Redefining politeness: Power and status in the digital age

Abstract

Politeness refers to socio-cultural norms, conventions, or rituals in society. From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, the discourse of politeness is inseparable from social status and power. For instance, people who have a high social standing associate with a high level of politeness. This condition certainly has implications for a social hierarchy. Status is characterized by the presence of a high social position, while power is related to the hegemony of the powerful person to his subordinates. Previous research has shown that power is closely related to society characterized by educated, knowledgeable, and elderly people in society. However, in today’s digital age, those indicators have shifted to wealth, position, and fame. It is for this reason that relations of power and status in politeness need to be redefined.

Keywords:

• politeness
• power
• social status
• sociolinguistics

1. Introduction

Effective use of language in communication focuses on goal-oriented speech situations. Speakers use language with the aim of producing a certain effect on the speaker’s mind. When communicating face-to-face, a person resorts to strategies in speaking, ranging from body language to choosing the form of speech. Language use strategies refer to the way of speaking to produce speech that can save the interlocutor’s face or self-esteem to avoid misunderstandings in communication. Every use of language in communication events consists of a set of principles, namely the principles of cooperation and politeness. The cooperation principle refers to the act of language that provides precise, correct, clear, and appropriate information, while the regulative principle keeps the conversation going smoothly, maintaining social balance and friendliness of relationships (Leech, 1983).

In recent decades, research on politeness has been widely discussed by prominent scholars (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes & Stubbe, 2014). In the perspective of Chinese culture, among others, Goffman (1955) revealed that the concept of face is seen as a personal heirloom that preserves its sacredness. This is because there are four traits of politeness based on the concept of face, namely relational, communal/social, hierarchical, and moral (Jia, 1997). The relational nature refers to the mechanism that applies in regulating relationships and interpersonal behaviors of community members to achieve community harmony. The communal characteristic is based on the idea that face is a shield that can protect itself from various possible insults from other citizens. Losing a shield will have an impact on the loss of one’s face in the view of other members of society. The hierarchical nature refers to the realization of respect for one’s self-worth related to social attributes that distinguish a person from others, such as age, heredity, position, property, status, and power.

The concept of face in Chinese culture is in line with Leech’s (1983) proposition, which underlines that the concept of politeness can be classified into two: relative politeness and absolute politeness. Relative politeness refers to politeness that depends on a context or a situation. That is, a speech can be considered polite in the culture of one society, but at the same time considered rude in the culture of another society. Similarly, absolute politeness pertains to the relationship between two actors: self and other. Absolute politeness is a scale that has negative and positive poles. The use of the concept of politeness is influenced by several social categories, such as gender and age (Leech, 1983), status (Wang, 2021), and power (Holmes & Stubbe, 2014). Using the parameters of the previous social category, women must respect men because some Indonesian society has a patriarchal ideology. Young people should be polite in talking with old people. People who have low social status should speak politely to people who have high social status. Low-level employees must politely talk with their bosses. This is certainly done to maintain the harmony and stability of social relations when communicating face-to-face.

However, this kind of communication event will certainly be different if language users use online media without directly meeting other speakers. That is, communication between women and men, young people and parents, subordinates and employers, and rich people with poor people using online media, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and so on. The use of online media will certainly produce different polite speech. That is because by not meeting directly and knowing in detail who the interlocutors are, speech that was originally polite becomes impolite. To achieve this goal, this study seeks to fill the existing research void by revisiting the definition of politeness in power and status in the digital age.

2. Communication in the digital age

Along with the development of information technology in recent decades, face-face communication between speakers began to be replaced with online communication. A person’s interaction experiences a revolution from the real world to the virtual world by using internet media. These characteristics of communication in cyberspace are global and cross generational, geographical, and cultural boundaries (Kusumastuti et al., 2021). Internet user data shows that online media users in Indonesia such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube have increased from year to year. For example, the number of internet users in Indonesia reached 205 million people in January 2022—around 77% of Indonesia’s population. Then, the number of internet users in January 2023 rose by 3.85% compared the year before.

