Eva Ogiermann

Politeness and in-directness across cultures: A comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian requests

Abstract This paper provides some (more) insights into cross-cultural variation in speech act realization by analyzing English, German, Polish and Russian requests. It aims to shows that the relationship between indirectness and politeness is interpreted differently across cultures. Hence, the analysis focuses on the difference between direct requests, which have been said to play a central role in Polish and Russian, and conventionally indirect requests, which are the most frequent request type in English and German. It further shows that the examined languages exhibit culture-specific preferences for syntactic and lexical downgraders modifying the illocutionary force of the request and, thus, reducing the threat to the hearers face. The requests analyzed in this study have been elicited by means of a discourse completion task and constitute responses to a scenario frequently used in previous request studies, so that the results can be compared with those established for other languages. The strong agreement among languages on the use of conventional indirectness in this scenario allows for testing the restricted applicability of interrogative constructions claimed for the two Slavic languages.

On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures

This book investigates how speakers of English, Polish and Russian deal with offensive situations. It reveals culture-specific perceptions of what counts as an apology and what constitutes politeness. It offers a critical discussion of Brown and Levinsons theory and provides counterevidence to the correlation between indirectness and politeness underlying their theory. Their theory is applied to two languages that rely less heavily on indirectness in conveying politeness than does English, and to a speech act that does not become more polite through indirectness. An analysis of the face considerations involved in apologising shows that in contrast to disarming apologies, remedial apologies are mainly directed towards positive face needs, which are crucial for the restoration of social equilibrium and maintenance of relationships. The data show that while English apologies are characterised by a relatively strong focus on both interlocutors’ negative face, Polish apologies display a particular concern for positive face. For Russian speakers, in contrast, apologies seem to involve a lower degree of face threat than they do in the other two languages.

On the culture-specificity of linguistic gender differences: The case of English and Russian apologies

Abstract The present paper analyzes the influence of gender and culture on speech act performance. Although culture as a factor shaping gender roles can be regarded as being implicitly addressed by the growing number of speech act studies analyzing gender differences in various languages, results from such studies are difficult to compare. This study examines responses to offensive situations produced under identical contextual conditions by English and Russian women and men, thus ensuring comparability across groups and allowing for statements on the culture-specificity of linguistic gender differences. The first part of the paper offers a contrastive analysis of English and Russian responses to offensive situations, sketching some culture-specific differences in dealing with them. The second part is devoted to an investigation of gender-based differences in English and Russian, their comparison and interpretation. Apart from apology strategies and intensifying devices, the study also examines the use of downgrading strategies and the effect of strategy combinations on the illocutionary force of the responses.