Читать книгу The Politeness/Impoliteness Divide - Saida Anssari-Naim - Страница 10
Оглавление3
An overview on English-based theories in cross-cultural communication and politeness
Any given language is of necessity enclosed into the socio-cultural reality in which it is found. Inspired particularly by developments in the field of pragmatics (and the connection with sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, second language learning/acquisition and cross-cultural research), recent studies have embraced a notably culture-sensitive orientation. This in turn has led to the integration of a wide range of socio-cultural factors which go beyond the traditional trilogy of grammar, phonology and lexis, and in this way communication between native and non-native speakers has come to be perceived as not simply inter-linguistic but also intercultural.
3.1. Cross-cultural communication
The notion of intercultural communication is rather complex. Banks et al. (1991) describe their notion of intercultural miscommunication as arising from the existence of two initial ‘obstacles’ that hint at a lack of agreement within the academic community as to the two components of this concept, i.e. inter-cultural and miscommunication. First, what is meant by ‘miscommunication’ is often ambiguous and varies among intercultural studies; and second, “what constitutes the realm of intercultural encounters is not universally agreed upon” (Banks et al. 1991: 103, cit. Lorenzo Dus, 1997). The term intercultural has typically been used to denote encounters between members of large cultural groups, namely different countries or ethnicities. However, Thomas, 1983, cit. ibid.) and (Cameron 1995, cit. ibid ) have claimed that inter-cultural does not simply refer to these two contexts, but can be used for other social settings, i.e. male female communication, intergenerational talk and even communication involving members of different social/professional backgrounds such as doctor-patient or legal practitioner-client interaction.
The problems speakers from different cultures find in interpreting the norms of others “based on generic cultural types” (Banks et al. 1991: 109, cit. ibid) can be found within this perspective. Individuals are perceived as representatives of different cultures. Asante et al. (1979, cit. ibid) identify two groups in this sense, on the basis of the research objectives of each group. The first school of researchers, known as cultural dialogists, assign priority to the foundation of a humanistic approach to communication theory and practice that would promote world understanding. The second group, labelled cultural criticism, intends to identify as the object of research those aspects of divergence between cultures. Sarangi (1995, cit. ibid) claims that both schools begin from common ground mainly because they share the same concern for the investigation of differences across cultures. He further argues that, despite the recognition of cultural differences in languages, these studies claim that “cultural problems are more significant than linguistic problems” (Sarangi 1995: 410, cit ibid), and they keep an analytical disconnection between language and culture.
With regard to this framework, cultures are evaluated in terms of generic cultural values that decisively affect the perception of how attempts at communication are made. Hall’s (1976, cit. ibid) study, subsequently applied by several intercultural communication theorists to particular cultural variables, takes this approach. Hall argues that cultures show a tendency towards High Context and Low Context communication. High Context refers to a form of communication where most of the mutual information is taken for granted and thus little information is conveyed. Conversely, Low Context is said to be a form of communication where little mutual information is assumed and most information is conveyed. The concept of High context/Low Context communication has been exploited in different ways, namely, as describing directness/indirectness and exaggeration/understatement, or individualism/collectivism (Cohen 1987). Likewise, a correlation has on occasion been established between these generic variables and intercultural communication.
The main issues at stake here are the supposed benefits of looking into the differences (cross-culturally determined) in realizations of specific linguistic activities, most frequently speech acts, as a means of shedding light on the causes of intercultural miscommunication. It has been argued that cross-cultural analysis on its own does not suffice for the understanding, let alone the prevention, of potential cases of intercultural miscommunication. Such an analysis needs complementing with a context-inclusive analysis of what strategies and discursive patterns are actually activated in each specific interaction, as well as personal, social and other variables. Thus, the fact that particular languages employ different formulae for the ‘same’ communicative routine, such as sneezing or coughing for example, does not automatically indicate that an English or an Arabic speaker will resort to their formulae when communicating in a different language. Even if they do, there may be other factors involved, such as a certain degree of tolerance or awareness on the part of the native speaker to the possibility of having misunderstood the non-native speaker’s utterance. Nonetheless, I concur with Gass and Varonis (1991: 130) in their claim that we “interpret through the filter of our native language”, and hence we do not undervalue the special position held by native speakers in their communication in a foreign language. An important issue here derives from the field of social psychology and involves individual versus group identity. The cultural difference approach, as Banks et al. (1991) argue, focuses on members’ communicative behaviour, together with their selection of linguistic codes and interactional strategies, as tools for individual and group identity preservation. What seems at stake in the cultural difference approach is the speakers’ adjustment of their behaviour to several cognitive and social dynamics, such as a sense of threat to ethnic identity (Bourhis and Giles 1977), an appeal for social approval, or a need to adhere to or detach oneself from others (Street and Giles 1982).
