The aim of this conference is to provide a platform for and to stimulate discussions on linguistic politeness in multilingual settings. Indeed, in the flourishing field of politeness research, linguistic politeness is commonly examined from a monolingual perspective. This conference is intended to introduce a complex multilingual perspective to politeness research.

The overarching question we propose to address in this conference is to what extent linguistic politeness resides within a particular named language, and to what extent it belongs to cultural norms that transcend linguistic boundaries. The choice of a language in a particular speech act can, in itself, be a matter of (im)politeness. In a multilingual speech community, we usually observe the distribution of language use over different domains or types of communicative situations, with some overlap. When more than one language is appropriate in a particular context, how do the different conventions of politeness in these languages interact? How is politeness realized in free-range language settings, where boundaries between languages are blurred?

Invited speakers:

Jieun Kiaer (University of Oxford)

Catrin Norrby (Stockholm University)

Henning Radke (University of Amsterdam)

Organizing committee:

Horst Simon

Sonya Yampolskaya

Jessica Sehrt

Julius Gürlich