discussed
1. We discussed methods that used the air pressure, buoyancy force as well as several methods that used the cereal box to create direct contact with the ball.
Professor: How and what method did you decide on
1. There was some disagreement, so we came up with system where each group member ranked all the different methods by the different criteria mentioned in the assignment. They scores were then added, and the one with the lowest score was chosen. In the end using the cereal box and pushing it around the ball was the chosen method.


It can be seen that that first and second-person pronouns comprise 5 words out of a total of 110 words in the first conversation, while they comprise 3 words out 101 in the second conversation. Another important factor is that the students were trying to be more polite with the teacher. Thus my hypothesis is proven right. In addition, by looking at the conversations it seems that 1st and 2nd person pronouns are used a lot more when discussing opinions rather than facts. Thus it can be seen that they are many variables that control the use of first and second person pronouns and making the simple assumption that the presence of first and second person pronouns is a sign of politeness is ridiculous.