How to write a response paper: Tips to write your response paper
1. Prewriting
- Read the article/chapter and jot down ideas.
- Make sure you understand what was said.
- How do you feel about what was said, especially the key points?
- Do you agree or disagree with the author?
- Do you understand what was said
- Have you had any similar experience that could support your understanding and application?
- Does the evidence in the article/chapter support the statements the writer made?
2. During Writing
- Write a concise summary of the article/chapter
- Establish your thesis statement
- Decide on the key points that you intend to focus on discussing and analyzing and critiquing. These will be your topic sentences.
- Develop your ideas by adding examples, quotations, and details to your paragraphs.
- Make sure the last sentence of each paragraph leads into the next paragraph.
3. Post-Writing
Check your thesis and make sure the topic sentence of each paragraph supports it.
Make sure this is a unified piece with a thesis statement that is developed with evidence, analyses, evaluations and conclusions
Response Paper Example
ABSTRACT
Response Paper #1
All speech communities use daily, informal conversations as their most used mode of communication. But what drives their speech? My paper explores the theory that politeness is a driving factor for our speech acts. Even cultures across the world from each other have found ways to make sure their speech is polite. These cultures want to make their speech acts polite and courteous no matter who the listener is.
Response Paper
I have read chapter five for my response paper in our textbook Language, Culture, and Communication: The meaning of messages by Nancy Bonvillain. This chapter is covering the interactions we have while communicating. The majority of our communication comes from speech that is informal. It is you speaking to your spouse, your co-worker, or a stranger. Our language is in informal conversation that occurs daily!
This chapter explores Grice’s Maxims for politeness and communication interaction. For some reason, I love these. It is interesting to read about these. Grice’s Maxims are as follows: 1. Quantity: be informative. 2. Quality: be truthful. 3. Relation: be reverent. 4. Manner: be perspicuous (Bonvillain, 107). These maxims are considered to be the “norms” for conversations. They outline how a speaker is expected to talk.
There are also theories of politeness. These include Lakoff’s rules of pragmatic competence. 1. Be clear, and 2. Be polite. Lakoff claims that politeness is far inferior than gaining clarity (Bonvillain, 115). The communication to another person must be on the politer side.
Directives are also a part of our communication. These are meant to give actions to the speaker. There are several speech acts discussed: stating, directing, requesting, promising (109). These directives, although asking for action, are still made to be polite to the speaker’s listener. It is important to still use manners here.
My thesis for this chapter is that politeness is still an overpowering part of our communication. No matter the authority or ranking of someone, your manners and speech is still required to be polite. This means that one must prove politeness supersedes clarity in our conversations. Does politeness overrule conversations to make it so people will avoid communication? Or does this mean that the listener will just assume the speaker is impolite if not using our politeness theories?
If you follow Grice’s Maxims, your first maxim is direct. The quantity of your communication must be informative (Bonvillain, 107). If you added too much “fluff”, you are not being direct enough. Your quality of communication must be true, and not gossip. This is very polite. The next maxim is relevance. It is imperative to be communicating on topic. It is incredibly impolite to discuss things that are not relevant to the conversation. The manner of your speech must be orderly. All of these maxims agree with my thesis that politeness supersedes our communication of length.
As the Maxims are a part of our communication, directives are important to analyze as well. We know that communication is meant to be sincere and “respect the rights of others” (Bonvillain, 109). Directives are made to have outcome in an action. We want to make sure that our speech acts are reasonable. I feel this goes hand in hand with politeness. You would never make unreasonable requests because this would be considered impolite. There is also places for politeness to be inserted into directives. Using “please” into a directive can help make it politer and less harsh. Bonvillian explains that even authority speakers must use politeness in their directives because it is inappropriate otherwise (Bonvillain, 110). Using manners is considered polite to all of the people in speech community.
Malagasy, a language spoken in Madagascar, has been observed to use indirect commands when speaking to each other (Bonvillain, 110). This speech community sees it as impolite to make direct speech acts. The indirect can make confrontational subject matter feel less harsh. They are observed using a more passive voice. This hides the speaker’s authority and seems to make the request politer for the social interaction. For their speech community, the Malagasy language helps them avoid unpleasant situations. Again, the politeness is a driving factor for them.
In a study by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levison in 1987, they looked at linguistics factors from English, Tzelta (Mexico), and Tamil (India) (Bonvillain, 116). They studied how people communicated and realized that politeness is used to keep the peace among the members of their culture. This definitely goes with my thesis. They studied different cultures and saw that across these, people will keep the politeness so not to hurt someone in their circle. They defined this as “face-wants” or what a person wants to show their culture in a public realm (Bonvillain, 116). This includes positive politeness, or you want your face-wants to shown respect (116). Negative politeness is more about avoidance (Bonvillian, 116). There is also the off-record politeness. This uses more indirect ways of speech so not to cause any impositions on the person being asked favors (Bonvillain, 116). All of these cultures show politeness is a driving force in their speech communities. This study proves that cultures across our world want to protect the polite usage in language.
Bonvillain demonstrates how the speaker of each of politeness choices their way of communicating. She explains that cultures would expect a person to be “tactful, modest, agreeable, generous, and sympathetic” (Bonvillain, 116). All of which are signs of good manners. The speaker may have varying degrees of these, dependent upon culture and status.
The Japanese have their way of politeness. The Japanese use “honorification” or using different nouns, verbs, and modifiers to show different levels of respect depending upon the person they are speaking to (Bonvillain, 122). The way you speak to someone is all dependent upon their stature it the community and that person’s role. They have three rules that apply here: “1. Be polite to a person of higher social position” (Bonvillain, 124). This means a doctor or a lawyer would receive much more politeness and respect. “2. Be polite to a person with power” (Bonvillain, 124). A person who holds an office would receive much higher politeness in the Japanese culture. “3. Be polite to an older person” (Bonvillain, 124). This is true my own culture as well. Older people have experienced more and can oftentimes deserve more respect. The Japanese culture has much respect for politeness in their speech communities. I would say that their speech acts are the politest.
Overall, I truly believe this chapter supports my thesis that politeness will always overcome clarity and conflict in communication. People want to keep their reputation and politeness is the key to this. All of our findings show that people tend to be polite versus confrontational. It is culturally accepted to show respect through politeness. The many cultures examined have different ways of avoiding unpleasant situations. They all want to be polite in their speech.
References
Bonvillain, N., (2014). Language, Culture, and Communication: The meaning of messages (7th Ed,). Boston: Pearson.