The use of formulaic language such as jokes or swearing by non-native speakers is not always considered as an appropriate means of relating to the ‘native group’. Native speakers might interpret such uses of the idiosyncratic facets of their language by non-native speakers as invasive, and hence might reject them; at other times such uses might be considered strange, causing surprise and perhaps disapproval; or, on the contrary, they might be seen as entertaining and thus earn approval. On the other hand, non-native speakers might detach themselves from the linguistic norms of the native group and underline their identity through the use of their own communicative repertoire, a situation which probably derives from the value non-native speakers place on their own culture and language in an ‘alien’ setting. Accordingly, it may be observed that members of a non-native group with a cultural orientation towards negative politeness deliberately adopt such a cultural pattern in their communication with members of a culture oriented towards positive politeness, this as a means of conserving their own idiosyncrasy despite the likely risk of miscommunication between interactants.
Comments on things ‘going wrong’ in interaction usually refer to communication between members of different cultures and, most frequently, different languages. There is a considerable research literature on mismatch talk and its consequences, that is, the association between breaks in communication and differences in the attribution of meaning to linguistic forms or silence in different cultures (Cf. Thomas 1983, Saville-Troike 1985, Tannen 1986, Ting-Toomey 1988, Sarangi and Slembrouck 1991, Tyler 1995, Roberts 1996, among others). Although the real difficulties that participants in intercultural encounters frequently experience cannot be ignored, the absence of problems of meaning exchange among interactants of the ‘same culture’ in no way indicates an absence of miscommunication at a deeper level. As Habermas (1970) maintains in his arguments on ‘pseudo-communication’, the notion of sharing the same linguistic code is an erroneous belief, in as much as it speciously attributes simplicity and ordinariness to communication. Such a point of view is reflected in a comparative study by Herbert (1990) on variations in the use of compliments by South Africans and North Americans, where both of these groups have the same L1.
3.2. Politeness as a universal variable in cross-cultural communication
The attention within pragmatics towards politeness theory over recent decades has resulted in a vast and varied literature. Indeed, linguistic politeness theory can almost be considered an independent branch of pragmatics; more specifically, it constitutes a social approach to pragmatics, rather than a cognitive approach (such as in relevance theory). Thomas (1995) enumerates a variety of sets of phenomena for which theories of politeness have been used: politeness as (1) a real-world goal; (2) as deference; (3) as register; (4) as a surface level phenomenon; (5) as an illocutionary phenomenon (1995: 149). The approach to politeness discussed in the present chapter falls within the fifth sub-class. However, even in this subset, various areas can be identified. Thus, Thomas (1995) following Fraser (1990) has gone on to distinguish between:
1. Politeness explained in terms of principles and maxims (Leech 1983)
2. Politeness and the management of face (Brown and Levinson 1987)
3. Politeness viewed as a conversational contract (Fraser 1990)
As noted above, in recent decades politeness has been one of the central areas of work in pragmatics (cf. for example, Thomas 1983, Blum-Kulka 1987, 1992, Sifianou 1992, Kienpointner 1997, Watts, Ide and Ehlich 1992, Eelen 2001, Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 2006). However, no consensus appears to exist in terms of how to define politeness; “politeness will always be a slippery and ultimately indefinable quality of interaction which is subject to change through time and across cultural space. There is, in other words, no stable referent indexed by the lexeme polite” (Watts, Ide and Ehlich 1992: xiii). The perennial discussion over how to define politeness is still a matter of contention. In what follows, I will offer an overview of the different trends and approaches.
Politeness as face-saving strategy: Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory is based on the existence of a Model Person who is rational and is endowed with face. Rationality denotes that the Model Person is “endowed with… a precisely defined mode of reasoning from ends to the means that will achieve those ends” (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 63). In addition, face is to be understood in terms of Goffman’s definition of the term as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman 1955: 213). Brown and Levinson define face as the “public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” (Brown and Levinson 1978: 66). Then, they divide face into two different, but related aspects, namely positive and negative face which are to be understood in terms of wants that every person knows every other person has (Brown and Levinson 1987: 67). Positive face denotes the desire to be appreciated and approved by others, whereas negative face concerns a person’s desire to be unimpeded and free from imposition (Tracy 1990: 210).
