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On Not Calling People by Their Names: Pragmatic Undertones of Sociocultural Relationships in a Postcolony
Abstract
This paper discusses name-avoidance by Cameroonians, and some of the socio-pragmatic impacts it creates. Focus is on five items that are often used in place of personal names—manyi (mother of twins), tanyi (father of twins), moyo (in-law, especially male), mbanya (co-wife in a polygamous marriage), and mbombo (namesake). The paper identifies some of the contexts in, and the purposes for, which these terms are used. Cameroon, like many other postcolonial contexts, is acutely different from certain English-based Western cultures in which using someone's personal name may be part of a positive politeness strategy and not disrespect or impoliteness as it is the case in the Cameroonian and some other African cultures. To call certain people by their personal names in these cultures is not only disrespectful but also a sign that they have no honor to merit the respect that goes with not calling their names. The terms studied here are also often used strategically on people who are not, for instance, mothers/fathers of twins or who may just well be strangers or first time acquaintances.
... An increasing number of researchers are interested in examining address forms in various contexts [44,45] . These studies have shown that speakers from different cultures and languages have a wide range of terms of address that are used in different ways in different contexts and reflect social power and solidarity relationships [18,31,[46][47][48] . ...
... Similarly, Qin [51] investigated terms of address in Chinese and established that kinship terms are the most used terms of address among Chinese people. Additionally, Anchimbe [46] studied terms of address in the Cameroonian community and found that the use of people's names as address terms was not common. He attributed this behavior to the effects of culture, in which using names is considered a sign of disrespect. ...
... Moreover, they are used without being accompanied by any other form of address (e.g., Mr., uncle). Similar to the studies conducted by Potter [56] , Maalej [31] , and Al-Refaie [15] , the first name category was the most used category by the participants, contrary to some of the conducted studies (e.g., Mahzari [7] , Anchimbe [46] , Yoon [50] , Qin [51] ). ...
Many studies have investigated terms of address, primarily focusing on Western languages. However, few studies have explored this topic in varieties of the Arabic language. This study examines the use of terms of address in Saudi Arabic, investigating the terms used by Saudi men and women, the effect of the addressees’ age and gender on the selection of address terms, and the linguistic patterns employed by Saudis when addressing each other. Twelve participants from two large cities in Saudi Arabia took part in the study. A semi-structured interview featuring 12 different social situations was conducted to answer the research questions. The interviews were conducted in the Saudi Arabic dialect to elicit authentic and realistic responses. The data were analyzed thematically to identify recurring patterns and trends in the use of address terms. Seven categories of address terms were identified. Furthermore, the age and gender of the addressees were found to influence the choice of terms. Moreover, five linguistic patterns were used by the participants to address each other. These findings provide important insights into professional settings where understanding suitable address terms can lead to more productive and culturally acceptable communication.
... While in most English-based Western cultures using other people's personal names is usually appreciated as a sign of respect and politeness, cultures practicing name avoidance consider certain naming behaviours (e.g. calling someone more senior or superior by their first name) disrespectful (Anchimbe, 2011). Name avoidance occurs by social convention and, in more extreme cases, can take the form of a taboo, for example, when using the name of god, the king's name, etc. (Fleming, 2011). ...
... Behaviour characterised by deliberately omitting names from direct verbal communication has been studied in the context of anthropological research on name avoidance. The practice of name avoidance occurs in many Asian and African cultures where using other people's names is considered disrespectful (Anchimbe, 2011;Fleming, 2011). While not saying a name is the preferred style of conversation and thus a deliberate choice by the speaker in name avoidance, people affected by alexinomia have the desire to use names but fail to do so, suggesting an important difference between these phenomena. ...
... An interesting factor from the point of view of intersubjectivity relates to the relevance of the process of naming, particularly in the African context (Anchimbe, 2011;Mulo Farenkia, 2011) On the one hand, it is generally the case that the birthname given to an individual is predictable only to a limited extent, as it depends on the social network -within or beyond the family-in which the individuals who choose and give the name are involved. Thus, a mother or a father may name their child after any of the relatives or even a friend. ...
