Communication Across Cultures: Face and Interaction
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1st Sosnowiec Symposium Communication across Cultures: Face and Interaction (CC2013FACE) http://ija.us.edu.pl/sub/face/ Institute of English, University of Silesia, Poland Sosnowiec, 26-27 April 2013
Book of Abstracts TABLE OF CONTENTS
PLENARY LECTURES Francesca Bargiela Enfleshing the imagined face…………………………………………………………..………….……..5 Andrzej Łyda Postmortem Politeness...... 6 Maria Sifianou On culture, face and politeness. Again……………………………………………..…………….……7 Helen Spencer-Oatey Managing Relations and Face in Culturally Unfamiliar Workplaces: What are the issues?...... 9
PAPERS Beata Abdallah-Krzepkowska Face of God in the Quran – a linguistic approach...... 11 Nisreen Naji Al-khawaldeh Cross-Cultural Perceptions of the Speech Act of Thanking: from Jordanian and British Perspectives…………………………………………………………………………………………………12
Nisreen Naji Al-Khawaldeh, Vladimir Žegarac
The Power Differential of Gender and Its Impact on Speech Act Performance:
A Sociolinguistic Study……………………………………………………………………………….….13 Ágnes Apró, Balázs Jámbor Tentative Language Use (TLU) as a means of considering Face in Business Communication…………………………………………………………………………………..………..14 Marzieh Bahsirpour, S. Imtiaz Hasnain Different functions of compliments and their effects on the hearer’s face and compliment response in interactions………………………………………………………………..………………..15
Katarzyna Bańka Translating Chinese Politeness: politeness markers vs. the importance of cultural-background awareness………………………………………………………..………………16
Paulina Biały The usage of diminutives in polite phrases as a way to express positive politeness or to formulate face-threatening acts in English and Polish………….………………………………..17 Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska Multiple contexts of face…………….………………………………………..………………………....18 Maciej Buczowski Face and interaction in presidential press conferences on the war on terror...... 19 Iwona Dronia Teacher’s discourse and the language of questions as a source of face-threatening acts…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….20 Marta Dynel Facework in the analysis of humour in interaction...... 21 Weronika Gasior ‘People never say what they’re actually thinking, don’t you think?’ Exchanges of opinions among Polish and Irish English speakers……………………………………………..….22 Gudrun Held 2 Is the Italian figura just a facet of face? Comparative view on two key cultural concepts...... 23 Ireneusz Kida
Different faces of Quechua, Nahuatl and Maya………………………………………………….….24 Urszula Kizelbach Villain or Victim? Two faces of Shylock in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice…………………………………………………………………………………....25 Marcin Kucznok The concept of FACE as anthropopathism of GOD in the Old Testament...... 26 Joanna Nijakowska Metadiscourse and (im)politeness: Converging, diverging, supplementing analytic frameworks in written academic discourse?...... 27 Jair Antonio de Oliveira Pragmatics of Brazilian Politeness (the voices of violence and cordiality)……...... 28 Elsa Pic, Gregory Furmaniak Questions and facework: Research articles and popular science articles compared...... 29 Adam Pluszczyk An analysis of hedging expressions in English and Spanish spoken discourse…………….30 Maria Smyl Omoiyari – the key word of harmonious Japanese communication……………………………31 Agnieszka Solska Between politeness and impoliteness: the face-work of punning………………………………32 Agnieszka Stanecka “Coconuts, Bounty bars, Oreo biscuits” – multi-faced London in postcolonial novels……33 Kamilla Termińska Gramatykalizacja „twarzy” w hebrajszczyźnie biblijnej...... 34 Magdalena Varga Aap kitna kamaate hain? „How much money do you earn?” The Indian way of politeness…………………………………………………………………………..35 Jiayi Wang Face in official intercultural interaction…………………………………………………………….36 Krystyna Warchał The scholar’s face: Selected interpersonal strategies in research article introductions….37 Yasuhisa Watanabe Face as a measure of foreign political relations: Seeing international relation through Japanese analytic articles…………………………………………………………………..38 Urszula Wieczorek Searching for God's face in religious language…………………………………………………….39
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS...... 40 PROGRAMME…………………………………………………………………………………………41 PRACRICAL INFORMATION...... 45
3 PLENARY LECTURES
4 Francesca Bargiela
Enfleshing the imagined face
The subject of this talk is an approach to the study of ‘face’ that emerges from the fusion of two research trajectories and is based on the following three premises: It can and should be studied separately from (im)politeness; It is a phenomenon that lends itself to multidisciplinary investigation; Its potential for further innovative empirical and theoretical research remains relatively unexplored. As a linguist who began research in the Eighties in the days of language needs analysis, I have witnessed the bourgeoning of discourse approaches to the study of interaction in organizational settings. Multimodal perspectives and the appreciation of the affective nature of communication have recently added considerable delicacy and interpretative power to original discourse-only analyses. Of late, by delving into hermeneutics and phenomenology, I have sought to capture and bring together insights that may contribute to outlining a multidisciplinary approach to communication that I have called ‘sensory pragmatics’. This is an ‘embodied response’ to the reductionism that befalls discursivity. The second research trajectory charts my involvement in collaborative research on intercultural (business) communication, which in the early 2000s led me to look again at the notion of the interactional self. Revisiting Erving Goffman’s work, in particular his elaboration of face and facework, inspired my ongoing reflection on the relevance of ‘face’ as a prism for the analysis of human communication. In the last two years, the phenomenology of perception proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas’s original philosophy of face – which can be seen as an ‘intensification’ of Goffman’s concept - have coalesced as a preliminary, theoretical articulation underpinning sensory pragmatics. In this talk, I will argue for the fundamentally embodied quality of ‘face’: an epistemological perspective on the present - and absent ‘other(s)’ – with whom we share the ontological space of existence and which entails an ethical response.
5 Andrzej Łyda
Postmortem Politeness
The death of an individual is a biological event. While it ends it all, thus excluding the individuals from the real world, it does not deprive the individuals of their dignity. In many cultures and societies whatever remains after a person's death: the lifetime image, or the identity of that person, deserves to be treated with appropriate human dignity, in the practices and in the social discourses that death gives rise to and that shape our sense of death. The possible mistreatment of the corpse is staved off by funeral customs, rituals surrounding the death and the disposition of the corpse. The possible mistreatment of the person deceased is less obvious at first glance although the history of mankind may offer an impressive list of mistreatment acts ranging from the removal of tomb inscriptions, photographic revisionism of Stalin's Russia, where the unpersons were blanked out, to the ban on the very mention of some names. Such "damnatio memoriae˝ or "condemnation of memory" can be viewed as an act threatening the negative face of individuals and whole societies inasmuch as it infringes on the freedom of memory: shaping and constructing it, or at least - if the former cannot be totally erased - on the freedom of speech, i.e. on the use of language with its displaced reference to the physically absent, or even impossible. The postmortem world of condolence books, funeral speeches, obituaries, newspaper death notice columns is the world of remembrance, in which the deceased are present in a number of ways, moderating and constraining the language of genres entailed by death. The constraints captured in the aphorism "de mortuis nihil nisi bonum", while not always strict enough, have long been a guiding principle for civilised societies. Even now with the evolving cultural scripts surrounding death, the aphorism seems to represent the dominant mode of remembering and speaking of remembering the deceased, thus activating the concept of positive face. Drawing from a corpus of obituaries of academics the present paper attempts to discuss the discourse of remembering the deceased in the context of the notion of face.
