ozarque (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ozarque) wrote,@ 2007-08-27 14:02:00 |
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Linguistics; "politeness" studies; recommended link....
Your many comments and responses proposing that the word "polite" means different things in different cultures and subcultures are absolutely correct. One of the struggles in linguistics at the moment is the attempt to find some sort of basic underlying "principles of politeness" that would apply in a more general fashion -- a project that's very hard slogging. [The concern with politeness as a theoretical entity in linguistics is usually considered to have started with Erving Goffman's work on "face" in the 1960s, and with Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's work on "politeness theory" in the 1980s.]
If you go to http://pioneer.chula.ac.th/~hkrisada/Po
1. From the abstract for "Politeness in Intercultural Communication: The Case of Sino-English-German Business Negotiations" --
"Western people think in an inductive way, and the individual is emphasised in the Western society, so Brown and Levinson analyse the politeness phenomenon from the point of view of personal face, personal self image; whereas Eastern people think in a deductive way, the harmony of the society is emphasised, every individual plays a role in the society to keep the harmony, the individual is not emphasised. ... Therefore, the universality of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory should be put in doubt when referring to Eastern cultures in intercultural communication..."
2. From the abstract for "Politeness Ideology in Thai Computer-Mediated Communication" --
"Thai users of CMC discourse... become consciously polite, manipulating a wide range of deference marking devices available in the language. The ideology of politeness is evidenced not only by overt forms such as terms of address, pronouns and final particles, but also by the various strategies they perform which characterize Thai culture."
3. From the abstract for "Another Face of Brown & Levinson's FACE: Some Honorific Principles in Japanese" --
"A Japanese speaker may feel awkward or even uncomfortable when he is greeted with a store manager's conventionalized expression 'What can I do for you?' To him, such an offer, welcoming and friendly though it might be in the American cultural context, is an instance of blunt violation of the principle of benevolence which says that the superior is always a benefactor and cannot be indebted."
Recommended.
Your many comments and responses proposing that the word "polite" means different things in different cultures and subcultures are absolutely correct. One of the struggles in linguistics at the moment is the attempt to find some sort of basic underlying "principles of politeness" that would apply in a more general fashion -- a project that's very hard slogging. [The concern with politeness as a theoretical entity in linguistics is usually considered to have started with Erving Goffman's work on "face" in the 1960s, and with Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's work on "politeness theory" in the 1980s.]
If you go to http://pioneer.chula.ac.th/~hkrisada/Po
1. From the abstract for "Politeness in Intercultural Communication: The Case of Sino-English-German Business Negotiations" --
"Western people think in an inductive way, and the individual is emphasised in the Western society, so Brown and Levinson analyse the politeness phenomenon from the point of view of personal face, personal self image; whereas Eastern people think in a deductive way, the harmony of the society is emphasised, every individual plays a role in the society to keep the harmony, the individual is not emphasised. ... Therefore, the universality of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory should be put in doubt when referring to Eastern cultures in intercultural communication..."
2. From the abstract for "Politeness Ideology in Thai Computer-Mediated Communication" --
"Thai users of CMC discourse... become consciously polite, manipulating a wide range of deference marking devices available in the language. The ideology of politeness is evidenced not only by overt forms such as terms of address, pronouns and final particles, but also by the various strategies they perform which characterize Thai culture."
3. From the abstract for "Another Face of Brown & Levinson's FACE: Some Honorific Principles in Japanese" --
"A Japanese speaker may feel awkward or even uncomfortable when he is greeted with a store manager's conventionalized expression 'What can I do for you?' To him, such an offer, welcoming and friendly though it might be in the American cultural context, is an instance of blunt violation of the principle of benevolence which says that the superior is always a benefactor and cannot be indebted."
Recommended.
