Matching and Mismatching Verbal and Nonverbal Politeness in Egyptians’ Congratulation, Condolence, and Consolation

As how it is to be said is as important as what is said, being
polite does not depend only on polite uttering but more on
behaving politely. To argue for this regard, this study
investigates the influence of speech-behavior matching and
mismatching on the perception of politeness in Egyptians‟
social interactions of offering and responding to
congratulations, condolences, and consolations. By multi-modally analyzing the verbal expressions and their
synchronous nonverbal behaviors including facial expressions,
gestures, body positions and orientations, touching, and tones
of voice, in 165 scenes collected from three Egyptian
television series concerning the interactions of congratulation,
condolence, and consolation, this study aims at fulfilling a
multimodal attitude of politeness through covering its
linguistic and non-linguistic manifestations in the light of
Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) Politeness Theory. With respect
to the disparity of the social variables of gender, social
distance, and power among Egyptian interlocutors, the attitude
of politeness is appeared to be highly influenced by matching
the verbal expressions with their co-nonverbal behaviors.