6 Maria Sifianou
On culture, face and politeness. Again
Face is a notion that is intuitively meaningful to people in diverse communities, but one that is highly complex and thus hard to define, especially if one aspires to a universally valid account. Its intuitive appeal is part of its explanatory power but also the source of problems when used as an analytical tool for the explanation of other interactional phenomena, such as politeness (Matsumoto 2010: xii). We owe Brown and Levinson (1978/1987) a debt for bringing the concept of ‘face’ into scholarly attention but as critics have argued they constructed a restricted, individualistic notion. As a result, research on face has grown exponentially but with a clear shift away from face being viewed as an individual construct to a more interactional one under the influence of discursive developments in politeness research. In this framework, it has been argued that research should focus on how face emerges in the sequential unfolding of interaction (e.g., Arundale 2010; Haugh 2010; O’Driscoll 2011). However, Brown and Levinson’s (1978/1987) influence has been so strong that it is only recently that the assumed tight association between face and politeness has been questioned and the need for more emic understandings has been voiced (e.g., Hinze 2012; Haugh 2013). In this presentation, it is suggested that face and politeness are different kinds of concepts so untangling face from im/politeness in research seems a necessary first step. If face and politeness are researched independently, we may be able to see their possible connections with fresh eyes (e.g., Haugh & Bargiela-Chiappini 2010). To this end, drawing from a wider range of emic perspectives may offer a better appreciation of the concept of ‘face’.
Drawing on data from Greek, I will try to substantiate my contentions that: face is a relational phenomenon but not necessarily an interactional one. it makes sense to talk about face as an individual possession (with group repercussions), and as a pre-existing (though not static) entity with enduring aspects. the association between face and politeness may not be as strong as has been assumed. I am not suggesting here that what applies to Greek is universal, or that emic conceptualisations should form the basis of any theory but that they should not be neglected.
References Arundale, R. B. 2010. Constituting face in conversation: Face, facework, and interactional achievement. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2078-2105. Brown, P. & Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Originally published as Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. Goody (ed.), (1978), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 56-289. Haugh, M. 2010. Face and interaction. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini & M. Haugh (eds.), Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, 1-30. Haugh, M. 2013. Disentangling face, facework and im/politeness. Sociocultural Pragmatics 1-28. DOI: 10.1515/soprag-2012-0005. Haugh, M. & Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 2010. Editorial: Face in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2073-2077. Hinze, C. 2012. Chinese politeness is not about ‘face’: Evidence from the business world. Journal of Politeness Research 8: 11-27.
7 Matsumoto, Y. 2010. Foreword. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini & M. Haugh (eds.), Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, xi-xii. O’Driscoll, J. 2011. Some issues with the concept of face: When, what, how and how much. In F. Bargiela- Chiappini & D. Kádár (eds.), Politeness across Cultures. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 17-41.
Helen Spencer-Oatey
8 Managing Relations and Face in Culturally Unfamiliar Workplaces: What are the issues?
“Successful leaders know that relationships are the engines of success, and they keep a close eye on the state of all key relationships.” These are the words of Kevin Murray (2012: 99), a specialist in strategic communication and a popular author and coach on the language of leaders. Recent work in pragmatics (e.g. Arundale 2010; Enfield 2009; Locher and Graham 2010; Spencer-Oatey 2011) has similarly begun to draw attention to the issue of ‘relations’, and to move beyond the original emphasis on face and (im)politeness. So a key question is the extent to which relations and face are similar or different phenomena. In this talk I start by reviewing, from a multidisciplinary perspective, recent theorising on relations. I then report findings from a recent study into building relations in culturally unfamiliar workplaces which had the following aims: a) to investigate employees’ ‘grassroots’ perspectives on relating at work; b) to explore ways in which their perspectives can be conceptualised. I explain how people talked about relations ,examine the applicability and relative usefulness of Relational Dialectic Theory for analytic purposes, and reflect on the interconnections between relations and face. I conclude by arguing that Relational Dialectic Theory and Face Theory offer valuable analytic perspectives that are complementary to each other, and call for more research into the broader issue of relating at work, especially in culturally unfamiliar workplaces.
References Arundale, Robert B. (2010). Relating. In: Locher, Miriam A., Graham, Sage L. (Eds), Interpersonal Pragmatics, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp.137–165. Enfield, N.J. (2009). Relationship thinking and human pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics 41: 60–78. Locher, Miriam A., Graham, Sage L. (Eds) (2012) Interpersonal Pragmatics, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. Murray, Kevin (2012) The Language of Leaders. How Top CEOs Communicate to Inspire, Influence and Achieve Results. London: KoganPage. Spencer-Oatey, Helen (2011). Conceptualising ‘the relational’ in pragmatics: Insights from metapragmatic emotion and (im)politeness comments. Journal of Pragmatics, 43: 3565–3578.
9 PAPERS
Beata Abdallah-Krzepkowska
Face of God in the Quran – a linguistic approach
10 Comparing to the Old Testament Quranic text is almost deprived of expressions that can be called “anthropomorphic” (denoting physical features/parts of the body of God). In the whole text there are only a few of such passages. ,,Face of God'' is mentioned 12 times. Some ayats mention also such function connected physically with face/head as saying, seeing and hearing, some of them mention God's hands. “Face of God” – this expression became one of the most interesting, inspiring and controversial issues in the Quranic hermeneutics, theology and philosophy. For exegetes of the Holy Book, this problem was an important point in reflections on reading and interpreting Quran, on literal, symbolic and metaphorical values of the text. For theologians and philosophers, it was also interesting in their disputes on nature of God ,and in a wider perspective of (im)possibility of understanding the language of religion and limits of this understanding. First I would like to present a short review of ideas and approaches to this issue. The main purpose is to present the concept of “face of God” from a linguistic point of view, from the perspectives of cognitive semantics – analyse linguistic means, metaphors, context, connotations, and compare it with the Quranic concept of “human face”.
Nisreen Naji Al-khawaldeh
Cross-Cultural Perceptions of the Speech Act of Thanking: from Jordanian and British Perspectives 11 This paper presents research and argument which show that thanking could be freed from the claim which labels it as intrinsic face-threatening act as argued by Brown and Levinson (1987) since it is also employed to establish and sustain social relationships. Thus, it should also be viewed as having interactional and relational functions as argued by Arundale (2006). This research compares Jordanian and English native speakers’ perceptions towards expressing thanking. The study is concerned with pragmatic features of communication, mainly those socio- pragmatic aspects associated with the social usage that interlocutors make with respect to the linguistic phenomenon of politeness, and with their attitudes towards realising the speech act of thanking. The 40 interviews conducted revealed evidence of slight similarity and remarkable differences across both groups’ perceptions in terms of the significance of thanking, the variables affecting it, style including verbal or nonverbal strategies and causes of awkwardness and misunderstanding. The comparison provides valuable insights into theoretical issues concerning the nature of speech acts, the relation between types of speech act and the general principles of human communication, especially rapport among people in social interaction, and the relation between culture-specific and universal features of speech act types. This knowledge of cross-cultural politeness variation provides an essential basis for successful intercultural communication. The study concludes with a consideration of the importance of the findings in politeness theory, speech act theory. The results are also pertinent to applied linguistic issues and could have a didactic implication for developing curricula and teaching each of these languages as a foreign or second language, thus enhancing fruitful intercultural communication. The present study indicates some useful suggestions bout promising directions for future research.
Keywords: cross-cultural pragmatics, the speech act of thanking, politeness
Nisreen Naji Al-Khawaldeh, Vladimir Žegarac
The Power Differential of Gender and Its Impact on Speech Act Performance: A Sociolinguistic Study 12 This paper examines Jordanians’ perception of the way and the extent to which gender influences the speech act of thanking. The qualitative analysis of 20 interviews revealed a considerable influence of gender on the speech act of thanking. Distinctive disparities between women and men were found at both within-gender and cross-gender interactions in the necessity, type and extent of thanking. Though the research reveals that women appear to value expressing thanking more than men, still there is no decisive answer to the question of who thanks most, as this depends on a number of factors such as the gender of the thanker. Apart from this factor, the thanking recipient and context, including the status of the thanking recipient, the degree of familiarity between the thanker and the thankee and the obligation weight affect the production and reception of this speech act. It was found that women tend to thank women more than men thank men and men appeared to be overly concerned about being more polite to women than to men, especially in unfamiliar and high imposition contexts. Despite showing graciousness to women, men revealed their awareness of the social and cultural restrictions imposed on cross- gender interactions. The analysis reveals a deep, intrinsic correlation between linguistic and social facts. This study contributes to socio-pragmatics by casting light on highly sensitive aspects of the Jordanian society concerning gender and politeness and highlighting the underlying influences of religious, socio-cultural rules that regulate cross-gender social interaction. The research presented in this paper suggests that instruction could benefit from the findings which add to the insights from the existing gender-language differences literature. Finally, it points to some directions for further gender-based cross-cultural investigation of thanking and some other speech acts.
