CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
B. Theoretical Background
3. Linguistic Politeness
32 direct forms index a more intimate and spontaneous side of the self,”
(Cook, 1996; Dunn, 1999). In this research, actors (addresser and addressee) are expected to use these forms when responding addressing form that refers to them. And then they are suspected of being conscious or unconscious while they are speaking on non-humble in dialogue of everyday exchanges among social politeness contexts.
All languages have addressing form reference including Sasak Language. Sasak Language addressing form references are; references Base Jamak are personal pronoun: 1st person; aku I (singular) aku+mesak, aku+ bedua…. Aku selapuq/selapuq kepenn I am alone, we are both, we are all, all use own(plural), 2sd person; kamu, side you (singular) kamu pade, side pade you/you are all (plural), 3th person; nie or proper name (singular) nie pade they are all (plural). Referent in Base Alus (high level/honorific) are; 1st person deweq tiang“I” (singular), dewek tiang selapuq “I” and all (plural), 2sd person pelungguhm/pelinggihm you (singular), pelungguhm/pelinggihm same you are all (plural), 3th person den + proper name, attitude and physical condition den boling Imran, den ayah Katok (singular) and + sareng + proper name den ayah katoksareng den boling ImranDen Ayah Katok with den boling Imran (plural). Reference for 3th person/natural arePanjaq and Kaule slave and servant.
33 politeness, and the history of politeness research in Europe and elsewhere. 2. The fundamental of theoretical problems of a notion of linguistic politeness. 3. The examples of the kind of empirical research being carried out within the framework of a notion of politeness. 4. Giving examples of some of the theoretical and empirical problem in a non-Western oriented conceptualization of politeness. In the former case, politeness was a too weakly positive message may be interpretive as insincere, ironic, or sarcastic; i. e., “damning by faint praise”. In the latter case, a too strongly negative message may be interpreted as aggressive, unfriendly, or hostile, (Watts, 2005: 36).
They stated the idea of linguistic politeness from a socio - psychological point of view. According to them, “politeness is not a static logical concept, but a dynamic interpersonal activity that can be observed, described, and explained in functional interactional terms. Within a given culture, almost any normal adult can be polite in impolite ways or can be impolite in polite ways, (Watts,2005: 22)”. For example: in Base Jamak
“Amak yakm mangan” will be polite if is uttered in appropriated intonation and a way of expression.
Watts also conducted the research with Arndt about the politeness from a social point of view, and later is politeness from an interpersonal point of view (Arndt and Janney 1985a, 1985b, 1987b). Both types of politeness - social and interpersonal - are culturally acquired, and are interrelated in speech; but they are quite different, and it is important for
34 investigators of politeness to distinguish between them. Watts and Arndt gave the strategy to avoid confusion in the following discussion; they will refer to the former as “social politeness” and to the latter as “tact” such as table below;
Table 2,1 Social Politeness
Social Politeness Tact
Focus The group: socially appropriate communicative forms, norms, routines, rituals, etc.
The partner: interpersonally supportive communicative techniques, styles and strategies.
Frame Interactional: people’s need for efficient, uncomplicated interaction with other members of their group,
Interpersonal: people’s need to preserve face and maintain positive relationships with their partners.
Functi on
Regulative: facilitates the coordinated exchange of routine conversational roles and responsibilities.
Conciliative: helps avoid threats to face, and facilitates the peaceful negotiation of interpersonal affairs
Based on the figure above, there are two main points that must be obeyed when conducting the linguistic politeness research such as;
1. Social Politeness
Social politeness is rooted in people’s need for smoothly organized interaction with other members of their group. As member of groups, people must behave in more or less predictable ways in order to achieve social coordination and sustain communication. One of their main means of doing this is to follow conventions of social politeness (Bennett 1976:
35 177, Griffin and Mehan (1981: 199). Various terms have been invented in recent years for such conventions: e. g., “convertional routines” (Coulmas, 1981), “Politeness formulas” (Ferguson:1976).“Compliment formulas”
(Manes and Wolfson: 1981), “Politeness Conventions” (Lewis 1969;
schiffer:1972), “Formulaic expressions” (Tannen and Oeztek: 1981), and so on.
They give the function of social politeness is mainly to provide a framework of standardized strategies for getting gracefully into, and back out of, recurring social situations such as: initiating conversation (e.g., greeting people, introducing oneself and others, responding to greetings and introductions, introducing topics), maintaining conversation (e. g., ending topics, ending conversations, bidding farewell), and so on.
2. Tact
Meanwhile, tact is rooted in people’s need to maintain face, in their fear of losing it, and in their reluctance to deprive others of it (Goffman:
1967). As partners in social interaction, people are more or less dependent on each other to cooperate in maintaining the fragile balance of respect and consideration necessary for the preservation of face (Brown and Levinson: 1978).one of their main means of doing this, and avoiding conflicts, is to be tactful (Arndt and Janney: 1987b). Being tactful is not simply a matter of behaving in a socially “Correct” way - i.e., following rules of social usage; rather, it is a matter of behaving in an interpersonally supportive way (Arndt and Jenney: 1985a, 1985b). It involves empathizing
36 with others, and not saying or doing things that threaten them, offend them, or injure their feelings.
