Disagreeing in english and vietnamese

1.3. Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, disagreeing is examined on the basis of SA theories and CA. In most cases, disagreement attributes are inclined to be hedged to minimize the seriousness of the act, but in self-deprecations they tend to overtly be stated to intensify the positive impact. The empirical findings have proved the hypotheses of the differences in the native Ss’ assessing socio-cultural parameters and social situations. The reasons for all these differences are supposed to lie in the differences in the two cultures and societies with their own socio-cultural systems of norms, values and beliefs. Besides the main concern of disagreeing in regards to politeness, its notions, research approaches and linguistic realization, Chapter 2 takes as one of its objectives the evaluation of politeness level of disagreement tokens performed by native Ss of English and Vietnamese.

CHAPTER TWO

POLITENESS IN DISAGREEING

2.1. Theoretical Preliminaries

Linguistic politeness, or politeness for short, has become central to a great many of searches for examining the right way to get successful in interaction. Pioneering works on politeness by Lakoff (1973), Grice (1975), Searle (1975), Brown & Levinson (1987[1978]), Back and Harnish (1979), Leech (1983) have given impetus for a number of publications on the same issue such as Hill et al. (1986), Blum-Kulka (1987, 1989, 1990, 1992), House (1981, 1989), Wierzbicka (1985), Ide (1982, 1987, 1989, 2001), Lee-Wong (2000) among others. Researchers are interested in the interpretation of politeness, its linguistic realization in different cultural frameworks, and the universality of the politeness theory.

Personal strategies or volition is observed to be preferable in the West (Leech 1983, Brown & Levinson 1987[1978], Yule 1996 among others), where individualism is the main concern, whereas discernment seems to be emphasized in those cultures where group or community solidarity is central (Doi 1973, Wierzbicka 1985, Matsumoto 1988, Gu 1990, Ide ibid., Blum-Kulka 1987, 1992). However, it is not necessary for one and the same kind of politeness to be utilized in every language or culture. The emphasis on discernment or/and volition differs across languages and cultures, and across speech acts in a given culture. When studying verbal politeness some researchers tend to focus just on one of its compositional elements (cf. Brown & Levinson 1987[1978], Leech 1983, Yule 1996, Doi 1973, Masumoto 1988, Gu 1990, Blum-Kulka 1992 among others), and very often, they are criticized by their abiding by the one-sided picture of politeness (Held 1992, Nguyen D. H. 1995, Vu T. T. H. 1997, Lee-Wong 2000). The co-existence of two different approaches to linguistic politeness seems to be quite problematic as there might be difficulty choosing the right approach. Socio-cultural norms, which may affect individuals on the one hand, might be considered the outcomes of frequent usage by individuals on the other. In other words, collective norms of a community are both resources and consequences of individual choice and usage, and politeness comprises both common rules of social behaviors and strategies of individual manners. It is on the basis of this assumption that a synthetic approach to politeness is proposed, taking as its components discernment and volition (Hill et al. 1986, Kasper 1990, Held 1992). The eclectic approach, according to Hill et al. (Ibid.), is essential in dealing with politeness as the phenomenon of politeness predominantly manifests itself in discernment and/or volition. Kasper (Ibid.) emphasizes the study of politeness in its unity of discernment and volition, and points out the non-correlative relationship between them. However, this synthetic perspective, which seems to offer a panorama of politeness, still needs to be empirically investigated and examined across languages and cultures.

2.1.1. Notion of Politeness

Being polite is defined as 'having, showing the possession of good manners and consideration for other people' (Hornby 1988: 646). Ide (1988) assumes that linguistic politeness encompasses the use of appropriate language and successful communication:

We speak language not only to transmit information, but also to establish the appropriate interactional relationship…. In speaking, we think of the content of what is to be conveyed, and at the same time of the linguistic expressions that will make the utterance appropriate to the given situational context. Appropriate speech establishes smooth communication. The language use associated with smooth communication is what is referred to as linguistic politeness.

Cited from Ide (1988: 371)

The appropriateness of smooth communication should be interpreted on the basis of socio-cultural beliefs and values that differ across cultures. Sometimes, what is considered polite in one language and culture is not comprehended as such in other languages and cultures. Let us have a look at the two requests (Mum to son):

1. 
   Could you turn the radio down?
   
2. 
   Turn the radio down.
   

The former is often believed polite in the Anglo-American context as it provides an option, and the latter is impolite as it creates imposition. However, the latter is considered polite in Vietnamese culture as the former in its literal interpretation “Con cã vÆn c¸i ®µi nhá l¹i kh«ng?” implies criticism or even threat (Vu T. T. H. 2000: 202).

