Sara Mills
1 Introduction
The terms‘language’and‘culture’are often used in politeness research as if they were synonyms.
In this chapter I tease these two terms apart and chart their complex relation with politeness. I firstly discuss traditional models of politeness and impoliteness which analyse politeness in purely formally linguistic terms. I foreground the problems of such an analysis and then I examine the discursive approach to politeness which tries to develop a more context-based approach. This approach is more able to chart the complex relations between the terms language, culture and politeness. I then focus on the way that different cultures have been described in relation to politeness norms, where certain cultures have been labelled as collectivist or individualist cultures, positive or negative politeness cultures, and discernment and volition-based cultures. I question the validity of classifying whole cultures as tending towards certain styles of politeness or impoliteness.
2 Politeness and impoliteness
2.1 Traditional approach to the analysis of politeness
Brown and Levinson’s early work on politeness has had a major impact on the researchfield (1978/1987). They were thefirst to propose a systematic model of politeness and while there has been much criticism of their work, many theorists still adhere to a great deal of their terminology and concepts, even though some elements of the approach used by Brown and Levinson have since been modified. More specifically, Brown and Levinson proposed that politeness is largely strategic, a calculation that speakers make when interacting with others about the social distance from the other person, the power relation between them and the‘cost’of the imposition on the other (if, say, for example, the speaker is requesting something from the hearer). From this calculation, speakers work out what they need to ‘pay’ the other person. For Brown and Levinson, individuals need to defend their‘face’, that is, the self-image of themselves which they, in interaction with others, agree to maintain. If others maintain your face, you, in turn, will maintain their face. Face threatening acts (FTAs) are classified as any actions which potentially disturb the balance of face maintenance among interactants. For example, requests can be
categorized as face threatening as they may put the interlocutor into a difficult position, if they wish to refuse the request. Politeness, for Brown and Levinson, is seen as the mitigation of potential threats to face.1
Brown and Levinson characterize politeness as consisting of two elements: negative and positive politeness. Negative politeness is largely concerned with not imposing on the other person, and indicating deference and respect towards them. Thus, apologizing would be categorized as negative politeness, as it is seen to be recognizing the needs and wishes of the other person, putting that other person first and stating that the other person will not be imposed upon.
Positive politeness is concerned with stressing the closeness between the speaker and the hearer and indicating that the needs of the hearer and the speaker are very similar. Paying someone a compliment or telling them a joke is characterized as positive politeness, as both of these are seen to be concerned with stressing the closeness of the relationship between interactants.
2.2 Problems with the traditional approach to the analysis of politeness There are a number of issues which have exercised theorists of politeness since Brown and Levinson’s work wasfirst published. These critiques have led theorists to either refine Brown and Levinson’s model or attempt to produce new models of analysis. I will deal with several of these criticisms here: universalism; the relation between indirectness and politeness and context
Universalism: Brown and Levinson claimed that their model was a universal description of politeness, that is, that it could describe politeness in all languages. They argued that individual language groups differed in the extent to which they used positive or negative politeness, but that in essence, all languages subscribed to the same system of politeness. In recent years, however, this traditional approach has come under scrutiny, largely because, although this model seems to be adequate to describe English politeness, it certainly is not an effective model for analysing, for example, East Asian languages (Kadar and Mills, 2011; Matsumoto, 1989).2 In languages such as Japanese or Chinese, the concern with strategy and fulfilling one’s own individual needs is not viewed as the primary driver of politeness. Instead, in these cultures, there tends to be a focus on marking one’s awareness of one’s position in the group and one’s position in relation to others. Ide (1989) put forward a distinction between discernment and volition to describe these two opposing concerns. Discernment (wakimae) is the concern with marking the awareness of one’s social position and one’s relationship with the interlocutor. Many East Asian languages seem to exhibit a tendency to mark discernment in politeness usage more frequently than Western European languages, or at least this marking of position seems to be more back- grounded and part of expected or appropriate behaviour, than it is in Western European languages. Volition, on the other hand, is characterized by Ide as the type of politeness where speakers decide on the shape and form of the utterance, and tailor it themselves to what they see as the demands of the context and interlocutor. This is often seen as the type of politeness which characterizes Western European languages largely, being concerned with the individual needs of the speaker – and it is the type of strategic politeness described by Brown and Levinson. Ide (1989) describes these two styles of politeness as being related to Eastern and Western cultures; Mills and Kadar (2011, 2013) have described these two styles as tendencies only, arguing that East Asian languages are not wholly characterized by discernment, nor are Western European languages largely characterized by volition. Instead, these are tendencies which can be found in all languages. Mills and Kadar (2013) have also questioned whether there is such a clear distinction to be made between these two terms, and have argued that in fact discernment can best be opposed to certain types of ritualistic or conventionalized utterances rather than to individualistic volitional statements.
