Politeness In Community Practice

POLITENESS IN COMMUNITY PRACTICE

1. Introduction An individual or a group involving in isolated speech acts or longer-stretches o talk within the context of community practice takes account the feeling of others, to avoid or minimize the threat of their face. The use of the term community practice and cultural group is applied here interchaangeably to mean the same thing. Both focus on values, practices, knowledge, and interpretation of experience that signify group members.

2. Culture and Communication The relationship between language and culture, world view, thought, and reality is that 1) language is more han speech, it is a rallying simbol, a means of identification, a tool, a lens through which reality is seen; 2) language responds

Ostensive utterances of a speaker must guarantee a cognitive affect on a hearer. In finding meaning, an interlocutor needs to draw inferences based on speech act component, including background of his/her interlocutor’s culture to arrive at contextual implication (cruse, 2000:348)

3.3 Yueguo Gu

Politeness principle put forward by Gu is based on the concept of Chinese politeness in which it is explicity associated with the norms of community practice. Politeness principle refers to a belief that individuals bahaviours must fulfill community practice norms covering the attitudes of respectfulness, modesty, and warmth and refirement. Thera re four maxims of this Chinese politeness: 1) self-denigration; 2) address system; 3) tact; and 4) generosity.

3.4 Sachiko

The first proverb requires people to speak and behave decently and politely to be respected; the second proverd requires woman to obay others’ advice; the third provebs requires people’s awareness of the meaning of indirect and non-verbal language; the fourth proverb requires people not to behave arrogantly.

4. The Implication of various politeness priciples on cross cultural pragmatic communucation Differences in culture bringforth differences in language use in particular politeness manifestation. Teaching communication pragmatically is considered necessary because of the following tendencies: 1) there are more than one way to express the intended meaning of a spekers in relation to the context of speech situation; 2) negative face wants does not imply negative of unfavourable attitudes; 3) indirectness is not synonymous with obeying politeness principles; 4) cultural relativist sees diggerentces in politeness principles in positive way.

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