24.3335, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics: Davies, Haugh & Merrison (2013)

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Subject: 24.3335, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics; Sociolinguistics: Davies, Haugh & Merrison (2013)

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Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 11:20:32
From: Gonzalo Martínez-Camino [Martineg at unican.es]
Subject: Situated Politeness

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-5394.html

EDITOR: Bethan L Davies
EDITOR: Michael  Haugh
EDITOR: Andrew John  Merrison
TITLE: Situated Politeness
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Gonzalo Martínez-Camino, Universidad de Cantabria

SUMMARY

This volume is a collection of articles that addresses the issue of the
relation between (im)politeness and context. In an introductory chapter by the
editors, the main guidelines of this enterprise are set. A brief survey of the
history of socio-pragmatics, since Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987) and Leech
(1983), allows them to review how the concept of the contextual variable has
evolved in this discipline. As socio-pragmatists have more accurately
pinpointed their object of study over the years, the concept of context has
evolved from a sociolinguistic variable firmly tied to social categories to
something that not only influences the evaluation of (im)politeness but is, at
the same time, influenced by the very same discourse that it influences.

It is through the ongoing process of this debate that the editors of this book
propose that (im)politeness should be situated “(1) within discourse, (2)
relative to groups and participation frameworks, and (3) in common or
background knowledge” (p. 7). Culture is understood as a dynamic and complex
set of values where different groups define different norms that, in turn,
define what is polite: “[…] norms of politeness vary within societies or
cultures, across different communities of practice (CoPs), social classes,
regions, gender and age among other things. The role of the politeness
researcher is to examine these situated variations in politeness norms” (pp.
8-9). On the other hand, these norms create a background knowledge which
encompasses situation-specific expectations about what is a (im)polite
behavior. As long as these arise within social networks across time, they form
a social memory that will allow interlocutors to assess communicative
behaviors as constructive, damaging or mixed. Finally, any particular
discourse is developed within the affordances and constraints that are a
function of its channel(s), medium, and institutional settings. The editors
claim that “Im/politeness can also be situated relative to particular groups
and participation frameworks, with CoPs and emergent/latent networks providing
alternative models, although the latter has the advantage of being more easily
generalizable across interaction and discourse types” (p. 12).

In addition to a theoretical introduction and an epilogue, this volume has 12
chapters. Each one is dedicated to the analysis of politeness in a particular
setting (i.e.  how politeness is situated in a context) and fits into one of
three parts: I. Politeness in Institutional Settings; II. Politeness in
Interpersonal Settings; III. Politeness in Public Settings. Therefore, the
analyses of this book are organized taking into account three semantic
continua: institutional-non institutional, interpersonal-transactional,
public-private.

The first chapter of the first part is written by Janet Holmes and Meredith
Marra and is titled “Relativity Rules: Politic Talk in Ethnicized Workplaces”.
Using a qualitative, ethnographic analytical approach, these authors explore
the distinctive features of communication in two different workplaces in New
Zealand, where Māori culture predominates. This study, relying on the concept
of CoP, sets out to analyze how, in these professional settings, Māori values
(e.g. avoidance of boasting, concern for the interest of the addressee, etc.)
play out in the form of specific communicative norms that determine what is
considered appropriate, thus affecting both transactional and relational
aspects of communication, and the effort that Māori interactants need to make
in order to fit in. For example, using House’s (2005) dimensions of
cross-cultural contrast, the authors conclude that Māori formal meetings
involve more explicit, direct, addressee-oriented discourse, and ad hoc
creative formulations than non-Māori ones; nevertheless, if we change the
situation to an informal conversation, features such as indirectness and
implicitness characterize Māori discourse. However, what the researchers find
is that there is a dynamic relation between discourse and contexts: contexts
shape talk as much as the interlocutors create contexts with their talk.
Participants alter and adapt their ways in response to their perception of the
effect their interventions are having. They consider that situated politeness
offers a valuable entrée to researching all these complex levels of
interactional diversity.

The second chapter, written by Gerrard Mugford, is “That’s not very polite!”.
He also insists that the analysis of (im)politeness in any particular CoP
needs to consider the wider socio-cultural milieu in which it is embedded.
Based on questionnaire data, he analyzes how societal norms are discursively
realized or abandoned in an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom in
Mexico. According to the author, “Therefore, classroom relationships should
not solely be seen in terms of L1 or L2 concepts of politeness, but rather as
ongoing negotiatory involvement as participants act and react in a given
situational context” (p. 54). Accordingly, this author studies how Mexican
students transfer norms of politic behaviour from their cultural background to
the ESL classroom. These expectations can interfere with the Anglo-Saxon ones
that are supposed to be acquired in this educational situation. This article
analyzes how these transferences and interferences condition the ongoing
negotiation of the subjects’ face in the classroom.