Keywords: Speech act of thanking, cross-gender interaction, politeness
Ágnes Apró, Balázs Jámbor
Tentative Language Use (TLU) as a means of considering Face in Business Communication
13 “L2 speakers may violate pragmatic norms either because they do not know what can be said to whom in particular situations, or because it might mean giving up their ‘cultural identity’.”(Kormos/Csölle 2004:91)
The presentation will introduce the results of a PhD research on the English language use of native Hungarians in situations where face considerations are vital to succeed. It focuses on non- native speakers’ pragmatic (functional) competence in a foreign language. (CEFR:125) First the concept of Tentative Language Use will be defined and then explained how TLU is related to other widely researched discourse effects and communication strategies like negative politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987), indirectness (Searle), deference (Fraser 2001, 2010), mitigation (Caffi 1999, 2007) and hedging (Kaltenböck, Mihatsch, Schneider 2010). A test has been developed to evaluate the ability of native Hungarians to comprehend and produce appropriate communicative acts in situations that require careful face considerations. The survey has been designed and administered through the software on www.surveymonkey.com. It consists of four parts: a discourse completion test with nine situations and a 20 situation multiple choice test with four possible utterances each to assess speech production, a test with 80 different statements to be judged by the respondents as appropriate or inappropriate on a four grade scale to evaluate speech perception, and a background questionnaire to collect information about respondents. A minimum of 40-45 minutes was required to take the test. 198 answers have been received and 132 could be included in all the analyses. Respondents were Hungarian businesspeople and students, and a reference group of language teachers. The evaluation of the results by SPSS is in progress. The validity and reliability of the survey have been proven. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses have been carried out.
References Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen 1987 Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: CUP. Caffi, Claudia 1999 “On mitigation”. Journal of Pragmatics Volume 31, 881-909. Caffi, Claudia 2007 Mitigation. Amsterdam: Elsevier. CEFR 2001 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge: CUP. Fraser, Bruce 2001 “The form and function of politeness in conversation”. In Linguistics of Text and Conversation Volume 2, K. Brinker, G. Antos, W. Heinemann (eds), 1406-1425. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Fraser, Bruce 2010 “Pragmatic competence: The case of hedging”. In New Approaches to Hedging G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch, S. Schneider (eds), 15-34. Kaltenböck,Gunther, Mihatsch,Wiltrud and Schneider, Stefan eds. 2010.,New Approaches to Hedging. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Kormos, Judit and Csölle, Anita 2004 Topics in Applied Linguistics. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó. Searle, John 1975: Indirect speech acts. In Pléh, Csaba. & Síklaki, István & Terestyéni, Tamás (Eds.) (1997) Nyelv- Kommunikáció-Cselekvés. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó
Marzieh Bahsirpour, S. Imtiaz Hasnain
Different functions of compliments and their effects on the hearer’s face and compliment response in interactions
14 Daily interpersonal communication is required to interact with people for initiating, developing, defining, maintaining and progressing or sustaining a relationship. Compliments are polite acts providing positive expressions that help in building relations, establishing confidence and developing sense of self esteem for the hearers. They vary from culture to culture, for instance, while they are generally paid and appreciated in Western culture (Holmes, 1986), in the Eastern culture (Gu, 1990; Chen 1993) they are rejected or denied. Compliments are also defined as maintaining, enhancing, or supporting the addressee’s face through admiring or approving someone’s work/appearance/taste (Goffman, 1967). Face is something that is emotionally invested and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced. People help each other to maintain face during interaction as participants can make their best interest to maintain each others’ face and to act in ways that assure the other participants that the agent is heedful (Brown and Levinson, 1987, p. 61). Face could be positive or negative that they may follow after positive or negative compliments. This paper propose to investigates different functions of compliments such as praising, reinforcing a desired action, or sarcasm or disapproval, in the context of cross-cultural differences in interaction of rational/ justification of focusing on Ph.D. students (different nationalities) who enrolled for studies in Aligarh Muslim University, India and their supervisors in order to understand how and in which contexts they affect the hearer’s face as being positive or negative, and what is the compliment respond.
References Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Chen, R. (1993). Responding to compliments: A contrastive study of politeness strategies between American English and Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 20, 49-75. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. Essays in Face-to-Face Interaction. Chicago Aldine. Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness Phenomena in Modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 237-57. Holmes, J. (1986). Compliments and Compliment Responses in New Zealand English. Anthropological Linguistics, 28.4, 485-508.
Katarzyna Bańka
Translating Chinese Politeness: politeness markers vs. the importance of cultural- background awareness
15 It is said that language is universal for all the human beings all over the world, however what makes it complicated, is the fact that people coming from two different linguistic cultures may have problems with day-to-day communication. “The organs of the body are relatively uniform around the world, but the way in which each culture talks about them is distinct” (Pellatt and Liu, 2010: 10). The bigger knowledge of the other language cultural background, the better the overall understating and translation of culture-oriented elements. The aim of this contribution is to provide important pieces of information concerning Chinese language politeness markers (used in dialogues in textbooks and day-to-day conversation) and to introduce patterns of translating them into Polish language. A comparative outline of common mistakes made by University of Silesia 1st year students of Chinese translation programme, and translated Polish version of Chinese textbook Contemporary Chinese will be introduced. At first a list of Chinese politeness markers will be provided followed by examples, e.g. accepting an invitation/offer, agreeing, disagreeing, apologizing, complaining, asking certain questions, etc. They were chosen from the “Index of Functional Items” (CC1, pp. 217– 218; CC2, pp. 237–239) divided into 44 categories, from which the set of 10 has been chosen, directly linked to politeness. In the second part of the presentation, the analysis of translating the selected politeness markers will be performed followed by set of examples concerning culture-oriented items, also in the contexts involving Polish- Chinese translation. Finally, the summary of the main translational difficulties will be introduced and the errors in rendering texts into Polish and Chinese and vice versa and the potential consequences of such situation.
References Contemporary Chinese. Vol. 1–2. Edited by Wu Zhongwei. Trans. by Yvonne L. Walls and Jan W.Walls. Beijing: Sinolingua Press, 2003. Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, E. 2010. Face. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Współczesny język chiński. Edited by Wu Zhongwei. Trans. by Krzysztof Achinger. Pekin: Sinolingua Press, 2010.
Paulina Biały
The usage of diminutives in polite phrases as a way to express positive politeness or to formulate face-threatening acts in English and Polish
16 Expressive polite phrases, namely the ones containing diminutive forms, play a significant role in interpersonal communication. According to Ożóg (1990: 72) they are aimed at convincing the addressee of special, and not only formal or perfunctory, attitude of the speaker towards him/her. Moreover, as it is usually the case, they are applied in situations when the speaker wants to maintain the addressee’s positive face, e.g. he/she wants to express meanings such as familiarity, intimacy, or liking. Nevertheless, sometimes they may be used as acts threatening the addressee’s positive or negative face. Usually, in the case of diminutives, face-threatening acts are done off record, when the speaker wants to express irony, disrespect and pitifulness. This article aims at answering the question about the role of diminutives in polite phrases. Are they always related only to positive politeness? How is their presence in a sentence perceived by the addressees? Moreover, the comparison between Polish and English will be provided as these two languages differ significantly in terms of expressing emotions in a conversation. In order to get answers for the questions mentioned above, a short questionnaire, containing some typical expressive polite phrases, was distributed among a representative number of native speakers of Polish and English, in order to assess whether the presence of diminutives influences their impressions and reactions to these sentences.
