More than words: Linguistic and nonlinguistic politeness in two cultures (original) (raw)

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Linguistic Politeness

Cross Cultural Communication, 2014

Linguistic politeness is one of the most significant underpinnings of interactional communication and social everyday life. This article reviews the most important theoretical and analytical frameworks which attempt to conceptualize politeness within and across cultures with the aim to uncover the universality of linguistic politeness.

Language Politeness: Pragmatic-Sociocultural Perspective

Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Language and Society, 2019

This study is aimed to explain the perspective of language politeness in terms of the sociocultural background of the Indonesian Language and Literature Education Study Program students at the Universitas Islam Riau (UIR). By applying the Phenomenology approach, data was collected through interviews with 44 students about language politeness which was then analyzed by applying the Miles & Huberman's analysis techniques. The results of the study showed that someone is said to be polite when s/he does not offend other people's hearts (the other person) in speaking, speaking in a soft tone, speaking based on contexts; who is the interlocutors, where the conversation takes place, whether in a serious or relaxed atmosphere, what topics are being discussed, and consider the norms in speaking. It can be concluded that the students are polite in speaking based on their respective cultural backgrounds with regard to contexts. The results of this study imply everyone with different cultural backgrounds has different language politeness.

Cross-Cultural Variation of Politeness Orientation & Speech Act Perception

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 2013

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study which compares Jordanian and English native speakers' perceptions about the speech act of thanking. The forty interviews conducted revealed some similarities but also of remarkable cross-cultural differences relating to the significance of thanking, the variables affecting it, and the appropriate linguistic and paralinguistic choices, as well as their impact on the interpretation of thanking behaviour. The most important theoretical finding is that the data, while consistent with many views found in the existing literature, do not support Brown and claim that thanking is a speech act which intrinsically threatens the speaker's negative face because it involves overt acceptance of an imposition on the speaker. Rather, thanking should be viewed as a means of establishing and sustaining social relationships. The study findings suggest that cultural variation in thanking is due to the high degree of sensitivity of this speech act to the complex interplay of a range of social and contextual variables, and point to some promising directions for further research.

Speech functions, politeness, and cross-cultural communication

Routledge eBooks, 2022

Chapter 10 discussed ways in which linguistic choices are influenced by social contexts. We adapt our talk to suit our audience and talk differently to children, customers and colleagues. We use language differently to construct different kinds of social identity, and we speak differently in formal and casual contexts. The purpose of talk also affects its form. This chapter begins by considering the range of functions that language may serve, and the variety of ways in which the "same" message may be expressed. Why do we select one way rather than another to convey our message? Given a choice between Mr Shaw, Robert and Bob, for instance, how do we decide which is appropriate? One relevant factor is politeness. The second part of this chapter illustrates how considerations of politeness influence the choice between different address forms, and discusses the social dimensions which influence what is considered polite in different situations and communities. Being considered linguistically polite is often a matter of selecting linguistic forms which are perceived as constructing an appropriate degree of social distance or which acknowledge and reinforce relevant status or power differences. Norms for polite behaviour differ from one speech community to another. Linguistic politeness is culturally based. Different speech communities emphasise different functions, and express particular functions differently. How, if at all, should one express appreciation for a meal in another culture? Is it possible to refuse an invitation politely? How should one greet people in different speech communities? These are the kinds of questions touched on in the final section of this chapter where some examples of cross-cultural differences in the expression of speech functions are discussed.

Politeness Across Cultures (Pagrave Macmillan, 2011)

This is the first edited collection to examine politeness in a wide range of diverse cultures. Most essays draw on empirical data from a wide variety of languages, including some key-languages in politeness research, such as English, and Japanese, as well as some lesser-studied languages, such as Georgian. The volume also includes four studies that discuss theoretical and empirical aspects of 'face', a construct that continues to attract much attention across disciplines. The specially-commissioned essays in this collection will be of interest to scholars, researchers and advanced students in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse studies, anthropology and intercultural communication.

Politeness Strategies in English and Chinese Emails: A Cross-cultural Speech Act Study

School conference, 2022

This study compared frequencies of politeness strategies in emails of English-speaking and Mandarin Chinese-speaking participants. It is generally assumed that cross-cultural differences exist in this aspect of pragmatics in that English speakers/writers tend to employ more independency/negative politeness strategies, and that Chinese speakers/writers tend to use more involvement/positive politeness strategies (Hofstede, 1984, 1990; Wierzbicka, 2003). The main goal of the present paper was to test whether such general conclusions and assumptions hold true in an electronically-mediated context. The two groups of participants were asked to write emails to invite a number of recipients to a casual social event, and their language items and politeness strategies were analyzed to determine whether there were any areas of cross-cultural variation. As expected, more involvement strategies were used by Chinese participants than their English counterparts. Conversely, more independency strategies were used on average by the English group. Both of these findings are consistent with many findings of previous research and lend support to the arguments that Chinese is a more collectivist-oriented culture and English speakers are more oriented towards individualism and autonomy, as these particular cultural traits were arguably manifested in the participants' speech act realization patterns, with clear statistically significant differences existing between the two groups. The paper concludes with remarks regarding the universality claims of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory and emphasizes the need for further research into cross-cultural pragmatics.