Sara Mills puts forward a theoretical reflection in “Communities of Practice
and Politeness”. Mills’ idea is that “being polite” is an evaluation performed
by other interlocutors of the communicator’s behaviour and position in the
CoP; however, from her point of view, the audience does not fall back only on
local norms, but rather hypothesizes “that there are certain socially-derived
norms at work within the group” (p. 75). These socially wider norms and forms
can come from different social groups, all of whom will use them differently;
it is the job of individuals to adjust their use to the situation since CoPs
have different ways to interpret norms, forms, and styles that characterize
societies. Mills shows how British norms are negotiated and locally inflected
by two real interlocutors -- a teacher who wants to attend a conference, and
her supervisor -- in an actual exchange, according to the constraints of their
CoP, an English school.

In the next chapter, “Relational Work in a Sporting Community of Practice”,
Jodie Clark implements an analysis of recorded interactions and ethnographic
interviews to situate local conflicts among members of a college hockey team
over norms within a larger institutional framework. This pragmatist draws upon
Watt’s (2003) notions of latent and emergent networks. She intends to carry
out a fine-grained analysis of verbal interaction that explains the relation
between objectified structures of institutionalized and institutionalizing
values and the emergent processes that carry them out through relational work
during concrete communicative encounters. This approach is designed to provide
“serious, sustained investigation of those factors that Watts (2003) considers
to be subsumed within the term ‘latent networks’, specifically institutions
and institutional practices” (p. 92). Clark studies how a new member’s
whimsical behavior impacts her CoP, the above-mentioned hockey team. Veteran
members consider this newer person’s behavior as not fitting in with what they
consider to be the latent network of their CoP; however, for others, it is
acceptable. Clark’s claim is that these parties will fall back on different
hierarchical institutional frameworks in order to reestablish an equilibrium.
>From this double-institutional frame, a new equilibrium for the team network
will emerge.

The main theme of the second part of the volume is interpersonal settings. Its
first chapter is Andrew Barke’s analyses of the use of honorifics in Japanese
television drama. He does both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of
the use of these forms in the scripts of these dramas. The most relevant part
is when, drawing upon instances in the dialogue where there are marked shifts
in the relative level of honorifics in particular interactions, he
demonstrates that they can be used to express impoliteness, sarcasm, annoyance
and lack of intimacy, meaning their function is not just to express politeness
(i.e. “[a] deliberate, situated and contextually appropriate expression of
consideration for the feelings/face-needs of the addressee by the speaker” (p.
114)). Barke postulates that the basic social function of these forms is to
index psychological/social distance between interactants. This distancing
effect is used in order to manifest the following different purposes:
impoliteness, sarcasm, annoyance and lack of intimacy.

The next chapter (“‘Do you want to do it yourself like?’ Hedging in Irish
Traveler and Settled Family Discourse”) is written by Brian Clancy. He
compares the use of hedges among family members in Ireland, either of
mainstream Irish families or members of ethnic minority groups. He draws on
the Blum-Kulka’s (1990, 1997) description of family discourse as mitigated and
direct: this discursive situation is characterized by, on the one hand, an
asymmetrical distribution of power and, on the other, intimacy and
informality. These features create conditions for the emergence of a style
that is characterized by solidarity politeness (Blum-Kulka 1997: 177).
Therefore, the author predicts a low instance of hedging and his empirical
study confirms this hypothesis. Nevertheless, what is more interesting is that
he also found that its occurrence is conditioned not only by the asymmetrical
power relationship between parents and children, but also by macro-social
variables, such as ethnicity, age, and education.

Noriko Inagaki’s chapter (“Unpacking the Hearer’s Interpretation of Situated
Politeness”) analyzes an intercultural dinner party where one of the
interlocutors poses a question that could be understood as impolite. As a
possible research method, she proposes collecting accounts of discourse events
where people experience an utterance as being impolite and are then asked to
reflect on what made them feel offended or uneasy. She draws on Bourdieu’s
(1990) notion of habitus as an embodied sensibility that is acquired by
interactants through socialization in childhood. This sensibility allows them
to generate practices that imply classificatory schemes and, therefore,
distinctions, assessment and taste. Therefore, the dinner guests’ evaluation
of the question is conditioned by their upbringing in their respective
societies. However, Inagaki finds Bourdieu’s concept insufficient because it
does not allow us to explain the contingency of the hearer’s assessment. She
draws on Gadamer’s (2004 [1975]) definition of understanding: the audience of
a text interprets it using the situation as a standpoint that limits the
possibility of vision, and therefore, each interlocutor brings his or her own
horizon to the encounter. The author summarizes the central idea behind
Gadamer’s book by stating, “[U]nderstanding emerges as a fusion of horizons.
Gadamer claims that while diverse traditions exist, they must necessarily
overlap at some points, although their points of divergence and convergence
are contingently governed” (p. 156).