... This suggests that naming is a relevant part of social interaction in the sense that names carry social messages which reflect the intersubjective relationships within a network, since the name chosen in each case results either from a negotiation process between the one who chooses it and the one who is named after or from what the one who gives a name thinks about their relationship with the group. In other words, a name carries a more or less implicit message addressed to the members of a group based on interpersonal relationships (Anchimbe, 2011;Mulo Farenkia, 2011). Thus, depending on the name received, a child may, for instance, be the father or mother of their biological mother or father which means, from a social point of view, be their own grandfather or grandmother. ...
El artículo tiene como objetivo estudiar la condición de la mujer africana tal como ha evolucionado desde el período colonial sobre la base de tres novelas: Americanah, Perpétue, y Who fears death? Sugerimos que existe una correlación entre la forma en que los autores representan la subjetividad de los protagonistas de sus novelas, de acuerdo con la complejidad de sus identidades, y la forma en que estos últimos reciben sus nombres, así como los nombres que reciben. Desde este punto de vista, el acto de dar un nombre parece ser uno de los recursos más eficientes que utilizan los autores para dar peso simbólico y credibilidad a la caracterización de los protagonistas de sus novelas.
... The phenomenon of name avoidance taboo (Anchimbe 2011, Fleming 2011, Fleming et al. 2019, Mitchell 2015 is also unique to the African people. Anchimbe (2011) specifically identifies such taboo names as a feature of interpersonal communication that is used to express politeness or show respect to the addressee in order to maintain social order and communion. ...
... The phenomenon of name avoidance taboo (Anchimbe 2011, Fleming 2011, Fleming et al. 2019, Mitchell 2015 is also unique to the African people. Anchimbe (2011) specifically identifies such taboo names as a feature of interpersonal communication that is used to express politeness or show respect to the addressee in order to maintain social order and communion. This depicts name avoidance as a face-saving strategy meant to secure social harmony. ...
... Zero address forms are those forms that are used in certain situations where the speaker is not sure which term to use or how to address another person (Wardhaugh, 1992;O'Grady et al., 1996). Anchimbe (2011) mentions that there are three fundamentals that affect the choice of appellatives as a strategy of address avoidance in Cameroonian culture. The first one is to show politeness or respect towards the addressee. ...
... According to the sociocultural norms, addressing an unfamiliar male who is older than the addresser is done through terms indicating respect, such as kinship terms and titles. Zero address forms are used when the addresser is not sure which term to use, show politeness and respect, and give the opportunity to the addresser to bail himself from unfavorable situations (Anchimbe, 2011). ...
The nature of this study is to investigate the different address
forms used by Mosuli speakers and the socio-cultural rules that
govern address usage in daily conversation in Mosuli Arabic. A
socio-pragmatic approach is adopted in this study and by using
semi-structured interviews to collect data from 80 participants in
English Department, College of Education for Humanities,
University of Mosul. The selection of the participants is done
through four variables namely: age, gender, educational status and
marital status. In this study, two theoretical frameworks are
selected as a model of analysis namely: the communication
accommodation theory and the power and solidarity theory of
Brown and Gilman (1968). The study finds that Mosuli speakers
use different address forms and the most predominant forms are
the kinship terms or its varieties. The age and status are the most
effecting determiners of address choice in Mosul society.
In addition, the study finds that speakers use the different forms to
accommodate their addressees and politeness is found greatly
embodied in many address forms that are used by Mosuli
speakers.
... For example, Jaworski and Galasinski (2000) suggest that interlocutors in Polish political television debates use address forms to define their interpersonal space, and regulate, establish and legitimise their political ideologies. In the study of address terms in postcolonial communities, scholars such as Afful (2007), Anchimbe (2011a) and Mühleisen (2011) have focused on forms of address in Ghanaian, Cameroonian and Caribbean societies respectively. Studies on forms of address in Nigerian societies have paid attention to address terms in the Yoruba society (Oyetade 1995), Yoruba names given to twins (Odebode 2010) and Yoruba names given to Abiku children (Odebode 2011). ...
