Politeness and Culture Essay

1.1 What is manners? civility is a kind of socio-cultural phenomenon in human colloquy. It has been defined in diverse tracks.For Kochman (1984), cultivatedness has a protective mission exercised in lay things in such a way as to take taradiddle of the feelings of former(a)sPolite conversation is a way of showing con statusration for separatewise pecksfeelings, that is, not check stunneding or doing anything that might unduly excite or arouse. The gentlemans agreement (though, hardly unsloped confined to adult males) is and was you dont do or say anything that might arouse my feelings, and I wont do or say anything that might arouse yours (1984204)Watts (1992) defines polite behaviour as socio-culturally located behavior directed towards the intention of establishing and/or maintaining in a plead of equilibrium the personal relationships between the some adepts of a social group, whether open or closed, during the ongoing process of interaction (199250)Therefore, th e termination politeness may be generally defined as adequate social conduct and tactful consideration of new(prenominal)s aiming to avoid interactional conflicts.Politeness brush off be effected in a number of ways, among which the use of phrase concerns us al close in the present discussion. Politeness is then taken to be the unhomogeneous forms of language structure and usage which allow the members of a socio-cultural group to master their conflict-avoiding determinations.If politeness is seen as the adequacy of linguistic behavior, then all speakers of distinguishable languages be equally polite, since they all check linguistic means at their disposal, which according to their rules of application are adequate in different circumstances. The supposition of politeness, thitherfore, is universally valid.1.2 Motives of Being PoliteWhy do passel rationalise when they have done something wrong? Why do they compliment on their friends hairstyle? In one word, why d o people behave appropriately, hence politely? The explanation of such diverse communicative behaviors lies in the consideration of feeling. nervus is thus viewed as a positive public ego-image that is maintaining in friendship. That is, in newly formed contacts the individual engages in establishing a public image for him self-importance-importance. In continued contacts he engages in sustaining and improving the heart he has encouraged the separates to develop for him.A fundamental frequency preoccupation of people around the homo is maintaining or defend slope. Threats to expect, whether intended, accidental, or yet imagined, are the basis of about interpersonal conflicts. They airlift when people feel that their right to a positive self-image being ignored. unmatched conventional way of avioding threats to governance in all nuances is to be lingually polite.To secure this public self-image, people engage in what Goffman calls saying reckon, performing action to make whatever they are doing consistent with grammatical construction(196712), while trying to save their avow face as intumesce as the others. Goffman (1967) specifies devil kinds of face-work the avoidance process (avoiding potentially face-threatening) acts and the tonic process (performing a variety of redressive acts). However, he says little about how face can be maintained linguistically while damage is occuring.As implied above, face wants are reciprocal, i.e. if one wants his face cared for, he should care for other peoples face. The reason is that, while the individual is absorbed in developing and maintaining his face, the others excessively have similar considerations for themselves. It is clear that one way of ensuring the maintenance of their own face is to keep everybodys face undamaged. Normally, the conk outicipants during interaction work on the understanding that one result respect the others face as long as the other reckon his. This point is best exp ressed by the concise rule in Scripture Do unto all men as you would they should do unto you.Since face wants are reciprocal, politeness naturally concerns a relationship between two rational participants or interlocutors, whom we may call self and other. In a conversation, self may be identified with speaker or addresser, and other with hearer or addressee. Also it is possible thatspeakers show politeness to a third party that is related to interlocutors face.2.0 Language and kitchen-gardening2.1 Defining goal nicety is a large and evasive concept. Sapir (1921) holds that civilization may be defined as what a society does and thinks, and language is a particular way of thought. Language, in this way, is part of culture. Culture is also interpreted in the sense of Goodenoughs definitionAs I see it, a societys culture consists of whatever it is one had to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members Culture, being what people have to check up on as di stinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end-product of learning knowledge, in a most geneal sense of the term (Goodenough,1954167).Culture is thus whatever a person must know in order to aim in a particular society, including language and conventional behavioral norms that a person must follow or that other people in the society expect you to follow, to get through the task of daily living.When we oeuvre a culture, it is not enough to merely learn the knowledge of a language and behavioral norms, as Steinmetz, Bush and Joseph-Goldfare (1994) point out perusing culture does not mean looking only at customs, insititution, and artifacts, tho also studying peoples values, beliefs, and attitudes and how they influence or are influenced by interaction among people. Culture should be studied as a process as well as a product (199412).As a combination of these views, culture consists of not only language, behavioural norms, which can be observed, simply also values an d beliefs underlying them. The famous simile of the culture iceberg (Hall & Hall,1990) indicates that numerous aspects of culture, such as certain beliefs, world views, and values, are below the surface of consciousness ( in the submerged part of the iceberg). Other aspects of culture, ilk language, eating