Linguistic Politeness—A Major Tool for Cross-cultural Requests

Article Sidebar

PDF
Published: Oct 8, 2015
Keywords:
linguistic politeness, politeness theory, politeness strategies, cross-cultural requests

Main Article Content

Takwa Bosuwon
University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce

Abstract

In an era of growing internationalization, requesting—a demand made by a requester asking a favor of another person (Nelson et al 2002) -- has played a vital role in cross-cultural interactions. Since making requests involves the speaker’s effort to get assistance from the hearer, it is intrinsically face-threatening (Brown and Levinson 1987). The use of politeness strategies then comes into play to soften the face threats. Moreover, since the notion of politeness is perceived differently across cultures (Blum-Kulka 1987), politeness strategies become helpful only when formulated in a socially and culturally appropriate way. This article explores linguistic politeness in requests based on politeness theories, linguistic politeness across cultures, shortcomings of universal politeness theories, studies of culture-specific politeness, and teaching linguistic politeness to EFL requesters.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 9 No. 2 (2015): The New English Teacher
Section
Research articles

 

 

 

Author Biography

Takwa Bosuwon, University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce

Asst. Prof. Dr. Takwa Bosuwon received her B.A. in English from the Faculty of Arts, Thammasat University, M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), Thammasat University, and a doctor of philosophy in English as an International Language (EIL), Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University. She is a lecturer in the Department of English for Business Communication, School of Humanities and Applied Arts, University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce. Her current interests are English reading-writing instruction, language test development, and intercultural communication.

References

Abdolrezapour, P. (2012). The effect of expectation of compliance on the preferred request strategy: Cross-cultural and situational variation in Iranian and American speech communities. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 32(3), 383-404.

Abdolrezapour, P., & Eslami-Rasekh, A. (2012). The effects of using mitigation devices on request compliance in Persian and American English. Discourse Studies, 14(2), 145-163.

Achiba, M. (2003). Learning to request in a second language: A study of child interlanguage pragmatics. Clevedon, England; Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.

Al-Fattah, M. H. A. (2010). Politeness strategies across cultures. Language in India. 10(9), 238-254.

Al-Marrani, Y. M. A., & Sazalie, A. B. A. (2010). Polite request strategies as produced by Yemeni EFL learners. Language in India, 10(7), 165-188.

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analyzing genres: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman.

Blum-Kulka, S. (1987). Indirectness and politeness in requests: Same or different? Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 131-146.

Blum-Kulka, S., & House, J. (1989). Cross-cultural and situational variation in requestive behavior in five languages. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 123-154). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Bou-Franch, P. (2001). Conversation in foreign language instruction. In V. Codina, & E. Alcon (Eds.), Language learning in the foreign language classroom (pp. 53-73). Castellon: Universitat Jaume I.

Bou-Franch, P., & Garcés-Conejos, P. (2003). Teaching linguistic politeness: A methodological proposal. IRAL, 41, 1-22.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language use: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness (pp. 56-289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chen, S., & Chen, E. (2007). Inter-language requests: A cross-cultural study of English and Chinese. The Linguistics Journal, 2, 33-52.

Christie, F. (1999). Genre theory and ESL teaching: A systemic functional perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 759-763.

Felix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2005). Indirectness and politeness in Mexican requests. In D. Eddington (Ed.). Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 66-78. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219-236.

Fukushima, S. (2000). Requests and culture: politeness in British English and Japanese. Bern: Peter Lang.

Garcés-Conejos, P. (2001). The teaching of pragmatic aspects in the ESL/EFL classroom: A critical review. In H. Ferrer, B. Pennock, P. Bou, C. Gregori, & M. Marti (Eds.), Teaching English in a Spanish setting, (pp. 79-94). Valencia: Universitat de Valencia.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face to face behavior. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Goldsmith, D. J. (2006). Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory. In B. Whaley & W. Samter (Eds.). Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars (pp. 219-236). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 237-257.

