Comparative study of “politeness”in multicultural communication
【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 Chine people and foreigners from the perceptive of Levinson’s face theory and Gu Yueguo’s theory about politeness in Chine 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 rearches bad on politeness were made from sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, ethics, culturology and many other aspects. From the beginning of the 1970s, rearchers focus on politeness on our daily life. In the cross-culture communication, people from differe
nt cultural backgrounds may have different feelings about each others’ words, which is likely to cau 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 bad 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 lf-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 discusd 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, bad on Leech's politeness principle theory, put forward a new p
oliteness principle: focusing on ourlves, respecting others, considering the third party (Xu Chenghuan, 1992:1, 6). Gu Yueguo’s description of politeness gives consideration to the common characteristics in different cultures and the individual characteristic in Chine culture (He Zhaoxiong, 2000:242).
3. Theoretical Framework
Brown and Levinson’s “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 bad on“the mutual vulnerability of face”(Brown &Levinson，1987：61)．
Face - saving assumes that tho 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 lf - image which each social memb
er 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 prai from others. Negative face means not wanting others to impo themlves to do what they don’t want to do; their behaviors were not affected by the interference of others.
Gu Yueguo countries summaries that politeness in Chine 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 ourlves.; attitudinal warmth refers to the care and enthusiasm of others obviously with Chine culture characteristics; refinement refers to our words and deeds conforming to some certain standards that reflect the standard feature of the politeness. The two kinds of principle are also largely similar to the Brown & Levinson’s negative face. However, their expressions are also quite different. (He Zhaoxiong，2000:242).
4. Ca analysis from the perspective of two “politeness” theory
To understand more deeply about two “politeness” theories in the daily communication, the prent author lects two situations in real life and analyzes the two situations in the perspective of Brown & Levinson’s face theory and Gu Yueguo’s politeness theory.
Situation： A Chine 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 respons “She’s 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 Chine’s words is to speak highly of the man’s wife and his wi choice. There is no offence when saying the words. In the Chine man’s opinion, he is respectful as he expresd 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 prai 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 e that Chine “politeness” principle always to belittle themlves to give prai 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 decread. 5. Conclusion
