Resumen de Politeness and off-record indirectness

Maria Sifianou

• The view that politeness is the major motivation for indirectness has been very influential. Such accounts based on British English view politeness primarily asformality and a means of expressing distance. The distinction drawn between on-record and off-record indirectness seems useful in clarifying some of the problems stemming from such view s. This paper focuses on off-record indirectness. Drawing evidence from Greek, it shows that offrecord indirectness can express not only formality (negative politeness) but also solidarity (positive politeness).