Holtgraves, T., & Yang, J. (1990). Politeness as universal: Cross-cultural perceptions of request strategies and inferences based on their use. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 719-729.

Jalilifar, A. (2009). Request strategies: Cross-sectional study of Iranian EFL learners and Australian native speakers. English Language Teaching, 2(1), 46-61.

Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer. Second Language Research, 8, 203-231.

Kasper, G. (1997). Can pragmatic competence be taught? Retrieved May 27 2015 from http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW06/ Honolulu: Second Language Teaching Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii.

Lee, C. (2011). Strategy and linguistic preference of requests by Cantonese learners of English: An interlanguage and cross-cultural comparison. Multilingua, 30, 99-129.

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.

Lin, Y. (2009). Query preparatory modals: Cross-linguistic and cross-situational variations in request modification. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1636-1656.

Mao, R. L. (1994). Beyond politeness theory: Face revisited and renewed. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 451-486.

Marti, L. (2006). Indirectness and politeness in Turkish-German bilingual and Turkish monolingual requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 1836-1869.

Martin, J. R. (1985). Process and text: Two aspects of human semiosis. In J. D. Benson, & W. S. Greaves (Eds.), Systemic perspectives on discourse. (pp. 248-274) Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Ma´rquez Reiter, R. (2002). A contrastive study of indirectness in Spanish: evidence from Peninsular Uruguayan Spanish. Pragmatics, 12(2), 135-151.

Matsumoto, Y. (1988). Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 403-426.

Meier, A. J. (1997). Teaching the universals of politeness. ELT Journal, 51, 21-28.

Mills, S. (2003). Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Najeeb, Z. M., Maros, M., & Mohd Nor, N. F. (2012). Politeness in emails of Arab students in Malaysia. GEMA OnlineTM Journal of Language Studies, 12(1), Special Section.

Nelson, G. L., Carson, J., Al-Batal, M., & El Bakary, W. (2002). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Strategy use in Egyptian Arabic and American English refusals. Applied Linguistics, 23(2), 163-189.

Ogiermann, E. (2009). Politeness and indirectness across cultures: A comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian requests. Journal of Politeness Research, 5(2), 189-216.

O’Sullivan, W. (2007). A study on politeness teaching to English learners in China. The International Journal of Language Society and Culture, 23, 47-52.

Pinker, S. (2007). The evolutionary social psychology of off-record indirect speech acts. Intercultural Pragmatics, 4(4), 437-461.

Prodanovic, M. M. (2014). The delicate mechanism of politeness as a strong soft skill. The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, 8(4), 7-19.

Rose, K. R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 27-67.

Rose, K. R. (2009). Interlanguage pragmatic development in Hong Kong. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(11), 2345-2364.

Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sifianou, M. (1992). Politeness phenomena in England and Greece: A cross-cultural perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (1995). Intercultural communication: A discourse approach. Oxford: Blackwell.

Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. Syntax and Semantics, 3, 59-82.

Suh, J. (1999). Pragmatic perception of politeness in requests by Korean learners of English as a second language. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 195-213.

Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tanaka, S., & Kawade, S. (1982). Politeness strategies and second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 5, 18-33.

Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91-112.

Vilkki, L. (2006). Politeness, face, and facework: Current issues. Journal of Linguistics, 19, 322-332.

Watts, J. R. (2003). Politeness: Topics in sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wierzbicka, A. (1985a). A semantic metalanguage for a cross-cultural comparison of speech acts and speech genres. Language in Society, 14, 491-514.

Wierzbicka, A. (1985b). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 145-178.

Wierzbicka, A. (1990). Cross-cultural pragmatics and different values. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 13(1), 43-76.

Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin; New York: Muton de Gruyter.

Yu, K. (2002). Culture-specific concepts of politeness: The Korean concept of gongsonhada is different from the American English concept of polite and from the Japanese concept of teineina. Korean Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18(2), 41-60.

Yu, K. (2011). Culture-specific concepts of politeness: Indirectness and politeness in English, Hebrew, and Korean requests. International Pragmatics, 8(3), 385-409.