Brown and Levinson also classified verbal or non-verbal acts, which contradict or “run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or speaker” as Face-Threatening-Acts (FTA) (1987: 70). Requests for instance, are considered as FTAs to the hearer’s (H) negative face in so far that the speaker (S) is impeding H by asking H to do what S wants and not what H wants. On the other hand, any “contradiction or expression of disagreement, which means the speaker thinks that there is something wrong with an opinion held by the hearer” is a FTA to H’s positive face. There are also acts that threaten both positive and negative face of the H, as is the case when H complies with S’s wants but not necessarily his or her own” (Fasold 1990: 161).
Some other acts are liable to affect S’s positive face, such as expressing thanks, excuses, acceptance of offers and apologies, acceptance of compliments, confessions, etc.; meanwhile, others affect S’s negative face, as with the acceptance of compliments, confessions, admission of guilt, or apologies where S recognises that his or her act contradicts H’s expectations. According to Brown and Levinson’s politeness hypothesis, MP (a Model person) would resort to different strategies to keep his/her face intact and at the same time to reduce the possibility of damaging the positive or negative face of H.
Brown and Levinson grouped these politeness strategies that speakers use to reduce the impact of an FTA into five categories, ranging from the most to the least polite:
Figure 1
(Brown & Levinson, 1978: 74)
The first difference is between enacting an FTA on record (strategies 1, 2, and 3) or FTA off record (strategy 4). On record denotes an expression with “one unambiguously attributable intention with which witnesses would concur”, and off record refers to an expression, which has “more than one unambiguously attributable intention” (Brown and Levinson 1978: 73-74). A good illustration of on record strategy would be when S wants H to open the window because it is hot and manages to formulate a direct request to H by saying ‘would you mind if I open the window?’ An off record strategy, on the other hand, is when the S formulates an indirect request by saying ‘it is hot in here’.
Bald on record (strategy1) refers to an action without redress and “involves doing it in the most direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way possible” (Brown & Levinson, 1978: 74). Strategies (2) and (3) refer to an act with redressive action “‘giv[ing] face’ to the addressee” (Brown and Levinson 1978: 74), that is, using “positive politeness” (strategy 2) which is “oriented towards the positive face of H, the positive image that he claims for himself”. Moreover, strategy (3) is “oriented mainly toward partially satisfying (redressing) H’s negative face, his basic want to maintain claims of territory and self-determination” (ibid: 75).
Brown and Levinson argue that the assessment of the seriousness of an FTA, that is, the calculation made by S and H, is determined by three factors “in many and perhaps all cultures” (1978: 74):
• The social distance (D) of S [the speaker] and H [hearer] (symmetric relation)
• The relative power (P) of S and H (an asymmetric relation)
• The absolute ranking (R) of imposition in a particular culture
Thus, the weight or seriousness of an FTA (x) can be estimated according to the following equation: Wx = D (S, H) + P (S, H) + Rx’. Brown and Levinson define D and P as “etic” pan-cultural social dimensions “which nevertheless probably have “emic” correlates” (1978: 76). In what concerns R, the degree it interferers with an agent’s positive or negative face needs, is culturally and situationally defined. In the case of positive FTAs, R involves “an assessment of the amount of “pain” given to H’s face, based on the discrepancy between H’s own desired self-image and that presented, explicitly or tacitly in the FTA” (1978: 78). With negative FTAs, two ranks of imposition are identifiable: one in proportion to the expenditure of resources (including the notion of time) and another in proportion to the expenditure of goods of whatever sort (including non-material goods). The three factors P, D and R are context-dependent variables and also independent of each other.
Politeness and the conversational-maxim view: The conversational maxim is based on Grice’s theory, first postulated in his paper ‘Logic and Conversation’ (Grice 1975). Grice discussed how speakers actually mean more than they say in their conversation, and claimed that conversationalists are rational and equal individuals who are primarily interested in the efficient conveying of messages. To this end, he devised the cooperative principle (CP), which states that individuals should say what they have to say, when they have to say it, and how they want to say it. For Leech (1983) to be polite is essentially an incitement to violate Grice’s (1975) conversational maxims. His politeness principle is based on six maxims, namely, tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement and sympathy. Each of these maxims carries a dual distinction:
1. Tact maxim (in impositives and commissives):
a. Minimise cost to other.
b. Maximise cost to other.
2. Generosity maxim (in impositives and commissives):
a. Minimise benefit to self.
b. Maximise cost to self.
3. Approbation maxim (in expressives and assertives):
a. Minimise praise to self.
b. Maximise praise to other.