A World Bank research report shows that communication is the most frequent activity Indonesians do when spending time on the internet. The communication includes messaging activities via WhatsApp and electronic mail which reached 36%. In addition, other activities include relaxing to watch video, audio or play games 21%, browsing information from the internet by 11%, doing online buying and selling activities by 3%, and 7% done for other activities. Referring to the research data mentioned, online communication of Indonesian people tends to increase. Apart from being easy, fast and practical, the use of online media as a communication tool is becoming more widely used by the public. By using one finger, communication can be applied without having to be tired of communicating. The trend of using online media certainly creates a new community known as digital communication.

Caballini et al. (2021) assert that the term “digital communication” refers to the activities of reading, writing, sharing camera videos, and communicating through computer networks. They underlined that there are two types of digital communication that can be carried out, synchronous and a-synchronous. Synchronous refers to direct communication mediated by computers. A person communicates in real-time through a chat software program with all computer participants participating in the communication at the same time. A-synchronous refers to computer-mediated communication delays in which people communicate in a computer-delayed mode, using WhatsApp programs, e-mail, forums, and reading and writing documents online through the digital world. Digital communication emerged against the background of the influence of information, communication technology, and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other research reports show that digital communication is the exchange of information by two or more people through gadgets such as smartphones, computers, and the internet ranging from direct telephone lines, short messages to sending messages through social media (Scolari, 2015). This digital communication has both positive and negative implications. The positive implication is that we can easily communicate with other speakers online with fast time and low cost, while the negative implication is that we cannot easily recognize the interlocutor’s response.

Digital communication can be identified by communicating quickly and avoiding space and time barriers (Caballini et al., 2021). This communication can take place using internet media where users can see and hear the interlocutor through a computer screen. Digital communication is rapidly influencing the development of various areas of people’s lives, such as work, education, food delivery, and shopping (Aburumman et al., 2022; Hopkins & McKay, 2019; Lin & Burgard, 2018). In addition, people can interact remotely with the interlocutor by no longer looking at physical appearance, age, race, and tone of voice, depending on the perception of the person involved in communication.

Although digital communication has become a concern for local communities and the world today, digital communication ethics still need to be maintained and preserved. Diebel-Fischer (2018) reports that digital communication ethics includes several things, namely the use of language, timeliness and the use of emoticons. The use of language, of course, both synchronically and asynchronously, requires a choice of words and sentences that are not offensive, do not contain double meanings or sarcasm words, and comply with applicable social norms. Punctuality relates to when we can reply to a message or leave a comment. Similarly, the use of certain emoticons must be done wisely because they can set boundaries of attitude, behavior, clarify the meaning of the message to be conveyed and can create a harmonious atmosphere.

In addition, Marcel (2017) and Pan’s (2022) research reports reveal that digital communication ethics includes seven aspects, namely paying attention to communication time, starting with polite sentences, paying attention to the wording and language used, using effective sentences, paying attention to typing errors, using appropriate and not excessive emojis, and asking for reciprocity from the interlocutor. In addition, Hand et al. (2022) and Yang et al. (2022) reported that in building digital communication, aspects of emotions, facial expressions, expression of opinions, interpersonal alignment negotiations, and statements of the speaker’s attitude towards the thing being discussed, namely circumstances, and events of the interlocutor who initially used facial expressions have shifted to be replaced by emojis.

3. Politeness in digital communication

Similarly to politeness in the real world, politeness in digital communication also adheres to a set of maxims that regulate the form of behavior in language, both linguistic and extralinguistic behavior. Leech (1983) points out that to realize language politeness it is necessary to pay attention to the principle of politeness which includes maxims of wisdom, generosity, praise, humility, agreement, and sympathy” (1983, p. 132). In addition, the communicators, communicants use modalities such as emoticons and language means, such as words, sentences and punctuation. Face-to-face communication involves verbal, nonverbal gestures, facial expressions, spontaneity, involving feedback, interaction, and personal coherence. In digital communication, the use of a single emoji represents many meanings ranging from facial expressions, attitudes, or emotions through illustrations, icons, or sets of characters clicked on the keyboard. The use of this emoji is more diverse and more appropriate in expressing oneself (Kejriwal et al., 2021; Pfeifer et al., 2022). Therefore, emojis make interactions shorter and denser.

