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Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 12:12:49
From: Emilia Slavova [eslavova at gmail.com]
Subject: Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness

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EDITOR: Marcel  Bax
EDITOR: Dániel Zoltan Kádár
TITLE: Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness
SUBTITLE: Relational linguistic practice over time and across cultures
SERIES TITLE: Benjamins Current Topics 41
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Emilia Kirilova Slavova, University of Sofia

INTRODUCTION 

Exploring politeness (and its opposite, impoliteness) in a historical
perspective is an ambitious and difficult task. While synchronic analysis of
present-day discourse can rely on vast corpora of spoken language, searching
for diachronic data on how im/politeness was applied and evaluated is much
harder, which explains the scarcity of material on this aspect of politeness.

This volume, which was originally published as a special issue of the Journal
of Historical Pragmatics (2011), acknowledges the importance of the topic and
sheds light on a wide range of historical periods: six of the articles focus
on different periods in the English language, from Old English to
nineteenth-century English; three articles treat other cultures, i.e., Turkish
versus Chinese, French, and American; and one article goes back to the roots
of human civilization and the appearance of homo erectus. In sum, the volume
comprises an introductory article and ten articles on politeness in a
historical perspective, which will be briefly summarized below.

SUMMARY

The Introduction, by Marcel Bax and Dániel Z. Kádár, “The historical
understanding of historical (im)politeness”, sets the groundwork for the
historical sociopragmatic approach to the topic, dwelling on a “thick”
description of past practices and on their understanding of ‘interpretive
anthropology’ (p. 4) , while seeking interpretations of practices and their
meaning rather than facts and laws.

The first article, “‘Face’ across historical cultures: A comparative study of
Turkish and Chinese”, by Şükriye Ruhi and Dániel Z. Kádár, looks at usages of
the concept of ‘face’ in Turkish and Chinese novels from the turn of the
twentieth century. Both in Turkey and China, this was a period of intensified
modernization, running in parallel with westernization; the old social order,
hierarchies and values were questioned and contested, which gives a context
for various usages of the concept of ‘face’ in the sources surveyed. While the
article states that in both sets of novels face is used a lot to convey
interpersonal, emotional or other meanings, the statistics given reveal that
the total usages in the Chinese sources heavily outnumber those in the Turkish
ones. In both cultures, face is related to ‘rights and obligations’, normative
values and behavioral expectations, whose (un)fulfillment brings either honor
or shame. However, the observation is made that the concept of face in the
Turkish sources is more often associated with relational management, while in
the Chinese sources it symbolizes the social identity and social worth of the
person in question. Another feature observed in the Chinese sources is
metapragmatic discourse on face; as the authors observe, the Chinese notion of
face has been elaborated since antiquity, and is seen by some other authors as
“the quintessence of the Chinese spirit” (p. 42). Being the only paper in the
volume which compares historical (im)politeness cross-culturally, the article
concludes by posing the very relevant question of how far face is entrenched
in politeness phenomena in different historical periods across cultures.
Research in this direction could serve to deconstruct certain stereotypes, the
authors claim.

In their article “Nineteenth-century English politeness: Negative politeness,
conventional indirect requests and the rise of the individual self”, Jonathan
Culpeper and Jane Demmen explore the notion of negative face, negative
politeness, their universality and their culture-specificity in English
culture.  The authors acknowledge that Brown and Levinson’s work (1978) has
greatly contributed to making the concept of face and negative politeness into
almost universal categories used in studies of politeness; however, they argue
that Brown and Levinson’s individualistic emphasis on the notion of politeness
is not simply influenced by the culture-specific importance of politeness in
British culture, but that this culture-specific notion is also time-specific,
grounded largely in the Victorian period, and associated with large-scale
industrialization, urbanization, migration and a drastic change in ideological
beliefs about the self and society. Through a historical overview starting
from the medieval period, Culpepper and Demmen demonstrate that the concepts
of the individual as separate from the larger community, of privacy, and of
non-imposition politeness developed at a particular time in British history;
this development ran in parallel with the development of the Protestant ethic
and the nineteenth-century concepts of individualism, self-help, and political
and economic liberalism. As a result, the ideal of the well-mannered English
gentleman, as well as an emphasis on self-control, privacy and distancing
behaviour (the basis of negative politeness) were developed. The historical
overview is followed by a corpus study researching the appearance of
conventional indirect requests in English in the nineteenth century (namely,
“can you/could you” constructions). These expressions are seen as typical of
British negative politeness, so their appearance in that particular period is
related to the socio-historical context discussed in the previous part.