habits, customs, are in the conscious body politic ( above the waterline). It is often the less conscious cultural aspects that influenced the way people communicate with for each one other.2.2 Language and CultureWe are now in a position to see language and culture in a dialectical relationship. Every language is part of a culture. As such, it cannot but serve and reflect cultural needs. This does not necessarily go a get onst de Saussures thesis that the signified of a language are tyrannical and hence derive their exact identity from brasss of relationships. What needs to be added, however, is that this legal opinion is not as absolute as he suggested, but is extra by the particular cultural setting from which a language extracts its signified. indoors the broad limits set by the specific needs of a culture, a language is free to make arbitrary selections of signifieds. This element of arbitrariness is brone out by the fact that there is of a talk community and its linguistic resources.Thus neither linguistic determinism nor cultural determinism can adequately rationalise why a language should select its unique system of signs, for these selections are made partially in response to cultural needs and partly owing to the inherent ( limited ) arbitrariness of the process.There is yet some other sense in which language is not a passive reflector of culture. Even assuming that culture is in many cases the first crap in the language-culture relationship, language as the effect in the first get together of the casual chain will in turn be the fountain in the next link, reinforcing and preserving beliefs and customs and conditioning their futur e course.3.0 Politeness and Culture3.1 The Concept of Face In Chinese and side of meatThe central to B & Ls politeness theory is the concept of face, and its two concimitant desires blackball face and positive face, which are defined from the perspective of individuals wants. B & L maintain that notion of face constituted by these two prefatorial desire is universal (198713). This section thus aims to probe whether their notion of face is applicable in Chinese culture. Since they acknowledge derivation their formulation of face from Goffmans classic account of face and from the side folk notion of face (198761), these two sources will be dealt with first.3.1.1 The stock of B & Ls FaceThe first source is Goffmans account of face. Goffman characterizes face as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. He sees face not as a private or an internalized flow of events, supported by other peo ples judgments, and enclosed by impersonal agencies in the situation (19677). Seen in this light, face becomes a public image that is on lend to individuals from society, and that will be withdrawn from them if they prove unworthy of it (196710).B & L say that their other sources is the side of meat folk concept of face, which is cogitate to notions like being embarrassed of humiliated, or losing face (198761). But in fact, such notions of face seem to be Chinese in origin. The word face is a literal translation of the two Chinese characters and ( Hu,1944Ho,1975).Presumably informed of these two sources, B & L characterize face as image that as such belongs to the individual, to the self. This seems to part with their first source considerably. Here, the public characteristic that is essential to Goffmans analysis of face seems to become an external modifier or else than an infixed constituent of this image.3.1.2 Chinese FaceAs pointed out above, two Chinese characters and are utilize to convey the denotative meaning of the word face ( that is, the front of the head) they also encode connotative meanings, which have to do with reputable, respectable images that individuals can claim for themselves from communities in which they interact, or to which they belong (Ho,1957). more than specifically, stands for prestige or reputation, which is either achieved through getting on in life (Hu, 194445), or ascribed by other members of ones own community. refers to the respect of the group for a man with a good deterrent example reputation it embodies the confidence of society in the integrity of egos moral character, and it is both a social sanction for enforcing moral standards and internalized sanction (Hu, 194445). Chinese speakers, therefore, will be seen as being polite if they know how to attend to each others and and to enact speech acts appropriate to and worthy of such an image.3.2 Difference Between Chinese Face and B & Ls FaceThe first exit is c ome to with their overall conceptualization of face-a difference that has been briefly alluded to above. B & L focus their notion of face in the beginning upon the individual-rather than the communal-aspect of face that is, the self is the principal constituent that contextualizes the concept of face. The self is public only to the tip that it depends on others face being manifested (B & L, 198761). The self depends on the public only to preserve its own interests. In short, the overall constitution of this self-image, with its negative and positive aspects, only concerns the individuals wants and desires.In contrast, Chinese face encodes a reputable image that individuals can claim for themselves as they interact with others in a given community it is intimately linked to the views of the community and to the communitys judgment and perception of the individuals character and behaviour. Chinese face emphasizes not the accommodation of individual wants or desires but the harmony of individual conduct with the views and judgment of the community. Chinese face, to plagiarize Goffman again, is on loanfrom society (196710) it belongs to the individual or to the self only to the extentthat the individual acts in full compliance with that face.The second difference is related to the content of face. B & L conceive of face as consisting of negative face and positive face. Their negative face refers to, and values, an individuals need to be free of external impositions, a desire to be left alone to enjoy a sense of ones territorial integrity. Privacy is a particular term used to describe this typical value, which is much more treasured in English