Dániel Z. Kádár

On historical Chinese apology and its strategic application

Abstract The present paper aims (a) to reconstruct the formal peculiarities of historical Chinese apology (HCA), and (b) to apply the data gained to reexamine the concept of “discernment”. In the first part of the study I look into the interactional application of ritualised formulae of apology (apology-RF), with the aid of historical pragmatics. The examination not only reveals the characteristics of apology-RF, but also shows the fact that they and elevating/denigrating terms of address (EA/DAs, cf. Kádár 2005a; forthcoming) correlated in HCA. In the second part of the study I try to reinforce the findings of studies that deny the claim that the use of honorifics/ritualised formulae was definitely non-strategic, as is asserted according to the so-called “discernment” aspect of linguistic politeness. HCA provides a corpus that is appropriate for analysing this issue because, as the first part of the study shows, in old China apology was practiced via honorific/ritualised formulae, the contextual application of which was constrained by strict sociolinguistic rules. As the examination of the honorific formulae of HCA shows, in spite of their “fixed” contextual application schemata, in a number of cases the speakers intentionally deviated from these to attain personal discourse goals.

Introduction: Politeness Research In and Across Cultures

This volume includes essays on face and politeness in a wide range of cultures. While previous monographs on politeness have tended to concentrate on one or sometimes two languages, the present volume utilises data drawn from as many as nine languages, including some ‘key languages’ in politeness research such as English and Japanese, as well as some lesser-studied languages, such as Georgian. Before introducing the goals, methodology and contents of this collection, we will briefly discuss ways in which ‘culture’ is represented in contemporary politeness studies, in comparision with its theorisation in other fields (Levi-Strauss 1955, Hodder 1982). This selective retrospective will place the present volume in the context of current debates on politeness.

Historical Chinese politeness and rhetoric. A case study of epistolary refusals

This paper explores the relationship between politeness behaviour and rhetoric by examining the case of the historical Chinese pragmatic act of refusal in epistolary discourse. The analysis presented is based on the hypothesis that it is possible to identify culture-specific choices of rhetorical patterns in certain pragmatic and relational acts. Such patterns, in particular in written genres, originate in culturally-situated rhetorical tra-

The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im) Politeness

This handbook comprehensively examines social interaction by providing a critical overview of the field of linguistic politeness and impoliteness. Authored by over forty leading scholars, it offers a diverse and multidisciplinary approach to a vast array of themes that are vital to the study of interpersonal communication. The chapters explore the use of (im)politeness in specific contexts as well as wider developments, and variations across cultures and contexts in understandings of key concepts (such as power, emotion, identity and ideology). Within each chapter, the authors select a topic and offer a critical commentary on the key linguistic concepts associated with it, supporting their assertions with case studies that enable the reader to consider the practicalities of (im)politeness studies. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of linguistics, particularly those concerned with pragmatics, sociolinguistics and interpersonal communication. Its multidisciplinary nature means that it is also relevant to researchers across the social sciences and humanities, particularly those working in sociology, psychology and history.

Convention and Ritual (Im)politeness

This chapter addresses the relationship between convention and ritual, and also provides an overview of these phenomena and the related research. In the technical literature convention and ritual are often merged together, or at least they are not sufficiently distinguished. This is not surprising, given these phenomena share a number of characteristics, as well as the fact that they jointly represent a key aspect of politeness, namely, recurrent behaviour, which is different from idiosyncratic forms of interaction (even though, as we argue, conventions and rituals can also be present in ad hoc, freely co-constructed forms of interaction). Yet, convention and ritual have a number of clearly different characteristics, and also address different interactional needs. Consequently, this chapter argues that it is essential to map the differences between these phenomena.

Intercultural (im)politeness

This chapter explores (Im)politeness in intercultural settings. The study of intercultural (Im)politeness lies at the intersection of two complex, fundamentally interdisciplinary fields, namely, sociopragmatics and intercultural communication. This chapter offers an overview of the key concepts relevant to the study of intercultural (Im)politeness in an effort to open up a relatively understudied area within (Im)politeness research to more extended research. A particular focus in the chapter is on teasing out the way in which (Im)politeness in intercultural settings invariably involves a complex intersection of multiple perspectives, and the implications of this complexity for the analyst. This is illustrated through case studies that focus on how intercultural (Im)politeness can be analysed in both micro, interactional and macro, intergroup settings.