References Brown, P. & Levinson, S.C. 1990. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jakubowska, E. 1999. Cross-cultural Dimensions of Politeness in the Case of Polish and English. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Jurafsky, D. 1996. Universal Tendencies in the Semantics of Diminutives. Language 72:3:533-578. Linde-Usiekniewicz, J. 2007. Językowe, międzyjęzykowe, kulturowe i międzykulturowe aspekty grzeczności. In: M. Marcjanik (ed.) Grzeczność na krańcach świata, 15-35. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne.
Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska
17 Multiple contexts of face
Face is a sociocultural construct which is based on the person’s sense of identity and expectations as to how his/her self-image should be created, and constitutes a property of relationship between interactants (cf. Arundale, 2006; Bousfield, 2008; Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2009). As such it appears to be strongly context dependent. Context is understood here as “aspects of the social environment” which become ‘observable’ by their consequences on discourse, or by the influence of discourse on social situations (van Dijk, 2006: 164). Contexts of social interactions in which face is constituted are “subjective participant interpretations” of the relevant aspects of the social environment. The aims of the study are to analyse the mechanisms responsible for face creation during social interaction and to investigate the role of context as a subjective face-constituting factor. Face has a structure which can be compared to lettuce; it is softer towards its centre. Some aspects of face, the central (internal) ones, are most sensitive and vulnerable to attack or damage; others – the more distant from the centre (external) are less vulnerable to face-threats. It may be assumed that in the majority of cultures people display affective sensitivity to the same aspects of face, the only difference is in the degree of their importance and in their location relative to the centre of face. Irrespective of the degree of sensitivity specific to a particular aspect of face, we can observe different contexts in which particular aspects of face are foregrounded. Scollon and Wong Scollon (2001: 48) claim that “[t]here is no faceless communication”. Thus, every social context in which interaction between people takes place is a context of face; its interpretation, however, differs from culture to culture and from person to person.
References Arundale, R.B. 2006. Face as relational and interactional: A communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 2: 193-216. Bousfield, D. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia Scollon, R. and S. Wong Scollon. 2001. Intercultural Communication. A Discourse Approach. Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Spencer-Oatey, H. and P. Franklin. 2009. Intercultural Interaction. A Multidisciplinary Approach to Intercultural Communication. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke. van Dijk, T. A. 2006. Discourse, context and cognition. Discourse Studies, Vol 8(1): 159-177.
18 Maciej Buczowski
Face and interaction in presidential press conferences on the war on terror
There is a significant body of studies on presidential speeches. However, presidential press conferences have not received as much attention in language research. Unlike political speeches, press conferences involve verbal interaction of two parties, the journalists and the speaker. They provide unique examples of language use with the aim to negotiate ideologies and power distribution. Presidential press conferences provide the setting for a linguistic struggle for the position of power between the speaker and the reporters, a phenomenon absent in political speeches.
The study includes a critical discourse analysis of selected press conferences devoted solely or mainly to the war on terror hosted by the last two presidents of the United States of America. It attempts to compare and contrast the most common face threatening acts used by George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama. In a similar vein, it conducts a statistical analysis of the types of FTAs used by the journalists in their ambition to damage the face of the presidents. The result of this analysis is a list of the most common strategies used by the presidents to sustain their position of power and the journalists to threaten the presidents’ face and take control over the interaction.
The main conclusion of this analysis is that although the conferences held by president Bush and Obama have the same theme- the war on terror, the most frequent face threatening acts used by the two presidents and the journalists depend on which political party the president is connected to. One of the explanations for this discrepancy may lie in Lakoff’s (2004) understanding of the role of the strict father, followed by the conservatives, and the nurturant parent, followed by the democrats.
References Bhatia, Aditi. 2006. "Critical discourse analysis of political press conferences", Discourse & Society 17, 2: 173-200.
19 Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. "Politeness: Some universals in language use", in Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland (eds.), The discourse reader. 1999. New York: Routledge, 321-335. Eshbaugh-Soha, Matthew. 2003. "Presidential Press Conferences over Time", American Journal of Political Science 47, 2: 348-353. Lakoff, George. 2004. Don't think of an elephant: Know your values and frame the debate. Canada: Chelsea Green Publishing. Watts, Richard J. 2003. Politeness: Key topics in sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wodak, Ruth and Michael Mayer. 2009. "Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda theory and methodology", in: Ruth Wodak and Michael Mayer (eds.), Methods for critical discourse analysis. London: Sage Publications, 1-33.
Iwona Dronia
Teacher’s discourse and the language of questions as a source of face-threatening acts
Questioning in class is often found by students to be highly stressful and a cause of anxiety. Lower-order questions, in particular, are often closely linked to behaviour management, with teachers using them as a means of control in the classroom while e.g. manipulating or accusing. The fact that questions are mainly initiated by teachers (they ask up to two questions every minute and questioning may account for even up to a third of all teaching time) and that there exists a strong asymmetric relationship in their number (students, on average ask not more than 6 questions during one lesson) may have a tremendous impact on students’ emotional well-being and their learning. This asymmetric relationship stems from differences of status, roles, age, education or class and can give teachers power or authority. Questions are commonly used as part of a power struggle, and pupils can still find this sort of interrogation intimidating. Thus teacher’s questioning (Mitchell, cited in Hastings, 2003) has been found children's main source of fear and face-threatening act - the learners are not afraid of being wrong, but of looking silly - saying something that will be ridiculed by the teacher or other pupils. It is well known that FTAs threatening the hearer’s self-image include expressions negatively evaluating the hearer’s positive face, e.g. disapproval, accusations, disagreement or criticism and all of these elements are commonly appearing in teacher’s discourse and questions they ask. Those of the lower status and less dominant role (students) use more indirectness and more negative politeness features, such as hedges and mitigation, than those with the higher status (teachers) do (Cutting, 2002). The article also aims at presenting Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning (1956) and the influence the language of teacher’s questions may have on students experiencing face- threatening acts.
References Ardissono, L., Boella, G. and L. Lesmo. Politeness and Speech Act. Available from http://www.di.unito.it/~guido/um-workshop/; 20.11.2012.
20 Bloom, B.S. 1956. Taxonomy of educational Objectives Handbook. The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc. Cutting, J. 2002. Pragmatic and Discourse. Resource book for Students. Florence: Routledge. Ishihara, N. and A.D. Cohen. 2010. Teaching and Learning Pragmatics. Where Language and Culture Meet. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Hastings, S. 2003. Questioning. Available from http://teachertools.londongt.org/index.php? page=questioningTechniques; 21.11.2012.
Marta Dynel
Facework in the analysis of humour in interaction
Whilst joking and banter tend to be viewed as politeness-orientated, strategies in line with Brown and Levinson’s (1987) suggestion, a great proportion of humour, encompassing what is known as aggressive/disparagement humour in humour research, appears to coincide with impoliteness. Moreover, impoliteness tends to be viewed as a source of humour in its own right (e.g. Culpeper 2005, 2012; Dynel 2012). Additionally, one utterance may invite diverging evaluations on the part of the various participants, depending on their interactional status (Dynel 2010, 2011, 2012; Haugh and Bousfield 2012). Therefore, as Haugh and Bousfield (2012) righty observe, the existing taxonomies of (im)politeness do not easily accommodate humour in interaction. The primary objective of this presentation is to conceptualise several manifestations of humour in interaction in the light of discursively constructed face, as conceptualised in relational work (Locher 2004; Locher and Watts 2005, 2008), and thus in reference to politeness, impoliteness, as well as mock politeness and impoliteness. It is argued that differentiation between several (im)politeness-orientated types of conversational humour can be done on the strength of the speaker’s intentional message and the hearer’s response to it (cf. Culpeper 2005; Mills 2002, 2003, 2005; Haugh 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007; Watts 2003; Arundale 2006, 2010; Bousfield 2007, 2008a, 2008b; Terkourafi 2008). While the speaker’s intentions can never be determined with full certainty, they can be conjectured, given the contextual evidence at hand (Culpeper et al. 2003). Film talk lends itself to linguistic analysis, being inherently constructed for the sake of an outside hearer’s (whether a viewer’s or a researcher’s) understanding. Thus, this presentation is illustrated with fictional extracts taken from “House”.