Being tactful in one’s own culture requires subtle modifications of verbal and nonverbal activities. To avoid threatening each other, most Westerners constantly modulate verbal messages with nonverbal vocal and kinesic messages to signal awareness of each other’s feelings: e. g., becoming more indirect when talking about uncomfortable topics, using a rising intonation to turn commands into requests, making criticisms in a pleasant tone of voice, smiling at each other, gazing toward each other, and so on (Arndt, Janney and Pesch 1984; Arndt and Janney 1983, 1987b).
The difference between tact and social politeness is that whereas the function of social politeness is essentially to coordinate social interaction - to regulate the mechanical exchange of roles and activities - the function of tact is quite different: namely, to preserve face and regulate interpersonal relationships. Metaphorically, we might say that social politeness is somewhat like a system of social traffic roles, while tact is more a matter of interpersonal driving style and strategies. In fact, it is probably not social politeness that enables people to avoid most everyday interpersonal conflicts, but tact, (Watts, 2005: 22-24).
Watts classified the linguistic politeness into type of politicverbal behavior revealed by the verbal interaction must be assessed in accordance with the following five factors:
37 1. The type social activity in which the participants to the interaction
are engaged (e. g., setting, communicative ends. Institutionalized social relationships between participants, degree ratified of membership in a social group, the open or close character of the interpersonal network develop through the interaction, etc.);
2. The speech events engaged in within that activity;
3. The degree to which the participants share a common set of cultural expectations with respect to the social activity and the speech events making up part of that activity;
4. The degree to which the participants share a common set of assumptions with respect to the information state (cf. Schiffrin 1987;
Watts 1989a) within which the strip of interaction is developed;
5. The social distance and dominance relationships in force between the participants prior to the interaction.
Two forms of marked behavior may now be posited, one leading to communicative breakdowns and the other to enhancement of ego’s standing with respect to alter, i, e., to “making other people have a better Opinion” of one self. The first type of behavior is “non politic”, the second, I contend “polite”. Thus what counts as polite verbal behavior depends entirely on those features of the interaction which are socio-culturally marked by the speech community as being more than merely politic. It is the ethnographer’s job to define in accordance with at least the constraints listed under 1-5 above what counts as politic verbal behavior (if one so
38 wishes, socially appropriate behavior) and to identify and to interpret stretches of interaction with include either breakdowns or enhancements.
Under this interpretation many of the strategies of positive and negative politeness suggested by Brown and Levinson will be explicable as socio-culturally determined politic verbal behavior. Similarly, the use of the terms of address, honorifics, ritualized expressions and speech events, indirect speech acts etc., all of which have been considered as examples of linguistic politeness, will be interpretable as polite forms if they go beyond their normal usage as socio-culturally constrained forms of politic verbal behavior, as Koshal shall later show in the case of terms of address. The honorific forms which are ubiquitous in Japanese and other Asian Language (cf. Koshal 1987) are lexicalized and grammaticalized to such a high degree precisely because their use depends crucially on ego’s perception of the total set of features in the social activity which are relevant to the speech events of that activity, as well as to the set of referents encoded in the speech events. As Matsumoto (1989) points out, no utterance in Japanese can be neutral with respect to the social context (Watts, 2005: 51-52).
They also reveal the corpus of language politeness based on verb which consists on the language usage. Language usage/language in use or language used, language in use would seem to refer to the structure of language in corpus of data and variations in that structure. It is domain of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, (Watts, 2005: 54).
39 In this research, the researcher will pay full attention on “Politic verbal behavior” which has been suggested to account for insight that all verbal interaction involves the negotiation of the coherence and equilibrium of the social group, within which the sacred nature of the social person can be projected. When politic verbal behavior is governed more by social distance and dominance than by exchange of “intimate stuff”, grammaticalized and address forms, formulaic expressions, ritualized and semi ritualized indirect speech acts, conventionalized means of face – threat minimization and maximization of the addressee’s positive face, solidarity display, etc., will be explicit in language usage.
However, only when such structures represent the attempt by ego, for whatever reason, enhance her/his social standing with respect to alter may they more profitably be called realizations of politeness. Politic verbal behavior which is culturally determined and is “generated” from underlying universal principle is transformed into politic verbal behavior under certain marked social condition, (Watts, 2005: 57).
The nature of the universal of language usage involved in the phenomenon of politeness that two line of research may be followed, and have been followed. Someone concerned with the explicit linguistic encoding of social distance and dominance relationship in the negotiation of exchanging “intimate stuff” (most notably of social person) in ritualized expression and honorific forms, and the other concerned with ways in
40 which linguistic system may be used to symbolize the underlying changing nature of that exchange, (Watts, 2005: 58).
The researcher will improve whether in ego’s standing the participant is truly being polite or being politic (enhance (filming), arrogant, plain or indeed lie; enggih-enggih nenten kepanggih agree with other’s order but doesn’t do anything) in culture values context. In other cultures, however, the rule will be less constitution and more regulative, i. e., participants in verbal interaction must decide how they wish to treat their own and their addressee’s social person in order to judge the appropriateness of the explicit verbal display, (Watts, 2005: 61).