Nodoushan (2007) also claimed that Americans tend to be more informal in their daily life greetings. Except on official occasions such as reception of distinguished guests, American society has a certain amount of informality in introductions and greetings. On most occasions one need not be ‘particularly conscious of social status, Americans generally ignore it’ (p. 359).
In spite of the informality, however, there are rules of good manners and social patterns that should be followed. There are rules of introducing people to each other. A younger person is generally introduced to an older person, a man to a woman, a guest to the host or hostess, and a person to the group (Nodoushan, 2007).
The most common greeting for acquaintances meeting on the street is "Hello." It can be used as formal and informal greeting depend on the sentence it comes within. For example, if you meet your friends and greet them with Hello guys! It will be considered informal, while when you meet your boss for example and say Hello Mr. Green! It will be a more formal greeting. Other more formal greetings are Good morning, Good afternoon, and Good evening.
These greeting (except "How do you do?") are often followed by the question How are you?.
Though in a question form, the greeting of How are you? only requires a brief replies such as
Just fine. How are things with you?. This may cause miscommunication in a situation when a
patient comes to see a doctor; the receptionist asks How are you? and he answers just fine! whenthe receptionist actually wants to know more details about his health condition to write down on his report.
However, in spite of the informality, Americans are not completely devoid of customs that show consciousness of social distinction. One is likely to use somewhat more formal language when talking to superiors or people with higher social status. For example, the less formal Hello (without terms of address) is an acceptable greeting for an employee (when greeting his employer), the employee is more likely to greet with more formal greeting like
Hello, Mr. Adversin, whereas the employer may reply Hello, Jim or even Hi, Jim.
The custom of hand shaking varies among different culture groups. In general, hand shaking is mostly reserved for formal occasions. When men are introduced, they generally shake hands, but women shake hands less frequently. For example, when women meet each other for the first time they generally do not shake hands unless one is an especially honored guest. If a man and a woman are being introduced to each other, they may or may not shake hands. If they do, woman always extends her hand first. For acquaintances meeting on the street, if a person does not shake hands when he meets and old acquaintance, he is not regarded as impolite. He may compliment the acquaintance and consider him as a member of his own group (Nodoushan, 2007). Kissing-related greetings, such as kissing on the cheek or kissing hand, are less common among Americans. Hand kissing is only observed in “absolutely formal situations on certain occasions” (Nodoushan, 2007, p. 359).
Greetings in Arabic culture.
In Muslim society, the most common verbal greeting is assalamu‘alaykum ‘peace be upon you’. This is, according to the Qur’an, how you will be greeted by the angels as you enter
Paradise, and it is also the way you greet your fellow humans. The most common reply is alaykum as-salam, ‘and upon you, too, peace’. However, one of the guidance in Qur’an is that
“when you are greeted with a greeting, greet with one fairer than it” (Surat An-Nisa', 86), which means that you are invited to redouble the greeting back and out-greet the greeter, as in
wa‘alaykum as-salam wa-rahmatullahi wabarakatuhu, which means ‘and on you be peace, and
also God’s mercy and also His blessing’ (Lawrence, 2006).In the Arab culture, an adult usually should greet each individual in the whole group even if there is only one person in the group who is known to him. In situation where one person walks by or meets a group, greeting not only is to maintain solidarity with the whole group but also is viewed as a social etiquette with a religious obligation. In Arabic culture, if a passer-by does not say Hello to the group he will be criticized publicly. However, greetings are largely optional if people have previous conflict or tense relationship with each other. In addition, a greeting is also optional when the group is made up of two, so one may simply greet one to the exclusion of the other.
The custom of hand shaking in Arabic countries varies from one country to another.
When men are introduced, they generally shake hands. Women shake hands if they are familiar with each other, or if the other part is an important (female) guest. However, even today, in most cases, when a man and a woman are being introduced for the first time, they almost never shake hands due to their religious beliefs. The same holds true with regard to kissing-the-cheek custom;
however, kissing the cheek is very common if two females greet each other.
