The Importance Of Politeness

“Living in China an honor & privilege” was a topic published very recently by Global Times about how to adapt to loving in another country (Cormack, 2016). It talked about a few things the writer learned living in China. Recognizing that Chinese people are more into showing off while British are more introverted; Chinese have guests-oriented household rules while British prefer property ownership. They can consider each other impolite when one shows off and one implies rules on guests. According to Chiappini and Kádár (2011), since the 1970s, linguistics politeness has been an interesting field to many scholars; and that, politeness research is an independent field in communication studies. Politeness is a very crucial part of our daily communication; …show more content…
Politeness is one of the preferred behaviors in the society. However, it can differ across cultures. Chiappini and Kádár (2011) suugested that “politeness is a common behavioral heritage of humanity, it is culturally as diverse as the human race. Politeness has been described as a cultural-specific phenomenon.” Just by searching on the dictionary, politeness can mean showing good manners toward others, as in behavior, speech, and more importantly refined and cultivated (dictionary.com). Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Model has been described as the most cited approach to politeness. Meanwhile it is being criticized for its universality. This essay is going to discuss about Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Model’s approach to politeness and analyze its advantages and disadvantages in an intercultural communication …show more content…
They defined both positive and negative face-threatening acts (FTAs) by proposing a formula to explain both faces according to two basic parameters: whose face is being threatened (the speaker’s or the addressee’s), and which type of face is being threatened (positive or negative face) (Wagner 2004, pg.19). By recommending positive and negative face exist universally across human culture, they concluded a number of situational interactions in order to further explain the formula and to demonstrate FTAs in different practical scenarios. They provided critical analysis, rationally selected and used number of politeness strategies across three languages, and amplify its dependence on three social factors of power, distance and imposition (Levinson 1988, pg.661). Which means the relative power if the speaker with respect to the hearer; the social distance between the speaker and the hearer; and the absolute ranking of the imposition in a particular culture