With the development of science and technology, communication among people from different countries and different cultures is more frequent and important. Our world is multicultural. When we communicate with people from another culture, we are not only affected by the difference of language, but also disturbed by the difference of culture. To ensure a successful understanding and communication, we should pay attention to politeness, one of the most universal phenomena in intercultural communication. Politeness is a very important part of every national culture. When we communicate with others, we should be polite. Polite and proper form of language helps to establish and maintain harmonious social relationships. It may lead to pragmatic failure when people from different cultures use polite forms to communicate with each other. English is Chinese students’ foreign language, and we are not very familiar with its language rules. When we make some grammatical errors, it’s easy to be found. And it’s also could be forgiven, because we are “foreigners” to English. If we can speak English fluently, but we don’t pay attention to the context and speak English improperly, we will be considered to be impolite, and then it will break the atmosphere of the whole communication. Therefore, it is necessary and important to study pragmatic failure in politeness language.
……（省略）
This paper makes an analysis of the cultural difference of politeness language in intercultural communication according to an investigation of Freshmen English Majors’ Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Competence in Politeness, on the basis of some theories. And it also proposes some suggestions on how to improve students’ pragmatic competence.
1 Theoretical Background
1.1 Intercultural pragmatic failure
1.1.1 Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication is “the communication between people whose cultural perceptions and distinct enough to alter the communication event. Frequently, the term cross-cultural communication is used when referring to communication between people from different cultures” (Samovar, 2000:48).
Nowadays, cross-cultural communication is more frequent and important in the world. In order to communicate with people from different cultures successfully, we must improve our intercultural communicative competence. Generally speaking, intercultural communicative competence is the competence and quality that a successful cross-cultural communication needs (Chen Junsen, Fan Weiwei & Zhong Hua, 2006:13-14).
1.1.2 Pragmatic failure
Pragmatics is a new area in linguistics, and intercultural pragmatics is a new-emerged branch of pragmatics. Until now, there have been many linguists and scholars both at home and abroad who have studied intercultural pragmatic failure. Among them, Thomas Jenny plays the most important role at abroad while He Ziran at home.
The term pragmatic failure was first advanced by Thomas Jenny as “the inability to understand what is meant by what is said” (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:677). Pragmatic failure has occurred on any occasion on which H (hearer) perceives the force of S’s (speaker’s) utterance as other than S (speaker) intended s/he should perceive it (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:683). In China, He Ziran reaches the most outstanding achievements in this regard. He has his own different definition. He defined as “failure to achieve the desired communication effect in communication”. (He Ziran, 1988:226).
Pragmatic failure is different from grammar error. “It’s legitimate to speak of grammatical error, since pragmmaticality can be judged according to prescriptive rules (prescriptive for language-teaching purposes, at least), whereas pragmatic competence, as Candlin has observed, ‘entails probable rather than categorical rules.’ The nature of pragmatic ambivalence is such that it is not possible to say that the pragmatic force of an utterance is ‘wrong’. All we can say is that it failed to achieve the speaker’s goal” (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:684).
There are two types of pragmatic failure: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.
1.1.2.1 Pragmalinguistic failure
Pragmalinguistic failure occurs when the pragmatic force mapped on to a linguistic token or structure is systematically different from that normally assigned to it by native speakers (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:696).
Pragmalinguistic failure may arise out of the following sources: pragmalinguistic transfer, pragmatic ambiguity and teaching-induced errors.
The pragmalinguistic failure occurs when the speaker can’t correctly interpret the words, phrases or sentence patterns. For example:
A (to fellow passenger on a long-distance coach): Ask the driver what time we get to Birmingham.
B (to diver): Could you tell me when we get to Birmingham, please?
C (the driver): Don’t worry, love, it’s a big place---- I don’t think it’s possible to miss it!
(Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:682)
In this case, the drive understood that B’s utterance as a request for information----“What time will we get to Birmingham?”, but misunderstood the intended sense of when.
Pragmalinguistic failure usually also occurs when Chinese people respond to the English tag question in a wrong way. For example, in Chinese, shi is an affirmative answer to the whole question no matter this tag question is in a positive or negative form, while in English “yes” is just confirms the basic part of the verb and doesn’t include the negative structure.