2.2.1 The relation between indirectness and politeness
Brown and Levinson argued that there is a scale of politeness, ranging from indirectness and avoidance of speaking to the directness of bald-on record utterances; indirectness for them is seen to be the most polite form. For them, when someone is indirect, for example when requesting something, the person gives the interlocutor the option of not recognizing or acknowledging the request, and therefore indirect forms allow the hearer some freedom of action. For example, if a speaker says:‘I wonder if you could possibly lend me that book?’using an indirect form rather than the relatively direct form:‘Can I borrow that book?’or the more direct form‘I want to read that book’, the hearer is offered more options in terms of being able to refuse the request. In a sense, the indirect form already has the potential of refusal embedded within it. This is a highly elaborated form which signals to the interlocutor that the speaker recognizes that they are making a request which might be refused and signalling also to the hearer that the person has the option to refuse:‘I wonder’ –thinking rather than demanding;‘if you’ –the use of the conditional rather than a statement; ‘could’ – use of the past tense rather than the present; ‘possibly’ – again signalling that there is the option for refusal. All of these elements are highly conventionalized in English and therefore it is difficult to describe the intention or the impact of this type of indirectness in particular interactions. However, overall, using indirectness in English seems to signal an acknowledgement that making such a request involves potentially face threatening behaviour, and because this difficulty has been indicated to the hearer, refusal does not threaten the speaker’s or the hearer’s face. This type of indirectness is characterized by Brown and Levinson (1978/1987) as universal; others have seen it as stereotypically English (Wierzbicka, 1999). However, others have even argued that this type of indirectness is associated with stereotypically elite forms of politeness in English only (Grainger and Mills, forthcoming).
However, many theorists have drawn attention to the fact that while for elite English, indirectness is seen to be the most polite form, in other languages, indirectness may in fact be considered impolite. Kerkam (forthcoming) has shown that in Arabic, indirectness is rarely used for the purposes of being polite, as directness is the seen as the more expected or appropriate form for requests and excuses. Indirectness used in these contexts would indicate a social or affective distance between the interlocutors, and therefore could give rise to an interpretation of impoliteness.
Kerkam also shows that when indirectness is strategically used by interlocutors, it tends to be used for face-threatening acts. She has shown that criticizing and blaming are often achieved through indirect means, where speakers and hearers both recognize that an abstracted, generalized indirect utterance, such as‘British children’s clothes are not very nice, are they?’is in fact a particularized criticism of someone’s taste in clothes, and perhaps also their orientation to foreign cultures.
Indirectness is not an agreed upon term in all languages; thus, what counts as indirect in English (for example, conventional indirectness, such as‘Could you open the window?’) might not be seen as indirect at all in some languages (Wierzbicka, 1999). The supposed widespread use of indirectness for refusals in East Asian languages should be viewed as conventionalized, and is often interpreted by native speakers of these languages as fairly straightforward and not indicating politeness.
Thus, indirectness should be seen to have a complex relationship with politeness, and it is clear that particular languages do not necessarily view or use indirectness in the same way as it is interpreted in English.
2.2.2 Context
Brown and Levinson, while arguing for the importance of context, largely focused on single sentence utterances as indicating politeness or impoliteness. It is quite clear that politeness tends
Language, culture, and politeness
to be an accumulated process, whereby politeness and impoliteness build up over a number of utterances and are contributed to by all participants. Thus we might argue that politeness and impoliteness are co-constructed rather than the product of an individual speaker’s intention.