In the next chapter (“Humor, Face and Im/politeness in Getting Acquainted”),
Michael Haugh analyzes how Australian speakers of English, who are getting
acquainted, resort to teasing to produce socio-pragmatic ambivalence.
Methodologically, he draws upon pragmatics and conversation analysis: on the
one hand, he relies on Arundale’s Face Constituting Theory (1999, 2006, 2010),
and on the other, he uses Svennevig’s (1999) analysis of self-presentation
sequences. In the encounters Haugh analyzes, the speakers produce
face-threatening teases. Apparently, their mocking implies that the speaker
enters into the recipient’s space or territory without his or her consent;
theoretically, these exchanges threaten their relational connection.
Nevertheless, as long as they are situated inside a jocular frame, these
dialogues “are reflective of a broader Anglo-Australian cultural ethos that
emphasizes ordinariness, familiarity and friendliness, as well as not taking
oneself too seriously” (p. 180). Therefore, what could be understood as
impolite in this situation is actually interpreted as polite when placed
inside the right frame.

The topic of the third part is public settings. Miriam Locher writes its first
chapter, entitled “Situated Politeness: The Interface between Relational Work
and Identity Construction”. She draws on her analysis of interactions in an
online forum between volunteers who provide free aid and public computer users
who need help. This author focuses on an exchange between a user in trouble
and one of the volunteers. The user feels that the volunteer threatens the
expert identity he claims for himself, and his reaction, in turn, aggravates
the volunteer’s face. Attacks and meta-socio-pragmatic comments go explicitly
on record. Locher’s analysis allows her to postulate that there is no
communication that is not relational because face and identity emerge from
interaction: during communicative exchanges, the interactants evaluate each
other’s messages, which is possible because they frame situations with
cognitive conceptualizations of what the CoP in question considers as
(in)appropriate. As such, during the process of interacting, identities,
norms, and expectations are discursively negotiated.

In her chapter (“Negative Politeness Forms and Impoliteness in Institutional
Discourse: A Corpus-assisted Approach”), Charlotte Taylor analyses the use of
negative politeness markers in the following public situations: parliamentary
debates, witness interviews, and broadcast interviews. She uses a corpus
analysis methodology in order to identify potential sites of impoliteness; for
example, shifts from transactional to interactional modes of communication or
the emergence of mock politeness. She identifies several rhetorical functions
for these markers; for example, the use of the collocation “with respect” or
the formal vocative in order to mark disagreement. However, most importantly,
she proves that, depending on the situation, all the identified forms are used
to manifest conflict in acceptable ways. For instance, when politicians resort
to mock politeness, they aggravate the recipient while remaining deniable; in
these cases, they achieve the transactional goal of conveying to the public
information that is favorable to themselves and unfavorable to others and, at
the same time, achieving the interactional goal of showing respect for norms,
as well as expertise in communicative matters (i.e. “they can handle it”).

In the next chapter (“‘National Face’ and ‘National Face Threatening Acts’:
Politeness and the European Constitution”), Elena Magistro expands on Brown
and Levinson’s (1987) theory to account for national face threat acts (NFTA)
that could endanger national face. Two booklets published in 2004, on the
European Constitution, form the corpus in which she looks for NFTAs and their
mitigations. Her approach is based on on the replacement of an individual’s
social image by national identity, which is understood as national face: “a
public national image which is commensurate to the sense of reputation that
they attribute to their country and that they want others to appreciate
(positive national face want) and respect (negative national face want)” (p.
234). This author posits that the European Constitution can be understood as a
NFTA because, presumably, it impedes national sovereign action. Magistro finds
different strategies that mitigate these NFTAs: in relation to negative
politeness, she finds the use of impersonal formulae, the passive voice,
explicit manifestations of respect and declarations of non-invasion and
non-coercion, etc.; in relation to positive politeness, the booklets make
reference to presumably shared principles and assumed wants, thus showing
solidarity and understanding.

In the last chapter of the book (“Tourist Advertising of Australia: Impolite
or Situation-appropriate? Or uniquely Aussie Invite Lost in Translation”),
Angela Ardington analyses the pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic causes of
the communicative failure of the advertising campaign entitled “So where the
bloody hell are you?”, launched by Tourism Australia. It resorted to dry,
deadpan, and understated Aussie humor as part of the irreverent,
anti-authoritative, and open-minded Aussie character. The idea was to ‘sell’
Australia as an attractive place to spend vacations to an international
audience. Nevertheless, the campaign misfired and achieved an expensive
cross-cultural communication breakdown for two reasons: first of all, the
communicators assumed that an anonymous, international, culturally diverse
audience shares the above-mentioned set of ethnopragmatic values, which led to
a miscalculation of the complexity of intercultural communication; and second,
the unidirectional and differing nature of advertising discourse made things
worse.

