It is very crucial for a public service to maintain a good and sustainable interaction. For most people, services are expected to be helpful and informative. The interactions practiced by certain individual shows their basic to advanced skill in communication, though, to what extent does the skill maintain respect? The use of language emphasize one’s character, it is more than a medium of information, but a link to tie relationships, express identity, and maintain social harmony. And so, in every act of interaction, individual must balance the duality of conveying meaning and preserving mutual respect. To do so is through politeness—universal aspect of human interaction that mirrors one’s awareness of social norms, interpersonal distance, and the impact of words on another individual.

Around the banking environment, an insurance adjuster are one of the very customer services that must be upfront and straight to the customer’s glare. The insurance company provide benefits for people in need, and they provide that help through the insurance adjustor—bridging function within the banking ecosystem to the customer. Their role specifically designed to influence customer contact points within the bank; mortgages, personal loans, or any general financial service system (that around of an insurance company). The insurance adjuster plays a role in business development, actively coaching in sales techniques to increase productivity and activity of customer’s account. Though their performance does not limit to rowing rates and showing sales, it is very conversational which rely heavy on communication. Reflecting professional ethics, empathy, and control. They are expected to:

vary across insurance companies. Alas, the application of politeness to the banking and insurance industries is both conceptually sound and practically useful, integrating language theory and workplace communication. This paper signifies said politeness from the movie: The Incredibles (2004), analyzing the Insurance Adjuster performance of Bob Parr in hopes to acquire an example. Although subjective, this paper emphasize how media literacy reflects an already existing ideas of the world, like Politeness and Insurance adjusters.

Overviewing Politeness

Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson's Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (reissued 1987), remains the classic account of how interlocutors manage 'face' — the positive and negative social desires of the self — in interaction. Brown and Levinson formalize the idea that many utterances are Face-Threatening Acts (FTAs), and that speakers choose from a limited number of general strategies (going on the record; positive politeness; negative politeness; going off the record/being indirect) to mitigate those threats. In their model, the choice of strategy is predicted by three sociological variables: relative power (P), social distance (D) and the rank of imposition (R). Together, these variables determine the weight (W) of an FTA and the level of corrective behavior required. This model treats politeness as a rational, widely applicable mechanism for balancing instrumental goals and interpersonal harmony. Brown and Levinson's formulation has been highly influential because it links micro-level linguistic choices to social structure, and it provides analysts with a concrete taxonomy for coding utterances in interactional data, such as requests, refusals, apologies and offers. Several subsequent works have expanded upon, critiqued or refined parts of the model, particularly with regard to its alleged universality and its treatment of cultural variation. Nevertheless, the framework continues to offer a useful and testable set of hypotheses for empirical studies of professional discourse.

The relation of the theory with Insurance adjuster, across banking roles

Insurance adjusters routinely engage in face-threatening acts, such as asking probing questions about sensitive facts, denying or limiting claims, and requesting additional proof or documentation. These acts have strong emotional implications for claimants, such as financial loss, stress and feelings of injustice. Therefore, the adjuster’s linguistic behavior must balance institutional demands, such as accuracy, auditability and fairness, with interpersonal management, such as calming, explaining and preserving trust. Using Brown and Levinson's terminology, insurance adjusters often encounter high R (serious imposition), variable P (they embody institutional authority yet must appear impartial) and variable D (sometimes personal if the claimant is distressed). These combined pressures tend to favor negative politeness strategies, such as hedging, apologizing and being indirect, as well as positive politeness moves, such as showing sympathy and offering help, where possible. They also explain why adjusters will sometimes be forced to make clear statements when legal or regulatory clarity is required. Thus, the theory maps directly onto the pragmatic choices an adjuster makes while performing their role.

Empirical research into politeness in professional and service settings corroborates this theory: studies of service agents, call center staff and bank customer service officers reveal that planners and trainers intentionally instruct them in the use of hedging, scripted apologies and 'promissory' language to manage FTAs and customer emotions — precisely the repertoire that Brown and Levinson describe as negative and positive politeness resources. In other words, politeness forms part of the adjuster's toolkit for mitigating conflict and managing reputation.

A few studies also used the theory around employee interaction, like Tirta (2016) investigated bank officers' politeness methods and discovered that hedging, apologies, and positive politeness markers were commonly used during needs-identification interviews, which is consistent with Brown and Levinson's model. This study is a direct example of applying the politeness taxonomy to financial service conversations. Not so far from the study of Cross- cultural research on politeness among Japanese businesspeople (e.g., Nakajima 1997; Ide 1989) shows that cultural norms profoundly impact the surface forms of politeness (e.g., honorifics, formulaic indirectness), underscoring the need for caveats to Brown and Levinson's universal assertion. These studies demonstrate how cultural factors influence professional civility, which is important when comparing adjuster performance across national contexts. Though different but still a study of interaction offers the same view, Experimental and corpus research (e.g., Holtgraves, 2016) investigate how politeness methods influence perceptions of uncertainty and credibility in utterances; the findings are directly relevant to adjusters, who must communicate probabilistic judgments about claims while safeguarding claimant face.

Using a pragmatic discourse analysis methodology grounded in Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Theory, this study uses a qualitative descriptive method. The data comes from the transcript of the "Insurance Claim" sequence in The Incredibles (2004), transcribing and examining the characters' speech in order to perform a non-participant observation. The data is analyzed utterance by utterance (line-by-line), in order to acknowledge the level of speech acts (requests, refusals, offers, complains, etc.) that are going to be applied by the politeness strategy. To analyze each utterance, Brown & Levinson’s model must be followed; a four-step analysis.