Much current research explains the ideational function of emojis to convey individual and group politeness in interactions using language (Hand et al., 2022; Kim et al., 2021; Zappavigna & Logi, 2021). When communicating, individuals often use emojis in communicating with those closest to them (Gesselman et al., 2019; Jones et al., 2020). Examples of WhatsApp student-lecturer communication can be observed as follows. Dear Ms. Dars. When I come to your office to speak to you about the title problem of my thesis? Another example is Liz, how is your thesis writing progress this Wednesday? Sorry, mom, just replied to I haven’t any progress to write it. The Sentences in WhatsApp messages are often accompanied by emoticons of faces, hands. Emoji in the study of digital modalities were identified as tools of emotional expression and interpersonal engagement (Bai et al., 2019; Boutet et al., 2021) and messages that include emojis are considered to have a more positive tone of emotion than messages without emojis (Riordan, 2017).

4. Emojis as a symbol of social relationships

The delivery of information in a virtual world can use emojis. Emojis are digital images that can appear alongside text messages and everyday chat platforms on social media. Stark and Crawford (2015) revealed that emojis have three functions, namely (1) a way to express joy, politeness, humor, and personality into a monochrome network text space; (2) to maintain social relations within the logic of economic instrumentalism and efficiency, and (3) phatic expression. Messages created by displaying emojis trigger the text reader’s urge to interpret what the author wants to say through a series of images. The use of emojis is bound by a linguistic, social context and cultural conventions (Derks et al., 2007), as well as illocutionary power in speech acting and punctuation (Dresner & Herring, 2010)., The use of emojis in digital communication can play the role of reinforcing social, cultural norms governed by power (Stark & Crawford, 2015). For example, an emoticon image of a grinning smile. This image means expressing excitement about something, brightening a short text and expressing a sense of greeting.

5. Emoji relations and politeness in power and status

In the context of social media, emojis have to do with politeness and social status of users. The use of emojis can express emotions and expressions that cannot be expressed through the written word, but emojis can help clarify the message being sent. In the context of politeness, the use of emojis can help clarify the intention, tone of the message, so as to avoid misunderstandings or even conflicts between users (Derks et al., 2007). For example, the use of the “shaking hands” emoji can indicate that the message is meant formal communication, reconciliation, congratulation, and empathy. Conversely, the use of the wide-eyed emoji can ruin impressions and trigger conflicts in communication.

In terms of one’s social status, the use of the “female chef” emoji; “female doctor”, for example, indicates a person’s social position in a particular position that receives social recognition. Everyone could have a lot of status sometimes. Female chef a for example, in addition to her status as a chef in a restaurant, she also becomes a older sister or sister to her brother, as a friend for her college environment. In short, emojis can be an indicator of tendencies or communication styles that are more popular among people with certain status groups (Derks et al., 2007). The use of emojis can affect a user’s perception of power or social status. For example, the use of smile emojis can affect a person’s perception of confidence and power in the context of job interviews conducted online. In the study, participants who used the smile emoji were perceived as more polite and friendly. Furthermore, the use of fist emojis can indicate a person’s perception of power and dominance in the context of online conversations (Park & Suk, 2022). In short, the use of emojis can provide a lot of information about politeness, power, and status in digital communication. Therefore, it is important for users to consider the use of emojis wisely and pay attention to the context of the communication that is taking place.

