Since
communication can be viewed as the primary and most inclusive social framework
for language use, it is logical to expect all speech communities to develop
rules and ways in which to improve and accommodate communicative acts in order
to ensure and promote social harmony. The area of politeness deals with
perceptions, expectations, and conventional realizations of communicative
strategies which enhance social harmony. In acquiring one’s first language, a
person also acquires these rules of politeness as part of one’s sociocultural
and pragmatic competence. When learning a second language, one needs to acquire
the new culture’s politeness framework, which often is very different from that
of one’s own culture. Perhaps a good example of opposing cross-cultural
perceptions of politeness is the following incident, which took place in the
United States, where a Japanese-born daughter-in-law came by unexpectedly to
visit her American-Jewish mother-in-law during lunchtime. The daughter-in-law
had stopped earlier at a snack shop to buy a sandwich to eat while visiting her
mother-in-law. Japanese rules of politeness dictated both that she not impose
on her mother-in-law in any way and that she should demonstrate that she
stopped by only to enjoy her company.
On the other hand, the Jewish
mother-in-law was shocked and quite offended that her daughter-in-law did not
feel that she could come over any time and expect to get a sandwich or some
simple lunch from her mother-in-law. In both cases, there are important cultural
expectations of “what is polite,” but these preceptions clash in term of
cultural presupposition: in the Japanese case, it is most important to maintain
respect for the freedom of choice of the other person and to avoid imposition
at all costs. In the Jewish tradition, feelings of solidarity and hospitality
override any question of imposition, and so it is expected that someone who is
close to you will “impose” from time to time as a normal part of the social
relationship.
This
example is also good illustration of negative versus positive politeness in
Browb and Levinson’s (1978) terms. Negative politeness avoids imposition
whereas positive politeness expects imposition. The Japanese culture is more
negative politeness oriented in that maintaining social distance is highly
valued, whereas the american-Jewish culture places higher value on lack of
social distance and focuses on group solidarity and positive politeness as more
appropriate values for family interactions. In the example described here,
positive politeness ranks group solidarity as having very high value in the one
culture, whereas in the other culture negative politeness is primarily
concerned with maintaining the other party’s “freedom action” and avoiding
imposition at al costs. When moves from one culture to another, it may take a
long time to become fully sensitive to the subtleties of a new set of
politeness rules.
Leech
(1983) adds the politeness principle (PP) o Grice (1975) more general
cooperative principle (CP) in order to “minimize the expression of impolite
beliefs.... and [maximize the expression of polite beliefs]” (81) The essence
of Leech’s PP is to minimize unfavorable behavior towards the hearer or a
third party while attempting to increase favorable consequences. Leech suggest
a cost-benefit scale where the claim is that when the speaker is impolite,
there is a higher cost for hearer. To be polite, therefore, means to minimize
cost to the hearer and to be impolite is to maxim it. The following definition
and example may help clarify this :
Cost
to Hearer = speaker is impolite incooperate, and do not value hearer’s well
being
Benefit
to Hearer = speaker is polite and conviderate of the teacher even at his/her
own expense
Example:
a situation where an insurance agents is asked to help the customer with an
usual claim, which turn out not to be covered by the policy and the customer
complains bitterly. If the agent might say “We are very sorry that our policy
doesn't cover your claim, but I am sure another agent and more accommodating in
future. Would you like me to recommend some another agencies ? In the first
case, the agent who responds impolitely does not consider the customer’s
(hearer’s) benefit, while in the second case, although the agent cannot offer
direct assistance, s/he is still very considerate of the customer’s needs
(lowering the hearer’s costs).
Each
culture may have rather different norms with respect to the expected politeness
considerations of “cost-benefit,” As we have seen from the earlier example
about the Japanese daughter-in-law and the Jewish-American mother-in-law, the
Japanese perception of politeness and “benefit to the hearer” entailed the
notion of “minimizing imposition,” whereas the Jewish expectation was “to
accept and appreciate family hospitality.” Consequently, we see that rules of
politeness cannot be translated directly from one culture to another.
Leech
(1983) suggest that these politeness principles are inherent in the
categorization of speech acts as well as in the realization of each speech act.
Therefore, he classifies illocutionary functions in terms of how they interact
with the goal of achieving social harmony :
Competitive
: the illocutionary goal competes with the social goal (e.g, ordering,
requesting, demanding, begging)
Convivial
: the illocutionary goal coincides with the social goal (e.g, offering,
inviting, greeting, thanking, congratulating)
Neutral
: the illocutionary goal is indifferent to the social goal (e.g, asserting,
reporting, announcing, instructing)
Conflicative
: the illocutionary goal conflicts with the social goal (e.g, threatening,
accusing, cursing, reprimanding)
Considerations
of politeness often relate to the degree of directness expressed in speech
acts. When talking about Leech’s competitive speech act or Brown and Levinson’s
face-threatening speech acts, there is implied imposition on the hearer in the
actual performance of the speech act. In order to lessen the force of the
impossition, all languages seem to have conventionalized less direct (or
indirect) realizations of such speech acts. Instead of saying to the hearer,
“Close the door,” we might prefer an indirect version, e.g, “It’s could in
here.” However, it should also be recognized that an indirect speech act is
often harder to interpret and so speaker of languages often develop
conventionally indirect realization patterns which enable us to make indirect
requests that are nonetheless unambiguous such as “Could you close the door ?”
or “Do you want to open the door ?” – the former is more polite and formal :
the latter is more casual and familiar. Being conventionally recognized request
forms, such questions should not be answered literally but according to their
illocutionary force. However, this fact is not always obvious to second
language learners who have acquired different ways of expressing
conventionalized indirect speech acts in their first language.
All
cultures are concerned with maintaining social harmony and therefore we find
rules of politeness incorporated in the rules of speech that one has to acquire
as part of language learning. Each language, accordingly, has developed a
repertoire of speech act realizations that enable the language user to be a
“polite” interactant and an accurate interpreter of discourse. In most cultures
these rules of linguistic behavior are also accompanied by appropriate eye
gaze, body language, and gestures. When learning a new language, the learner
cannot possibly expect to acquire complete pragmatic competence, let it is
possible to incorporate the study of manageable amount of pragmatic information
into a language program and to include activities which make the learner aware
of and sensitive to the major features of politeness and common variations on
expressing politeness in the new language.