““[T]his most unnecessary, unjust, and disgraceful war”: Attacks on the
Madison Administration in Federalist newspapers during the War of 1812”, by
Juhani Rudanko, focuses on face-threatening comments in newspaper articles
from the early nineteenth century in the USA. After providing a detailed
historical context, Rudanko provides a theme-based analysis of the types of
insults, face threats and impoliteness encountered in the articles under
analysis, and  distinction is made between unmarked impoliteness and
aggravated impoliteness. Many of the articles analysed exhibit aggravated
impoliteness; Madison is accused of not telling the truth, of poor conduct in
the war and of “insanity”, and is requested to resign from his position. The
analysis seems to confirm previous observations that no president has come
under such harsh personal criticisms and abuse before. It appears that
President Madison’s conduct in this situation established a precedent of
tolerance of free speech, even during times of war (when civil rights are
usually compromised), and as such, contributed to the spirit of openness and
accountability characterizing American political culture even today. The study
invites a cross-cultural comparison of the ways dissent is articulated under
different governments in times of conflict and war.

In “A socio-cognitive approach to historical politeness”, Richard J. Watts
begins with a discussion of the popular “Politeness theory” in Brown and
Levinson’s (1978) model, and questions the assumption that there is only one,
universally accepted theoretical model. He also refers to Eelen’s (2001)
discussion of “politeness theories” and the observation that none of them
offers a fully adequate analysis of the phenomenon of politeness. As an
alternative, Watts refers to the useful distinction between first-order and
second-order theories of politeness (Watts, Ide and Ehlich, 1992) and focuses
on the development of the notion of politeness as a first-order term in
eighteenth-century popular discourse. Describing his approach as
‘socio-cognitive’, Watts argues that politeness is “an extremely complex,
fluid, changing conceptual blend that cannot be pinned down within the
framework of objectivist theory-making” (p. 107). The article then explores
the development of the ideology of “politeness” in the eighteenth century and
its relationship to non-linguistic values (e.g. “decorum”, “grace”, “beauty”,
“symmetry” and “order”), on the one hand, and to language and the movement for
language purity, standardization and prescriptivism, on the other. The result
is “an elitist social discourse”, related to the process of “gentrification”,
in which politeness is seen as a marker of class distinction rather than what
recent objectivist theories of politeness claim it is. In conclusion, Watts
claims that second-order, linguistic conceptualizations of politeness should
better refer to politic behavior, which is a more appropriate term than
“politeness”.

A similar concern about the problematic use of the second-order term
“politeness” is expressed in Kerbrat-Orecchioni’s article, entitled “From good
manners to facework: Politeness variations and constants in France, from the
classic age to today”. Asserting that the face-saving view remains, in her
opinion, “the most productive model for describing politeness phenomena in
general” (p. 132), she proposes a “revised Brown and Levinson model” (p. 133).
In it, speech acts are seen as either face-threatening or face-flattering, or
even a combination of the two. This leads to a new classification of
categories: politeness (marked by the existence of face-threatening act
softeners or face-flattering acts); overpoliteness (characterized by markers
exceeding expected social norms); non-politeness (no politeness markers,
neutral, politic); impoliteness (“abnormal” absence of an expected politeness
marker); and polirudeness (an additional, complex category, combining
politeness and rudeness). This model is then applied to diachronic variation,
as observed in French seventeenth-century literature sources (the period in
which France was considered the European cultural centre of manners and
etiquette). In these sources, divergent conceptions of politeness can be
found, which are summarized in the following oppositions:  “politeness of the
code” versus “politeness of the heart”; politeness seen as artificial versus
naturally occurring behaviour; politeness as idealistic versus pragmatic
behaviour; and finally, politeness seen as the alternative to sincerity (p.
140). The paper concludes with the strong universalistic statement that
general politeness principles are unchanging because of the universal
face-wants of people across different times and cultures.