... Forms of address are important linguistic items that encode the social status of interactants and the relationship that exists between the addresser and the addressee. They appear as pronouns, nouns and verbs (Jucker/Taavitsainen 2003;Anchimbe 2011a;Mühleisen 2011). Pronominal address forms may include pronouns that indicate familiarity or distance such as the tu/vous distinction in French while nominal address terms include names, kinship terms, titles and occupational terms. ...
This paper examines the forms and functions of address terms employed among staff members
and the language ideologies that inform the use of these address forms in a southwestern
Nigerian university. The study is guided by Anchimbe’s (2011a) categorisation of address
forms, and theories on language ideologies. The data are collected through participantobservation,
oral and written interviews, and these are analysed qualitatively. The analysis
reveals that forms of address used in the university include academic titles, official titles, kinship
terms, social titles, nicknames, first names, surnames, and different combinations of these
address forms. The address terms are derived from English, Yoruba, Nigerian Pidgin and
other indigenous Nigerian languages. The address forms are informed by postmodernist and
functionalist language ideologies which are influenced by cultural ideologies where interactants’
cultures play significant roles in the choice of address terms
... The names are allusive and are used to carry messages in indirect ways. Anchimbe (2011) uses data from Cameroon to demonstrate how verbal indirectness can be signalled through name-avoidance. In this study, it is revealed that calling people by their names could be regarded as a sign of disrespect, depending on status and distance, and this is interpreted as a mark of impoliteness. ...
... Name avoidance or situational indirectness is therefore a politeness strategy which is an important interactional facet of the Cameroonian community of practice. It is also a part of the social norms in the daily negotiation of social order and power (Anchimbe, 2011(Anchimbe, , p. 1483. Indirectness by name avoidance, therefore, plays an important role in personal interactions as a form of conversational style that reinforces sociability and maintains a positive face needed between interactants. ...
Among the Ngə̂mbà, a Bantu-Grassfields people of Western Cameroon, personal names are alternative forms of narratives that represent past experiences and conflicts encountered by the name giver. These are central to the self-definition and future expectations of the name bearer as well as in re-negotiating locally relevant principles of values. This article explores Ngə̂mbà personal names as communicative acts that mirror a wide range of human experiences within the Ngə̂mbà sociocultural context. In this article, we trace the stories behind these names, investigate their communicative and socio-onomastic significance and analyse their ethnopragmatic meanings. The study discovers that Ngə̂mbà personal names do not only index individual or collective identities and belongings but also embed significant historical resonances and cultural assumptions that reflect cruel and sometimes pleasant personal memories, unresolved tension and promising futures.
... In the field of pragmatics there is an increasing amount of research which proposes different frameworks derived from different languages, taking a different approach from the pioneering research traditions of politeness (e.g., Gu 1990;Nwoye 1992;Okamoto and Shibamoto-Smith 2004;Anchimbe 2011;Anchimbe and Janney 2011;Hanks 2014;Ameka and Terkourafi 2019). Studies in linguistic typology have shown an enormous range of diverse languages from which generalizations are considered extremely hard to © 2023. ...
This chapter discusses the notion of wakimae, known in pragmatics by its English translation ‘discernment’, and reconsiders both its relevance and challenges in analyzing different aspects of communication. Kádár and Mills (2013) point out that the problem of the polarization of ‘discernment culture’ and ‘volition culture’, which exhibits stereotypes and does not capture the complexities of cross-cultural examinations of politeness, is not the concept of discernment itself, but the fact that a discernment vs. volition dichotomy has been uncritically used by numerous scholars in discussing politeness. In line with Kádár and Mills (2013), this chapter discusses the notion of discernment in its own right and explores the concept as providing a useful analytical perspective on language use in interaction involving (im)politeness.
Handbook of Pragmatics
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... Ubuntu explains the African culture's emphasis on compassion, dignity, reciprocity, harmony, with justice and mutual caring (Tomaselli, 2009). In analysing Ubuntu, scholars often contrast the collective nature of African society and self-concept, with the individualism of Western society (Anchimbe, 2011). Thus, the framework of Unhu is helpful for illuminating how an African postgraduate supervisor, living and espousing the associated virtues, negotiates his status and roles, both on a factual level, and on a normative one (Giddy, 2012). ...
