Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures (Open Linguistics S.) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0304704377 ISBN 13: 9780304704378

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2000

Synopsis

Taking "politeness theory" as its starting point, this study develops an integrated framework for analyzing the management of rapport in authentic interactions. It deals with both comparative and interactive aspects of talk across cultures, incorporates disciplinary perspectives, and illustrates theoretical issues with empirical studies. It should be suitable for third-year undergraduate and postgraduate readers, as well as professionals interested in intercultural communication.

About this title

About the Author

Helen Spencer-Oatey (Ph.D., University of Lancaster, 1992) is Principal Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Luton, and manager of its degree courses in Intercultural Communication. She is also co-director of the Centre for Intercultural Training and Research. Her primary research interests are in cross-cultural pragmatics and intercultural discourse, and she is series editor for Continuum's new series of books on pragmatics. Her recent publications include 'state-of-the-art' articles on intercultural communication and on pragmatics, and theoretical and empirical articles in journals such as the Journal of Pragmatics and the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter One: Introduction
One afternoon after work, a British teacher of EFL, who had recently started teaching at a college in Hong Kong, decided to visit some friends who lived in a different part of the city. She went to the appropriate bus stop, and as she walked up, a group of her students who were waiting there asked 'Where are you going?' Immediately she felt irritated, and thought to herself, 'What business is it of theirs where I'm going? Why should I tell them about my personal life?' However, she tried to hide her irritation, and simply answered, 'I'm going to visit some friends.'

Several months later this British teacher discovered that 'Where are you going?' is simply a greeting in Chinese. There is no expectation that it should be answered explicitly: a vague response such as, 'Over there' or 'Into town' is perfectly adequate. Moreover, according to Chinese conventions, the students were being friendly and polite in giving such a greeting, not intrusive and disrespectful as the British teacher interpreted them to be. This incident, which I personally experienced during my first overseas teaching post, highlights three features that are important foci of this book:

- people's use of language can influence interpersonal relations (the students' question irritated the teacher and she started to form a negative impression of them);

- people may try to 'manage' their relationships with others (the teacher did not want the students to know that she was irritated, and so she tried to hide her annoyance);

- different cultures may have different conventions as to what is appropriate behaviour in what contexts ('where are you going?' is a polite greeting among acquaintances in Chinese, but is an inappropriate explicit question in this context in English).

The main title of this book is Culturally Speaking but, as the subtitle suggests, the 'speaking' component focuses on a specific aspect of communication: the management of social relations. People sometimes think of communication as 'the transmission of information' but, as many authors have pointed out, communication also involves 'the management of social relations'. Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson (1967), for example, propose that all language has a content component and a relationship component. If two people have a disagreement, for instance, there will be a content aspect to their disagreement, which concerns the 'what' of the disagreement, such as disagreement over the accuracy of a piece of information, or the suitability of a course of action. However, there will also be a relationship aspect to their disagreement; for example, whether the expression of disagreement conveys lack of respect for the other person, whether it is interpreted as a bid for one-upmanship or whether it leads to feelings of resentment or dislike. ...

One of the main areas of linguistic theory that is relevant to 'relational communication' is politeness theory. However, in this book the term 'politeness' is avoided as much as possible (except when discussing well known theories of politeness) because the term is so confusing. 'Politeness' is often interpreted as referring to the use of relatively formal and deferential language, such as formal terms of address like Sir or Madam, request patterns such as would you be so kind as to ..., and formal expressions of gratitude and apology. From such a perspective, sentences such as 'Would you mind passing the salt' would be classified as 'more polite' than 'Pass the salt, will you.' However, there are many occasions when it is more appropriate to use 'Pass the salt, will you' than 'Would you mind passing the salt' (at home, to a family member, for example). And as Fraser and Nolan (1981) point out, politeness is actually a contextual judgement: " ... no sentence is inherently polite or impolite. We often take certain expressions to be impolite, but it is not the expressions themselves but the conditions under which they are used that determine the judgement of politeness." (p.96) In other words, sentences or linguistic constructions are not ipso facto polite or rude; rather, politeness is a social judgement, and speakers are judged to be polite or rude, depending on what they say in what context. Politeness, in this sense, is a question of appropriateness. ...

The second component of the title refers to 'culture'. Culture is notoriously difficult to define. In 1952, the American anthropologists, Kroeber and Kluckhohn, ... compiled a list of 164 different definitions. Apte (1994), writing in the ten volume Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, summarizes the problem as follows: "Despite a century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990's no agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature." (p.2001) Despite these problems, I propose the following definition for the purposes of this book: "Culture is a fuzzy set of attitudes, beliefs, behavioural conventions, and basic assumptions and values that are shared by a group of people, and that influence each member's behaviour and his/her interpretations of the 'meaning' of other people's behaviour."
This definition draws attention to a number of issues. Firstly, culture is manifested at different layers of depth, ranging from inner core basic assumptions and values, through outer core attitudes, beliefs and social conventions, to surface level behavioural manifestations. See Figure 1.1 for a diagrammatic representation of the different layers of culture. Secondly, the sub-surface aspects of culture influence people's behaviour and the meanings they attribute to other people's behaviour (along with other factors such as personality). Thirdly, culture is a 'fuzzy' concept, in that group members are unlikely to share identical sets of attitudes, beliefs and so on, but rather show 'family resemblances', with the result that there is no absolute set of features that can distinguish definitively one cultural group from another. Fourthly, culture is associated with social groups. All people are simultaneously members of a number of different groups and categories; for example, gender groups, ethnic groups, generational groups, national groups, professional groups, and so on. So in many respects, all these different groupings can be seen as different cultural groups. ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0304704377
• ISBN 13: 9780304704378
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Spencer-Oatey Helen