6. Politeness in power

Power has an important role to determine the fate of millions of people, for example Papua under the rule of President Joko Widodo experienced advanced infrastructure development to facilitate economic growth that prospered the community. Sociology recognizes power as an important element in the life of a society (Soekanto & Sulistyowati, 2019). Power always exists in every society, whether it is still simple, a large society, complicated in its arrangement and a digital society. Power is the ability to influence others according to the will of the power holder. The existence of power depends on the relationship between parties who have the ability to exert influence on other parties who receive that influence, willingly or forcedly. When power is incarnated in a person, that person is called a leader and those who receive his influence are called followers (Soekanto & Sulistyowati, 2019).

The difference between authority and legalized power is that any ability to influence others can be called power. Meanwhile, authority is power that exists in a person or group of people who have support or recognition from the community. Because it requires community recognition, in a society whose structure is complex and has known a detailed division of labor, it is limited to what is covered, when, and how to use that power. The notion of authority arises when society begins to regulate the division of power and determine its use. Authority can be effective when it is supported by real power (Kemper, 2011).

In every relationship between people and social groups, there is always a sense of power and authority. Power is present in all areas of life and is exercised. Power includes the ability to govern, make decisions that directly or indirectly influence the actions of others (Kemper, 2011). Power in the digital world has the following forms and sources as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Forms and Sources of Power

No.	Form of Power	Sources of Power
1.	Traditional	Property rights and positions, bureaucratic traditions, customs, and norms that have existed in society. This source of power is passed down from generation to generation to maintain the stability and continuity of society. This power is found in the monarchy system, the kingdom is headed by the king, the queen.
2.	Rational legal	Written rules and laws are formally recognized. This power is found in modern democratic systems such as the President, Prime Minister, and Parliament.
3.	Charismatic	Personal traits and unique abilities of the leader. Charismatic power is generally found in authoritarian systems or dictators such as Adolf Hitler.
4.	Economics	Money, property, and business are like big businessmen or oligarchs.
5.	Mass media	Public opinion and views such as big media companies
6.	Digital media	financial, technological, editorial, political, public opinion and views.

Note: Sources (Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Weber, 2019; Zuboff, 2020):

Table 1 shows there are six forms and sources of power in today’s society. Of the six forms and sources of power discussed, only number 6. The politeness and power of digital media have a close relationship due to the use of language. For example, the use of motivation-oriented language will increase the competence of netizens, while the use of disrespectful and inappropriate language in digital media can trigger unnecessary debate and worsen the situation. In addition, power in terms of persuasive language skills can influence the mindset, response, and behavior of others in digital media. The use of language is categorized as politeness-based power. In short, politeness in language on social media must be considered by social media users (Palupi & Endahati, 2019; Stockmann & Luo, 2017).

Digital media has several forms of power that can influence users and society at large, namely (i) the power to do news to influence public opinion, public actions by choosing and emphasizing certain news topics. This can affect people’s perception of certain issues (DePaula, 2023). The above description shows that decency and power are bound by the use of language according to context in influencing public opinion, public action. Being polite means saying something the right way (Lakoff, 1973). Therefore, the ruling class needs to try to instill power by connecting with strong beliefs and feelings in a society that are basically manifested in values and norms.

Communication suggested on the Internet is identified as a collection of forms of digital communication characterized by the fact that two or more participants in the communication do not have context information, such as location or time as well as various signs from the speaker such as mimics and gestures, as exist in normal communication situations (Crystal, 2004). However, politeness, rules of conduct, or etiquette must still be present in that internet-based communication. The rules of behavior in cyberspace are called netiquette. Netiquette refers to certain rules of ethical behavior, promoting the way communication is carried out in a positive sense and making interactions more enjoyable (Kusumastuti et al., 2021). For example, decency in power can be used as a concept of regulating the behavior and actions of individuals, groups, government officials in exercising their power. The rules include ethical behavior, transparency, accountability and respect for human rights and avoiding cyberbullying.

Relying on the concepts outlined above, the proposed redefinition of modesty in power is the concept of decency in power, which refers to the attempt to maintain an attitude of courtesy, respect for others, especially in situations where there are clear differences in power or hierarchy, by means of paying attention to the language used, avoiding intimidating behavior, considering needs, privacy respecting the perspective of others when communication in cyberspace and the proper use of emojis.