Politeness Theory
Politeness is an area of interactional pragmatics which has experienced an explosion of interest over the past quarter of a century and in which empirical studies have proliferated, examining individually and cross-culturally languages and language varieties from around the world (Hickey & Stewart, 2005).
What is politeness?
In his own book ‘Politeness,’ Richard Watts (2003, p. 1) described how hard it is to define politeness:
Most of us are fairly sure we know what we mean when we describe someone’s behavior as ‘polite’. To define the criteria with which we apply that description, however, is not quite as easy as we might think. When people are asked what they imagine polite
behavior to be, there is a surprising amount of disagreement. Some people feel that polite behavior is equivalent to socially ‘correct’ or appropriate behavior; others consider it to be the hallmark of the cultivated man or woman. Some might characterize a polite person as always being considerate towards other people; others might suggest that a polite person is self-effacing. There are even people who classify polite behavior negatively, characterizing it with such terms as ‘standoffish’, ‘haughty’, ‘insincere’, etc.
Politeness manifests itself in social interaction and is conditioned by the socio-cultural norms dictated by the members of a society who negotiate their intentions by means of verbal and non-verbal actions (Félix-Brasdefer, 2008). The majority forms of politic behavior consist of highly routinised sequences whose function is to regulate the lines taken in the interaction order and to ensure overall face maintenance. This is the case with greeting sequences, leave-taking
sequences (e.g., saying goodbye), request and acceptance sequences, apology sequences, addressing other interactants, etc. These sequences have a regulatory force in facework, contributing to the reproduction of politic behavior (Watts, 2003).
In this perspective, the politeness markers can be labeled together with speech acts such as greetings, farewells, jokes, compliments and congratulations as supportive interchanges belonging to “the ritualization of identificatory sympathy,” “rituals of ratification” (Goffman, 1971, p. 65, 67), which function as displays of reassurance between interlocutors and provide signs of involvement in and connectedness with another person in society. Thus, rather than redressing a negative face-threat, the display of verbal energy in these situations constitutes an act of doing positive face (Lakoff, 1973, p. 298), as it emphasises goodwill to bring the
interaction to a successful end.
Politeness and gender.
At a stereotypical level, politeness is often considered to be a woman’s concern, in the sense that stereotypes of how women in general should behave are in fact rather a prototypical description of white, middle-class women’s behavior in relation to politeness. That is, teaching and enforcement of ‘manners’ are often considered to be the preserve of women. Femininity, that set of varied and changing characteristics which have been rather arbitrarily associated with women in general, and which no woman could unequivocally adopt, has an association with politeness, self-effacement, weakness, vulnerability, and friendliness. This manifests itself in the type of language practices which Lakoff described as ‘talking like a lady’ (Lakoff, 1975, p. 10).
Women’s linguistic behavior is often characterised as being concerned with co-operation (more positively polite than men) and avoidance of conflict (more negatively polite than men).
This characterization is based on the assumption that women are powerless and display their powerlessness in language; these forms of politeness are markers of their subordination.
However, stereotypes of gender have been contested for many years by feminists and have themselves been changed because of the changes in women’s participation in the public sphere. We can therefore no longer assume that everyone has the same ‘take’ on a stereotype, or that they share assumptions with others about what a particular stereotype consists of. Mills (2003) discussed in her book the complex relations between gender and politeness and argued that although there are circumstances when women speakers, drawing on stereotypes of
femininity to guide their behavior, will appear to be acting in a more polite way than men, there are many circumstances where women will act just as impolitely as men.
Greetings and politeness.
Politeness is one of the most important aspects of human communication: human beings can only exist in peace together if certain basic conventions of politeness are observed (Rash, 2004). Since Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson first developed the theory of linguistic politeness, most sociolinguistic studies have looked at politeness in terms of "face" (Hartung 2001, p. 214). Social cohesion depends upon awareness and consideration of the "face needs" of others. Each participant in human society has two types of face need: a "positive face need" and a "negative face need". The positive face need is “the positive consistent self-image or
‘personality’ (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants” and the negative face need is “the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction - i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from imposition”
(Brown & Levinson 1987, p. 61). Positive politeness attends to a person's positive face needs and includes such speech acts as compliments, invitations and greetings. It expresses good-will and
solidarity. On the other hand, negative politeness attends to a person's negative face needs and includes indirectness and apologies. It expresses respect and consideration (Holmes, 1995, p.
