Comparative study of “politeness”in multicultural communication

王清瑩

【Abstract】In daily life, everyone has to communicate with the medium of language. How to communicate effectively is a question bothering each of us through our lifetime. This thesis analyzes the situations of communication between Chinese people and foreigners from the perceptive of Levinsons face theory and Gu Yueguos theory about politeness in Chinese culture in order to further find out the different cultural characteristics of communication in China and the West.

【Key words】communicate; impoliteness; face theory; culture

1. Introduction

As a social phenomenon, politeness has been paid much attention to. Many researches based on politeness were made from sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, ethics, culturology and many other aspects. From the beginning of the 1970s, researchers focus on politeness on our daily life. In the cross-culture communication, people from different cultural backgrounds may have different feelings about each others words, which is likely to cause impoliteness. How to communicate effectively between people from different culture backgrounds to avoid impoliteness is a question that needs us to solve. To solve this problem, the key point is the cognition of politeness.

2. Literature Review

In the early 1950 s, Brown and Levinson (1978) established their theory system based on Goffman's politeness theory. From their point of view, “face” is an emotional investment, and it can be lost, maintained and strengthened in the communication between people. Therefore, face is the public self-image, as everyone wants to be acknowledged by others. (Brown&Levinson;, 1987:61). They divided “politeness” into two concrete forms: negative face and positive face.

Chen Rong discussed the basic concept of “face”, face threatening acts and face saving skills. In addition, he also introduced the Brown and Levinson's face theory (Chen Rong, 1986). Xu Shenghuan, based on Leech's politeness principle theory, put forward a new politeness principle: focusing on ourselves, respecting others, considering the third party (Xu Chenghuan, 1992:1, 6). Gu Yueguos description of politeness gives consideration to the common characteristics in different cultures and the individual characteristic in Chinese culture (He Zhaoxiong, 2000:242).

3. Theoretical Framework

Brown and Levinsons “Politeness Theory” includes three basic notions：face，face threatening acts(FTAs)and politeness strategies．

Face refers to participants give each parties mutual coordination in sake of public interest in social interaction. People will cooperate when maintaining face in interaction，or cooperation is based on“the mutual vulnerability of face”(Brown &Levinson;，1987：61)．

Face - saving assumes that those who participate in social activities are typical human beings. A typical man is one person who has “Rational Demand”. Putting it in another way, a typical man has normal communicative ability in the social group. In the perspective of the typical person, “Face” means the self - image which each social member wants to get in the public. It is divided into two categories, positive face and negative face. Positive face refers to hoping to get approval and praise from others. Negative face means not wanting others to impose themselves to do what they dont want to do; their behaviors were not affected by the interference of others.

Gu Yueguo countries summaries that politeness in Chinese culture has four basic elements: respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement. Respectfulness refers to affirmation and appreciation to others, and concerns about other people's face, social status, etc.; Modesty is another way of saying to belittle ourselves.; attitudinal warmth refers to the care and enthusiasm of others obviously with Chinese culture characteristics; refinement refers to our words and deeds conforming to some certain standards that reflect the standard feature of the politeness. These two kinds of principle are also largely similar to the Brown & Levinsons negative face. However, their expressions are also quite different. (He Zhaoxiong，2000:242).

4. Case analysis from the perspective of two “politeness” theory

To understand more deeply about two “politeness” theories in the daily communication, the present author selects two situations in real life and analyzes the two situations in the perspective of Brown & Levinsons face theory and Gu Yueguos politeness theory.

Situation： A Chinese man had got to know a British couple and got along with them for a while. When he was chatting with the husband “You are lucky indeed to have married such a good woman as your wife.” Then the British husband responses “Shes lucky, too.”Then it comes the question that why he did not say “Thank you” instead?

Analysis: When it comes to this question, it may involve the different cognitive perspectives between the east and the west. The real intention of the Chineses words is to speak highly of the mans wife and his wise choice. There is no offence when saying these words. In the Chinese mans opinion, he is respectful as he expressed his feeling of envying his happy life and appreciation of his virtuous wife. Moreover, through this way, his positive face was also maintained. However, when you speak highly of one—his wife, its potential meaning is to belittle the other, which threatened his positive face as he did not get approval and praise from others. So, in the communication between people from different backgrounds, we must pay attention to the differences in politeness produced by speech acts. From the situation mentioned above, we can see that Chinese “politeness” principle always to belittle themselves to give praise to others so as to maintain their positive face. To understand culture characteristic, people will have less misunderstanding when communicating with people from different cultural backgrounds and “impoliteness” will be largely decreased.

5. Conclusion

From the analysis above, we can draw a conclusion that people with different backgrounds have different perceptions toward politeness from the perspective of face theory and Gu Yueguos politeness theory. In the western culture, the individualism and privacy is paid more attention to while it is not the same as that in China. So, some Chinese politeness expressions may offend them and they may feel the impoliteness from the other part. So, when communicating with foreigners, we ought to pay more attention to their perception toward impoliteness, and then we may communicate effectively with foreigners and avoid impoliteness.

References:

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