1.1.2.2 Sociopragmatic failure
Sociopragmatic failure occurs when interlocutors don’t understand or ignore the social and cultural differences between themselves. As we know, language is a reflection of culture. When people from different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other, there inevitably occur some misunderstandings between them because of their different social systems, habits and customs, beliefs, values and so on. For example: Mrs. Brown is about fifty years old. One day, she wore a new dress and then a student said, “You look nice and younger wearing this dress.” The student wanted to get the middle-aged teacher’s favor, but this made Mrs. Brown unhappy. Because this made she feel that she was old in speaker’s eyes, only the dress made younger. Or she thought the speaker flattered her. But in Chinese, this topic is absolutely free.
When scholars study pragmatic failure, most of them pay more attention to sociopragmatic failure. It’s the main pragmatic failure. It is usually caused by the inappropriate use of the grade of courtesy and the difference of culture values.
1.2 Pragmatic transfer
Interlanguage Pragmatics is a young discipline. The study and acquisition of the foreign language is easy to be influenced by mother tongue or native language culture, and then the pragmatic transfer appears. Pragmatic transfer is a domain of Interlanguage Pragmatics.
There are two types of pragmatic transfer: pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer.
A pragmalinguistic transfer is “the process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to a particular linguistic material in NL, influences learners’ perception and production of form function mappings in TL”(Kasper, cited in Liu Shaozhong, Liao Fengrong, 2002:37).
The following dialogue between a native English speaker (Speaker A) and a Chinese speaker of English (Speaker B) is a typical case of pragmalingistic transfer.
A: Would you like to go out and have dinner with me tonight?
B: Excuse me, but I’m busy tonight.
In this dialogue, Speaker A gave an invitation to B, expecting B to go to have dinner with him. B refused A directly, and apologized for it before giving an excuse. But B inappropriately used the expression “Excuse me” instead of suitable expressions such as “I’m sorry”. “Excuse me” and “I’m sorry” have the same Chinese meaning “对不起”, but they used in different contexts in English. B failed to use the suitable English expression due to the lack of linguistic means of expression.
A sociopragmatic transfer is a process “operative when the social perceptions underlying language users’ interpretation and performance of linguistic action in TL are influenced by their assessment of subjectively equivalent NL contexts” (Kasper, cited in Liu Shaozhong, Liao Fengrong, 2002:37).
The following dialogue between a native English speaker (Speaker A) and a Chinese speaker of English (Speaker B) is a typical case of pragmalingistic transfer.
A: Your English is really fluent.
B: No, no, my English is still very poor.
(He Ziran & Chen Xinren, 2002:172)
In this dialogue, A praised B’s English. Following Chinese cultural pattern, B answered modestly. This was absolutely suitable to Chinese culture, but not suitable to English culture. It would make A think that his view was denied and he would feel unhappy. In China, when one is praised, he would behave modestly, and often say “哪里,哪里”. But in English culture, when someone praises you, “Thank you” is the most proper response. So in the dialogue, B can reply “Thank you”. This kind of pragmatic transfer, which is due to the cultural differences between Chinese and English cultural paradigms, is what we call “sociopragmatic transfer”.
Pragmatic transfer can also be divided into positive pragmatic transfer and negative pragmatic transfer according to the effect of transference, which plays an important role in communication. Negative transfer of pragmatic is the directly reason which causes pragmatic failure.
The rules of language are different in every culture. When we acquire our mother tongue, we acquire the rules of mother tongue unconsciously at the same time. In the intercultural communication, we are often unconsciously to express our own thought according to the language rules of our native culture. Because we always ignore the difference of cultural background between each other, and we are lake of the understanding of other’s culture and don’t master the language rules of other’s culture. So the “interlanguage” has come into being, and it may cause pragmatic failure. This is what we usually said pragmatic failure which is caused by pragmatic negative transfer. We can use the following figure to summarize:
Pragmatic failure violating the rules of native language violating the norms of
native culture
Pragmatic negative transfer
Pragmatic transfer
The difference between native language and target language
1.3 Politeness principles
Politeness is a hot study in pragmatics. It is a universal phenomenon, and it exists in all cultures.
In the English-speaking culture and the Western world in general, politeness has been closely related to the behaviour typical of a certain social location and a certain social group. To be polite means to live up to a set of conventionalized norms of behaviour (He Zhaoxiong, 1995:3).
