Article : LINGUISTIC POLITENESS IN DIFFERENT CULTURES

LINGUISTIC POLITENESS IN DIFFERENT CULTURES

Mufidah Nur Izzati

mufidahnur.2018@student.uny.ac.id

Introduction

Cross-cultural communication is communication between two people from different cultural backgrounds. This includes not only international cultural communication, but also communication between different races or ethnicities in the same country. Here we are mainly talking about verbal communication between different ethnic groups. In cross-cultural communication, cultural differences have an important role in the act of speaking and in scientific disciplines in the use of speech. In addition, people tend to use their own cultural principles as a standard to explain and evaluate the behavior of others. This is called "pragmatic transfer" (He, 2000, p.98). Because of this, misunderstandings occur easily and communication across cultures is hampered.

Humans are social creatures. As social beings, humans naturally need to interact and communicate with other humans. Language is the main means in interacting and communicating with other humans. An interaction can occur between intergroup and intragroup. In intergroup, misunderstanding of interactions is very possible if people don't pay attention communication rules in other languages. One way to avoid misunderstanding is knowing how to behave politely in accordance with the norm, because each language has a different way of showing politeness. This article was created to discuss decency in different cultures. By understanding the norm and possessing politeness in different cultures, it is expected that communication is carried out by people from different cultures will go well and there are no misunderstandings.

Literature Review and Theories

Politeness is a kind of social phenomenon, an approach used in order to maintain the harmonious interpersonal relationship, and a kind of conventional behavioral norms. It is a standard of behavior that everyone must follow no matter what his culture is. There are different standards of politeness in different cultural backgrounds of society. The diversities are reflected mainly through the definitions of politeness, the strategy of realization of politeness, etc.(Gu Yueguo, 1992).

In relation to politeness principle in the process of communication, Grice in Brown (2000: 257) proposes four maxims called conversational maxim, namely:

Quantity

This maxim requires each participant in a conversation says as much as is necessary 

for understanding the communication.

Quality

This maxim obliges each participant in a conversation to s ay only what is true. 

Relevance

This maxim obliges each participant in a conversation to say only what is relevant.

Manner

This maxim requires that what the speaker talk about must be clear. Being clear 

means that the speakers have to: (a) avoid obscurity, (b) avoid ambiguity, (c) be 

brief, and (d) be orderly. 

Wardhaugh (1988: 212) explain that one of the claims concerning the relationship between language and culture is that the culture of people is reflected in the language  they  employ  because  they  use  their  language  in  ways  that  reflect  what  they value  and  what  they  do. From this definition, we can conclude that language and culture are two things that are closely related, namely language reflects culture and culture are included in the language.

Every culture has different language norms. Every language has a different principle of politeness. In verbal cross-cultural communication, one must learn the principle of politeness in languages ​​from other cultures to avoid misunderstanding, as stated by Holmes (2001: 279), “the appropriate ways of speaking in different communities are clearly quite distinctive in a range of areas. Being polite involves understanding the social values which govern the way social dimensions such as status, solidarity, and formality are expressed.” 

This article presents the phenomenon of linguistic politeness in different cultures.

Phenomena 1

Christina Paulston, a Swede, returned home after living in America for some time. One evening soon after arriving back she invited some people to dinner, including her brother and his wife. She was in the kitchen when they arrived, and when she came through into the lounge she said to her sister-in-law, in impeccable Swedish, ‘do you know everyone?’ An American or an English person would assume that Christina, as hostess, was checking that her sister-in-law had been introduced to anyone she had not previously met. In Sweden, however, etiquette requires a new arrival to introduce themselves to anyone they do not know. Her sister-in-law was very offended by Christina’s question, assuming Christina was implying she did not know the rules for greeting people politely.

Christina encountered a cross-cultural communication problem on returning to her own native culture. The potential areas of misunderstanding are even greater when we venture into new cultures. Anyone who has travelled outside their own speech community is likely to have had some experience of miscommunication based on cultural differences. Often these relate to different assumptions deriving from different ‘normal’ environments. A Thai student in Britain, for example, reported not being able to understand what her hostess meant when she asked On which day of the week would you like to have your bath ? Coming from a very hot country with a ‘water-oriented culture’, the notion that she might have a bath only once a week was very difficult to grasp. Learning another language usually involves a great deal more than learning the literal meaning of the words, how to put them together and how to pronounce them. We need to know what they mean in the cultural context in which they are normally used. And that involves some understanding of the cultural and social norms of their users.