7. Politeness in status

Every human being needs another human being. Soekanto and Sulistyowati (2019) explained that dynamic social relationships that involve relationships between people and others and one group with another group are called social interactions. If two people meet and greet, talk to each other and even fight, then social interaction has already begun. People need to join each other for various purposes and interests because they cannot make it happen on their own. Activities carried out by humans are of two types, namely (i) technical activities, and (ii) relational (Kemper, 2011). Technical activity refers to the task orientation of actors involved in some type of division of labor to achieve common goals or group goals, for example the division of labor such as lecturers teaching students, doctors examining patients’ illnesses, electricians installing cables to illuminate the house. These examples show the division of labor in a specific way. In addition to technical activity, actors are engaged in relational activity, that is, the actors involved in behavior are distinguished from the tasks performed, for example a student consults a lecturer on a technical issue of writing a thesis and the student asks questions with a respectful attitude. Students and lecturers have differences in terms of social factors, namely differences in age, education level, and work. So, the illustration of student and lecturer relations in sociology is known as a system of layers of society consisting of two elements, namely (i) status, and (ii) role. The description is as follows.

Status is a standard element in the layer system and has significance for the social system (Kemper, 2011). Social systems are patterns that regulate the interrelationships between individuals with each other in society. Status is the place or position of a person in a social group of society with respect to other people, in the sphere of association, prestige, rights, and obligations. A person is said to have some status because that person is in some pattern of life. For example, Fauzi’s status as a citizen of the community is a combination of all his status as a lawyer, chairman of the neighborhood community, Ana’s husband, father of the children and so on. Status is a collection of rights and obligations that are only exercised in relation to other individuals. There are two kinds of status, namely (a) ascribed status and (b) achieved status. Ascribed status is the status of a person in society without regard to spiritual differences, and abilities. Achieved status is the position attained by a person with deliberate efforts (Soekanto & Sulistyowati, 2019, pp. 208–209). Achieved status is acquired by a person due to heredity. For example, the birth of a child from noble parents leads to the child being equally noble. Achieved status is obtained through the efforts made by a person depending on the ability of each person to pursue and achieve his goals.

Roles are a standard element in the layer system and have significance for the social system (Kemper, 2011). Role is a dynamic aspect of status. A role is performed if a person has exercised rights and obligations according to status. Everyone has various roles derived from social patterns. His role determines what he does for society and what opportunities society gives him. Social relations that exist in society are relationships between individual roles in society. Roles regulate a person’s behavior, roles are governed by prevailing norms (Kemper, 2011). For example, the norm of modesty requires that one should know (a) how to use one’s turn to speak, interrupt another’s speech, (b) when to be quiet, when to listen to the speech of others, and (c) how to intonate the voice, loudly, quietly. The inherent role of a person is distinguished in social association.

Roles refer to a function, adjustment and as a process. Roles include three things: norms, concepts about what individuals can do in an organization, and individual behavior for the social structure of society. Thus, individuals in relation to other parties have a certain level of role. For example, a student who interacts with certain parties in a campus social sub-system. In short, in social interaction carrying out a role is very important. Status and roles need to be implemented jointly so that rights and obligations can be balanced. However, not infrequently in the process of interaction, status is more important than role so that unequal relationships occur. Unequal relationships occur because one party only has rights while the other party has obligations.

Politeness in status refers to language activities based on status and roles that are consciously understood by individuals or groups in the context of respecting others when speaking directly or indirectly. Leech defines politeness as a strategy to avoid conflict measurable by the degree of effort made (1983, p. 176). Based on Leech’s (1983) concept, politeness in status is defined as norms or rules that regulate the behavior of individuals or groups when speaking, both face-to-face and in the use of social media mediated by devices. Currently, social media is a place for people to interact, communicate, and participate online widely and freely. Examples of social media that are often used are WhatsApp, Instagram, Line, Twitter, and Telegram. However, when using social media, of course, we must always pay attention to the politeness of the language because by paying attention to the politeness of the language we will be wiser in using social media.

