Put the following responses in each dialogues in increasing order of politeness.(Approbation Maxim)
1. Mary: Well, I‘ve done it. I‘ve dyed my hair blonde. Ed: a) you look beautiful. b) you look awful. c) you look amazing.
b)—c)—a)
2. Tom: Do you like the wine I picked out? Mary: a) it‘s Italian, isn‘t b) yes, I do. c) not really.
c)—a)—b)
it‘s Italian, isn‘t it? Implies a less than whole-hearted endorsement of the wine by failing to be maximally informative, ‗answering a question with another question‘, and by failing to be maximally relevant since the topic was the wine‘s taste not its country of origin.
B: No, it was very uninteresting.
2. A: English is a difficult language to learn. B: True, but the grammar is quite easy.
8.3 Brown & Levinson‘s Face Theory