In modern Chinese, the equivalent of politeness is limao, which is believed to have evolved in history from the notion of li. Li originally refers to the various rules or practices employed in ancient sacrificial rites. The ancient philosopher and thinker Confucius advocates restoring li, which refers to the social hierarchy and order of the slave system of the Zhou Dynasty. It has ever since become an essential feature of the Chinese notion of politeness and has remained at the core of politeness in the Chinese culture (He Zhaoxiong, 1995:3-4).
Brown & Levinson’s “Face Theory” and Leech’s “Politeness Principle” trigger the past 20 years’ extensive research of politeness. Lots of literatures about politeness put forward many amendments when they agree the two theories basically. And in China, Gu Yueguo proposed “Politeness Principle” according to the characteristics of Chinese culture.
1.3.1 Grice’s Cooperative Principle
In Grice’s opinion, in all verbal communication, in order to achieve specific aims, there is a tacit understanding between the speaker and hearer, a principle that should be obeyed by speaker and hearer. He called this principle as the Cooperative Principle of conversion.
There are four maxims in Cooperative Principle
(1) The maxim of quality
Try to make your contribution one that is true, especially:
a. Do not say what you believe to be false;
b. Do not say that for which you lace adequate evidence;
(2) The maxim of quantity
a. Make your contribution as is required for the current purposes of the exchange;
b. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
(3) The maxim of relevance
Make your contribution relevant.
(4) The maxim of manner
Be perspicuous, and specifically:
a. Avoid obscurity of expression;
b. Avoid ambiguity;
c. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity);
d. Be orderly.
(Yang Xinzhang, 2005:169-170)
If everyone obeys the four maxims strictly, the communication would be the most reasonable and efficient. But in real communication, in order to be polite or something else, the participants often flout the cooperative principle and its maxims. However, the CP fails to give a reason why people are frequently indirect in expressing what they mean, so that they use conversional implication.
1.3.2 Leech’s PP and Gu’s PP
Leech added and enriched Grice’s Cooperative Principle, proposed Politeness Principle which makes up for the lack of Cooperative Principle and increases the expression of politeness.
In describing the Interpersonal Rhetoric, Leech has concentrated on the Cooperative Principle and one maxim of the Politeness Principle----Tact Maxim. “Apart from Tact Maxim, there are a number of maxims dealing with polite behavior” “politeness concerns a relationship between two participants whom we call self and other” (Leech, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:533-534).
Leech proposed six maxims of Politeness Principle:
(1) Tact maxim (in impositives and commissives)
a. Minimize cost to other
b. Maximize benefit to other
(2) Generosity maxim (in impositives and commissives)
a. Minimize benefit to self
b. Maximize cost to self
(3) Approbation maxim (in expressives and assertives)
a. Minimize dispraise of other
b. Maximize praise of other
(4) Modesty maxim (in expressives and assertives)
a. Minimize praise of self
b. Maximize dispraise of self
(5) Agreement maxim (in assertives)
a. Minimize disagreement between self and other
b. Maximize agreement between self and other
(6) Sympathy maxim (in assertives)
a. Minimize antipathy between self and other
b. Maximize sympathy between self and other
(Leech, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:534-535)
In these six maxims, we can find (1) & (2) and (3) & (4) are pairs. The difference is that (1) and (3) considerate from other’s benefits and loses, while (2) and (4) considerate from self’s benefits and loses. We also can see, (1) a and (2) a is not different from each other naturally. If a sentence follows (1) a, and it must be follow (2) a. Similarly, if a sentence follows (1) b, it must be follow (2) b. And the relationship of the maxim of (3) and the maxim of (4) is different from the relationship of the maxim of (1) and the maxim of (2). Praise or dispraise other will not cause to dispraise or praise self. The maxim of (5) and the maxim of (6) have no relation with each other.
Leech notes that not all the maxims are equally important. Tact maxim appears to be a more powerful constraint on conversational behaviour than generosity maxim, while approbation maxim is more important than modesty maxim. And he suggests that “politeness is focused more strongly on other than on self” (Leech, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:536).
Leech’s Politeness Principle is proposed according to western culture. Some of them are not suitable to Chinese culture, because China has its own culture characteristics which are quite different from western culture. Among Chinese scholars, the one who has contributed significantly to the study of politeness should be mentioned Prof. Gu Yueguo. He has proposed four sides of politeness: respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement (Li Yue’e & Fan Hongxiong, 1998:29).
