（英语语言文学专业论文）论语言礼貌能力模式.pdf

iii 摘要 在现代社会的交际中我们越来越多地意识到礼貌地使用语言的重要性掌握 礼貌会话的能力不仅能帮助我们顺利地达到交际目的还有助于建立我们的良 好自我形象虽然学会礼貌交际有着那么多显而易见的益处可是对于如何培 养这一特殊语用交际能力的问题并没有引起广泛的注意本文旨在提出一个语 言礼貌能力的模式为外语教学中对语用能力的教学提供一点启示本文的第 一部分回顾了两个关于语言学中礼貌现象的经典理论礼貌理论布朗和列文 森1987以及礼貌原则里奇1983第二部分探讨了语言礼貌在交际中 的功能第三部分是对于语言礼貌能力模型的具体论述作者把该模式包含在 交际能力之内并且从语言社会和文化三个层面讨论了语言礼貌能力模式的内 在要素文章的最后一章对语言礼貌的教学提出了一些建设性的建议 关键词交际能力交际面子语用交际能力语言行为, 语言礼貌 ii abstract the communication in modern society has made us more and more aware of the importance of the polite use of our language. the ability of speaking polite language not only helps us achieve our communicative goal but also helps us establish a positive and friendly image for ourselves. despite the apparent advantage of speaking politely for anyone in society, the issue as for how to develop this special aspect of pragmatic competence has not been given much consideration so far. this paper is intended to propose a comprehensive model of competence for linguistic politeness that may give some insights into the teaching of pragmatic competence in efl. the first section of this article reviews two classic theories, the politeness theory (brown and levinson, 1987) and the politeness principle (leech, 1983), which are regarded as the theoretical basis of the discussion. the functions of linguistic politeness in interpersonal communication are dealt with in the second section. the third section discusses the model of competence for linguistic politeness in depth. this aspect of competence is grounded in the communicative competence and its components are analyzed from linguistic, social, and cultural perspectives. the last part attempts to discuss some implication to the efl teaching of linguistic politeness. key words: communicative competence, communication, face, pragmatic competence, speech act, linguistic politeness towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 1 - 1. introduction: in recent years, the study of politeness is developing at a rapid speed attracting a great interest among researchers. across the boundaries, linguistic practitioners (fraser, 1980leech, 1983; brown and levinson, 1987; gu, 1990; watts, 1992) have been exploring this field and yielded considerable theoretic findings within a wide social and cultural scope. the emerging theories of politeness study have given linguistic politeness a firm position in pragmatic study, and on the other hand the rich findings and data of politeness phenomena have also offered strong evidence for the studies of socio-linguistics as well as pragmatics. notwithstanding the surge of linguistic politeness studies in the theoretical aspect, not much work has yet been done to relate this feature in language use to linguistic competence for communication. there is no recognized position for linguistic politeness in communicative competence, and on the other hand, very few teaching approaches have been provided with a view to promote this particular linguistic ability for efl learners. . it is argued, in this paper, that the competence for linguistic politeness plays an important role in communication, and therefore a socio-pragmatic aspect in communicative competence must be acknowledged. a lack of this competence, such as miscalculating social distance, relative rights and obligations, and the size of an imposition carried by an utterance (thomas, 1983) will result in the so- called socio-pragmatic failure. miscommunications due to the incompetence in judging socio-interaction and use of language could impede communication to a great extent and even produce an impaired image on the speaker. the consequence of misunderstandings at this level should not be overlooked. thomas (1983) argues the importance of pragmatic failure by comparing it with grammatical errors: towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 2 - grammatical errors may be irritating and impede communication, but at least, as a rule, they are apparent in the surface structure, so that h (hearer) is aware that an error has occurred. once altered to the fact that s (speaker) is not fully grammatically competent, native speakers seem to have little difficulty in making allowances for it. pragmatic failure, on the other hand, is rarely recognized as such by non-linguists. if a non-native speaker appears to speak fluently (i.e., is grammatically competent), a native speaker is likely to attribute his/her apparent impoliteness or unfriendliness, not to any linguistic deficiency, but to boorishness or ill-will. while grammatical error may reveal a speaker to be a less than proficient language-user, pragmatic failure reflects badly on him/her as a person. it is also believed in this article that the acquisition of competence for linguistic politeness for non-native speakers requires some special instruction in that pragmatic competence has been claimed to be “the most difficult aspect of language to master in learning a second language (blum-kulka and sheffer, 1993) and “without some form of instruction, many aspects of pragmatic competence do not develop sufficiently” (kasper, 1997). although as a universal knowledge and as a result of positive pragmatic transfer, competence for linguistic politeness does develop considerably alongside the non-native speakers acquisition of lexical and grammatical knowledge, we still hold that the teaching of competence for linguistic politeness is of crucial significance in helping efl learners get aware of the different perceptions on what politeness means in different cultures and enable them to choose suitable linguistic form and strategy to achieve their communicative goals in a specific social contexts. thus, the paper is aiming at, in the very first place, raising a working model of linguistic politeness competence