Relational Rituals: Some Terminological Problems
The aim of this paper is to provide basic terminology for the research of linguistic rituals. More specifically, I will overview two terms, 'politeness' and 'rituality', which seem to have pre-evident meanings, through the lenses of first-order and second-order conceptualisation. The first-order (i.e. 'emic' or the language user's perspective) vs. second-order (i.e. 'etic' or the analyst's perspective) distinction has been widely applied in the field of discursive politeness research, since Eelen's (2001) groundbreaking study (see also Haugh 2007 for an in-depth discussion on first/second order in pragmatics-based inquiries), but it has been neglected in linguistic (and non-linguistic) studies on rituality.