Reflection: Impoliteness and cultural variation

Culpeper et al. (2010) investigated the cross-cultural variation of impoliteness. Their data consisted of 500 impoliteness events reported by students in England, China, Finland, Germany and Turkey. Of course, there is no claim to be comparing all the cultural communities that live in England with all those in China, and so on, but rather groups of students of similar age who are geographically separated and likely to be influenced by different cultural practices. The main analytical framework adopted was Spencer-Oatey’s (e.g. 2008) Rapport Management, as outlined, covering various types of face as well as sociality rights. Their quantitative analysis reveals some distinct differences amongst the groups. For example, China-based data had the highest number of impoliteness events involving either relational face or equity rights (or sometimes both together). Here is an example from the Chinese-based data involving relational face:

[7.5]

I saw her immediately after I went to the cafeteria. I told her ideas for some activities for our class. I intended to collect some suggestions from my classmates by telling them the activities ahead of the schedule. I was shocked at her answer. She rejected the ideas loudly with a tone of ordering in front of all the people in the cafeteria. Despite explaining to her softly and humbly, she rejected them more disrespectfully than before, paying no attention to my good manner. I was greatly annoyed because my classmates all respected me and I had never come across situations like that before.

This informant comments thus on this interaction: My good intention was rejected coldly and rudely. That was a great threat and puzzle to a leader of a class (our emphasis). What troubled this informant is that her relational value as a leader of her classmates had been threatened. Here is an example from another China-based informant involving equity rights:

[7.6] In a cafeteria I greeted my classmate. But he did not respond.

One key principle underlying equity rights is reciprocity, the principle that costs and benefits should be fairly balanced amongst participants. Here, one participant has made the effort to greet another, but this has not been reciprocated. Of course, none of this is to say that the same kind of event could not have caused offence to the England-based informants. The point is simply that the greater frequency with which this occurs in the China-based group may be evidence of greater cultural sensitivity to the relational and equity of social interactions in China. This tallies in fact with points made about face and cultural variation, specifically that Chinese cultures may be less focused on the individual. Certainly, this would tally with the long-standing influence of Confucianism, which advocates reciprocity, in Chinese cultures (cf. Pan and Kádár 2011 for another view on impoliteness in Mainland China).

Of course, whether or not impoliteness formulae result in impoliteness will depend on the hearer’s assessment of its usage in context. Consider this example:

Here, in the direct speech, we see a conventionalized insulting vocative, you bitch, and also a conventionalized dismissal, get out of here. McEnery (2006: 39, 236) provides corpus evidence that there is a strong tendency in British English for bitch to be used between women, as here. Nevertheless, these items project contexts that are dramatically at odds with the situation within which they are uttered. Rather than antagonistic relationships, hate, coercion and so on, we have a strong loving family unit (Francesca has just demonstrated her affection by giving her mother a kiss). The recontextualisation of impoliteness formulae in socially opposite contexts reinforces socially opposite effects, namely, affectionate, intimate bonds amongst individuals and the identity of that group. Here we have the opposite of genuine impoliteness, that is, mock impoliteness, which consists of impolite forms whose effects are (at least theoretically for the most part) cancelled by the context (the term “mock impoliteness” is used in Leech 1983). Banter is a key everyday label (at least in English), though most types of teasing and some jokes and types of insults also have in common the fact that they involve mock impoliteness. One of the lacunae in Brown and Levinson (1987) is that they do not treat banter at all; in contrast, Leech (1983: 144) describes mock impoliteness within his Banter Principle:

“In order to show solidarity with h, say something which is (i) obviously untrue, and (ii) obviously impolite to h” [and this will give rise to an interpretation such that] “What s says is impolite to h and is clearly untrue. Therefore what s really means is polite to h and true.”

Banter, of course, also exists in a heavily ritualized form as a kind of language game – a specific activity type. In America some forms of this activity are known as “sounding”, “playing the dozens” or “signifying”, which takes place particularly amongst black adolescents (e.g. Labov 1972; for a nuanced account of banter in a community in France, see Tetreault 2009).