““Tumbled into the dirt”: Wit and incivility in early modern England”, by Phil
Withington, considers the notion of “wit” and its relation to civility,
incivility and impoliteness in early modern England. The paper analyses texts
such as Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’ and its emphasis on the notion of “wit” as
an umbrella term for intellectual virtues. A quantitative analysis of printed
title pages between 1500 and 1700 shows that in spite of the growing
popularity of the notion of “civility”, “wit” was more prominent than
“civility” in print culture. Withington opposes the notions of “civility” and
“anti-civility”, defined as following libertine codes of conduct, and the
transgression of certain forms of civility, respectively. “Wit”, speaking
one’s mind, and “tumbling into the dirt” are presented as a reaction to
Puritanism and the absence of a courtly model of behaviour; they were
ritualized forms of aggression and markers of distinction. Another interesting
aspect of “wit” in early modern England was associated with gender
stereotypes. While libertine behaviour and “wit” were accepted as part of
men’s behaviour, the inferior position of women in society and the
expectations of them to preserve their chastity more or less equated “wit” in
women with promiscuity and prostitution. Finally, a quantitative analysis of
references to “wit” in the entire corpus of Shakespeare’s works is carried
out, illustrating that the notion of “wit” and its derivatives were used in
all but one of Shakespeare’s plays and in some 332 speeches (compared to 57
uses of “civil”/”civility”). The article concludes with an emphasis on the
importance of the notion of wit alongside the notion of civility in the early
modern period marked by Renaissance humanism.

In “Positive and negative face as descriptive categories in the history of
English”, Andreas H. Jucker explores Brown and Levinson’s notion of face as a
universal politeness category and its relevance to the study of politeness in
the English language within a historical context. The study spans over a long
historical period (from Anglo-Saxon England to the present day) and uses
several other researchers’ findings, along with the author’s own research, in
order to provide a coherent analysis of the development of the notion of
negative face, and the closely related notion of negative politeness, over
time. It appears (and Jucker is quite tentative in his conclusions, due to the
limited data available) that in Anglo-Saxon times, freedom from imposition and
appreciation from others (the essence of negative and positive face needs,
respectively) were not a high priority; instead, kinship, loyalty to one’s
network and recognition of one’s place in society were central values. With
the introduction of Christianity, the new values of humilitas and caritas were
added to earlier tribal values. The analysis of address terms used in Old
English (OE) demonstrates that they fulfilled the function of deference
politeness rather than non-imposition politeness. Furthermore, a look at
directives further supports the hypothesis that face-threatening performatives
were quite common, while indirect strategies were unavailable, which further
suggests that notions of positive and negative face are not particularly
helpful for a pragmatic analysis of OE. In Middle English (ME), the term
courtesie (‘courteous behaviour’) was increasingly used to describe the
behaviour of the aristocracy. Of particular interest in this period is the
introduction of the 2nd person polite plural “ye” in the 13th century, which
was first used as the marked (polite) term, and later, in the 17th century, as
the unmarked term, making the previous singular form “thou” the marked term,
signifying impoliteness (insult). An analysis of terms of address in
Shakespeare’s plays suggests that Early Modern English (EME) was probably
characterized by predominant positive politeness strategies and a concern for
positive face. An examination of directives in present-day British English
shows that the notion of ‘face’ is quite useful as a descriptive concept, and
that negative politeness, off-record strategies and non-conventional
indirectness have come to dominate present-day discourse. As a result of this
historical overview of politeness and the notion of face in the English
language, Jucker concludes that negative and positive politeness, and the
respective notions of negative and positive face, may be useful in describing
EME and present-day English, but cannot be applied as all-inclusive categories
for the description of politeness across time and space.

“Insults, violence, and the meaning of lytegian in the Old English Battle of
Maldon”, by Valentine A. Pakis, begins with the close link between speech and
“doing things” in OE texts. This leads to an exploration of insults in
medieval literature, where they function as stylized linguistic violence,
challenging the honor and the face of the interlocutor. Looking at OE sources
such as ‘Beowulf’ and the “Battle of Maldon’, Pakis finds multiple examples of
“flyting” (ritual insults) as a form of verbal dueling in place of actual
violence, or as a build-up to it. Ritual insults are then addressed from an
ethological perspective, but the explanation of flyting as a purely symbolic
enactment of power struggles is questioned by evidence showing that many
ceremonialized insults end in real battles and death; as such, an alternative
explanation related to the Freudian death drive is offered. On the basis of
the analysis of insults and physical violence, Pakis suggests a new
interpretation of the OE verb “lytegian” in the ‘Battle of Maldon’: ‘to
slander, jeer, insult’ rather than ‘to lie, to use guile’, as previously
understood, with important implications for understanding the rationale for
the behaviour of Byrthnoth and his fatal choice. The paper concludes with the
apt observation that “honor cannot exist without effrontery and […] heroes are
never made in polite company” (p. 217); this is a reminder that many
situations in life are not governed by politeness, but rather by its opposite
force.