21 Weronika Gasior
‘People never say what they’re actually thinking, don’t you think?’ Exchanges of opinions among Polish and Irish English speakers
Epistemologically an opinion is different from a fact. However, emotionally, that difference can be more blurry. In a study of exchanges of opinions among Polish and Irish English speakers those emotional attachments to opinions on the one hand, and the importance of facts on the other, become apparent. These differences can cause conflict in intercultural communication. While Poles are believed to express opinions which are ‘dogmatic’ (Wierzbicka 1985), English opinions tend to be stated so that they are clearly distinguishable from a statement of fact (Mullan 2010). This study aimed firstly to describe the range of strategies in the speech act set of exchanging opinions in two linguistic groups: Polish-Irish and Irish-Irish interactions in English. Secondly, it examined issues of sociopragmatic principles of expressing opinions in Ireland. Discourse data was gathered in six open role-plays which were followed by focus groups exploring the issues of sociocultural constraints in expressing opinions. The results point towards a difference in semantic scripts for opinions in the two linguistic groups; confirm previous classifications of Polish and Irish cultures as favouring positive and negative politeness respectively; and provide an insight into the affective side of exchanging opinions.
References Mullan, K. (2010) Expressing Opinions in French and Australian English, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wierzbicka, A. (1985) "Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: Polish vs. English", Journal of Pragmatics 9(2-3), 145-178.
22 Gudrun Held
Is the Italian figura just a facet of face? Comparative view on two key cultural concepts
The art of fare una bella figura is commonly considered as the cultural and societal cornerstone of the Italian way of life: covertly, but constantly regulating the Italian identity in its everyday interaction, it is not only an aesthetic and spirited show-off, but also a soulful and diplomatic manner of communication that makes foreigners surrender in feelings of admiration, envy or simple misunderstanding. I thus presume that the specific cultural concept of figura is a facet of the general concept of face as it is shaped in modern theories of pragmatics and cultural studies. While being pragmatically interrelated, the two concepts, nevertheless, reflect very different conceptualizations of the social image that they transport through history, discourse and literature. Overall, neither their communities, nor their differences have ever been studied systematically. As both, figura and face manifest themselves in the ongoing social performance, they are also a semiotic phenomenon that is mainly displayed in language use. Hence, the idiomatic expression “making a good or a bad figura” refers to verbal manners that can also be evaluated in terms of face-saving or face-loosing. Therefore, I argue that 'figuring' the figura in the right verbal way is nothing else than the Italian version of face work that is historically learned and culturally approved. Fare figura thus implies a range of strategies that are likely to keep up a context-appropriate 'impression management' between felt solidarity and simulated equality. The present paper – part of a larger work in progress – takes up these theses. Intending to deepen both, affinities and differences of the two concepts, it is concerned with the following aims: 1) a brief comparative study of the two notions taking into account their terminological history, their idiomatic collocations and their discursive development; 2) an outline of the main socio-pragmatic concepts of face (and face work or face negotiation) in order to work out similarities and differences with the concept of figura; 3) a discussion of these findings within the theory of (im)politeness (throughout the different stages of research where the traditional issue = first order politeness is distinguished from the scientific issue = second order politeness); 4) a short evidence from selected data (namely Italian internet-blogs on the tragedy of Costa Concordia) where the figura-concept is emotionally discussed in terms of national
23 stereotype. It is thus not only the main subject of the ongoing intercultural debate, but it also provokes a big variety of language strategies that visibly perform the bella or brutta figura in action.
N.B. I renounce on a selected bibliography because I refer to the large area of research on face and politeness, wherein studies on the concept of figura are constantly lacking.
Ireneusz Kida
Different faces of Quechua, Nahuatl and Maya
In my presentation I am going to discuss different faces of the general languages of the three great civilizations of America, namely Quechua, the general language of the Inca Empire, Nahuatl, the general language of the Aztec Empire and Maya, the general language of the Maya Empire. I will discuss the most striking differences and similarities between these languages. I will concentrate upon the following aspects: family members, greetings and farewells, grammar structure, expression of possession, and system of tenses. I will also search for common roots of these languages and languages of Europe.
24 Urszula Kizelbach
Villain or Victim? Two faces of Shylock in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
We are used to thinking of Shakespeare’s Shylock in terms of a villain character – in the play he is presented as a stereotypical, mean and cruel Jew. However, on closer inspection, Shylock’s two different “selves” or “faces” emerge in his relationships with other characters, for example with his clients or the family. Baumeister (1986: v) said that people in social interactions develop two selves: a public self or “the self that is manifested in the presence of others, (…) formed when other people attribute traits and qualities to the individual”, and a private self, understood as our true self or personality, which encompasses our behaviour and feelings “even if other people fail to recognize [them]”. Baumeister’s notions of the public and private self can be associated with Spenser-Oatey’s (2002: 540) social identity face as “[the] sense of public worth” and quality face, which refers to “our sense of personal self-esteem”. I want to argue that Shylock is a tragic character, since the Venetian society stigmatized him as a villain because of his Jewishness, his face wants were not recognized in social interactions. Shylock’s tragedy is even greater because he is fully aware of the injustice done to him by other people, therefore he asks: “Hath not a Jew eyes? / (…) Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, / (…) warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer / as a Christian is? (The Merchant of Venice, 3.1.53, 55, 57-58). Surely, Shylock has two “faces” in the play, the face of a villain, which is exhibited in his social interactions, and the face of a victim, which he keeps to himself. The question is which “face”, public or private, constitutes Shylock’s real face and to what extent.
References Baumeister, Ray F. (ed.). 1986. Public self and private self. New York: Springer. Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 2002. “Managing rapport in talk: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the motivational concerns underlying the management of relations”, Journal of Pragmatics 34: 529-545.
25 Marcin Kucznok
The concept of FACE as anthropopathism of GOD in the Old Testament
The aim of the presentation is to analyze the concept of GOD'S FACE functioning as a means for anthropopathisation of God in the Old Testament. According to biblical scholars, anthropopathism along with anthropomorphisms constitute the metaphorical means for personification of God in the Bible (Szlaga 1986). It means that in the biblical language, God is perceived as a human being by referring either to His appearance (anthropomorhisms), or feelings, attitudes and ways of interaction with people (anthropopathisms). Interestingly, from the linguistic perspective, the concept of FACE may function in the language as a metonymy for emotions (Bogdanowska-Jakubowska 2010). The Old Testament exhibits numerous instances of the application of the concept of GOD'S FACE to express the variety of God's feelings and attitudes towards people. The range of God's emotions expressed by means of His FACE involves both positive feelings, such as joy, happiness, and the negative ones, such as sadness or anger. Moreover, GOD'S FACE supports people, protects and blesses people, or scares and destroys them. Additionally, the cognitive analysis allows to identify various types of metaphor- metonymy interaction involving the concept of GOD'S FACE.
References Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, E. 2010. FACE. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 2003. Metaphors We Live By. With a New Afterword. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kövecses, Z. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McFague, S. (1985). Metaphorical Theology. Models of God in Religious Language. Second printing. Augsburg: Fortress Publishers. Szlaga, J. (ed.). 1986. Wstęp ogólny do Pisma Świętego. Poznań: Pallotinum. Wierzbicka, A. 1999. Emotions across Languages and Cultures. Diversity and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
26 Joanna Nijakowska
Metadiscourse and (im)politeness: Converging, diverging, supplementing analytic frameworks in written academic discourse?
