The Art of Saying Please

4.3 The Art of Saying Please

Today’s topic might be very familiar to you, but it will be proven to be a very tricky issue in authentic communication. That is, the art of saying please. Please is a requestive marker that is often used together with an imperative or a conventionally indirect request. It is often used in standard situations.

In a standard situation, role relations are transparent and predetermined, the requester has a right to make the request, the requestee has an obligation to comply with the request, the degree of imposition involved in the request is low, and the degree of difficulty in realizing the request is also low. Consider the following examples.

Example 1, Taxidriver: Where to please? / Where do you live please?

Example 2, Policeman: What’s your name please?

Imperatives and conventionally indirect strategies occur relatively frequently in standardized situations, and are more often than not marked by please. As the imperative form is most commonly associated with the directive force of a command or an order, the collocation with a please downgrades this implicit force. The same is true of conventionally indirect strategies. In these two types of request strategies, the use of the marker is therefore common: the effect is polite, not direct, as illustrated in the following examples.

Example 3, Please clean up the kitchen. (This can be said in the Kitchen)

Example 4, Shift your car please. (This can be said by a policeman to a man parking his car in front of a building)

Example 5, Can you please move your car, Madam. (This can also be said by a policeman to a woman parking her car in front of a building.)

In standard situations, the insertion of please into both imperatives and conventionally indirect structures may act as a downgrader. In a situation where the request is considered legitimate and even expected beforehand, the use of please is understood as downgrading the requestive force and regarded as polite.

We have looked at standard situations. But please never occurs in nonstandard situations. In a nonstandard situations, the role relationships are negotiated, the requester doesn’t have the right to make the request, the requestee doesn’t have the obligation to comply with the request, the difficulty in realizing the request is always high and imposition is usually very high. This is what we mean by nonstandard situations. And so far there are no devices to show that please can be used in such kind of situations. Let’s look at the following examples.

Example 6, Guest taking fellow-guest home: *Where to please? / *Where do you live please?

These two requests are not appropriate.

Example 7, Partygoer: *What’s your name please?

Again, this request is not appropriate.

In the same token, conventionally indirect requests should not be marked by please in nonstandard situations, especially those that call for heavy face-work. The use of please in these situations with conventionally indirect requests is not polite, but direct. Look at the following situation.

Example 8, A nonstandard situation: A student asks people living on the same street for a ride home.

This is a typical nonstandard situation. The requester is likely to have to engage in considerable interactional work, as rights and obligations are not clear-cut, and the act of requesting is seen as inherently difficult. In other words, imposition involved in the request is extremely high. In such a situation, there is a great variety and frequency of syntactic downgraders and supportive moves, and the use of please together with a query preparatory is counterproductive. The request may go like this:

Example 9, Excuse me I’m Bob Miller I live in the same street you do. I wanted to ask you if you may possibly take me along in your car because I missed my bus and the next bus goes in one hour.

In this example, the request proper is take me along in your car. But it is preceded and followed by supportive moves and realized in an embedded clause. Besides, past tense (wanted) and lexical devices (possibly) are employed to lessen the imposition. In this nonstandard situation, the use of both an imperative and a conventionally indirect act is inappropriate.

It follows from the aforementioned examples that, the more face-threatening a request is, the less likely that the speaker might use the requestive marker please in such kind of situations. It can also be said that the more politeness is called for, the less appropriate the use of please.

Practice