Women and politeness: The Javanese example

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between the status of Javanese women and the politeness or formality of their speech. I examine the hypothesis that, cross-culturally, women will speak more politely than men as an expression of their secondary status. Ethnographic research from East Java reveals that Javanese women are required to be more polite within the family where they receive less polite speech and offer more. In the wider context of Javanese culture, however, it is Javanese men who strive to cultivate politeness for the purpose of expressing their superior status and authority. The potentially coercive or political power of politeness in Javanese is related to the ambiguity of the polite codes themselves, which may be used to express both deference or humility on the one hand and status, refinement, and power on the other. Speech patterns are linked to a number of social-structural variables: patterns of socialization, models of appropriate male and female linguistic behavior, and men's and women's social roles and typical spheres of interest. Where, as in Java, polite codes are associated with public power and control, we should expect that men may be especially concerned with the cultivation of polite styles of speech. (Politeness, gender roles, linguistic socialization, Indonesia)