4. Modesty maxim (in expressive and assertive):
a. Minimise praise to self.
b. Maximise dispraise of self.
5. Agreement maxim (in assertive):
a. Minimise disagreement between self and other.
b. Maximise agreement between self and other.
6. Sympathy maxim (in assertive):
a. Minimise antipathy between self and other.
b. Maximise sympathy between self and other.
Lakoff (1973) followed Grice’s CP in an attempt to account for politeness. Unlike Grice, Lakoff broadened the notion of grammatical rule as associated with well-formedness to pragmatics and applied it to the field of politeness, where she claimed that specific constructions of some sentences can convey politeness. Lakoff envisages politeness as “a device used in order to reduce friction in personal interaction (Lakoff 1979: 64). Pragmatic competence for Lakoff is based on two rules: “Be Clear”, this rule deriving basically from Grice’s maxim; and “Be Polite”. These two rules are claimed by Lakoff as dichotomous, i.e. in some contexts they reinforce each other and in other contexts come into conflict. Thus, she proposed a set of politeness sub-maxims. The first sub-maxim, “Don’t Impose”, is said to be necessary for formal and impersonal politeness. The second, “Give Options”, is required for informal politeness. The third sub-maxim, “Make ‘A’ Feel good”, is required for intimate relations.
Politeness and the conversational-contract view: Introduced by Fraser (1975) Fraser and Nolen (1981), this approach relies generally on Grice’s CP and Goffman’s (1967) concept of face. In the conversational-contract view, participants are involved in conversations which depend on a mutual understanding of a set of obligations and rights which regulate at an initial stage what each participant expects from the other. During the conversation, participants have the possibility of renegotiating the conversational contract by readjusting the rights and obligations between them. This dimension of rights and obligations varies depending on the choices of the participants. However, some conversational norms are pre-established, conventional, and rarely negotiable; such is the case, for example, with turn-taking and the use of mutually intelligible language. Jary (1998), on the same lines as Fraser (1990), proposes that politeness in communication, in terms of Relevance Theory, is usually anticipated rather than communicated; intuitively participants are more concerned about what is permissible in terms of force and content, and they hardly notice forms of politeness when they are engaged in conversation.
Politeness and the social-norm view: The social-norm view essentially reflects the conventional view of politeness as a series of refined and well-mannered acts, and any deviation from these rules as impoliteness. However, conceiving of politeness as a matter of social rituals is subject to several problems, especially in terms of any cross-cultural comparison or understanding. We can assume that the concept and social interpretation of an example of polite behaviour in a given culture might not equate exactly with that found in any other culture (Nwoye 1992: 315). Equivalent polite terms might simply not exist, or might denote a different concept across cultures (Hill et al. 1986); alternatively, the concept of what is seen as polite might differ from one period to another (Locher, 2004: 72). Additionally, strategies used to display polite acts might contradict, in terms of perceived intent, those used in different cultures. For example, the use of modality or indirectness to indicate formality in English requests does not have a directly comparable counterpart in MA, where other devices, such as a “plea for blessing”, are used instead. (This strategy will be addressed in the forthcoming chapters). Another case in point is the question of with whom politeness should be used, and is again of specific interest cross-culturally. According to Fraser (1990: 321) the use of polite behaviour among family members could be seen as arrogant or even impolite.