Lakoff (1990: 34) understands politeness as a set of interpersonal relations employed to facilitate human interaction via the process of reducing and smoothing the potential conflict and confrontation. Also, politeness can be considered one of the constraints on behavior helping humans in their gaining “effective social living” (Watts et al. 1992: 2). By effective social living is meant anticipation of others’ actions, consideration of costs and gains, and predication of final results of one’s own behavior (Goody 1978: 1). On the basis of the cultural viewpoint which suggests that politeness is culturally and linguistically specific, Yule (1996: 60) states,

‘It is possible to treat politeness as a fixed concept, as in the idea of 'polite social behavior', or etiquette, within a culture.’

Vu T. T. H. (1997, 2000) assumes that the notion 'lÞch sù' in Vietnamese culture contains four aspects 'lÔ phÐp', '®óng mùc', 'khÐo lÐo' and 'tÕ nhÞ', which are interwoven. While 'lÔ phÐp' (respectfulness) and '®óng mùc' (propriety) are understood as social norms that should be followed to show respect to interlocutors’ hierarchy, status, age etc., 'khÐo lÐo' (tact) and 'tÕ nhÞ' (delicacy) can be interpreted as individual strategies chosen to please co-participants in order to gain the highest effects in communication.

In the Vietnamese language 'lÞch sù' appears to be the closest equivalence to English word 'politeness'. It is defined in A Vietnamese Dictionary as: '...having elegant manners and observing properness in conformity with social rules and expectations in interactions' (Hoang P. et al. 1988. Translated by Nguyen D. H. 1995).

The issues of politeness are so crucial and thrilling that much effort has been made by philosophers, linguists, socio-linguists, and anthropologists to establish universal research framework for investigating the key problems in politeness. The main approaches are now briefly discussed.

2.1.2. Volitional Approach

Understood as the ‘aspect of politeness which allows the speaker a considerably more active choice, according to the speaker’s intention’ (Hill et al. 1986: 348), well-known as the strategic or instrumental view (Kasper 1990), indirectness perspective (Held 1992), second-order approach (Watts et al. 1992) and the modern view (Werkhofer 1992), this approach encompasses two different sub-perspectives, namely, conversational-maxim view with the works by Lakoff (1973) and Leech (1983), and the face-saving view postulated by Brown & Levinson (1987[1978]). Apart from some methodological differences, the two sub-perspectives are similar in their comprehension of politeness phenomena as individual strategies to avoid or minimize frictions or conflicts between interlocutors. Fundamental to both perspectives are Gricean co-operative principle and implicature (1975) and Goffman’s notion of face.

2.1.2.1. Grice’s principle

Gricean Cooperative Principle (CP) is considered the basis of this approach to politeness. The CP (Grice 1975: 45) runs as follows:

Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of talk exchange in which you are engaged.

Grice's 1975 article 'Logic and Conversation' is deserved to be credited the starting point in almost all of the works concerning the questions of politeness. The fact that Gricean paper had been circulating among many linguists and philosophers in its manuscript form long before it was finally published suggests that his ideas had certain effects on the works by Lakoff (1973, 1977, 1989), Leech (1983), Brown & Levinson (1987[1978]) and others. Grice associates with the CP a set of maxims and sub-maxims that are named as Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner. The CP is claimed to govern most human conversational interactions and rational participants abide by the maxims in so far as they are able in the process of the efficient conveying of messages.

When Ss observe all the maxims, saying precisely what they want, obviously, there is no difficulty in getting the intended meaning of the utterance. But there are many occasions when people fail to observe the maxims. Conversation normally works on the assumption that Ss, being co-operative, adheres to the maxims as far as they can and do not break the maxims by lying, sarcasm, etc. Therefore, any violation of the maxims can be a signal for the H to seek a suitable interpretation of the utterance by a sequence of inferences.