154).
Interactants in a communicative act great to respect the face needs of others. Failure to do so is seen as an intrusion into another's personal space or territory; as a "face threatening act"
(FTA) (Lüger, 2001, p. 6). FTAs include threats, insults, criticism and orders. The negative effect of an FTA may be reduced or totally eliminated by a variety of types of corrective "face work". Such "face-redressive" or "face-saving" work may involve linguistic indirectness, such as modal verbs, particles or hedges, as in Wouldn't you like to close the window?. An FTA may also be mitigated by an apology, as in I'm sorry to bother you, but would you please close the
window?.
As with politeness in general, greetings can be analyzed within the framework of theories of face. When we approach our fellows, we are entering their personal space, or their territory.
This can be interpreted as an FTA, particularly if we remain silent, as silence is naturally experienced by human beings as disconcerting: breaking a silence, as in greeting, is a sign of friendly intent (Züger, 1998, p. 29). A greeting, if performed correctly, that is with appropriate words, tone of voice and body language, can attenuate the force of a potential FTA. Some people are aware of the face-saving function of greetings: one greets to show that one wishes to
establish a relationship in a non-threatening atmosphere. This is also referred to as "phatic communication" (Crystal, 1987, p. 427). Züger (1998) documented two aspects of greeting: (1)
Initialphatik ‘initial phatic communication’ or ‘initial greeting’, and (2) Terminalphatik ‘terminal
phatic communication’ or ‘leave-taking’. A greeting exemplifies how a phatic communication act may be "other-oriented" or "self-oriented" (Laver 1975, p. 223). Self-oriented greetings mayinclude declarative statements, such as My legs weren't made for these hills; other-oriented greetings often contain a question, like How are you? or comments, such as That looks like hard
work (Laver, 1975, p. 223). Holmes (1995) believed women to be more other-oriented than men,
as exemplified in their greater readiness to accept apologies. She claimed that this is because women feel more responsible for social harmony than men; that they are more interested in finding common ground and establishing solidarity (Holmes, 1995, p. 188). In Switzerland, as elsewhere, it is women who tend to perform the very important task of teaching greeting conventions to their children.Social Distance
As other variables play an important role in the speech act of greeting, the element of social distance has no less significant role in here. Familiarity and intimacy between people would affect all kind of speech acts they use among them (Blum-Kulka, S. & Olshtain, E., 1984).
Social distance between people, their relative status, and the formality of the context all together influence the choice of appropriate speech forms (Holmes, 2008: 273). Migge (2005), revealed that greetings play an important role in defining the nature of social relationship. When people greet family members or close friends, they tend to use less formal speech, and less number of greeting strategies; they can directly engage to a conversation without using long and formal openings.
According to Migge (2005), greetings that convey less social distance are usually consist of less formulaic utterances, and the verbal content of the adjacency pairs implies a great degree of familiarity or a closer relationship. Moreover, one can notice the less social distance between two interlocutors when they exchange personal information (e.g. about their state of health) and directly relate to each other using pronominal forms of address. She also suggested that in
everyday situations, like in daily greetings between neighbors, classmates or people who regularly meet each other and maintain a cordial, yet formal relationship, they tend to use less greeting strategies (usually only three sequences), and more formal language. People also tend to use more politeness strategies when they greet someone they are not very familiar with (Migge, 2005). In the current study, I used social distance as one of the research variables in order to elicit more authentic results that are closer to real life situations.
Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatic Failure in Greetings
In the context of a foreign language, “the more speakers understand the cultural context of greetings, the better the society appreciates them, and the more they are regarded as well behaved” (Schleicher, 1997, p. 334).
Intercultural communication is perceived as being somewhat problematic, given the varied cultures that come into contact with one another. Misunderstanding and communication breakdown are said to mark many intercultural encounters as participants rely on the norms of their mother tongue and native culture to interpret meaning.