Bousfield (2008) has argued that it is important to focus on the way that impoliteness builds up over a long stretch of conversation, rather than assuming that it is somehow‘contained’within one utterance. What is important to analyse is the potentiality of politeness and impoliteness–the way that at certain points in the conversation, an interactant manages to repair potential hints of impoliteness, or manages to steer the conversation away from possible impoliteness (Watts, 2003), as I show in the next section. Mills (2003) has focused on the way that, drawing on a Community of Practice (CoP) approach, within a particular context, groups of people classify certain elements as appropriate or inappropriate (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1998). Within each CoP, there may be slightly different assessments of what counts as polite or impolite. A focus on context leads also to a focus on judgement, because politeness and impoliteness are seen as less inherent in particular speech acts or types of utterance, but more as judgements made by interactants about the appropriateness of utterances, in relation to what they consider to be the CoP norms of behaviour (see alsoChapter 25this volume).
2.3 Discursive approach to the analysis of politeness
The discursive approach to the analysis of politeness developed because of a dissatisfaction with many aspects of Brown and Levinson’s theorizing and analysis. Following on from Eelen’s (2001) thoroughgoing critique of the work of Brown and Levinson and other politeness theorists, the discursive approach has attempted to develop a form of analysis which either modifies their work or dispenses with their work altogether.
Instead of making universal statements about politeness use, and developing a global model for the analysis of politeness, the discursive approach focuses on the way that context, resources and social forces /ideologies determine the possible meanings and interpretations of politeness.
These are the elements which in fact determine whether an utterance is considered to be polite or impolite. Politeness and impoliteness are only that which is judged by interactants to be so, but interactants do not make these judgements in a vacuum. Thus the discursive approach focuses on language use in detail, in much the same way that traditional approaches have, but interpretation, judgement and context are considered crucial (Mills, 2011). For example, a dis- cursive approach to the analysis of politeness would analyse an utterance in a particular context and analyse the way that the utterance seems to be functioning, and seems to be judged by the interactants as polite or impolite. Rather than focusing on second order judgements about the utterance (i.e. the analyst’s assessment), discursive approaches tend to focus on first order evaluations (i.e. the judgements that the interactants can be seen to be making) (Watts, 2003;
Eelen, 2001).
Locher and Watts (2008) argue that politeness and impoliteness are not inherent in utterances;
the analyst can only recognize that politeness is a possible interpretation, and thus they describe politeness as a potential within utterances. It is the hearer who decides whether they will choose to categorize the utterance as polite or impolite (or in fact a different form of relational work).3 Mills (2003) also shows the way that within family interactions, for example, interactants may decide not to‘take up’potential impoliteness moves; they may decide that in fact they value keeping the peace, rather than recognizing explicitly that someone has been impolite–impoliteness within this type of interaction stays at the‘potential’level. That is not to say, however, that its potential is not recognized by interactants. Parents, for example, have the option of acting as though they did not hear the ‘impolite’ utterance. Bousfield (2008), in an analysis of
impoliteness in a documentary about traffic wardens, examines the way that a traffic warden has the option of classifying an utterance by an irate member of the public as impolite. However, generally the traffic wardens do not classify offensive or aggressive utterances as impolite, despite the fact that they involve swearing and shouting, because their institutional position allows them to accept that the offensive language is directed to the institution rather than to them personally.
Culpeper (2011) also considers the question of whether in army training, the language used by sergeants towards their trainees is impolite, since none of the trainees displays in their responses to the sergeants any indication that they consider the language inappropriate or offensive. Thus, discursive approaches to the analysis of politeness and impoliteness focus more on the evaluation of acts as polite within particular contexts, rather than retaining any sense that language items are intrinsically polite or impolite (see Linguistic Politeness Research Group, 2011).
3 Conventional approach to culture and language
Conventional linguistic approaches to politeness and culture have tended to assume that different cultures, for example, Arab cultures or English culture, are fairly homogeneous. Everyone within that community is characterized as agreeing on particular norms and rules of behaviour, values, and beliefs. Hofstede (1984: 8) argues that‘culture is composed of many elements which may be classified into four categories: symbols, heroes, rituals and values’. Damen (1987: 367) argues that culture is‘learned and shared human patterns and models for living, day to day living patterns’. However, I would argue what has been described here as the values and beliefs of a given culture, albeit British or Japanese, tend to be the values and beliefs of the elite which end up being applied to the culture as a whole, when they actually function as stereotypes. This notion that all the individuals who categorize themselves or are characterized as belonging to a particular culture have the same access to that culture’s values and beliefs, or would share those beliefs is one that a discursive approach would question.