A major premise of metadiscourse framework (e.g. Hyland, 2000, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2009; Hyland & Tse, 2004), that written academic discourse is a social enterprise which involves construing interpersonal bonds between its participants, serves as a point of departure and an analytic prompt to justify the application of politeness framework (Brown & Levinson, [1978]/1987) with reformulations) and impoliteness framework (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 1996, 2010, 2011; Culpeper et al., 2003) to the study of written discourse. Viewed from such an inviting perspective (im)politeness seems to materialize as a natural and legitimate component of the W-R interaction that holds the potential to add some important insight into the description and understanding of this kind of interaction. My attempt in this paper, on a theoretical plane, is to indicate how (im)politeness strategies that writers apply to develop relations and create bonds with their readers intertwine and intertwist with metadiscourse framework. Some of (im)politeness strategies and their linguistic realizations seem to be convergent with metadiscourse categories. However, (im)politeness tools also prove effective in capturing certain aspects of writer-reader interaction not explicitly covered by the metadiscourse categories. In this way (im)politeness theory can potentially enrich and add to our understanding of the writer-reader interaction patterns in academic writing and to supplement the potential picture of the writer-reader interaction emerging from the metadiscourse description.
References Bousfield, D. (2008) Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. (1987 [1978]) Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J. (1996) Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25, 349–367. Culpeper, J. (2010) Conventionalised impoliteness formulae. Journal of Pragmatics 42, 3232–3245. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.05.007 Culpeper, J. (2011) Impoliteness. Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D. and Wichmann, A. (2003) Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35, 1545–1579. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00118-2 Hyland, K. (2000) Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interactions in Academic Writing. London: Longman. Hyland, K. (2005a) Representing readers in writing: Student and expert practices. Linguistics and Education 16, 363–377. doi:10.1016/j.linged.2006.05.002 Hyland, K. (2005b) Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies 7 (2), 173–192. doi: 10.1177/1461445605050365 Hyland, K. (2005c) Metadiscourse: Exploring Writing in Interaction. London: Continuum. Hyland, K. (2009) Academic Discourse. London: Continuum International Publishing. 27 Hyland, K. and Tse, P. (2004) Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal. Applied Linguistics 25 (2), 156– 177.
Jair Antonio de Oliveira
Pragmatics of Brazilian Politeness (the voices of violence and cordiality)
In a survey conducted in the archives of academic theses and dissertations in the Department of Personnel of Higher Education of Brazil (CAPES) I found that most studies that address the linguistic politeness in Brazil follows the same authors and theories: Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), Goffman (1959, 1967), Lakoff (1973, 1977), Grice (1975), Leech (1983), Wierzbicka (1985), Watts (1992), Labov (1972), Elias (1978), Bourdieau (1977 ), Blum-Kulka (1987,1990), among others. I also noticed that the Brazilian research using theories developed in other cultures do not explain satisfactorily the moral and political aspects that politeness have in our country, particularly in the use of language of people belonging to the economically less privileged social layers and placed "fringe "of consumption. With this in mind, I plan to use the ideas of "friendliness", "Brazilian way" and "miscegenation" to demonstrate that politeness and violence are two sides of the same coin in the "voices" of people excluded and a hallmark of politeness Brazilian (Buarque de Holanda, 1956; Ortiz, 1985; Barbosa, 1992; DaMatta, 1984, 1997; Moita Lopes, 2006; Rajagopalan, 2001, 2003).
Keywords: Pragmatics - Politeness - Culture - Violence.
28 Elsa Pic, Gregory Furmaniak
Questions and facework: Research articles and popular science articles compared
This study, based on a 1,000,000-word interdisciplinary corpus of British English, is part of a research project on the grammatical properties of research articles (RAs) and popular science articles (PAs). Of particular interest are the grammatical devices whose function is primarily intersubjective, as they reflect the difference in interpersonal relationships between RAs, where experts address other experts, and PAs, where experts address laypeople. This discrepancy in targeted audience involves different face-saving strategies. Although RAs and PAs are non-interactional genres where questions are not employed prototypically, their use in academic writing is known to favour reader engagement, which suggests Brown & Levinson (1987)’s analysis of questions as face-maintaining tools can be extended to RAs and PAs. In the corpus, interrogatives are twice as frequent in PAs as in RAs. This is explained through a detailed investigation of their syntactic, pragmatic and rhetorical properties that also takes into account their contribution to authors’ face-saving strategies. It appears that questions in RAs are only used for argumentative purposes while they are used for a wider range of purposes (explaining, guiding the reader, making the text vivid) in PAs. We argue the similarities and differences are related to the ethos of the two genres. In both RAs and PAs, questions are used to hedge the writer’s view or to object to other experts’ opinions, thereby paying negative face to both reader and writer. Indeed, authors of PAs also write with experts in mind and adopt similar negative-face strategies. However, in RAs, too much explaining or guiding might be regarded as face-threatening and questions contributing to such acts are avoided. By contrast, PAs make extensive use of questions in such contexts either to redress the potential FTAs of explaining or guiding, or to save the reader’s positive face by making the text more vivid.
References Brown, P. & S. C. Levinson (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ducrot, O. and J.C. Anscombre (1981). Interrogation et argumentation, Langue française 52, 5-22. Fløttum, K. (ed.) (2007) Language and discipline perspectives on academic discourse. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Han, C-H. (2002) Interpreting interrogatives as rhetorical questions. Lingua 112, 201-229. Hyland, K. (2002) What do they mean? Questions in academic writing. Text 22 (4), 529-557. Rohde, H. (2006) Rhetorical questions as redundant interrogatives. San Diego Linguistics Papers 2, 134-168. Varttala, T. (2001) Hedging in scientifically oriented discourse: Exploring variation according to discipline and intended audience. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tampere.
29 Adam Pluszczyk
An analysis of hedging expressions in English and Spanish spoken discourse
The term hedge was coined by G. Lakoff (1972:195) as “it was Lakoff (1972) who had the greatest initial impact, and it was his papers that popularized the concept” (Fraser, 2010). In due course, it was defined in a number of other ways in the linguistic research literature and hedging has become more defined. Nevertheless, there is still no consensus among linguists as to the reliable definition of a hedge which would encompass all approaches. Generally, hedging constitutes a rhetorical strategy which is used to lessen the impact of an utterance and can be found in both spoken and written language, especially in scientific discourse but not only. According to Fraser (2010:201), hedging is a rhetorical strategy used to convey a lack of full commitment since “by including a particular term, choosing a particular structure, or imposing a specific prosodic form on the utterance, the speaker signals a lack of a full commitment… simply put, it is attenuation of the full value which the utterance would have…” (Fraser, 2010:201). The purpose of the study is to investigate hedging expressions in both English and Spanish. We will attempt to register the types of hedges and the occurrence of hedging expressions in spoken discourse, in conversational settings reflecting everyday life. In order to conduct the investigation, we will focus on selected films in both English and Spanish. We will observe how hedges are used and applied by discerning between strategies and devices and showing linguistic constructions and items which are used as hedges. Additionally, we will aim at analyzing the functions of hedges used in various contexts as they can vary depending on particular circumstances, the speaker’s attitude, the speaker’s intentions, the audience etc. For instance, hedging might indicate that one is not committed to what he / she says. Hence, one might use hedges in order to reduce or mitigate the forcefulness of an utterance. At other times, hedges serve for indicating caution, humility or politeness. Thus we will also analyze hedging strategies and devices in terms of politeness. We will verify if and if yes - to what extent hedges are correlated with politeness – both positive and negative politeness strategies.