According to the characteristic of Chinese culture, Gu Yueguo has proposed five politeness maxims:
(1) Self-denigration Maxim
a. Denigrate self;
b. Elevate other;
(2) Address Term Maxim
Address your interlocutor with an appropriate address form;
(3) Refinement Maxim
Use refined language, including the use of euphemisms and indirectness, and avoid foul language;
(4) Agreement Maxim
Maximize agreement and harmony between interlocutors, and minimize disagreement between them;
(5) Virtues-words-deeds Maxim
Minimize cost and maximized benefit to other at the motivational level, and maximize benefit received and minimize cost to self at the conversational level.
(Gu, 1992: 11-14)
Comparing Leech’s PP with Gu’s PP, we can find some similarity between them. For instance, Tact Maxim and Generosity Maxim of Leech’s PP are similar with Virtues-words-deeds Maxim of Gu’s PP. However, there are still some differences between them, because of the different cultural backgrounds. Self-denigration Maxim has the most Chinese characteristics. For example, a Chinese invites an English to go to his house to have a dinner. The English says: “How Sumptuous and delicious the meal is. Thank you very much!” The Chinese host would reply as following: “Oh, no, no. It’s just a simple meal.” When Chinese people are praised, they will deny other’s praise and denigrate self to show modesty. But the English-speaking people would think you are impolite because of denying their praise.
1.3.3 Brown & Levinson’s Face Theory
Face is something that can be lost, maintained and enhanced, a kind of the speaker’s public self-image (Zhang Maizeng, 1998:257).
Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory is generally believed to be the most detailed and influential account of politeness to date. In their view, politeness is that people adopt a kind of language strategy to reach the purpose of leaving face to other in communication. Their Face Theory contains three basic notions: face, face threatening acts (FTAS) and politeness strategies.
Face, in Brown & Levinson’s theory, refers to the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself. It consists in two related aspects:
a. Positive face: the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others.
b. Negative face: the want of every “competent adult member” that his actions be unimpeded by others. With the development of science and technology, communication among people from different countries and different cultures is more frequent and important. Our world is multicultural. When we communicate with people from another culture, we are not only affected by the difference of language, but also disturbed by the difference of culture. To ensure a successful understanding and communication, we should pay attention to politeness, one of the most universal phenomena in intercultural communication. Politeness is a very important part of every national culture. When we communicate with others, we should be polite. Polite and proper form of language helps to establish and maintain harmonious social relationships. It may lead to pragmatic failure when people from different cultures use polite forms to communicate with each other. English is Chinese students’ foreign language, and we are not very familiar with its language rules. When we make some grammatical errors, it’s easy to be found. And it’s also could be forgiven, because we are “foreigners” to English. If we can speak English fluently, but we don’t pay attention to the context and speak English improperly, we will be considered to be impolite, and then it will break the atmosphere of the whole communication. Therefore, it is necessary and important to study pragmatic failure in politeness language.
……（省略）
This paper makes an analysis of the cultural difference of politeness language in intercultural communication according to an investigation of Freshmen English Majors’ Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Competence in Politeness, on the basis of some theories. And it also proposes some suggestions on how to improve students’ pragmatic competence.
1 Theoretical Background
1.1 Intercultural pragmatic failure
1.1.1 Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication is “the communication between people whose cultural perceptions and distinct enough to alter the communication event. Frequently, the term cross-cultural communication is used when referring to communication between people from different cultures” (Samovar, 2000:48).
Nowadays, cross-cultural communication is more frequent and important in the world. In order to communicate with people from different cultures successfully, we must improve our intercultural communicative competence. Generally speaking, intercultural communicative competence is the competence and quality that a successful cross-cultural communication needs (Chen Junsen, Fan Weiwei & Zhong Hua, 2006:13-14).
1.1.2 Pragmatic failure
Pragmatics is a new area in linguistics, and intercultural pragmatics is a new-emerged branch of pragmatics. Until now, there have been many linguists and scholars both at home and abroad who have studied intercultural pragmatic failure. Among them, Thomas Jenny plays the most important role at abroad while He Ziran at home.
