This paper reports on a small-scale investigation of the polite ness strategies used by American and Chinese subjects improvising the same situation. In the terms of Brown and Levinson (1978), Americans favored negative politeness and Chinese preferred positive politeness. These preferences are in accord with the American indivi dual-centered and the Chinese situation-centered ways of life dis cussed by Hsu (1981). However, inasmuch as some researchers have argued that the United States has a positive politeness culture, the results of the study argue against the crude classification of cultures into politeness types, suggesting instead that politeness strategies are more situation-specific.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen.1978. Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction , ed. by E.N. Goody, 56-289. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
2.
Goffman, Erving.1967. Interaction ritual. New York: Anchor Books.
3.
Hsu, Francis L.K.1981. Americans and Chinese. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.
4.
Hull, Philip and Keeler, James.1982. Strategies for giving refusals in Honolulu, Hawaii. Unpublished paper, University of Hawaii.
5.
Richards, Jack C.1982. Talking across cultures. Language Learning and Communication1:1. 61-72.
6.
Scollon, Ron and Scollon, Suzanne B.K.Face in interethnic communication. Language and communication, ed. by J. Richards and R. Schmidt. London: Longman. Forthcoming.
