ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a well-known stereotype about British politeness. Whilst academia treats politeness in Britain as a monolithic block characterised by indirectness, there is ample evidence in lay discourse that northerners are perceived as having very different politeness practices from southerners, practices which, broadly, are characterised by friendliness. We put this to the test by selecting 14 key British formulaic politeness expressions, each belonging to one of three different types of politeness (tentativeness, deference or solidarity), and then examining their frequencies in the combined north and south components of the Spoken BNC2014 and the original BNC’s spoken component (the Spoken BNC1994). Surprisingly, we found support for the idea that tentativeness politeness, including indirectness, is indeed a general characteristic in England, and no support for the idea that solidarity politeness might be more characteristic of the north compared with the south. However, a pattern that did seem to reflect a north-south divide concerned (in)formality. The northern data had a tendency to avoid more formal expressions and variants and favour more informal ones. This, we suggest, may underlie the perceived difference in north-south politeness practices.