This study employs an Afro-centric framework of Digital Unhu (i.e. digital humanism) and netnographic accounts of supervisor-supervisee interactions to investigate Mobile Instant Messaging mediated interaction as a platform for honing students’ career management competencies. While many existing studies foreground Western epistemological lenses that have limited resonance with resource-constrained African contexts, the Afro-centric Digital Unhu framework enabled a more nuanced delineation of student-supervisor interaction as it was enacted in a South African university setting. Findings demonstrated that WhatsApp-mediated interaction, framed within the African ethos of Digital Unhu, provided a dynamic and highly personal environment in which the supervisor could delicately coach students in various career related processes, namely, the negotiation of competing family and job hunt commitments, career planning, job applications and salary negotiations, resignations, and managing career frustrations. More broadly, the study demonstrates the central role of Unhu in negotiating student-supervisor interactions in the unique cultural setting, in tension to a degree with the Western philosophical thinking in which South African higher education is situated. Further, contrary to common characterisations of texting culture as a youth phenomenon, both student and supervisor were able to leverage WhatsApp to achieve career management ends.
... Research has shown an increasing interest in investigating address forms across different contexts (Afzali 2011;Aba-Alalaa 2015). The studies revealed that speakers from different cultural backgrounds and speaking different languages have a repertoire of diverse terms of address, that are differently used in various contexts and signal relationships of social power and solidarity (Clayman 2010;Maalej 2010;Anchimbe 2011;Ozcan 2016). ...
This study investigates the key forms of address used amongst Jordanian university students, the impact of gender on using these forms and what accounts for the variation in their address system. By addressing the issue of normativity and heterogeneity in the use of address terms, in different social settings, the study enriches the understanding of the internal variation of the address term system. Data collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were analysed, based on Watts’ discursive approach to politeness and Agha’s approach of indexicality. The results revealed that the identified normative patterns represent Jordanian university politic behaviours, which index different social meanings and relations among the youth community, in relation to specific social contexts. The most frequent strategies university students use for addressing others are personal names, innovative terms, descriptive phrases, pronouns, titles, teknonyms, and religious, military, attention attractors, as well as a combination of these terms. It also seems that there are no absolute stable patterns of address term usage among the youth community, speaking Jordanian Arabic. Rather, there is an infinite society-internal heterogeneity in the address terms usage. The results also revealed that an intra-group variation signifies social struggles over the norms of address term usage and potentially normative incertitude.
... My insider status was reinforced by Président when he said 'Vous connaissez notre frère ci; voici uneétudiante qu'il nous amène [You know this brother of ours; here is a student he is bringing to us]'. In the context of Cameroon, frère [brother] implies a kinship relationship, and this kinship is extended to anyone introduced by 'a brother' (Anchimbe, 2011). Hence, I was an insider, though an outsider when Président stated 'elle vient des Etats-Unis; elle fait sa recherche sur le Songo, et viendra ici filmer comment on joue [she is coming from the United States; she is investigating Songo, and will be coming here to video record our gameplay]'. ...
This article considers the way in which positionality shifts and is formed during a cross-cultural study to reveal the complexity of the insider-outsider status. As a researcher in a male-dominated game setting, I reflect on the research process and my interactions with participants to show the interplay of space, context, and identity in shaping a researcher’s status. I discuss the process of gaining access to the research site and participants, and data collection in relation to space, context, and identity. The interaction of my identities with space, and context informed my status at various moments. This interplay constructs a complex status of an “in-out-sider”. These findings prepare researchers to pay close attention to the role space, context, and identity play in shaping their positionality. This study serves as a welcome addition to the emerging literature on positionality, and to the situatedness of a researcher status.
... She, therefore, attributes these changes to increased secularisation, colonialisation, modernisation and Christianity which are eroding Bakossi values and identity. Anchimbe (2011) discusses the socio-pragmatic impact of name-avoidance by Cameroonians. He examines the imperative of name-avoidance as a face-saving act, which is a principle of politeness. ...