The term pragmatic failure was first advanced by Thomas Jenny as “the inability to understand what is meant by what is said” (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:677). Pragmatic failure has occurred on any occasion on which H (hearer) perceives the force of S’s (speaker’s) utterance as other than S (speaker) intended s/he should perceive it (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:683). In China, He Ziran reaches the most outstanding achievements in this regard. He has his own different definition. He defined as “failure to achieve the desired communication effect in communication”. (He Ziran, 1988:226).
Pragmatic failure is different from grammar error. “It’s legitimate to speak of grammatical error, since pragmmaticality can be judged according to prescriptive rules (prescriptive for language-teaching purposes, at least), whereas pragmatic competence, as Candlin has observed, ‘entails probable rather than categorical rules.’ The nature of pragmatic ambivalence is such that it is not possible to say that the pragmatic force of an utterance is ‘wrong’. All we can say is that it failed to achieve the speaker’s goal” (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:684).
There are two types of pragmatic failure: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure.
1.1.2.1 Pragmalinguistic failure
Pragmalinguistic failure occurs when the pragmatic force mapped on to a linguistic token or structure is systematically different from that normally assigned to it by native speakers (Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:696).
Pragmalinguistic failure may arise out of the following sources: pragmalinguistic transfer, pragmatic ambiguity and teaching-induced errors.
The pragmalinguistic failure occurs when the speaker can’t correctly interpret the words, phrases or sentence patterns. For example:
A (to fellow passenger on a long-distance coach): Ask the driver what time we get to Birmingham.
B (to diver): Could you tell me when we get to Birmingham, please?
C (the driver): Don’t worry, love, it’s a big place---- I don’t think it’s possible to miss it!
(Thomas, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:682)
In this case, the drive understood that B’s utterance as a request for information----“What time will we get to Birmingham?”, but misunderstood the intended sense of when.
Pragmalinguistic failure usually also occurs when Chinese people respond to the English tag question in a wrong way. For example, in Chinese, shi is an affirmative answer to the whole question no matter this tag question is in a positive or negative form, while in English “yes” is just confirms the basic part of the verb and doesn’t include the negative structure.
1.1.2.2 Sociopragmatic failure
Sociopragmatic failure occurs when interlocutors don’t understand or ignore the social and cultural differences between themselves. As we know, language is a reflection of culture. When people from different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other, there inevitably occur some misunderstandings between them because of their different social systems, habits and customs, beliefs, values and so on. For example: Mrs. Brown is about fifty years old. One day, she wore a new dress and then a student said, “You look nice and younger wearing this dress.” The student wanted to get the middle-aged teacher’s favor, but this made Mrs. Brown unhappy. Because this made she feel that she was old in speaker’s eyes, only the dress made younger. Or she thought the speaker flattered her. But in Chinese, this topic is absolutely free.
When scholars study pragmatic failure, most of them pay more attention to sociopragmatic failure. It’s the main pragmatic failure. It is usually caused by the inappropriate use of the grade of courtesy and the difference of culture values.
1.2 Pragmatic transfer
Interlanguage Pragmatics is a young discipline. The study and acquisition of the foreign language is easy to be influenced by mother tongue or native language culture, and then the pragmatic transfer appears. Pragmatic transfer is a domain of Interlanguage Pragmatics.
There are two types of pragmatic transfer: pragmalinguistic transfer and sociopragmatic transfer.
A pragmalinguistic transfer is “the process whereby the illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to a particular linguistic material in NL, influences learners’ perception and production of form function mappings in TL”(Kasper, cited in Liu Shaozhong, Liao Fengrong, 2002:37).
The following dialogue between a native English speaker (Speaker A) and a Chinese speaker of English (Speaker B) is a typical case of pragmalingistic transfer.
A: Would you like to go out and have dinner with me tonight?
B: Excuse me, but I’m busy tonight.
In this dialogue, Speaker A gave an invitation to B, expecting B to go to have dinner with him. B refused A directly, and apologized for it before giving an excuse. But B inappropriately used the expression “Excuse me” instead of suitable expressions such as “I’m sorry”. “Excuse me” and “I’m sorry” have the same Chinese meaning “对不起”, but they used in different contexts in English. B failed to use the suitable English expression due to the lack of linguistic means of expression.
A sociopragmatic transfer is a process “operative when the social perceptions underlying language users’ interpretation and performance of linguistic action in TL are influenced by their assessment of subjectively equivalent NL contexts” (Kasper, cited in Liu Shaozhong, Liao Fengrong, 2002:37).