3. 
   A. Is Jane good at French?
   

B. She sings beautifully.

In B's reply, the Maxim of Relation is intentionally flouted. B expresses his/her assessment indirectly and politely by providing irrelevant information, so the second S can convey more than what is said. The mechanism used to convey more than it is literally said is known as conversational implicature or just implicature. It is worth noting that in general, the implicated information cannot effectively be transmitted if the S and the H do not share the same background knowledge.

2.1.2.2. Lakoff’s rules and Leech’s maxims

Based on Grice's construct of Conversational Principles, Lakoff (1973) suggests three rules of Pragmatic Competence and Sub-maxims or sub-rules, each of which is oriented to make the H 'feel good'. The maxims are adapted as follows: (1) Don't Impose (Used when Formal/Impersonal Politeness is required), (2) Give Options (Used when Informal Politeness is required) (3) Make A Feel Good (Used when Intimate Politeness is required). Not imposing (1) means avoiding reference to personal problems, habits, taboo topics and the like. Offering options (2) means expressing oneself in such a way that one's opinion or request can be ignored without being rejected. It is suggested that these three rules can be combined to one with the overall function of 'Making A Feel Good'.

In addition, the rules seem to be central to Western notions of politeness, which emphasizes non-imposition and freedom of actions. Thus, they are difficult to be considered universal rules of politeness. In non-Western cultures, including the Vietnamese culture, where community and group solidarity is highly appreciated, impersonalization is not always perceived as a polite strategy.

Adopting the framework initially set out by Grice, Leech (1980 [1977] and 1983) opts to treat politeness within the domain of a rhetorical pragmatics and his account of goal-directed linguistic behaviors. He considers politeness a crucial factor in explaining 'why people are so often indirect in conveying what they mean' and (1983: 80) 'a rescue for the CP'. He raises two concepts: ambivalence and pragmatic principles. By making an utterance ambivalent one can remain polite when performing some inherently impolite speech acts. Leech's Politeness Principle (PP) (1983) runs as follows:

Minimize (all things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs; Maximize (all things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs.

Cited in Fraser (1990: 225)

PP, according to Leech, 'rescues' Grice's CP by explaining why Ss do not always observe the Gricean maxims (however, as mentioned above, Grice himself also discusses the violation of his maxims). In addition, Leech introduces a number of maxims that explain the relationship between sense and force in conversations. Leech claims that his model could be applied universally across cultures, and in the English speaking context, the Tact Maxim seems to be the most important.

Although Leech's maxims allow us to make specific cross-cultural comparisons and to explain cross-cultural differences in understanding politeness and the use of politeness strategies, they fail to account for contextual factors like roles of participants, their gender and the setting of talk. In addition, the model seems to best be applied to Anglo-American cultures where social distance is valued.

2.1.2.3. Brown & Levinson’s model

The face-management view on politeness, put forth by Brown & Levinson (1978 and revised in 1987), is recognized as the most articulated and the most influential and successful theory of politeness. They propose a Model Person capable of speaking a language fluently and endowed with both rationality and face understood as a feeling of self-worth or self-image that can be damaged, maintained, enhanced or even lost in conversation. ‘Face’ is compounded of ‘positive’ aspect concerning the desire to be appreciated and approved of, and ‘negative’ aspect concerning the freedom from imposition and of action. These two facets of face are regarded as two ‘wants’. By rationality is meant the ability to select linguistic strategies to satisfy communicative and face-oriented ends.

Generally, in English-speaking contexts, people expect their public self-image, or their face wants to be respected in interactions. If Ss say something that potentially threats another's self-image, they are said to perform a face threatening act (FTA). An act of uttering something to lessen the potential threat is called a face saving act (FSA). Brown & Levinson work on how to reduce FTAs, and suggest a set of strategies said to be exploited in conversation by Ss in regards to the degree they want to preserve their interlocutors’ face, and in some cases, their own face.

It is the notion of ‘face’, commonly thought to be originated in the Chinese and American Indian concepts of face, developed by Brown & Levinson on the basis of Goffman’s 1967 elaboration and reference to Durkheim’s 1915 work that generates a great number of debates among politeness researchers as to its Western individualistic and ethnocentric assumptions. It is argued that the dualistic notion of face with negative and positive politeness does not find correspondence in Goffman’s or Durkheim’s work. According to Bargiela-Chiappini (2003), their concept of face and the rational person radically departs from Goffman’s understanding of interaction in which ‘not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to one another’ (Ibid. 1967: 2). In addition, in spite of Brown & Levinson’s statement of their borrowing ‘the distinction between negative and positive politeness from Durkheim’s distinction between negative and positive rites’ (Brown & Levinson 1987: 43), there seems to be no such similarity between them. Durkheim’s ‘negative cult’ is ‘one means in view of an end: it is a condition of access to the positive cult’ (Ibid, 1915: 309), and further on, he submits that ‘normally, the negative cult serves only as an introduction and preparation for the positive one’ (Ibid. 311). However, Brown & Levinson’s negative politeness and positive politeness are mutually exclusive, and their ideal rational Model Person is mostly concerned with the protectiveness of his personal territory from face-threatening interpersonal contact.

