Zimbabwean English and British English: A Case Study of Directness and Indirectness Across Cultures

Abstract

In intercultural pragmatics and in politeness studies, directness and indirectness are phenomena that have already received some considerable attention (for example, Blum-Kulka et al., 1989; Holtgraves, 1997; Wierzbicka, 2003) probably largely due to two factors: a) much of the thinking about directness and indirectness has focused on perceived cultural differences in languages in relation to English, and this linguistic ideology of difference has informed research; b) indirectness particularly has been considered in relation to its potential for ambiguity and miscommunication between cultures (Gumperz, 1982; Roberts et al., 1992). In this chapter, we discuss the way in which the notions of directness and indirectness may be worked out in relation to particular intercultural contexts, using naturally occurring interactions. However, as we have previously discussed, in the preceding chapters, the concepts of ‘directness’, ‘indirectness’ and ‘culture’ remain complex and not unproblematic. Since neither ‘culture’ nor ‘(in)directness’ can be assumed to be absolute or monolithic, in this chapter we investigate the way that the community of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1998), the wider social group, the society and language group as a whole, impact on the language choices and interpretations made within a particular context.