In certain societies including the Ibibio of Akwa Ibom State, South-Eastern Nigeria, naming is a distinctive system of communicative practice which is used to express emotion and construct the personhood and identity of the name-bearer. This article examines emotion-referencing names among the Ibibio and adopts an ethnographic approach to investigate the motivations for the name choice, their socio-onomastic significance and the extent of influence they have over their bearers’ ‘selves’. We find that emotion names are bestowed through a range of motivations such as being a reflection of familial problems, death-prevention, religiously inspired and namesaking. We conclude that regardless of these motivations or whether the name has a positive or negative VALENCE, for the Ibibio, emotion-referencing names appear to have a subtle psychological impact upon the name-bearers self-perception. Naming among the Ibibio, therefore, is not only a form of cultural identity but a prominent site to reflect on and interpret emotions.
... Such perspectives will provide more reliable explications of speakers' choices of language, words and identity 'coat' in given contexts and with given interlocutors. The use of names or naming strategies (Anchimbe 2008(Anchimbe , 2011, address forms (Echu 2008), insultive references (Mulo Farenkia 2011), and certain discourse markers (Talla Sando 2006) to refer to people suggest far more than identification or naming. These strategies also indicate patterns of closeness and distance, politeness and impoliteness, in-group vs. out-group construction, and deference and social hierarchy within the society and between interlocutors. ...
... Based on our findings, in British family, the politeness strategies of addressing in top-down context between parents to children are formed by using name, nickname or endearing words as in the situations below, when the father addresses his daughter for passing him the salt at dinner table (1-2), when the mother addresses her daughter for babysitting her sibling (3)(4), when the father addresses his son after repairing his bike (5), and when the father addresses his son for cleaning the garage (6). In these situations, zero addressing has hardly ever appeared (7)(8): ...
The aim of the study is defining the similarities and differences of politeness norms and politeness strategies of addressing in British and Persian family and illustrating them through cultural distinctions. The scientific novelty of the study lies in our analysis of addressing speech act in British and Persian family setting with concentrating on (im)politeness theory, speech act theory, cross-cultural pragmatic and discourse analysis, research on identity construction, and the effect of politeness on communicative styles. Our findings reveal that in British culture, the politeness strategies are egalitarian in asymmetrical top-down (parents to children) and bottom-up (children to parents) contexts. Meanwhile, in Persian culture, due to an expanded index of power distance, there are notable differences in these contexts.
... These typologies are not exclusive to the Akan people, as others include 'praise' and 'contact' names (Lusekelo, 2018) and 'death prevention' names (Obeng, 1998), all of which Mensah (2015:129) believes points to the deep insights into the cultural patterns, beliefs, language and spirituality of a people. In Cameroon and among the Akan of Ghana, pet-names or hypocorisms sometimes replace original names as a sign of respect and politeness (Obeng, 1997:41;Anchimbe, 2011); or as with Ngemba people of Cameroon, names 'tell a story about the bearer's historical and social background as well as circumstances of birth', including past experiences and sentiments (Mensah and Mekamgoum, 2017:398). Among South African English and Afrikaans, nicknames become instruments of 'verbal playfulness' (de Klerk and Bosch, 1999), 'often acting as thumbnail character sketches, personality and physical appearance (…) capsule histories…and some moment in life'. ...
This study suggests a theoretical connection between Bette given maiden name at birth, which tends to circumscribe the child’s psyche in the exclusive cast of future wife or mother; and the resultant personal identity of the adult woman in compliance or deviance.
Using French feminist psychoanalytical critical theory which perceives sex roles and gender as patriarchal cultural constructs through the agency of language, the study rearticulates Bette-Obudu female names as ‘embodied’ signifiers that may have future identity consequences on the name-bearers in the contemporary world of multi-tasking. Using a purposive sample of 74 maiden names from the five Bette speaking communities, I argue, using qualitative ethnographic analysis, that these manipulative naming practices
(re)construct the girl-child’s self-concept and self-image in some future time; finding further that a combination of neo-colonial religions, the 21st-century marriage institution and cultural traditions among Bette people may be contributory to name mutations and the
creation of deviance. Significantly, female naming tradition among Bette people tends to ‘pre-fix’ the girl-child along patriarchal designs, thereby making the contemporary Bette woman appear marginal to other concerns of postmodern imperatives.