The individualistic comprehension of ‘face’ and the model of a predominantly rational actor with face-threatening intentions engender further resistance in research in many non-Anglosaxon cultures (Matsumoto 1988, Ide 1989, Mao 1994, de Kadt 1998, Rathmayr 1999, Hernández-Flores 1999, to name just a few), leading to the need to seek for a version of politeness that accommodates both strategic and socially prescribed norms of behavior.

2.1.3. Normative Approach

Considering politeness a manifestation of etiquette and the socially defined norms, this approach is called the social norm view (Fraser 1990), the first order approach (Watts et al. 1992) and the traditional view (Werkhofer 1992). The basis of this approach is the assumption that every culture, every community possesses a system of social conventions and norms of appropriate behavior that require its members to strictly follow. Despite being capable of describing socially ritualized behavior like greetings, thankings etc., this approach with its sets of prescriptive rules fail to deal with the dynamic, highly contextualized nature of polite behavior. Its limitation of explanatory power as regards interpersonal verbal behavior is due to its being culture/group specific. In contrast to the indifference on the part of Western researchers, there has been an increasing interest in the social-norm/normative approach among politeness researchers in non-Anglophone languages. Their attitudes and arguments are viewed in the following section.

2.1.3.1. Chinese research

The closest Chinese equivalent of English ‘politeness’, in Lee-Wong’s 2000 view is limao, which comprises li (ceremony, courtesy or etiquette) and mao (appearance) and constitutes part of normative politeness expected of individual in social interactions. Brown & Levinson’s politeness reduced to pure redressive strategies does not seem to fit into Chinese concern about ethics and morals. Hsien (1944) suggests lien and mien be equivalents to ‘face’ and points out,

[T]he latter by far the older, being found in ancient literature. Mien had acquired a figurative meaning referring to the relation between ego and society as early as the fourth century B. C. Lien is a more modern term, the earliest reference cited in the K’ang-shi Dictionary dating from the Yuan Dynasty (1277-1367).

Cited from Hsien (1944: 45)

Li, the notion of which was formulated by Confucius (511 B. C. - 479 B. C.), is used in at least nineteen compound nouns involving the concept of politeness as part of extensive and elaborate rituals in ancient China (Lee-Wong ibid.). The rich lexicon of li in Chinese displays the crucial role of rituals in Chinese culture and society of the old days. Limao (manners, courtesy and politeness) should be construed in a cultural milieu where rituals were both socially and ethically motivated and encoded in fossilized linguistic expressions of gestures to be used in visits, funerals or weddings.

Focusing on the extended-family structure of the old China, Shih (1975: 31) points out, ‘China was traditionally a family-based society … the principle holding the family peacefully together was also the principle behind the social order.’ In his view, Chinese society today is still distinctly hierarchical and vertically structured, and this basic principle is deeply embedded in the mind and social life of the Chinese despite the changes in their social structure. According to Lee-Wong (2000: 24), the Chinese modern day dictionary provides mianzi (face, reputation, and prestige) as the closest in meaning to Hsien’s mien. The rich vocabulary of the notional construct of mianzi such as ai mianzi (love face), you mianzi (to have face), gei mianzi (give face) etc. in Chinese reflects an overt concern with face maintenance. As social members, Ss should avoid face loss and try to maintain face if they love their face, and it is necessary that they look after others’ face while looking after their own. All in all, Chinese limao is apprehended as socially determined etiquette of behavior expected of social members who share the same conventions of politeness in the speech community.

Gu (1990: 242) considers Chinese politeness a phenomenon which belongs ‘to the level of society, which endorses its normative constraints on each individual’ and is mainly deployed ‘to enhance social harmony, and to defuse interpersonal tensions and conflicts’.