culture than in Chinese whereas Chinese face emphasizes ones dependence on societys recognition of ones social standing and of ones reputableexistence, and subsequently, on societys endorsement of ones attending to it. Relatively speaking, Chinese face does not comprise the element of what B & L term negative face.3.3 Cul tural AssumptionIn this section, the differences of politeness in English and Chinese will be elaborated in terms of the different historicity that the concept of politeness can be traced back to, and of the fundamental cultural assumptions underlying the two different notions of English and Chinese face.3.3.1 A Historical ReviewAs we have known, privacy is a value derived from B & Ls notion of face. It is a notion embracing at once the freedom, rights, and the independence of action of man. Such a value is closely associated with the emancipation of man from the yokes of the church on the European continent, and with the opening up of the New World on the other side of the Atlantic-North America. Consequently, showing respct to an individuals liberty, his rights, his independence in Anglo-American culture, will be considered polite lack of it will be improper, hence impolite.On the contrary, Chinese culture has had a 2000-year-long history of feudalism. Chinese civilization has be en schematic on agriculture, and Generations of peasants were tied to the land on which they lives and worked. Except in multiplication of war and famine, there was little mobility, either socially and geographically (Hu & Grove,19911). From this historicity resulted the corporal (group-oriented) nature of Chinese value, which was reinforced ideologically in the Confucian tradition, a tradition that advocates subordinating the individual to the group or the community, and maintains that the ultimate goal of human behavior is to achieve harmony, which leads the Chinese to pursue a conflict-free and group-oriented system of an ever-expanding circle of human-relatedness (Chen, 1993). Namely, an individual is presumed not to satisfy the desire for freedom, but to gain self-esteem in harmony with group. Just as English culture values privacy, Chinese culture values harmony.In modern Chinese, the resembling of politeness is believed to have evolved in history from the notion of Li . Th e quaint philosopher and thinker Confucius (551479 B.C.), in order to restore the harmony of society when there were constant wars between feudal states, advocated restoring Li. Derived from this book are four basic elements of politeness, or what count as polite behaviors respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth, and refinement. Respectfulness is the selfs positive appreciation of admiration of the other concerning the latters face, generally identical with the need to maintain the hearers positive face. military reserve can be seen as another way of saying self-denigration though modesty varies in the importance attached to it in different cultures, it is to a large extent universal, her to interpret it as self-denigration is uniquely Chinese. Attitudinal warmth is the selfs demonstration of kindness, consideration, and hospitality, the speaker runs the risk of infringing on the hearers personal freedom, viz. privacy, thus threatening his negative face. Finally, refinement re fers to the selfs behavior to the other which meets certain moral standards laid by society it represents the normative character of politeness in addition to the instrumental aspect. These four essential elements of politeness are believed to manifest themselves in many Chinese speech events.3.3.2 Two Construals of the Self Interdependent and IndependentIf we turn out the deep structure from which the two different notions of English and Chinese face can possibly be derived, them they can be said to have been informed metarphorically by two divergent underlying forces (Mao,1994) the centripetal force, which leads Chinese face to gravitate toward social recognition and hierarchical interdependence, and the centrifugal force, which enables English face to spiral outward from individual desires or wants with the self as the initiating agent. The centripetal force and centrifugal force represent two different face orientations, which correspond to two distinct construals of the self an interdependent construal of the self and an independent construal of the self respectively(Markus and Kitayama, 1991).The independent construal of the self, endorsed by English culture and most Western countries, builds on a faith in the inherent sharpness of distinct persons . The normative imperative of this culture is to become independent of others and to regard and express ones unique attributes (Miller, 1988).Thus achieving the cultural goal of independent requires construing oneself as an individual whose behavior is made meaningful primarily by reference to ones own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions, rather than by reference to those of others whereas the interdependent construal of the self, favoured by Chinese culture and most East Asian countries, insists on the fundamental connectedness of human beings to each other(Markus and Kitayama, 1991227). A normative imperative of this culture is to maintain this interdependence, therefore, entails beholding onesel f as part of an encompassing social relationship and recongnizing that ones behavior is organized by what the self perceives to be the thoughts, feeling, and actions of others in the relationship, so that the self within such a construal becomes most meaningful and complete.BIBLIOGRAPHYBlum-Kulka, S. et al. 1984. Requests and apologies A cross-cultural study of speech acts realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied philology 5(3)192-212Brown, R. & S. Levinson. 1987. Politeness Some Universals in Language Usage. CambridgeCUP.Chen, Guoming. 1993. A Chinese perspective of communication competence. Paper presented at the annual convention of the speech communication association, Miami Beach, FL.Goffman, E. 1967. interactive Ritual Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York Doubleday Anchor Books.Goffman, E. 1972. 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