Key words: hedging, spoken discourse, pragmatic function, politeness strategies
Maria Smyl
30 Omoiyari – the key word of harmonious Japanese communication
Omoiyari is known as one of the most ideal ways of behavior in Japanese society. This word is often translated in Japanese - English dictionaries as “consideration”, ”sympathy”, “empathy”, “compassion”, “thoughtful” and “sensitive”. Other senses, as Rohlen claims, are rendered through a combination of English words like “concerned sensitivity”, “empathetic sensing”, “concerned empathy” and “concerned emphatic kindness”. However as Travis (1992) has shown in her work, none of these equivalents can grasp the full meaning of omoiyari, which is described by Japanese primary school’s programs in the following way: “Omoiyari tte nan darou. Doushitara ii no.” (“What is the omoiyari? What is right?”). Lebra (1976) defines it as a way of harmonious Japanese communication and coexistence with others. Omoyari, just like other ways of behavior, has to be taught to the children by their families and schools. In this paper I would like to take Lebra’s and Japanese teaching programs and books as a starting point for the discussion of omoiyari. Specifically, I focus on the way Japanese teaching programs and books like “Katei kyouiku techou” (“Family education agenda”) try to clarify the concept to Japanese children and non-Japanese speakers. Furthermore I would like to answer the question whether omoiyari is a unique concept of communication, typical only for the Japanese language or it is something we can also find in Polish culture and discourse. To find out the answer I discuss the results of my research on how Japanese people do omoiyari and describe typical reaction of Polish people in the same situations.
Agnieszka Solska
31 Between politeness and impoliteness: the face-work of punning
In this paper I would like to explore the interpersonal dimension of punning, the practice of using a polysemous or a homophonic word in such a way as to activate two or more of its meanings (as in Your argument is sound – nothing but sound) in order to create a humorous or rhetorical effect. Drawing on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) original face-saving view of politeness and Culpeper’s (2005) model of intentional impoliteness, I would like to investigate the face-work of punning, i.e. the role using puns may have in enacting, supporting, or challenging face understood as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman 1955: 213). Using a wide range of examples from different types of discourse, both written and spoken, I hope to demonstrate that punning is a communicative strategy which is essentially ambivalent in nature since it can be applied both as a means to maintain social harmony, or conversely, as a method of challenging or even damaging the face of the addressee or some third party.
References Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness In Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brown, Penelope and Steven. C. Levinson 1987. Politeness: Some Universals In Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25(3): 349-367. Goffman, Erving. 1955. On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements of social interaction’ Psychiatry. Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18(3): 213:231. Solska, Agnieszka. 2012. The relevance of the juxtaposition of meanings in puns. In: W. Skrzypczak, T. Fojt, S. Wacewicz and W. Skrzypczak (Eds.) Exploring Language Through Contrast. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 184-200.
Agnieszka Stanecka
32 “Coconuts, Bounty bars, Oreo biscuits” – multi-faced London in postcolonial novels
There is always one chance to make the first impression. The way we behave, the voice of the speaker or his/her appearance can influence the further relation or communication with the interlocutor. What if he or she turns out to be different to what we had expected? What if the person’s face and personality result from his/her heritage and it is impossible to hide our disappointment? In multicultural London the body or face stigmatized by colour frequently turn out to be problematic. The protagonists of postcolonial novels often try to hide their “darkness” in order to avoid conflicts with white Londoners. Blurred identity of postcolonial subjects places them among those of a different category. Nevertheless, there are also those who seem to be fascinated by what Gautam Malkani calls, “Oreo biscuit” appearance. Although the reasons of the attraction become the secret Malkani hides to the end of the novel, the journey to multi racial London is worth the lie we are served with.
Kamilla Termińska
Gramatykalizacja „twarzy” w hebrajszczyźnie biblijnej
33 Już na poziomie leksyki „twarz” w hebrajszczyźnie biblijnej sprawia problemy. Stanowi ona część wspólną znaczeń aż trzech (wg innych badaczy – czterech) spokrewnionych ze sobą leksemów; `af, pe/pi, pane(h), ale tylko dla ostatniego z nich jest wysunięta na czoło hasła słownikowego jako sens prymarny. Każdy z tych leksemów, obok twarzy, oznacza jeszcze jej poszczególne elementy: nos, usta, widoczną dla obserwatora powierzchnię uznawanej za najważniejszą, najbardziej reprezentatywną część ciała istoty żywej - głowy. Każdy też jest nośnikiem tropicznego bogactwa. Metonimicznie twarz oznacza osobę – jej namacalną obecność. Jako nośnik metafor antropocentrycznych buduje dwa zasadnicze obrazy: po pierwsze, istniejącego niezależnie od woli osoby ekranu, na którym wyświetlany jest jej pejzaż wewnętrzny: intencje, emocje, doświadczenia, po drugie zaś, narzędzia, którym można manipulować w określonym celu. Zjawisko to nie jest obce językowej kulturze judeochrześcijańskiej Europy. Zadomowiona jest w niej również gramatykalizacja rzeczowników „twarz”/”oblicze” (np. w polszczyźnie: stanąć w obliczu niebezpieczeństwa/ twarzą w twarz niebezpieczeństwu). Hebrajszczyzna biblijna jednak charakteryzuje się tak wielkim natężeniem i rozmaitością konstrukcji, w których następuje przemiana autosemantycznego nomen w wyrażenie synsemantyczne, że warto uczynić go tematem referatu, chociaż mógłby stanowić przedmiot wielkiej monografii.
Magdalena Varga
Aap kitna kamaate hain? „How much money do you earn?” The Indian way of politeness
34 The title question may seem to the Western hearer strange, insolent or even aggressive. Most of us would judge it impolite and think that our interlocutor doesn’t observe the social niceties as well as breaks the rules of verbal etiquette. What is more, being convinced that our face has just been threatened we could pay our conversation partner in his own coin and this would be the worst decision ever. Language must be used with a great care and the inhabitants of Indian subcontinent know this rule better than anyone. That is why, especially during the first meeting, they ask their interlocutor – doesn’t matter if Indian or not - many, from our point of view perhaps inappropriate, questions; they simply try to get to know their (and their conversation partner) place in the social order. Only if they do so, they will be able to use proper pronouns and verb forms as well as choose appropriate honorifics or polite phrases. The main goal of this paper is to outline a complicated connection between family, caste, or broadly speaking - community and religion in India (Kachru, 2008) and to show a specificity of their influence on one of the most widely known languages of subcontinent, it means Hindi. The successive paragraphs will describe all of the most important factors which are crucial to Indian concept of ‘face’ (mũh), they will also present an arsenal of grammatical and lexical measures and politeness strategies allowing Hindi speaking people to manage multilevel socio-cultural relations and to coexist with each other more or less peacefully. Finally, the nuances that should be taken into account while making conversation with Hindi speaking partner will be discussed.
References Kachru, Yamuna. 2008. “Language in social and ethnic interaction,” in Language in South Asia, edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, S. N. Sridhar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Jiayi Wang
Face in official intercultural interaction
This research explores face in Sino-American official interaction with a data-driven approach. Using the empirical data of a one-month-long Chinese delegation trip to the United States and taking a ‘life cycle’ perspective, the study contributes to our understanding of the 35 conceptualisation and operationalisation of face. The data revealed that face was a central interpreting frame (Grainger, Mills & Sibanda, 2010) for the Chinese, and Americans and Chinese had different interpretations of the same interaction. My analysis makes three theoretical claims. First, as a multi-layered image, face exists at both individual and group levels. Second, face can be quantifiable (Ho, 1994), and non-politeness-triggered proactive face-enhancement forms a vital relational strategy. Third, face sustains over time (Chang & Holt, 1994) and across encounters. I thus argue for the value of a longitudinal study of face and dynamics thereof. These claims are supported by evidence from twenty-hour-long video recordings and four-hour-long audio recordings of official intercultural interaction including meetings and banquets, notes of twelve evening meetings, forty-one post-event and post-trip interviews and ten questionnaire responses.