Politeness and the post-modern view: Recent work on politeness has tended to rely on two approaches, namely “the traditional” approach inspired basically by Grice’s Cooperative Maxims, and/or in speech act theory and work deriving from this (Lakoff 1973, Brown and Levinson 1978-1987, Leech 1983). The premises established by the former, classic movement were soon disclaimed by the “Post-Modern” view in which politeness is captured as emerging from participants’ own perception of politeness (Ellen 2001, Mills 2003, Watts 2003 cit. in Terkourafi 2005: 237). On this view, politeness falls within two categories, “first-order” and “second-order” politeness (Watts et al. 1992). The first of these refers to how politeness is determined by ordinary people and how it is defined in dictionaries, for instance. The second term, however, relates politeness to theories such as face-work and maxims (which is how politeness is typically approached by modern researchers in the field of pragmatics). The post-modern view encompasses social theories, such as Bourdieu’s practice-based theory of “habitus”; here, politeness is conceived of as “contested” conversely to the traditional view, with the claim that politeness is a matter of “shared norms”, that is, politeness is regulated by social norms rather than by pragmatic rules. Eelen (2001) provides a useful summary:
Norms are not straightforward entities, but rather highly versatile argumentative tools, and their nature and operational aspects need to be examined more closely before they can be posited as explanatory concepts- and before they can be allocated any scientific role whatsoever. (Eelen 2001: 233; cit. in Terkourafi 2005: 243)
Politeness and the frame-based view: One critique of the post-modern view is that it emerged out of a dissatisfaction with traditional theories of politeness, which they sought to remedy by “importing insights from social theory into pragmatics, or rather, exporting politeness into the realm of social theory” (Terkourafi 2005: 246). In ‘Beyond the micro-level in politeness research’ (2005) Terkourafi argues that the post modern-view is an extension of the traditional view:
Despite departing from the traditional theories in this respect, post-modern theories share with them the two premises, which may after all prove crucial. The first premise is that both types of theory are theory-driven. Their respective points of departure are concrete theoretical preoccupations- the Co-operative Principle and speech act theory on the one hand, the notion of politeness1 and discursive struggle over politeness on the other. These theoretical preoccupations then provide the lens through which they approach the data, invariably coloring their analyses. This theoretical focus is seen most clearly in the attitude the two types of theory adopt towards the notion of norms. On the one hand, traditional theories assume the existence of norms a priori, hence they do not bother engaging in quantitative analyses of the data. On the other hand, post-modern theories challenge current understandings of norms, pre-empting the value, or indeed the possibility, of quantitative analyses. The second premise shared by both traditional and post-modern views is their analysis of politeness on the pragmatic level as particularized implicature. (Terkourafi 2005: 246)
Terkourafi then proposes an alternative, or rather a complement, to both traditional and post-modern views, which she notes are theory-driven. This alternative is the frame-based view (Terkourafi 2001, cit. in Terkourafi 2005: 246) which is data-driven and concerned with the analysis of large corpora of naturally occurring interactions as a means of observing the regularities between linguistic expressions and their co-occurrence in their extra-linguistic contexts of use. According to Terkourafi, in order to uncover these regularities it is necessary to categorize real life contexts into types of context. This can be done through recourse to the notion ‘frame’, adapted from related notions in (Minsky 1975), as well as from psychology (Schank and Abelson 1977) and linguistics (Fillmore 1982). The frame-based view of politeness is characterized by a focus on politeness as all face-constituting linguistic behaviour that can account for linguistic behaviour through the lens of its face-constituting potential.
Critiques of politeness theories: Some scholars have been criticized for their view of interaction as problematic and for seeing speakers in a permanent struggle to avoid the ‘conflict’, ‘threat’ and ‘friction’ which is supposedly a constant feature of interaction with others. Scholarly notions of politeness have also been criticized for being too vague (Watts, Ide and Ehlich 1992: xvi), pessimistic and overtly paranoiac. Richard Smith, in his critique to Brown and Levinson’s conceptualization of politeness as the realization of face-threat mitigation (Schmidt 1980: 104), argues that it is “an overtly pessimistic, rather paranoid view of human social interaction”. Lakoff (1975, cit. in Watts 2003) suggests “politeness is developed by societies in order to reduce friction in personal interaction”. On the other hand, Leech (1980: 19) defines politeness as “strategic conflict avoidance and it can be measured in term of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of conflict situation”.
On the same lines, Brown and Levinson (1978-1987) claim politeness to be “a rational behaviour aimed at strategic softening (or mitigation) of face threatening acts”. Kasper (1990) regards politeness as a set of strategies “to diffuse the danger and to minimalise the antagonism” in so far that he envisages communication as “a fundamentally dangerous and antagonistic endeavour” (Kasper 1990: 194). Hill et al. (1986) regard politeness as “one of the constraints on human interaction, whose purpose is to consider others’ feelings, establish levels of mutual comfort and promote rapport”. Another case in point is the issue as to whether im/politeness should be studied as a lay or folk notion, which has been termed First Order im/politeness (Cf. Eelen 2001, Watts 2003, Locher 2004, 2006, Locher and Watts 2005), or as a theoretical construct to be used for the sociolinguistic and pragmatic research, termed Second Order im/politeness (Watts 2003). However, even those who consider im/politeness to be a theoretical concept diverge as to a definition. Politeness has been approached in terms of maxims and norms, embracing face-work, adherence to social norms and adequate behaviour, and impoliteness as a deviation or infraction of such these norms.
We can argue, in summary, that all of the theories of politeness have a ‘reason to be’, in that analysts draw on their own intuition and their local understanding about what is polite. I don’t consider the existence of contradictory theories in the field to be a problem; on the contrary, it seems to me pointless to claim one valid norm for all cultures.