from a communicative perspective that specifies the various factors influencing our speech events. the competence of linguistic politeness is grounded in hymes notion of communicative competence and is argued to be a decisive element in socio-cultural interaction. secondly, this paper attempts to discuss towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 3 - the possibility of teaching linguistic politeness in efl classroom as a means to enhance the pragmatic competence of the non-native speaker. taking the politeness phenomenon as the departure point of the discussion, the first section gives an overview of the established theories of politeness in recent years with a particular focus on brown and levinsons (1987) (abbreviated by b leech, 1983; gu, 1990) have argued that peoples use of language observes pragmatic maxims. one of the most influential models is the cooperative principle proposed by grice, which argues that there are four conversational maxims for the effectiveness of conversation (maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relation and maxim of manner).the four maxims serve as unstated assumptions that underlie communication. if a speaker flouts one of the maxims (by giving a seemingly unrelated answer or being more than necessarily informative), the speaker may be intending the listener to look for an implied meaning that is different from what is expressed by its verbal form, in other words, to understand the conversational implicature. leech argues that there is a politeness principle working in conjunction with the cooperative principle in the interpretation of indirectness. he maintains that grices cooperative principle is constrained by the politeness principle in that besides achieving the illocutionary or contextual goals, what people say should be modified by their desire to “maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place” (leech, 1983:82). the following example explained how politeness principle helps the cooperative principle to reach the conversational implicature. 6 a: well all miss bill and agatha, wont we? b: well, well all miss bill. towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 11 - apparently, bs answer fails to observe the maxim of quantity by merely confirming part of it while ignoring the rest. the implicature is that b will not miss agatha. here a question should be posed: what helps us arrive at the unstated meaning? if b had added “ but not agatha”, it would have been more informative according to maxim of quantity. however, the politeness principle would be inevitably flouted and the cost would be the impoliteness to a as well as to the third party. therefore, b concealed the desired information in order to adhere to the politeness principle. 2.2.2 maxims of politeness principle in describing the rules beneath the polite behaviors, leech proposes six maxims of politeness principle forming interpersonal rhetoric: (i) tact maxim: minimize the cost to other and maximize benefit to other (ii) generoisity maxim: minimize benefit to self and maximize cost to self (iii) approbation maxim: minimize dispraise of other and maximize praise of other (iv) modesty maxim: minimize praise of self and maximize dispraise of self (v) agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and other and maximize agreement between self and other (vi) sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other and maximize sympathy between self and other three interesting points worth noticing could be found in this model. firstly, it is pointed out by leech as a general point that politeness concerns a relationship between two participants whom we may call self and other (leech, 1983:131). self will normally be identified with speaker (s) and other with hearer (h) in conversation, and in some cases, speaker shows politeness not only to the hearer but also to a third parties who may or may not be directly involved in the speech situation. secondly, leech further clarifies a set of scales on which these maxims operate. the towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 12 - first four maxims go in pairs dealing with cost-benefit and praise-dispraise scales respectively, and the last two deal with the scales of agreement and sympathy. these scales help us judge the politeness degree of a speech behavior when marked on them. the asymmetry of the following sentences 7 and 8 could find its explanation in the maxim of tact and generosity maxims 7 you can lend me your car. 8 i can lend you my car. 7 is regarded as impolite as it violates the tact maxim by expanding the cost to the addressee and maximizing the benefit to self, whereas 8 is judged to be a polite offer due to adherence to generosity maxim. finally, these maxims are typically used in a relative sense, which is to say, there is no way to explore one end of the scale (e.g. praise-dispraise scale) indefinitely. it is agreed that praising is generally seen as in line with generosity maxim requiring the maximization of the praise to other, nevertheless, paying too much lip service only conveys a sense of insincerity. what governs the relativity is usually the typical standard or sets of standards of behavior to a specific culture or language community. this explains why some impolite behaviors in one social setting are accepted as polite in others. westerners are too often thought to be insincere by their eastern counterparts because they tend to give excessive praises even on trivial matter, whereas easterners, on the contrary, are no less hypocritical in the western eyes for they are ready to depreciate themselves at any time and by any means. this is a good example of different norms of relative politeness bringing cross-cultural misunderstanding. 