References Chang, H.-C., & Holt, G. R. (1994). A Chinese perspective on face as inter-relational concern. In S. Ting-Toomey (Ed.), The challenge of facework: Cross-cultural and interpersonal issues (pp. 95-132). Albany: State University of New York Press. Grainger, K., Mills, S., & Sibanda, M. (2010). “Just tell us what to do”: Southern African face and its relevance to intercultural communication. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2158-2171. Ho, D. Y.-f. (1994). Face dynamics: From conceptualization to measurement. In S. Ting-Toomey (Ed.), The challenge of facework: Cross-cultural and interpersonal issues (pp. 269-286). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Krystyna Warchał
The scholar’s face: Selected interpersonal strategies in research article introductions
Often associated with a dry exchange of verifiable information between invisible experts and descriptive, non-emotional, monologic style of exposition, written academic discourse has been shown to be an inherently dialogic undertaking, which involves negotiation of meanings and 36 concepts between the writer and the reader rather than a one-way transfer of data (e.g., Myers, 1989; Swales, 2004; Hyland, 2000, 2005). This Bakhtinian idea of language as a product of interaction between the producer and the receiver is present also in the apparently faceless and impersonal research article, where questions, doubts and criticism on the part of the knowledgeable (and inquisitive) audience are anticipated and disarmed before they actually appear (Swales, 1990). As any other social encounter, this type of academic communication is subject to various norms and conventions, such as the need to establish one’s own credibility as an expert in the field, to present one’s research as a valuable addition to the existing knowledge, and to confirm one’s status as an insider – an experienced member of the academic community – by displaying respect for others’ work, their contribution to the field and their professional self- image. This paper refers to the concept of face and face-work to look into the ways academic authors attempt to satisfy some of those needs in introductory sections of research articles in the field of linguistics written in English for international audiences. It bases on the Create-a- Research-Space model (Swales, 1981, 1990) of rhetorical moves to investigate the linguistic choices the authors make in order to indicate a gap in the existing knowledge, to announce how their own research intends to fill it in, and to minimize the risk to face – both their readers’ and their own – these rhetorical moves potentially entail.
References Hyland, Ken. 2000. Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in Academic Writing. Harlow, Essex: Longman. Hyland, Ken. 2005. Metadiscourse: Exploring interaction in writing. London: Continuum. Myers, Greg. 1989. The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics 10(1): 1–35. Swales, John M. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, John M. 2004. Research genres: Explorations and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yasuhisa Watanabe
Face as a measure of foreign political relations: Seeing international relation through Japanese analytic articles
Analysis of political and international relations in Japanese newspaper and web journal articles often use ‘face’, or in Japanese, kao, mentsu, taimen (Yabuuchi, 2004), as well as ‘place’ tachiba (Haugh, 2005) to explain the internal workings of political relations, both in Japan and overseas. For example, Tanaka (2011) analyses that the series of non-activation of nuclear power plants in
37 Japan is a result of the Prime Minister crashing the faces of local Mayors. This is because the face of the Mayor who has convinced and allowed the re-start of the local nuclear power plant is smashed in front of his constituents when the PM ordered stress test of all nuclear power plants announcing they are not safe (Tanaka, 2011). The Mayor will be reluctant to allow because of fear that his face will be lost again. Similar description is given to explain relationships between non-Japanese political players, highlighting different aspects of face construals that the analysts think is important in the given situations. However, these views are strongly influenced by Japanese emic understanding of face, which both the analysts and the readers share. Although Goffman’s (1967) original conceptualisation of face is borrowed from the East, it is still questionable that the Japanese emic description of face can accurately describe face concerns in other cultures. Whether the construals of face are pan-cultural is not yet determined (Spencer-Oatey, 2005). However, as argued by Haugh (2009) an emic view of face can be a start of theorizing face in interaction, or in this case, face as appeared as claimed in public through various talks and actions. In this paper, I will examine whether the view of face imposed by the Japanese analyst on political players described from different cultural background is valid, and contribute to the on- going debate on what constitute one’s face which can potentially raise collisions in international relations.
References Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-to-face Behavior. New York: Pantheon Books. Haugh, M. (2005). The importance of "place" in Japanese politeness: Implications for cross-cultural and intercultural analyses. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(1), 41-68. Haugh, M. (2009). Face and interaction. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini & M. Haugh (Eds.), Face, communication and social interaction. London: Equinox. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2005). (Im)politeness, face and perceptions of rapport: unpackaging their bases and interrelationships. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 95-120. Tanaka, S. (2011). Nihon mo datsu-genpatsu ni mukau (Japan will also head to abolishing nuclear power plants) Retrieved 30/07/2012, 2012, from tanakanews.com/110708nuclear.htm Yabuuchi, A. (2004). Face in Chinese, Japanese and U.S. American Cultures. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 14(2), 263-299.
Urszula Wieczorek
Searching for God's face in religious language
The concept of God's face appears as a natural consequence of accepting the view that Christian God is a Person (Creator, Father, Messiah, the Beloved, etc.). It may seem a trivial statement, but not all religious beliefs of the world personify God as the Other. Religious language in the Christian tradition is a history of the human desire to see God „face to face”; this, however, is not possible in this life, as to see Him means to die. Yet, in the religious context men describe their relationship with the Other by analogy to human relationships and human communication. There 38 is simply no other way of communicating with Him but through the body. Face, being the „mirror of the soul”, is one of the central elements in this process. In this paper I propose to analyse some literal and metaphorical usages of the concept of face in religious language, which, as I hope, will shed some light on the meaning of the Christian concept of God and also, on the nature of the relationship between Him and man. Face, as the most natural part of the body that shows one's emotional states, is also an important source of information about the emotional aspect of this relationship. It appeals to the eyes, unlike other elements of this metaphorical mapping related to face (voice, kisses, lips). Sensory language, so characteristic of Christian imagery, is helpful in understanding that body is an inseparable aspect of our existence both in this world and the one to come.
List of participants
Name Affiliation e-mail address Beata Abdallah – Krzepkowska University of Silesia [email protected] Nisreen Naji Al-khawaldeh University of Bedfordshire, UK [email protected] Ágnes Apró Budapest Business School, [email protected] College of Business Administration, Zalaegerszeg, Hungary Marzieh Bahsirpour Aligarh Muslim University, India [email protected] Katarzyna Bańka University of Silesia [email protected] Francesca Bargiela-Chappini University of Warwick, UK [email protected] Paulina Biały University of Silesia [email protected]
39 Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska University of Silesia [email protected] Maciej Buczowski Adam Mickiewicz University, [email protected] Poznań Iwona Dronia University of Silesia [email protected] Marta Dynel University of Łódź [email protected] Gregory Furmaniak Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – [email protected] Paris 3, France Weronika Gasior University of Limerick, Ireland [email protected] Gudrun Held Universität Salzburg, Austria [email protected] Ireneusz Kida University of Silesia [email protected] Urszula Kizelbach Adam Mickiewicz University, [email protected] Poznań Marcin Kuczok University of Silesia [email protected] Andrzej Łyda University of Silesia [email protected] Joanna Nijakowska University of Lódź [email protected] Jair Antonio de Oliveira Federal University of Paraná, [email protected] Brazil [email protected] Elsa Pic Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – [email protected] Paris 3, France Adam Pluszczyk University of Silesia [email protected] Edyta Rachwał PWSW Przemyśl [email protected] Maria Sifianou University of Athens, Greece [email protected] Maria Smyl University of Silesia [email protected] Agnieszka Solska University of Silesia [email protected] [email protected] Helen Spencer-Oatey University of Warwick, UK [email protected] Agnieszka Stanecka Jan Kochanowski University, [email protected] Piotrków Trybunalski Kamilla Termińska University of Silesia [email protected] Magdalena Varga Jagiellonian University, Kraków [email protected] Jiayi Wang University of Warwick, UK [email protected] Krystyna Warchał University of Silesia [email protected] Yasuhisa Watanabe University of Melbourne, [email protected] Australia Urszula Wieczorek University of Silesia [email protected]
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
CONFERENCE VENUE:
The Modern Languages Centre Faculty of Philology, University of Silesia ul. Grota Roweckiego 5
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