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One way to differentiate Chinese and Americans is in the culture influences.
Chinese, which are more collectivism; they treat speakers as in-groups with whom they mutually shared background knowledge and values. There are basic positive politeness techniques, in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) idea; the hearers are trying to put the speakers ‘at ease’. On the other hand, Americans are much of individualism.
They think faces are the endowment that individuals are inborn with. They believe that they have to protect the faces of themselves and of the speakers to show respect.
Take a closer look. In Boxer’s (1993) ethnographical spontaneous data
collection of the responses to indirect complaints, 533 exchanges of 100 males and 195 females were studied. Commiseration took the leading place with a frequency of 43.58%, followed with contradiction 14.72%, advice/lectures, 13.58%, question, 11.70%, and zero response, 10.19%. Joking and teasing took the least portion with a frequency of 6.23%.
In this study, 2880 exchanges of 60 males and 60 females collected by discourse completion task. Advice/lectures and commiseration were the dominated responses. Zero response and jokes/teasing were almost a quarter of all responses, and questions and contradiction were accounted less than 10% of the total counts.
Although Boxer’s categories were good enough to cover all responses, there was still difference in the definition of the responses. The reason for the difference might rise because Boxer obtained her data from spontaneous conversation with no control of variables. In this study, discourse completion episodes were with set controlled conditions and in the university environment, the data of the received responses did look comparatively much similar in contents.
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Advice/lectures and commiseration. Americans took the lead with the
advice/lectures and commiseration strategies. American had most of the
commiseration but not the most counts in advice. EFL had the second place in the total counts of these two strategies, but a lot of counts were from advice. Taiwanese had the fewest counts in the sum-up but they had more commiseration than EFL groups. Based on the responses, EFL showed great difference from the other two groups by their aggressiveness in getting involved and to help out. A typical example from EFL was presented here for contrast: “This is the world- full of idiots and morons. But still we should save the world. If we don't, then no one will...” when the intention of the hearer was to say we should still do something. The overelaboration was due to the hearer’s insecurity with the target with the target language norms. He might think that the more he said, the more convincing it is more likely is.
In this study, EFL group seemed to violate the Quantity Principle by speaking more than their counterparts. They aggressively show their intention to build up the solidarity by giving more verbal strategies to achieve a “specific pragmatic goal”
(Edmondson & House, 1991) without knowing their good intention might be an imposition over others’ negative faces. On the other hand, Taiwanese took advice as a face satisfying action, a “rapport-building strategy” (Hinkel, 1994), a token of
solidarity (Du, 1995), an action to show they are treating the speakers as of “in-group”.
Taiwanese highlighted collectivism while Americans emphasized individualism.
Collectivism culture assumed that everyone belonged to group”, and the “in-group” members protected the benefits of its people and seek to support and approve their groups. Americans viewed giving advice as strong offense in their culture (Brown & Levinson, 1987). As it showed in the data, Americans comparatively gave less advice toward their interlocutors.
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Zero response and jokes/teasing. Based on the data of this study, zero
response and jokes/teasing were the next largest strategies for responding to the survey. Americans and EFL had the similar response patterns. There were more zero responses than jokes/teasing. Taiwanese were on the opposite direction. Taiwanese had more jokes/teasing than zero response. The possible reason for this difference might be because of Taiwanese’s culture norms. Their concept of politeness out of attitudinal warmth and the harmony of the community influenced their way of responding to others.
People are connected by “cooperative principles” (Grice, 1975). Interlocutors find ways to recognize the purpose of the speech and feel the responsibility to carry on conversation. Saying thing right and clear and not too much is the universal politeness.
Americans viewed individuals’ image as a restricted territory for jokes/teasing.
It seemed that the majority EFL learners acquired the competent knowledge and followed suit.
Question and contradiction. The most face threatening action in conversation
was not been understood by what was said or even been rejected with the validity of utterances. Question and contradiction were face threatening actions in the responses.
The three groups had the least response in this domain. It was interesting that EFL groups asked more questions than the other two groups; while Taiwanese and American groups contradicted more than asking questions. There were evidences of universality. It was polite for hearers to pay attention to what the speakers said and responded properly. A face threatening act was to veto what was said or to ask for further clarification. EFL students showed to be patient in acquiring more information
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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
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and were reluctant to reject what was said. On the other hand, it also showed that in lack of pragmatic knowledge, they might need to play the skill to gain time to be sure what to do.