Impoliteness in polylogal interaction: Accounting for face-threat witnesses’ responses

• We apply a genre-approach to analyze impoliteness in polylogal classroom discourse.
• We examine impoliteness in small-group discussion practices among adolescents.
• We find face-threat witnesses are integral to the co-construction of impoliteness.
• Face-threat witnesses respond to impoliteness in complex, often constitutive, ways.
• We revise extant models of response options to account for polylogal interactions.

Though, in recent years, impoliteness research has embraced a view of impoliteness as dynamically co-constructed in interaction, the role of impoliteness in polylogal discourse is still in need of further examination. Drawing from a corpus of naturally occurring classroom discourse, this paper uses a genre approach (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010a, Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010b and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2010c) to examine the role of face-threat witnesses in small-group discussion practices among adolescents. Our research shows that face-threat witnesses respond to impoliteness in complex and dynamic ways that are integral to the co-construction of impoliteness, and that would have been missed entirely if the focus of our analysis had been purely dyadic. In view of our findings, we propose a refinement of extant models of response options (Culpeper et al., 2003, Bousfield, 2007 and Bousfield, 2008) that incorporates the response options available to face-threat witnesses, thus moving beyond the dyad. Accounting for the multifunctionality of impoliteness in polylogal interaction allows for an understanding of impoliteness as constitutive, not just disruptive, of social life. With further application, our proposed refinement of extant models can help expand research that examines manifestations of impoliteness in a wide range of (non)institutional, polylogal discourse.