We often make generalizations about cultures. Cultures are believed to be more or less patriarchal, conservative, upholding or challenging certain ideologies about language, encouraging respect for the elderly, encouraging individual self-fulfilment, and so on. But the important thing to recognize is that these are ideological beliefs about the culture, rather than being statements of facts about a culture.4 They are generally the values and beliefs of an elite group within the culture, and they are produced and maintained by that elite, and those within society who see it as in their interests to uphold the values of that group.5 These beliefs about the culture are generally seen/portrayed as enduring values, which have‘always’characterized that particular culture. However, when we examine these ideologies, they may sometimes have developed relatively recently. For example, Inoue (2004) has documented the way that ideologies about ‘Japanese women’s language’ and Japanese standard language developed along with the state’s move to present itself as modern in the late nineteenth century.
Instead, I see culture as being a fairly heterogeneous grouping of values, beliefs, and ideologies which are associated with a particular elite group. These values then tend to be identified at a stereotypical level with the culture as a whole and there is stratified access to these particular practices, thus often excluding groups from being recognized as fully belonging to that culture.6 Politeness is one of the key elements in this view of culture, as politeness is very much about appropriate behaviour, and speech whichfits in with social norms of what is expected from an elite group. Within a culture there are also many individuals, who belong to sub-groups, who contest the cultural values of the elite culture, but who would still classify themselves as belonging to that particular culture. For example, British people are generally considered to be self-deprecating and reserved. This is a cultural stereotype, as many British people are not
Language, culture, and politeness
self-deprecating at all. But this ideology of the cool, modest, and reserved male developed particularly within the colonial and imperial period, when this particular set of character traits developed to set British people apart both from the indigenous people and from other colonizing nations. In a sense this set of elite cultural characteristics developed to distinguish British people from other groups of people and to justify them in their imperial role. Cultural stereotypes change slowly and it is interesting that this is one of the stereotypes of British people which both informs other nations’ view of British people and also informs some British peoples’ notions of themselves and what is appropriate. Thus, I am not arguing that cultures are all the same and that we cannot distinguish between different cultures. Rather what I am arguing is that when we distinguish between cultures we are doing so at a stereotypical, ideological level.
These ideological beliefs are not necessarily ones that all of the members of that culture will draw on in their own linguistic repertoire.
It is important to maintain a distinction between these values which form elite culture and the language as a whole. Cultural elites will stress the importance of a concern for individual freedom and rights, or a concern for the social norms as a whole, and these constitute what could be considered a particular culture. These values inevitably influence the form of what is considered linguistically appropriate. But these cultural stereotypes do not constitute the language as a whole. It is possible to use language in ways which deviate from these cultural stereotypes. Working-class British people, for example, may recognize that indirectness is a form which is favoured by middle-class people when making requests, and may even see this concern for the other as characterizing British culture, but they may not in fact use indirectness themselves when requesting, or may even mock using indirectness, seeing it as mannered or over-polite (Mills, 2012).
3.1 Collectivist and individualism
When culture is discussed within conventional linguistic research, especially in relation to politeness, cultures are often split into certain tendencies, such as collectivist and individualist;
positive politeness and negative politeness; and discernment and volition cultures. I will discuss each of these in turn.
Collectivist cultures are those where the group is seen to be at the fore and the individual is not seen to be of the greatest value. In collectivist cultures, Triandis et al. (1990) argue, the group has primacy and individuals give up their personal autonomy to the group. Individuals are not seen and do not see themselves as isolated but rather solely as part of a social whole.
Collectivist cultures emphasize adhering to cultural norms and harmony. One’s position within a grouping is at the core of one’s value and status. An individual’s relationship with their family is seen as central and some cultures which are characterized as collectivist may be seen as rela- tively conservative in relation to values which are associated with the rights of individuals7. In these cultures, often the rights of certain marginalized groups such as gay people and women, are seen to be of less importance than the values of the culture as a whole.
In individualist cultures, the individual is characterized as having a more detached relation to groups such as the family or friendship groups, moving on to other groups relatively easily, if relationships within a group do not work out. Status is derived from one’s own strivings and it is one’s own individual efforts to achieve status for oneself which is of prime importance. Individualist societies are those where the freedom of the individual from the constraints of the group are paramount, and these cultures may be classified as relatively liberal in relation to the rights of the individual.
While it is possible to recognize broadly speaking tendencies in particular cultures towards collectivism or individualism, what is striking about all cultural groups is that all societies display both collectivism and individualism. Thus, while Arab cultures are often characterized as