Maintaining Face in Diplomacy: A Study of Negative Politeness Strategies in The Diplomat TV Series
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v14i2.11966Keywords:
Diplomatic Discourse, Negative Politeness, Power, Social distance, Rank of Imposition, Scripted television dialogueAbstract
This study aims to identify the primary negative-politeness strategies used in scripted diplomatic and institutional interaction and to explain how power, social distance, and rank of imposition shape their pragmatic functions. Drawing on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) framework, the analysis examined 24 face-threatening utterances from the first two episodes of Netflix’s The Diplomat. Each datum was assigned one primary strategy, while co-occurring mitigating expressions were treated as supporting devices. Seven of the ten negative-politeness strategies occurred as primary strategies. Conventional indirectness was the most frequent (8 data; 33.3%), followed by questions or hedges and apology (6 data each; 25.0%). The findings show that mitigation is not restricted to lower-status speakers: formally higher-status speakers also use negative politeness when hearers possess immediate control over relevant institutional resources, including schedules, access, investigative procedures, and professional output. The study therefore suggests that negative politeness in mediated institutional discourse is shaped not only by formal hierarchy but also by situationally activated, locally distributed authority.
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