Another paper dealing with OE is Thomas Kohnen’s “Understanding Anglo-Saxon
“politeness”: Directive constructions with “ic wille / ic wolde”. Kohnen
starts his paper from the premise that strategic, face-oriented behaviour in
the sense of present-day pragmatic theories of politeness is hard to find in a
world that relies on mutual obligation and kin loyalty combined with the
Christian values of caritas (‘compassion’, ‘love’), humilitas (‘humility’,
‘modesty’) and obedientia (‘obedience’, ‘compliance’). Basing his analysis of
directive speech acts on evidence found in the ‘Dictionary of Old English
Corpus’, Kohnen reveals a distinct distribution of the two terms: the “ic
wolde” is largely related to translations from Latin and could be interpreted
as strategies of negative politeness; “ic wille”, on the other hand, cannot be
traced to Latin originals and  is mostly found in directives between people of
different power status (e.g. a man and his lord), where obligation and
obedience define behaviour, and concepts of politeness or face-saving do not
apply. All this confirms Kohnen’s previously formulated hypothesis about
Anglo-Saxon society as a world “beyond politeness” (p. 248).

“An evolutionary take on (im)politeness: Three broad developments in the
marking out of socio-proxemic space”, by Marcel Bax, takes the reader back to
pre-historic times, 1.5 million years ago, and poses the question of whether
homo ergaster (the predecessor of homo erectus) might have been a polite or an
impolite being. The article argues that while impoliteness is basically a
natural thing, politeness is a cultural phenomenon, and that in spite of the
etymological link between the two words, they are of very different natures.
And while impoliteness seems to be part of natural animal and early hominid
behaviour (seen in rival behaviour, ritual superiority display, intimidation
and conflict resolution), its opposite, politeness, is seen as a later
evolving element of culture. However, while the transmission of cultural forms
and politeness is greatly facilitated by the development of language, it
appears that language has also served as the medium for transmitting impolite
messages; this is seen through a shift from behavioral/ performative to
codal/verbal displays of power and superiority and the ritual/mimetic
enactment of conflict. Interestingly, following this train of thought, Bax
concludes that early modern negative politeness evolved as the counterpart of
such ritual superiority display; it was a ritual enactment of deferential and
submissive behaviour, serving at the same time as a marker of the refinement
and culture of the performer. The other shift is from a predominantly
collective to a predominantly individualistic perspective in the early modern
period in Western Europe. The third shift is from a focus on self-face to a
focus on other-face, as a result of the spread of humanism and urbanization.

EVALUATION

The edited volume “Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness” is a substantial
contribution to the now rapidly growing body of research in the field,
exploring the less travelled road of diachronic pragmatic research on
(im)politeness.  . It follows the hugely influential edited volume ‘Politeness
in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice’ (Watts et al.,
1992), reissued with an updated Introduction in 2005, as well as another
seminal volume, ‘Historical Impoliteness’ (Culpepper & Kádár, 2010). There
have been other publications on impoliteness across cultures recently (e.g.
Kádár  2007; Bousfield & Locher 2008; Ige 2011; Haugh 2011; Culpeper 2011;
Jucker 2011), however, the current volume seems to be the first one to explore
both politeness and impoliteness from a historical perspective.

The volume comprises articles from distinguished researchers and academics
working on politeness, impoliteness, and related areas from different
theoretical and methodological perspectives. The articles are arranged in
reverse chronological order, starting from the 19th century and going back in
time to homo ergaster. While there are certain merits in gradually going back
in time, I believe that a chronological arrangement would have been more
appropriate, notably because the last article, by Bax, poses a number of
important theoretical questions (e.g. about the very nature of politeness and
impoliteness and their different genesis), which could have enriched the
reading of the remaining articles.

A key issue addressed in several of the articles is the notion of “face” and
the extent to which it is equivalent to politeness (and respectively,
impoliteness). This question is particularly important, as face is a basic
notion in Brown and Levinson’s (1978) Politeness Theory, where politeness is
interpreted as encompassing a number of strategies for the mitigation of
face-threat. This theory is still dominant in research on politeness and
impoliteness (as seen in in Kebrat-Orecchoni’s article, for example).

However, this universalistic view of politeness and the relationship between
“face” and “politeness” have been questioned by  other researchers (e.g.
Jucker, Watts). As Watts argues, “…“politeness” is, in effect, an extremely
complex, fluid, changing conceptual blend that cannot be pinned down within
the framework of objectivist theory-making” (p. 107). Instead, he proposes a
socio-cognitive approach in which “politeness” is seen as a complex frame
based on social experiences and embedded in long-term memory. This, of course,
is a serious departure from the objectivist model proposed by Brown and
Levinson and one that is particularly relevant for future research.