We automatically make many unconscious sociolinguistic assumptions about what people mean when they ask a particular question or make a statement. When we ask someone

to introduce an honoured guest at an important formal dinner, we expect something more elaborate than This is Dr Kennedy . When we ask someone to dinner we assume they will know the norms concerning appropriate dress, time of arrival and aceptable topics for discussion during the evening. Detailed discussion of the cat’s latest operation or the innards of your new car are generally not considered appropriate, for instance, unless the guests are very close friends and thus free to ask the speaker to shut up when they have heard enough.

Phenomena 2

Hostess : Have another helping

Guests : No thanks.  I am thoroughly fed up

There are sociolinguistic norms for polite acceptance and refusal which differ cross-culturally. Refusing an invitation appropriately in Western culture can be a challenging task. How do you refuse a lift home from someone you don’t like? How do you refuse an invitation to a meal from someone who is your social superior? An excuse is mandatory, and it needs to be plausible and reasonably specific. In some cultures, there are very general vague formulas such as I’m busy that night I’m afraid , which are perfectly acceptable. But in many Western communities people expect to be provided with a more specific reason for a refusal. Where solidarity is the dominant social dimension, privacy is reduced and vagueness about one’s activities is seen as evasive. Being polite in such contexts involves knowing how to express a range of speech functions in a culturally appropriate way.

Phenomena 3

When Rebecca arrived in New Zealand from Nottingham in England, she and her family were invited to a Christmas party at a neighbour’s house. Bring a plate she was told, and, thinking her hosts must be having a very big party if they expected to run out of plates, she obligingly brought four. Empty ones! When she arrived she was embarrassed to discover that bring a plate meant bring a contribution to the food. Fortunately she had some flowers with her to cover her confusion.

Rebecca’s experience is not unusual. The phrase bring a plate is a common trap for unsuspecting new arrivals in New Zealand. A commonly quoted (though now very dated) phrase is Ladies a plate, gentlemen a crate , meaning women should bring some food and men some beer.

Having accepted an invitation to dinner, what are the sociolinguistic rules which then apply? What is the appropriate linguistic formula for the beginning of the meal? Buon appetito in Italy, bon appétit in France, smakelijk eten in Holland, Guten Appetit in Germany. At a Maori gathering a prayer always precedes the meal, as it does in the rather different Liverpool household of the Catholic Boswell family portrayed in the old British TV programme Bread.

Then there is the problem of how you get enough to eat. In some parts of India and Taiwan, as well as in parts of the Arabic-speaking world, it is considered impolite to accept food when it is fi rst offered. Only on the third offer is it appropriate to accept and, correspondingly, only a third refusal is considered defi nitive by the offerer. There are many stories of over-replete Western visitors who had not worked out this cultural norm. On the other hand, overseas visitors who operate with such norms are likely to perceive their English hosts as ungenerous, because a second helping is offered only once. Once again, the sociolinguistic norms express cultural values. Plying someone with food is regarded as positively polite behaviour, especially in cultures with sharp economic differences between social groups. In Western society, on the other hand, fatness is not regarded as a sign of wealth. Indeed thinness is highly valued and sociolinguistic dinner norms tend to take account of the possibility that guests are dieting. Being forced to repeatedly refuse offers of food may be experienced as embarrassing.

Phenomena 4

At the end of a telephone conversation which he had initiated, a German professor said to his English colleague, Tom, That is very good then. Good evening.

There are two odd features of the German professor’s farewell from Tom’s point of view. First, there is no opportunity for Tom to respond to the professor’s pre-closing formula. A pre-closing formula checks out that the other person is ready to close the conversation. It often takes the form of is that OK then? or right ? to which the other person responds similarly, but with a falling intonation. The professor pre-closes with a slightly odd but recognisable formula That is very good then. But he then proceeds immediately to a fi nal closing formula without giving Tom a chance to respond.

The second odd usage is the phrase good evening. Good evening is a greeting formula, not a farewell. Goodbye would be more appropriate. Note that good night , which closely resembles good evening in its form, is a farewell formula, but not one generally considered appropriate on the telephone between acquaintances. The reasons appear to be that good night has connotations of intimacy, or perhaps it implies that the call has been unreasonably late. The conventions of telephone behaviour are another fascinating area for cross-cultural investigation, as well as those governing greetings and farewells.

Conclussion 

These phenomenon illustrate that ways of expressing the same speech act may differ quite markedly from one culture to another. These differences may seem totally random and unpredictable, but in fact they are not. They indicate the different social values and attitudes of different societies.

One aspect of culture that must be considered in communication is politeness. Every culture has culture and a different principle of politeness. In talking with other people from different countries, we must use the principle of the politeness of these cultures so that misunderstandings will not occur.