Searches by other Chinese scholars (Ho 1994, Chang 1999, Ji 2000) come to the same conclusion of a more public and more positive concept of face firmly embodied in interpersonal relations and applicable to such cultures belonging to the so-called Confucian Civilization as Japanese and Vietnamese.

2.1.3.2. Japanese research

Brown & Levinson’s politeness model has met with a quite a few objections raised by such Japanese researchers as Nakane (1972), Doi (1973), Matsumoto (1988), Ide (1989), Nwoye (1992), Agha (1994), Bargiela-Chiappini (2003) in the last few decades. Although the notion of Model Person who desires to protect his own territory from the outside invasion has long been appreciated in Anglo-American culture, it has been regarded with suspicion in relation to Japanese culture and society. It is the individual’s position in relation to the others in the group and his/her acceptance by other social members that is of paramount concern in Japan. Matsumoto (1988: 405) assumes:

A Japanese … must acknowledge his/her dependence on the others. Acknowledgement and maintenance of the relative position of others, rather than preservation of an individual’s proper territory, governs all social interaction.

Nakane (1970) believes that Japanese people are hierarchically related and mainly concerned about how to become and remain accepted in the group or community. Thus, Japanese wishes to maintain face as a dynamic governing politeness do not appear to be consistent with Brown & Levinson’s claim of the universality of ‘face’. Ide (1989: 241) says,

In a Western culture where individualism is assumed to be the basis of all interactions, it is easy to regard face as the key to interaction. On the other hand, in a society where group membership is regarded as the basis for interactions, the role or status defined in a particular situation rather than face is the basis of interaction.

Discernment, the English translation from Japanese Wakimae (meaning practice of polite behavior in accord with social norms), requires strict observance of the socio-cultural norms prescribed for each speech event. Ss are said to passively adhere to discernment when making a choice of certain address forms, formulaic expressions, etiquettes, honorifics or speech levels to produce a polite behavior. And nowhere else is it more important to know how to use honorifics than it is in Japanese, where honorifics act as ‘relation-acknowledging devices’ (Matsumoto 1988: 414) to recognize one’s relative position in the context and maintain the social ranking order. By and large, the overemphasis on rational use of strategies fails to account for the deployment of linguistic devices like honorifics, address terms, conventionalized formulas etc. in politeness realization in non-Anglophone languages and cultures (Ide 1989).

2.1.3.3. Other non-Anglophone research

Since the appearance of Matsumoto’s article in 1988 and Ide’s paper in 1989, there have been a number of searches into non-Anglophone languages to re-examine the cultural variability of Brown & Levinson’s definition of ‘polite behavior’. Apart from those mentioned above some extant papers seem to exhibit a discrepancy between Brown & Levinson’s assumption and their local socio-cultural conventions.

The Korean che-myon (face), the image of the sociological self given to individuals by society, is quite different from that posited by Brown & Levinson (Lim & Choi 1996). Korean speakers hold che-myon important and attach a high value to social relationships and spend much time and energy on establishing and maintaining them.

Bharuthram (2003: 1523-44) finds out that while politeness is also fundamental to human relationships within the Hindu sector of the South African Indian English speaking community, it places more emphasis on the face pertaining to the collective image of the group. Consequently, as a group member, the S has to follow the norms of behavior defined by the group/community. The concept of politeness in the target culture, which is claimed to be more appropriately portrayed from the normative perspective, seems to deviate from Brown & Levinson’s model, which focuses upon the individual self-image.

In formal interactions, native Ss of Russian take into account their interlocutors’ status for it is considered a basic societal norm existing alongside the Russian politeness or ‘authentically Russian’ politeness coming from the heart (Rathmayr 1999: 76, Bargiela-Chiappini’s translation from French original 2003: 1462).

Although ‘face’ is observed to operate in Spanish casual interactions, its contents are not the same as those polarized by Brown & Levinson. Such notions as ‘self-affirmation’ (similar to positive face) and confianza - ‘sense of deep familiarity’ (similar to negative face), which refer to ‘the acceptance of the individual inside the group’, are actually independent elements in Spanish socio-communicative talks (Hernández-Flores 1999: 41).

A close look at volitional and normative approaches reveals that each focuses on a different aspect of one and the same notion commonly termed as politeness. Politeness with its two structuring components volition and discernment calls for a synthetic approach which integrates personal choices and conventional practices into an adequately theoretical framework capable of highlighting the study of politeness considered both a socially prescriptive and personally motivated phenomenon.