By questioning the second-order term “politeness” (as used in theoretical
research, in contrast to the lay meaning of the term) and exploring the
meaning of politeness as a first-order term in eighteenth-century public
discourse, Watts demonstrates how the ideology of “politeness”, alongside the
ideology of standardization, was used to transform public attitudes and to
prescribe linguistic and behaviour practices.

While, as Watts argues, the lexeme “politeness” has been taken from English
and used as a term in the “theory of politeness”, it is interesting to note
that another key word, “face”, is a loan word from Chinese which is documented
as having entered the English language in the late nineteenth century. A more
detailed analysis could give further insights into the origin and the
multitude of nuances of the term in Chinese culture, as well as its adoption
and appropriation in Western culture and in theoretical writings of the
twentieth century (see article on “Face” in Wikipedia for a number of
interesting observations and relevant quotes).

>From a methodological point of view, the articles examine a range of primary
sources that are mostly literary, such as novels, plays, and ballads, but also
newspaper articles, normative and prescriptive writings, and so on.  From
general socio-historical descriptions to close analyses of linguistic forms
(usages of “face”, terms of address, directives, requests, etc., studied both
qualitatively and quantitatively through analyzing appearances of certain key
words in large corpora of written texts), the material discussed in the volume
is rich and diverse.

One shortcoming of the volume that could be pointed out is the fact that most
of the articles are on the English language within British culture, with only
two articles covering other languages (Chinese versus Turkish, and French) and
one article on American English. This somewhat limits the cross-cultural
exploration of historical (im)politeness. The survey of politeness in several
different periods in English history, starting from OE, is certainly
impressive; however, further research is needed to put all the pieces of the
puzzle into a coherent and consistent picture of English politeness throughout
time.

I have one more recommendation regarding the focus of the volume’s research.
While some of the articles explore historical periods with the purpose of
furthering our knowledge and understanding of politeness, others seem to touch
upon categories borrowed from politeness with the main purpose of furthering
research on specific historical periods. The latter type of article seems more
suitable for a volume on history than a volume on politeness.

To sum up, the broad historical range, the various methodological approaches
to politeness and impoliteness, the combination of rich historical data and
high-level theoretical discussions make this volume appropriate for
researchers and advanced students. The book will be of interest to historical
linguists, pragmatists, sociolinguists, anthropologists and other
professionals interested in the topic of politeness, both as a first-order and
second-order term, as well as to those working on impoliteness, ritual
insults, and related topics. All this said, “Understanding Historical
(Im)Politeness” is certainly a valuable contribution to the field of
politeness research and opens new directions for exploration of a vast and
fascinating topic.

REFERENCES

Bousfield, D. & M. A. Locher (Eds.) 2008. Impoliteness in language: studies on
its interplay with power in theory and practice. Berlin; New York: Mouton de
Gruyter

Brown, P. & S. Levinson. [1978] 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language
usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Culpeper, J. & D. Z. Kádár. 2010. Historical Impoliteness. Peter Lang. 

Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. CUP

Eelen, G. 2001. Critique of politeness theories. Manchester: St Jerome Press.

Face (Sociological concept). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept), accessed June 6th,
2013.

Haugh, M. 2011. (Im)politeness Implicatures. De Gruyter 

Ige, B. 2011. Impoliteness in Context. Lambert Academic Publishing 

Jucker, A. (Ed.) 2011. Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness. Special issue
of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2 (2011)

Kádár, D. Z. 2007. Terms of (im)politeness: a study of communicational
properties of traditional Chinese (im)polite terms. Eötvös Löránd University

Watts, R. J., S. Ide & K. Ehlich (eds.). 1992. Politeness in language: Studies
in its history, theory and practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Watts, R. J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watts, R. J., et al. (Eds.) 2005. Politeness in Language. Studies in its
History, Theory and Practice. Berlin, Boston: Mouton De Gruyter.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Emilia Slavova is a Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of
English and American Studies at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Her
doctoral dissertation is on politeness across cultures, with a specific focus
on English and Bulgarian. Research interests and courses taught include
English language and culture, sociolinguistics, politeness theories,
politeness in a cross-cultural and in a historical perspective, communication
skills, intercultural communication, critical discourse analysis, language and
cultural diversity.








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