Asymmetry markers in discourse The expressive meaning of bitte please
The article puts forward an analysis of the German expressive marker bitte 'please/there (you are) that does not treat it as a politeness marker or modifier on directive speech acts, pace Levinson (1983) nor as an explicit marker of directive illocutionary force, pace Searle (1979) Instead, we take the expressive element bitte to indicate speaker hearer asymmetries in epistemic, circumstantial or deontic authority, independently of sentence type and illocutionary force. The analysis in terms of asymmetry marking explains why German bitte has a wider distribution than English please, and why it can trigger attenuating effects (politeness) as well as strengthening effects.