2.1.4. Normative-Volitional Approach

2.1.4.1. Literature by Vietnamese researchers

One cannot fully comprehend politeness in modern Vietnam without reaching back to its past, when the whole societal structure was regarded to be strongly influenced by Confucianism, the dissemination of which from China to Vietnam dated back more than 2,000 years ago. Fundamental to Confucianism is LÔ (rituals), which required people to behave in accordance with their places in the social hierarchy, as Quang Dam (1994: 149) states:

LÔ requires people to follow exactly all the rituals and principles advocated by Confucianism …. If one does not do so, one does not have lÔ. If one does not have lÔ, one has no right to look, to hear, to talk or do things. Speaking, greeting, eating, etc. all need to be done in accordance with rites….

Cited in Vu T. T. H. (1997: 47-48)

The combination of Confucianism with its LÔ, Buddhism, and Taoism are believed to have constituted the basis of Vietnamese politeness (Nguyen D. H. 1995, Nguyen V. D. 1996). Apart from Confucianism, Vu T. T. H. (1997) mentions community-based solidarity as a typical characteristic of the target culture. The sharing of community-oriented solidarity by Vietnamese Ss may be the basis of the speech responsibility for taking notice of interlocutors’ face/welfare so as to please them, as reflected in the saying, ‘Lùa lêi mµ nãi cho võa lßng nhau’ (Choose the right way to talk so as to please each other).

The contemporary socio-cultural life of the Vietnamese has still been affected by Confucian ideology despite the big changes resulted from the contact with French culture (1858-1954), the active spread of communist egalitarian ideas in human relationships, and the strong impact of modern technology and communication (Luong 1988, Nguyen D. H. 1995, among others).

Hanoi Ss of Vietnamese, who are the informants of the interviews and elicited questionnaires used in the research into politeness by Vu T. T. H. (1997), are inclined to attach notions of politeness with socially institutionalized rules of behavior (according to its cultural and moral values) on the one hand, and underline the manipulative strategies in regards to communicative goals on the other. These two aspects of politeness in Vietnamese culture, namely, normative/social politeness and strategic/personal politeness, are inextricably interwoven and linguistically realized by means of address terms, particles and indirectness under the influence of the S-H’s status and solidarity relationships and such social attributes as age, gender and occupation.

The face in Vietnamese culture, according to Vu T. T. H. (Ibid.), thought as an integration of the personal side consisting of the internal self and the social side covering the relationships between self and alters, suggests a deviation of the universality of Brown & Levinson’s notion of face (interpreted as a self-image of the personal self), and proposes an investigation of cultural variations in the notion of face and its underlying socio-cultural values on the basis of non-Western languages and cultures. Nguyen D. H. (1995), who is in favor of using volition-discernment as the analytic framework for his examining politeness markers in Vietnamese, also argues the concept of negative face in Brown & Levinson’s model and emphasizes the social aspect of face, and hence politeness, in Japanese and Chinese cultures, which he thinks identical to that in Vietnamese culture.

The empirical results in section 1.2.2.1 of the present study show that social attributes like age and status are of paramount concern in the Vietnamese socio-cultural environment, and Vietnam belongs to the so-called hierarchy-based societies in which interpersonal relationships are hierarchically stratified. However, the vertical relationships in Asian cultures in general and Vietnamese culture in particular, seem to be distinctive and specific in the sense that they are collectively oriented, reciprocal and interdependent. Younger or lower-status people are supposed to show respect to older or higher-status people in conformity to the maxim ‘kÝnh trªn’ (respect super-ordinates), and meanwhile, the superiors should take good care of the inferiors, which is relevant to the maxim ‘nh­êng d­íi’ (yield to subordinates).

Vietnamese politeness theorists, deploying the synthetic approach, arrive at the same assumption that the notion of face connoting negative and positive face-wants seems to have no counterpart in the Vietnamese socio-cultural milieu, which orients itself to hierarchy, solidarity and interdependence in upward-downward relationships, and that both personally strategic politeness and socially conventional politeness do exist in this culture. The co-existence and interplay between these two kinds of politeness are distinctive and complex, and so is the degree to which each operates. Normative politeness or discernment, which is reflected in Ss’ passive adherence to the social norms and practices, is mainly manifested in the exploitation of address terms, particles, formulaic expressions, etc. As discussed earlier, volition or volitional politeness, which tends to conceptualize politeness as individual strategies to avoid social conflicts or/and achieve communicative goals, is subjected to personal choices. And although group/community norms are socially institutionalized, they are optional and open to Ss’ strategic manipulations. It is Ss that decide to abide by certain conventions to be polite or impolite.