Identifying Politeness entails much more than simply saying “sorry” or “excuse me”; it also includes indicating “Ma’am,” “sir,” “Mr,” or “Mrs.” Brown and Levinson provided wider view of it. Their view, shows that politeness strategies are rational mechanisms for balancing instrumental goals like denying a claim with the goal of interpersonal harmony by managing the interlocutor's 'face the positive and negative social desires of the self. In the context of the insurance adjuster, this balancing act is important because their role often involves Face- Threatening Acts (FTAs) like denying claims or asking probing questions. The adjuster must therefore mediate between institutional demands for accuracy and auditability and the need for interpersonal management, such as preserving trust and calming distressed customers. The results supports that notion.

In the first dialogue (2 first utterances) Mrs Hogenson to Bob Parr is a back and forth conversation, both are speakers and hearers. She expresses her genuine complaint in disbelief, practicing bald-on-record because of her emotions, ignoring that she is in a lower power than Bob. Bob apologizes and mentions institutional policy in a negative politeness. The move from personal to impersonal language allows Bob to soften his refusal while keeping both parties’ faces — a tactic consistent with Brown and Levinson’s paradigm of minimizing imposition. The politeness of Bob Parr started to get intriguing by the second dialogue. Mrs. Hogenson’s plea is a classic high-imposition request, given through emotional weakness rather than direct order. Her sobbing reduces social distance (D ↓) and evokes empathy in Bob, leading to positive politeness in response. Bob, limited by his institutional duty (P ↑, R ↑), begins with solidarity (“I’d like to help you”) but quickly retreats to negative civility to acknowledge business rules. His final gesture, offering her the pen and paper, is off-the-record civility, hinting counsel without explicitly stating it.

The third dialogue shows more of Bob’s attempt at face preservation. Bob Parr's final verbal refusal, “I’d like to help, but there’s nothing I can do,” is an examples of negative politeness. By using the phrase "I'd like to help," he explicitly affirms his positive face desire for solidarity with the client, but the constraint "nothing I can do" shifts the agency of the refusal entirely to the institutional structure, thereby mitigating the threat to Mrs. Hogenson's positive face by showing he is forced to deny the claim. Mrs. Hogenson's mumbled gratitude in return functions as a positive politeness marker. This response signals that she has successfully processed the off-the-record hint and is now erasing the emotionally charged interaction, which helps restore Bob's positive face by accepting his difficult situation.

The fourth dialogue shows a significant shift in discourse setting, moving from the customer-facing role to an intra-office, superior-subordinate dynamic. Mr. Huph's utterance is a clear bald-on-record challenge—a high-imposition accusation delivered with high power (P ↑) and zero mitigation. By immediately using the direct address "Parr!" and questioning Bob's authorized payment, Mr. Huph asserts his managerial authority, prioritizing institutional compliance and control over interpersonal harmony. Bob's defense is equally bald-on-record in its core function—citing the policy ("policy clearly covers them—")—because his defense relies on the impersonal clarity of company regulations. However, he employs the formal address "Mr. Huph," which is a small, necessary take of a negative politeness to demonstrate deference and acknowledge the power differential while still defending his actions as being institutionally correct. This exchange highlights how the variables of Power and Distance dramatically dictate the choice of politeness strategy, contrasting the empathetic, mixed strategies used with a distressed client against the direct, unmitigated discourse of institutional authority.

Suppose that Bob Parr is having an uneasy definition of his face or self image. In other words he is battling his face, as in He is conflicted between maintaining his self-image (as compassionate or competent) and retaining situational authority (as a representation of power). A person’s face represents their public self-image, or how they wish to be perceived and accepted by others. It has two sides.

Bob’s personal face, motivated by empathy and charity, strives to maintain the client’s dignity. His institutional face, ruled by bureaucratic hierarchy, necessitates emotional control and conformity to protocol. As he tries to keep both faces at once, the ensuing conflict results in linguistic strain, including an apologetic tone, hedged statements, and secret off-record guidance. Face is “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself,” according to Brown and Levinson (1987). A pragmatic conflict arises in Bob Parr’s case because of the friction between his positive face want—to be seen as caring— and his negative face want—to be free from institutional constraints. The oscillation between empathy and restraint in his etiquette methods is rooted in this contradiction.

From the analysis of “The Incredibles” insurance scene, it can be seen that politeness is more than just speaking nicely, it is a way to balance emotion, respect, and responsibility in communication. Bob Parr’s role as an insurance adjuster shows how someone must follow company rules while still showing care toward others. Based on Brown and Levinson’s theory, his words reflect several politeness strategies such as apologizing, showing empathy, and being indirect to reduce conflict. His talk with Mrs. Hogenson shows emotional understanding and respect, while his interaction with Mr. Huph shows how authority changes the way politeness is used. These findings prove that politeness depends on social distance, power, and situation.

For future research, studies could explore politeness in other professional or movie contexts to see how culture, gender, or workplace setting influence the way people use polite language. It would also be interesting to compare real-life customer service interactions with fictional ones, to see how media represents professional behavior and what lessons it offers for real-world communication.

The author would like to express sincere gratitude to all scholars and researchers whose works contributed to the development and completion of this study.