Disattending Customer Dissatisfaction on Facebook: A Case Study of a Slovenian Public Transport Company

In an increasingly mobile and social world, the marketing battle is going digital. A good example was advertising for the 2014 Brazil World Cup.1 Traditional media sectors, including TV and radio, enjoyed their usual advertising revenue but the real winners, in terms of direction of marketing resources and effort, were social media such as Twitter, You Tube and Facebook.

Identity Formation in Ritual Interaction

This paper explores the (co-)construction of identities in ritual interaction, by focusing on the choice of interactional styles. ‘Interactional style’ describes a cluster of similar indexical actions within the interaction “frame” (Goffman, 1974) of a ritual. Ritual is a recurrent interaction type, which puts constraints on the individual’s “freedom” to construct their (and others’) identities, in a somewhat similar way to institutional interactions, which have been broadly studied in the field. However, the constraints posed by ritual interactions are different from institutional, and so by examining identity (co-)construction via interactional style choices in ritual contexts, this paper fills an important knowledge gap. I approach interactional style choices through the notions of “role” and “accountability”, and by placing ritual practices within Goffman’s (1981) participation framework. I use examples of heckling at performing arts events as data. By focusing on interactional style, the paper contributes to the present Special Issue dedicated to interactional styles across cultures.

Silence and Absence in Chinese Smog Discourses

Smog has become a living reality for a growing number of Chinese people in China. While it has drawn increasing public attention in China and around the world, interestingly, very little is known about Chinese media discourses on this issue, or public reactions to these discourses, especially outside the field of Chinese journalism. By focusing on silence and absence in Chinese smog discourses, this study aims to fill this gap. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, a corpus-assisted discourse analysis was conducted on a corpus of 415 articles with explicit mention of the word “smog” from major Chinese newspapers. The findings suggest that the number of Chinese media reports dramatically increases in a politically salient period. Smog is usually backgrounded in news articles, and in the minority of reports where smog is foregrounded, the media tend to frame it in a way that remains relatively silent about the causes of the issue. Smog discourses also tend to hide individual agency by, for example, vague characterisation of social actors, and when such discourses touch on agency, it is almost always limited to a small group of actors, i.e. the government; this, in turn, reinforces the perception that it is the government’s role to tackle this issue. By identifying the key features of Chinese smog discourses, ultimately, this chapter hopes to contribute to the translation of people’s realisation of environmental deterioration into enhanced awareness and action.

Ritual and Politeness Research

Introduction Chapter 2 illustrated that ritual has an important and complex relationship with (im)politeness even if one examines ritual action in a simplistic way. This raises a question, namely how the area of ritual research should be positioned in the field of politeness research. This is not a straightforward question, considering the disciplinary differences that exist between ritual and politeness research (see Chapter 1): while ritual research is a strongly multidisciplinary area and pragmatics has had relatively little weight in ‘mainstream’ ritual studies, politeness research is an essentially pragmatics-driven area, even though it merges pragmatics with some other areas as well. Therefore, there seems to be an interdisciplinary gap between the research of these phenomena, and it is necessary to fill this gap before moving on to a more complex examination of the interface between ritual and (im)politeness in Chapter 4. Studying this disciplinary question reveals various key aspects of ritual, such as its relationship with other phenomena such as conventional practices of interpersonal interaction. In Section 3.2, I take the politeness researchers position and revisit previous politeness theories, which, in my view, are highly relevant to ritual theory. I argue that ritual (along with convention) has been present in the field, in particular in cross-cultural (im)politeness research, even though it has never been explicitly identified within the scope of ritual research. The most important study in this area was written by the Japanese expert Sachiko Ide (1989) and is now counted as a ‘classic’ of politeness research; similarly to Brown and Levinson (1987), Ides study has been broadly criticised in the field. In the present inquiry, I devote particular attention to this work, by revisiting Ides (1989) arguments, as well as a number of politeness theoretical problems that these arguments imply, through the lenses of ritual research. Instead of criticising Ides work (1989) for the sake of being critical, I aim to show its worth for the ritual researcher: I believe that Ide (1989) has made a fundamental contribution to the field of politeness; although it has been broadly criticised (including by myself in Kadar 2007), this work has drawn attention to some key characteristics of politeness inferences triggered by ritual actions.