2.3 correlation between the two models before the correlation of the two models proposed by b sometimes they can be group-oriented. gao (1996:96), for example, argues: “ face need is not only a personal concern but, more important, a collective concern (king and bond, 1985). as king and myers (1977) indicate, face is more a concern to the family than to the person and face- losing or face-gaining acts reflect both on persons themselves and on their families. to illustrate, ones failure threatens the face of the family; ones accomplishment, however, gains face for the family.” interestingly, in line with it, spencer-oatey (2000), in a study of sino-british business meeting, found that both the british and chinese delegates seemed to address to each other in terms of group rather than individual when face issues arose. towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 14 - in leechs theory, those scales determining politeness maxims also explain the positive/negative politeness by b first of all, linguistic politeness has to be communicated. that is to say, a linguistic message conveying politeness has to be transmitted. any instance of verbal communication must include two interlocutors, the speaker and the hearer (“self” and “other” in leechs distinction). in many cases, there is even an involvement of a third party, present either directly in the situation or indirectly in the content of propositions. therefore, the process of communicating politeness is complicated. before uttering a linguistic message to the hearer, the speaker will have to assume his relation with the hearer according to a set of social and cultural scales. towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 16 - the assumption is a comprehensive judgment on a variety of factors such as relative power and intimacy. here, b in the longer term, her aim will include that of becoming/remaining a liked and respected member of a certain group” (jary, 1998). the short term goal of communication described above refers to the speakers immediate desire to pass some illocutionary force or deliver information to the hearer via linguistic behaviors, and it satisfies the present individual need of the speaker. but communication also has to achieve another sustaining aim called long term goal in contrast to the short term one, which is the communicators intention to establish a good relationship with other people in the community and raise his/her own status in the community. it is supposed that the two goals, although corresponding to different needs, should be achieved at one linguistic behavior simultaneously. some speech acts such as praising and inviting coincide with the social goals, but many other acts such as demanding, begging or accusing compete or conflict with the social goal of building a favorable environment. therefore we sometimes call these impolite linguistic behaviors. in order to accommodate the innate offence carried in these speech acts to a desirable social image, politeness provides a solution. towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 19 - 3.2.2 the functions of politeness in communication primarily, linguistic politeness can be seen as a way of smoothing the social interaction and avoiding conflicts between people. a glance at the metaphors about politeness many linguists elaborated will give a better understanding on the various functions of linguistic politeness. lakoff (1975: 64), for instance, interprets politeness as a social lubricant aimed at reducing “the friction in personal interaction”. watt (1992: 44) understands politeness as “a mask to conceal egos true frame of mind and which functions to avoid conflict, to tune down potential aggression and to ensure that interaction will be accomplished smoothly”. sell (1991: 210) even describes politeness as “velvet glove within which to hide one or another kind of iron fist”. even b e.g. ordering, asking, demanding, begging, etc. (2) convivial: the illocutionary goal coincides with the social goal; e.g. offering, inviting, greeting, thanking, congratulation. towards a model of competence for linguistic politeness - 22 - (3) collaborate: the illocutionary function is indifferent to the social goal; e.g. asserting, reporting, announcing, instructing. (4) conflictive: the illocutionary goal conflicts with the social goal; e.g. threatening, accusing, cursing, reprimanding. in further analysis, leech pointed out that competitive and convivial are the two categories which we should confine our attention to in that they are directly dealing with negative and positive politeness whereas the last category conflictive is a rather marginal linguistic behavior owing to its conflicting nature to politeness. since competitive, as the definition goes, reveals the competition between what the speaker wants to achieve and what is “good manner” (leech 1983: 105), in 3.3.3, we will make use of some speech acts in this category to demonstrate how politeness manipulates the two conflicting goals. 3.3.3 one example: the politeness in disagreeing disagreeing is one good example that lends us a full vision of the functioning of politeness in interaction. disagreeing falls into the category of competitive and it is defined in pragmatic term as: “a speaker s thinks untrue of the proposition p uttered by addressee a and reacts with an utterance whose propositional content or implicture is not p. since disagreeing negates the proposition pre-uttered by the addressee either directly or indirectly, the responses are undesirable in friendly talk because they jeopardize the participants drive towards an interpersonal consensus (georgakopoulou, 2001). by its very nature, disagreeing is a high-level face- threatening act that destroys the solida