Reflections on Cultural Systems 2: Face and Politeness

There were three learning objectives for our class today. First, to understand the basic concepts in the study of linguistic politenesss through a discussion fo the two main approaches to the study of politeness; i.e politeness maxims and face management. Second, to understand the importance of politeness in determining how we structure and interpret utteracnes and communication situations in our everyday life and activities. Third, to learn how politeness and languasge are context and culture-bound.

Our session commenced with a discussion of the various politeness maxims. It was interesting to see how these maxims are actually commonly used in our daily life and interactions with our friends, family etc. For instance, I felt that the tact maxim is often used with minimizers in our speech so as to help to minimize the cost to others and make us sound more polite in our daily utterances and requests. A good example would be, "just pop upstairs and ...", "Hang on a second!..." etc. We also discussed other politeness maxims such as generosity maxim which involves minimizing benefit to self, approbation maxim which is maximizing praise of others, modesty maxim which involves minimizing praise of self, agreement maxim, involving maximizing agreement between self and other and finally, sympathy maxim which involves maximizing sympathy between self and other. On top of this, we also discussed on the possibility of the formation on other additional maxims based on various situations we are likely to encounter in daily life; since such maxims are often part and parcel of our daily life and in some sense unconsciously observed too. We came up with social distance maxim, involving minimizing social distance to be polite and maximizing closeness between self and other.

Following that, we discussed on face management strategies which concerns public self image and the emotional and social sense of self. It also encompasses being sensitive to the 'face needs' of others. There are namely two types of face; positive face which concerns the need to be accepted and connected and negative face which concerns the need to be independent and having the freedom of action. In our discussion, I think it is intersting to see that when we are making request from a close friend such as to borrow a pen, we tend to use positve face strategies as there is a connection with them and it would be quite weird if we use negative face strategies as it would be too polite and even end up making us seem impolite! However, if the situation is with a stranger, negative face strategies would be used instead as we would have to ask the person in an appropriate manner so as not to come across as rude or impolite. Thus I felt that after our discussion of all these different approaches to politeness and face management, it would heighten my awareness to the different ways that we act out our communication situations and utterances in daily life. It would be interesting to observe the various encounters I face everyday and apply these insights.

To conclude, I think it is very apt that we ended the lesson in discussing about the cultural context and aspects with regards to politeness and face. Indeed, the subject of politeness is a cultural relative concept which encompasses making appropriate linguistic choices based on what is appropriate in a particular culture. For instance, there is a different emphasis of the various politness maxims and face management strategies in different cultural groups and countries; i.e there is greater emphasis on negative face among the Japanese and British compared to a agreater emphasis on positive face in the African American community. Thus it is crucial that we be sensitive and aware of the way such politeness maxims and face management strategies are employed in relation the various cultural groups so that we will not come across as being impolite in our attempts to be polite.