The following dialogue between a native English speaker (Speaker A) and a Chinese speaker of English (Speaker B) is a typical case of pragmalingistic transfer.
A: Your English is really fluent.
B: No, no, my English is still very poor.
(He Ziran & Chen Xinren, 2002:172)
In this dialogue, A praised B’s English. Following Chinese cultural pattern, B answered modestly. This was absolutely suitable to Chinese culture, but not suitable to English culture. It would make A think that his view was denied and he would feel unhappy. In China, when one is praised, he would behave modestly, and often say “哪里,哪里”. But in English culture, when someone praises you, “Thank you” is the most proper response. So in the dialogue, B can reply “Thank you”. This kind of pragmatic transfer, which is due to the cultural differences between Chinese and English cultural paradigms, is what we call “sociopragmatic transfer”.
Pragmatic transfer can also be divided into positive pragmatic transfer and negative pragmatic transfer according to the effect of transference, which plays an important role in communication. Negative transfer of pragmatic is the directly reason which causes pragmatic failure.
The rules of language are different in every culture. When we acquire our mother tongue, we acquire the rules of mother tongue unconsciously at the same time. In the intercultural communication, we are often unconsciously to express our own thought according to the language rules of our native culture. Because we always ignore the difference of cultural background between each other, and we are lake of the understanding of other’s culture and don’t master the language rules of other’s culture. So the “interlanguage” has come into being, and it may cause pragmatic failure. This is what we usually said pragmatic failure which is caused by pragmatic negative transfer. We can use the following figure to summarize:
Pragmatic failure violating the rules of native language violating the norms of
native culture
Pragmatic negative transfer
Pragmatic transfer
The difference between native language and target language
1.3 Politeness principles
Politeness is a hot study in pragmatics. It is a universal phenomenon, and it exists in all cultures.
In the English-speaking culture and the Western world in general, politeness has been closely related to the behaviour typical of a certain social location and a certain social group. To be polite means to live up to a set of conventionalized norms of behaviour (He Zhaoxiong, 1995:3).
In modern Chinese, the equivalent of politeness is limao, which is believed to have evolved in history from the notion of li. Li originally refers to the various rules or practices employed in ancient sacrificial rites. The ancient philosopher and thinker Confucius advocates restoring li, which refers to the social hierarchy and order of the slave system of the Zhou Dynasty. It has ever since become an essential feature of the Chinese notion of politeness and has remained at the core of politeness in the Chinese culture (He Zhaoxiong, 1995:3-4).
Brown & Levinson’s “Face Theory” and Leech’s “Politeness Principle” trigger the past 20 years’ extensive research of politeness. Lots of literatures about politeness put forward many amendments when they agree the two theories basically. And in China, Gu Yueguo proposed “Politeness Principle” according to the characteristics of Chinese culture.
1.3.1 Grice’s Cooperative Principle
In Grice’s opinion, in all verbal communication, in order to achieve specific aims, there is a tacit understanding between the speaker and hearer, a principle that should be obeyed by speaker and hearer. He called this principle as the Cooperative Principle of conversion.
There are four maxims in Cooperative Principle
(1) The maxim of quality
Try to make your contribution one that is true, especially:
a. Do not say what you believe to be false;
b. Do not say that for which you lace adequate evidence;
(2) The maxim of quantity
a. Make your contribution as is required for the current purposes of the exchange;
b. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
(3) The maxim of relevance
Make your contribution relevant.
(4) The maxim of manner
Be perspicuous, and specifically:
a. Avoid obscurity of expression;
b. Avoid ambiguity;
c. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity);
d. Be orderly.
(Yang Xinzhang, 2005:169-170)
If everyone obeys the four maxims strictly, the communication would be the most reasonable and efficient. But in real communication, in order to be polite or something else, the participants often flout the cooperative principle and its maxims. However, the CP fails to give a reason why people are frequently indirect in expressing what they mean, so that they use conversional implication.
1.3.2 Leech’s PP and Gu’s PP
Leech added and enriched Grice’s Cooperative Principle, proposed Politeness Principle which makes up for the lack of Cooperative Principle and increases the expression of politeness.