The term 'pragmatic failure' is borrowed from Thomas (1983) and is said to occur on any occasion on which the hearer perceives the force of the speaker's utterance as other than the speaker intended s/he should perceive it. In a natural setting this may lead interlocutors to serious misinterpretations of each other's intentions and in the most dramatic cases to communication breakdowns.
Greeting is one of the functions in language that establishes a platform for acceptance creating a positive social bond between interlocutors. When it is not performed well, it can result in confusion, awkwardness, and hostility. Dissimilar interactional styles between two languages
can lead to misunderstandings and negative stereotypes, including such widely-held false assumptions that Spaniards are rude and English speakers are hypocrites (Ballesteros, 2001).
The following two examples are the notion of pragmatic failure involving formulaic language. In United States, a lot of foreigners are annoyed by the apparent insincerity of some Americans who say they would like to invite someone to lunch, but never really do so (Wolfson, 1981). What happens is that the foreigners do not realize the formulaic nature of such
expressions like We must have lunch together some time, or its more recent variant Let's do lunch which belong to some Americans' repertoire of leave-taking formulas such as: See you, So long,
Take care, etc., and these expressions do not signal the speaker's commitment to have lunch with
the hearer. Pragmatic failure occurs because the hearer assigns the force of the invitation to an utterance whose intended force is a friendly leave-taking. In other words, the intended force of the utterance as a formulaic leave-taking is mistaken for a (non-formulaic) invitation.The second example quoted by Fillmore (1984) contains two separate anecdotes about the use of the American English formula I thought you'd never ask. It's a fairly innocent teasing expression in American English, but it could easily be taken as insulting by people who did not know its special status as a routine formula. In one case a European man asked an American woman to join him in the dance, and she, being playful, said, I thought you'd never ask. Her potential dancing partner withdrew his invitation in irritation. In another case a European hostess offered an American guest something to drink, when he, unilaterally assuming a teasing
relationship, said, I thought you'd never ask. He was asked to leave the party for having insulted his host (Fillmore, 1984, p. 129-130).
Another difference concerning the way of greeting can be seen in Puerto Rico, where greeting a friend has a high significance, which means that conversations are always interrupted when a friend passes by. Americans would be confused by this behavior because they always feel that their first obligation is to the person they are having a conversation with and when a friend would like to talk to one of the speakers, he or she would have to wait just outside the listening distance until the conversation has come to an end.
Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1986) examined possible causes for pragmatic failure in learner’s inter-language. They aimed to capture the types of misunderstanding which occur when two speakers “fail to understand each other’s intentions,” especially when one of these speakers is a second language learner, whose different linguistic and cultural background may play a key role in such misunderstanding (p. 49). The authors examined the semantic formulas employed in native and non-native requests. One of the most remarkable results of their analysis involved
“length of utterance” which is the number of words used in each sequence. Opposing to the expectations, they discovered that the learners in their study used more external modification, and thus more words, than the native speakers to convey their requests. Such findings were surprising as one would normally expect that learners, who have more limited linguistic means, would be less verbose than native speakers, and they would naturally have a tendency to talk less.
Using “too many words”, Blum-Kulka and Olshtain claimed, was an important factor leading to pragmatic failure. Exmaples from their data revealed that excessive talk by learners was often inappropriate, overly-informative, irrelevant, and confusing. The present study also examines the response length and possible explanations for increases in response length are discussed. While the findings clearly are not comparable with the results of studies on length of
utterance, some of the discussion regarding learner verbosity can be considered her, particularly discussion of how learner’s responses vary from native speakers, and may lead to pragmatic failures.
In the area of cross-cultural pragmatics, it has been always difficult for researchers to capture the authenticity, creativity and richness of natural speech while trying to control the many variables inherent in language use so that data from different individuals can be
In the area of cross-cultural pragmatics, it has been always difficult for researchers to capture the authenticity, creativity and richness of natural speech while trying to control the many variables inherent in language use so that data from different individuals can be