The books ends with an epilogue in which the editors tell us the relation
between this volume and the international conference held at The University of
Leeds in 2007 on the subject of the book.

EVALUATION

The editors say that the subject of the volume was chosen because of their
interest in the many micro-contexts to which politeness can be applied (p.
270). However, very different papers from a very different set of approaches
(e.g. ethnography, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, etc.)
“highlighted the interaction between these micro-contexts and the broader
societal contexts” (p. 270). Overall, the volume makes its readers face two
different tensions that dominate the field of socio-pragmatics: first, between
the heterogeneity and homogeneity of cultural norms or values that support
polite evaluations; and second, between structural expectations and the
ongoing negotiation that takes place during the process of
communication-evaluation. Since the volume covers these crucial issues for the
study of interpersonal management, it is a very interesting and critically
enlightening reading for a specialist who wants to be at the cutting edge of
this discipline. The idea is, as the editors point out, to disentangle the
relationship between pragmatic meaning, social meaning and identity. They do
not achieve a final solution (which may be impossible) nor do they steer clear
of the complexities of this matter. On the contrary, by drawing on empirical
research, the authors present different fine-grained theoretical tools and
approaches that, undoubtedly, constitute an advance in this discipline, which
was clearly their objective.

A few additional points related to the volume merit a brief discussion. First,
we must pay attention to the concepts of “situation” or “situated”, which are
understood as the point where micro- and macro- level societal frames
intersect. This idea helps to improve the constructivist models that seem to
dominate our field by introducing new perspectives that balance a focused
approach with broader societal categories. In order to do this, researchers
rely on concepts such as “community of practice” (Lave & Wenger 1991; Eckert
and McConnell-Ginet 2007) and “latent” and “emergent network” (Watts 1991 &
2003). Obviously, these are not original notions, but the empirical
applications, discussions of results, and theoretical reflections that the
reader encounters are enriching and improve the capacity of socio-pragmatics
to describe and explain what is going on during communicative behavior. Above
all, if we take into account the variety of modes of communication and data
sets that are addressed in this collection of studies, we clearly see the
value of this volume.

Even though the aim of this volume is not to achieve a final disentanglement
of the relationship between pragmatic meaning, social meaning and identity, I
would like to make a reflection on why this is not possible at present. In my
opinion, one of the main problems is that we first need to clarify the
relationship between abstract, culturally grounded expectations and actual
evaluations of (im)politeness during the development of communicative
encounters. To date, this relationship remains undertheorized. The  other side
of this discussion involves developing more accurate, fine-grained,
well-defined methodologies. I think these are two steps we need to take before
we can finally untangle the above-mentioned knot.

In sum, reading “Situated Politeness” allows for improvement in our
comprehension of the above-mentioned, complicated concepts. Combining this
advancement with the variety of approaches covered in the volume make it an
important step forward for the field of socio-pragmatics.

REFERENCES

Arundale, Robert B. 1999. An Alternative Model and Ideology Of Communication
for an Alternative to Politeness Theory. Pragmatics 9. 119-153.

Arundale, Robert B. 2006. Face as relational and interactional: A
communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness.
Journal of Politeness Research 2. 193-216.

Arundale, Robert B. 2010. Constituting face in conversation: face, facework,
and intereactional achievement. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2078-2105.

Blum-Kulka, S. 1990. ‘You don’t touch lettuce with your fingers’: Parental
politeness in family discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 14. 259-288.

Blum-Kulka, S. 1997. Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and
Socialization in Family Discourse. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bourdieu, P. 1990. The logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. 1978. Universals in language use: Politeness
phenomena. In E. Goody (ed.), Quenstions and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 56-311.

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in language usage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. 2007. Putting communities of practice in
their place. Gender and Language 1. 27-38.

Gadamer, H. G. 2004 [1975]. Truth and Method. London: continuum.

House, J. 2005. Politeness in Germany: Politeness in Germany?. in L. Hickey
and M. Stewart (eds), Politeness in Europe. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters,
13-28.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Svennevig, J. 1999. Getting Acquainted in Conversation. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.

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


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Gonzalo Martínez Camino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern
Languages of the Universidad de Cantabria, Spain. He also teaches Pragmatics
Applied to Second Language Teaching and Learning at the International Center
for Higher Spanish Studies-Comillas Foundation. Currently, he is also the
coordinator of the program “Lengua y cultura españolas”, carried out as part
of an agreement between the Universidad of Cantabria and the University of the
North Carolina at Charlotte (U.S.A.). In the past, he has taught at The Ohio
State University and Western Michigan University. His current research
interests include advertising, Socio-Pragmatics, and Spanish as a foreign
language.








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