That rule needs to be applied by every individual who interacts with other individuals to maintain modesty. In maintaining politeness when interacting, one needs to make the right choice of words, avoid using harsh words, do not post content that contains hatred or discrimination, and respect the views of others. Although there are rules in society, however, there are many people of various statuses who are not wise when using social media, they comment freely without paying attention to language politeness, even though such things may be considered misunderstood by many people. For example, commenting badly on a post on Instagram can result in bad things happening like cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is bad behavior that occurs online on social media, more precisely on chat platforms where someone is threatened, scared, and humiliated or humiliated (Lam et al., 2022). If this happens to someone, it will endanger him mentally. Therefore, the government as the party that has the power to issue written regulations in the form of electronic information and transaction laws (ITE, 2016).

Based on the description of the concepts in the previous section, it is redefined that politeness in the status that prevails in the online world refers to ethics, norms, rules, ways of communicating and interacting with others in the cyber environment by considering the status, role possessed by each individual or group using language that is appropriate to the context. It is important to build respectful and professional relationships, especially in work or business environments.

8. Conclusion: Redefinition of politeness in power and status

Based on the disciplines of pragmatics and sociology about the concepts of politeness, power and status in the discussion in the previous section, judging from the sociological approach, it was found that the concepts of politeness, power, and status refer to norms that regulate social interaction. Judging from pragmatics, politeness, power, and status are ethics based on the context and purpose of communication. Therefore, the definition proposed today is politeness in power and status is a standard of positive and dignified communication behavior, respect for privacy, respect for the ethics, rights, and obligations of others, related to the position or position held by a person in the digital environment.

We would like to suggest that future researchers explore the linguistic study of the language of contempt from a psychological perspective: how different social relationships can affect self-perception. Next, the next researcher can choose an anthropological perspective: how the concepts of politeness, power and status across different cultures. This diversity broadens views on politeness, power and status in the online community.

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Additional information

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The work was supported by the No research funding was used to do this research [0].

Notes on contributors

Darsita Suparno

Darsita Suparno graduated with a first-class honors in linguistics from Universitas Indonesia In 1986. She received both her master's and doctoral degrees in linguistics from Sam Ratulang University in Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia, in 2000 and 2012, respectively. She accepted a ‘short-term research fellowship’ at the National University of Singapore's Asean Research Institute in 2007. She started lecturing in 1993. Her email address is [email protected].

Ita Fitriana

Ita Fitriana received her undergraduate degree in 2010 and her master's degree in 2012, both from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. Then, she obtained her doctoral degree from Universitas Udayana, Indonesia in 2022. She participated in the ”Long Term Japanese Teacher Training” program sponsored by the Japanese government in Japan in 2016-2017. Since 2014, Ita Fitriana has been working as a lecturer in the Japanese Department at the Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Jenderal Soedirman, located in Purwokerto, Indonesia. Her email is [email protected]

Nadra Nadra

Nadra obtained her first degree from Universitas Andalas in 1986—her master's degree in 1992 and her doctorate in 1997, both from Gadjah Mada University. She also took the ‘Short-Term Research Fellowship’ at J. W. Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany in 1993. She has been a lecturer since 1988 and a Professor of Linguistics at Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Andalas, Indonesia, since 2002. Her email is [email protected]

Fahmi Gunawan

Fahmi Gunawan holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics. He is an associate professor in the Department of Arabic Language Education, Institut Agama Islam Negeri Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. He has fourteen years of experience in teaching and research. His research interests include but are not restricted to translation, cri tical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics, sociopragmatic, language education and language in Islamic studies.

Saad Boulahnane

Saad Boulahnane earned his Ph.D in Cultural Studies from Hassan II University. He is presently assistant professor of English at Hassan I University (FLASH). Boulahnane is a Fulbright alumnus, who served as a teaching assistant in Colorado State University, USA