Abstract
Cross-cultural studies of (im)politeness have tended to focus on identifying differences in linguistic behaviour by which speech acts are delivered, which are then explained as motivated by underlying cultural differences. In this paper, we argue that this approach unnecessarily backgrounds emic or cultural members’ understandings of (im)politeness. Through a comparative analysis of criticisms in initial interactions amongst Taiwanese speakers of Mandarin Chinese and amongst Australian speakers of English, we draw attention to the way in which similarities in the locally situated ways in which criticisms are delivered and responded to (i.e. their sequential properties) can mask differences in the culturally relevant meanings of criticisms (i.e. their indexical properties) in the respective languages. We conclude that cross-cultural studies of (im)politeness should not only focus on differences in the forms or strategies by which speech acts are accomplished, but remain alert to the possibility that what is ostensibly the same speech act, may in fact be interpreted in different ways by members of different cultural groups.
Highlights
Studies ofpoliteness across languages and cultures have generally focused on identifying differences in behaviour that are explained as cultural differences, with much of this work in cross-cultural pragmatics focusing on requests, apologies, compliments and compliment responses (Sifianou & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2017: 584)
This has, in turn, reinforced the view that cross-cultural studies ofpoliteness are about identifying differences in behaviour, which are explained as motivated by underlying cultural differences
Other-criticisms, in initial interactions in which participants are getting acquainted
Summary
Studies of (im)politeness across languages and cultures have generally focused on identifying differences in (linguistic) behaviour that are explained as cultural differences, with much of this work in cross-cultural pragmatics focusing on requests, apologies, compliments and compliment responses (Sifianou & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2017: 584). Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) politeness theory has long been a popular vehicle for these kinds of cross-cultural (im)politeness studies, in large part because that is what Brown and Levinson’s theory was designed to do. While the discursive turn in (im)politeness research has subsequently challenged the validity of Brown and Levinson’s approach (Eelen 2011; Mills 2003), such critical work has not provided a clear alternative way forward for studying (im)politeness across languages and cultures (Grainger 2013; Sifianou & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2017). This has led to a return to a neo-Brown and Levinsonian stance, in which the same theoretical tools (positive and negative face, face-threatening acts and so on) are deployed with discourse data, as opposed to the utterance-based analyses found in Brown and Levinson’s original. We conclude by briefly discussing the implications of our study for cross-cultural (im)politeness research
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