In describing the Interpersonal Rhetoric, Leech has concentrated on the Cooperative Principle and one maxim of the Politeness Principle----Tact Maxim. “Apart from Tact Maxim, there are a number of maxims dealing with polite behavior” “politeness concerns a relationship between two participants whom we call self and other” (Leech, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:533-534).
Leech proposed six maxims of Politeness Principle:
(1) Tact maxim (in impositives and commissives)
a. Minimize cost to other
b. Maximize benefit to other
(2) Generosity maxim (in impositives and commissives)
a. Minimize benefit to self
b. Maximize cost to self
(3) Approbation maxim (in expressives and assertives)
a. Minimize dispraise of other
b. Maximize praise of other
(4) Modesty maxim (in expressives and assertives)
a. Minimize praise of self
b. Maximize dispraise of self
(5) Agreement maxim (in assertives)
a. Minimize disagreement between self and other
b. Maximize agreement between self and other
(6) Sympathy maxim (in assertives)
a. Minimize antipathy between self and other
b. Maximize sympathy between self and other
(Leech, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:534-535)
In these six maxims, we can find (1) & (2) and (3) & (4) are pairs. The difference is that (1) and (3) considerate from other’s benefits and loses, while (2) and (4) considerate from self’s benefits and loses. We also can see, (1) a and (2) a is not different from each other naturally. If a sentence follows (1) a, and it must be follow (2) a. Similarly, if a sentence follows (1) b, it must be follow (2) b. And the relationship of the maxim of (3) and the maxim of (4) is different from the relationship of the maxim of (1) and the maxim of (2). Praise or dispraise other will not cause to dispraise or praise self. The maxim of (5) and the maxim of (6) have no relation with each other.
Leech notes that not all the maxims are equally important. Tact maxim appears to be a more powerful constraint on conversational behaviour than generosity maxim, while approbation maxim is more important than modesty maxim. And he suggests that “politeness is focused more strongly on other than on self” (Leech, from He Zhaoxiong, 2003:536).
Leech’s Politeness Principle is proposed according to western culture. Some of them are not suitable to Chinese culture, because China has its own culture characteristics which are quite different from western culture. Among Chinese scholars, the one who has contributed significantly to the study of politeness should be mentioned Prof. Gu Yueguo. He has proposed four sides of politeness: respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement (Li Yue’e & Fan Hongxiong, 1998:29).
According to the characteristic of Chinese culture, Gu Yueguo has proposed five politeness maxims:
(1) Self-denigration Maxim
a. Denigrate self;
b. Elevate other;
(2) Address Term Maxim
Address your interlocutor with an appropriate address form;
(3) Refinement Maxim
Use refined language, including the use of euphemisms and indirectness, and avoid foul language;
(4) Agreement Maxim
Maximize agreement and harmony between interlocutors, and minimize disagreement between them;
(5) Virtues-words-deeds Maxim
Minimize cost and maximized benefit to other at the motivational level, and maximize benefit received and minimize cost to self at the conversational level.
(Gu, 1992: 11-14)
Comparing Leech’s PP with Gu’s PP, we can find some similarity between them. For instance, Tact Maxim and Generosity Maxim of Leech’s PP are similar with Virtues-words-deeds Maxim of Gu’s PP. However, there are still some differences between them, because of the different cultural backgrounds. Self-denigration Maxim has the most Chinese characteristics. For example, a Chinese invites an English to go to his house to have a dinner. The English says: “How Sumptuous and delicious the meal is. Thank you very much!” The Chinese host would reply as following: “Oh, no, no. It’s just a simple meal.” When Chinese people are praised, they will deny other’s praise and denigrate self to show modesty. But the English-speaking people would think you are impolite because of denying their praise.
1.3.3 Brown & Levinson’s Face Theory
Face is something that can be lost, maintained and enhanced, a kind of the speaker’s public self-image (Zhang Maizeng, 1998:257).
Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory is generally believed to be the most detailed and influential account of politeness to date. In their view, politeness is that people adopt a kind of language strategy to reach the purpose of leaving face to other in communication. Their Face Theory contains three basic notions: face, face threatening acts (FTAS) and politeness strategies.
Face, in Brown & Levinson’s theory, refers to the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself. It consists in two related aspects:
a. Positive face: the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others.
b. Negative face: the want of every “competent adult member” that his actions be unimpeded by others.