LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Politeness Strategies Across Cultures

Mohammed Hasan Ahmed ALFattah, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract

Most researchers have adopted the view that culture does indeed have a role to play in language behavior. Specifically, it has been established that the speaker's intended meaning, mediated by linguistic symbols, may be interpreted or misinterpreted in cross-cultural contexts as the result of each interactants' own cultural norms of interpretation (Locastro, 2006).

This paper focuses on how culture can be treated as an explanatory variable in cross-cultural pragmatic studies. It starts with a review of pragmatic studies and politeness across cultures. It then presents perspectives on the impact of culture on language use. It gives a brief survey of politeness strategies in social interaction across cultures.

1. Introduction

Questions about how politeness should be defined, the ways in which it is realized in different cultural frameworks and the validity of a universal theory of politeness are of interest to a wide range of social science researchers, in particular pragmalinguists, sociolinguists, sociologists, social anthropologists and social psychologists (Watts, 2005).

Blum-Kulka (1992:270) points out that cultural notion interferes in the features of politeness across societies."… Cultural notions interfere in determining the distinctive features of each of the four parameters and as a result significantly affect the social understanding of politeness across societies in the world.

In the above quotation, Blum-Kulka assumes that the four parameters, social motivations, expressive modes, social differentials and social meanings affect the social understanding of politeness. She defined the four parameters that affect the understanding of politeness. Social motivation for politeness is the need to maintain face; the expressive modes refer to the wide range of linguistic expressions available in any language to realize politeness. Social differentials is a term referring to such factors as social distance , power and degree to which speech acts constitute an imposition on the addressee.

The important question arises here is what do we mean by the term (culture). According to Blum-Kulka, culture is a self-evident entity. "But is an objective entity that can be used to explain politeness or anything else for that matter.The problems with the term that can be explained and contracted as well" (Watts, 2003:78).

Cross-cultural work assessing the ways in which two or more cultures differ in their realization of politeness, either in general terms or in relation to specific speech activities is the preferred model of Brown and Levinson" (Watts, 2003:98).

By having a closer look it might lead us to the conclusion that politeness researchers present their notions of linguistic politeness within the cultural framework with which they are familiar ,whether it is their intention or not.

As has been mentioned earlier politeness is a culture specific convention; what is considered politeness in a culture may not be considered so in other cultures. "Based on studies on linguistic politeness conveying a wide range of culture, we could see that more detailed studies are needed in order to establish a theory of politeness which may have a stronger universal claim"(Al-hamzy,1999). The focus of the present study will have indications in the perception of linguistic politeness with reference to Arabic culture as the study deals with different cultures belonging to different language families.

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