In addition, social norms of behavior may be the ultimate consequences of long-term repetition of strategic choices. For instance, quite a few honorific expressions whose deployment is said to implicitly comply with conventions/discernment might be originally strategic manipulations (Brown & Levinson 1987: 23). Therefore, it is logically deduced that politeness is both normative and volitional. Stated otherwise, discernment and volition are the two sides of one unity, i.e. politeness, and one cannot be thoroughly analyzed or fully understood without taking the other into careful consideration. Along this line and for this very reason, came into being the synthetic approach to politeness which takes as its analytical framework volitional and normative approaches.

2.1.4.2. Literature by other researchers

Having realized the strength as well as the limitation of each approach to politeness, a number of researchers show a tendency to regard politeness as having two structuring elements volition and discernment. Hill et al. (1986: 349) overtly states the desire to have ‘a system for polite use of a particular language’ that ‘will exhibit two major aspects: the necessity for speaker Discernment and the opportunity for speaker Volition’. Kasper (1990) emphasizes the need of investigating politeness in its unity of individual strategies and social norms, the interrelationships of which are culturally and situationally specific.

Werkhofer (1992) compares politeness with money, and although politeness socially and personally characterized, the social restrictions on it are much stronger than personal intents. Focusing on the finding of a more efficient analytic model for the study of linguistic politeness, Ide (1993) underlines the task of describing and analyzing linguistic politeness in Western and non-Western languages and cultures on the basis of integrating the strategic view and the social-norm view.

In an attempt to combine individual choices with social constraints on behavior, Fraser’s 1990 ‘Perspective on Politeness’ treats politeness as appropriate language use and links it to the terms and conditions of conversational contract, as posited below:

Being polite does not involve making the hearer ‘feel good,’ à la Lakoff or Leech, nor with making the hearer not ‘feel bad,’ à la Brown & Levinson. It simply involves getting on with the task at hand in light of the terms and conditions of the conversational contract.

Cited from Fraser (1990: 233)

To shed light on the notion of politeness in Chinese culture and society, Lee-Wong underlines the significant difference between the Western concept of the individual as a social unit and the Chinese focus on society as a social unit, which has long been proved in cross-cultural studies (Nakane 1970, Doi 1973, Matsumoto 1988 among others). Her research, which is conducted within the framework of normative-volitional approach and on the basis of data from questionnaires, interviews and naturally-occurring interaction, confronts the Western concepts of politeness with great emphasis on non-imposition with the Chinese concept with intense focus on ethics.

2.1.5 Summary

This section looks at different views on and research into politeness by Western and non-Western scholars. Theoretical concepts or rules of politeness put forth by Grice, Lakoff, Leech, as well as Brown & Levinson seem incomplete and universally inapplicable because they do not sufficiently accounts for discourse behaviors in cultures other than Anglo-American where group or community solidarity, not individualism, is of prime importance. Politeness can only be properly interpreted and explored on the basis of the larger socio-cultural structure, the matrix of institutionalized norms of behavior within the framework of normative-volitional approach. Politeness involves socio-cultural norms can be observed in linguistic forms and analyzed on the basis of linguistic data, as these norms affect language and leave behind traces visible in the lexicon and grammar systems.

To achieve their goals, Ss show deference and respect to others through behavioral conventions and petrified formulae that reflect value judgments and beliefs of a given culture and society. However, Ss do not passively adhere to native socio-cultural contexts. As creative representatives of a language community they are prone to deploy contextually defined strategies to ease the process of interpersonal communication. Collective norms/discernment, and individual strategic manipulations/volition are found to exist, to different extents, in almost all languages and cultures (Hill et al. 1986, Ide 1987, 1989, among others). The degree to which discernment or volition is focused on varies greatly from culture to culture and from language to language.

In the following section, politeness is empirically examined by means of elicited data in disagreeing by English and Vietnamese speakers processed on SPSS.