KEYWORDS: CULTURE, AFRICAN ANTHROPONOMASTICS, PERSONAL NAMES,
IDENTITY, GENDER, MARRIAGE, BETTE-OBUDU, NIGERIA
... This is when names are said to index a positive affect (Rossi, 1965). Anchimbe (2011) discusses the phenomenon of name avoidance as a positive politeness strategy in Cameroon. He maintains that the way that this naming strategy occurs reveals the social stratification of societies, their network of interpersonal relationships, negotiations of power, superiority and balance of age and social status. ...
Naming in the African cultural context serves both referential and connotative functions as a unique means of identity construction which contains important cultural meaning and metaphysical presuppositions. Among the Tiv people of Benue State, North-central Nigeria, personal names reflect social relations and reveal major insights into their history, philosophy, language, spirituality and worldview. Naming practices in Tiv are indicative of the community’s social existence and redefine the essence of its being. This article explores the interaction of the Tiv people naming system with their sociocultural experience and physical environment. We investigate how naming intersects with social class distinction (wealth vs. poverty), emotions, occupations and topography, and examine their sources, social categorization and socio-onomastic significance. This study is theoretically rooted in Goddard’s (2006) ethnopragmatic paradigm which examines the locally relevant construction of cultural and contextual meanings in the interpretation of language. Data for the study were sourced from two Tiv communities of Gboko and Makurdi in Benue State, Nigeria through participant observations, personal interviews and conversations with name-bearers, -givers and -users. We conclude that Tiv personal names reflect the sociocultural environment and provide prominent sites for the creative expression of the Tiv social universe and lived cultural experiences.
... adequately descriptive). However, as pointed out by other scholars (Levinson 2007, Anchimbe 2011), there are other factors that come into play, such as the relationship between interlocutors (seniority and social status) or restricted use of personal names in some communities in preference to kinship terms, for example. Thus, choices of names appear to be socio-pragmatically determined(Dickey 1997). ...
linguistic act as involving choices, this study seeks to understand how naming choices reflect and aid in realizing the ideological positions of language users in institutional discourse. Drawing upon ten opening addresses from the penalty phase of capital trials, the quantitative and qualitative analysis identifies the forms, functions and frequencies of names that lawyers use to refer to the defendants and victims in their speeches. The findings reveal that the two sides differ starkly in terms of naming choices and purposes for which names are used (or not used). Such systematic differences contribute to shaping interpersonal relationships between the trial participants (the jurors, the defendants and the lawyers) and partly constructing aggravating and mitigating circumstances for the person on trial and his impending sentence.
... Subsequently British conquered Sindh in 1843 and annexing it into the Bombay Presidency. The elite classes of subcontinent, who had previously adapted Arabic and Persian, now learnt English, registered their children in the expensive English schools to indicate their social prosperity and political affiliation with the colonizers (Anchimbe, 2011). When British government declared literacy in English language one of the major eligibility factors for government employment, it highly facilitated the elite class, who was literate in English, to occupy the high ranked jobs while the middle and working class was excluded from the main stream of the country (Shah, 1978). ...
This critique is based on the critical analysis of the language and education policies in Pakistan and their impacts on the sociolinguistic situation in the region. The article is poised on the descriptive approach. To evaluate the policy making decision the historical, socio-political and linguistic scenario of Pakistan is analyzed in detail. It also shades light on the motives behind the decision to announce Urdu and English, the two foreign languages, as the official languages of the state, ignoring the indigenous regional languages of the newly created state. Focusing on the political decisions, which cause the socio-linguistic unrest in Pakistan, specially, in Sindh, the second largest province of Pakistan; the article highlights the dents caused to the ethnic and sociolinguistic stability due to the language politics. _______________
... Subsequently British conquered Sindh in 1843 and annexing it into the Bombay Presidency. The elite classes of subcontinent, who had previously adapted Arabic and Persian, now learnt English, registered their children in the expensive English schools to indicate their social prosperity and political affiliation with the colonizers (Anchimbe, 2011). When British government declared literacy in English language one of the major eligibility factors for government employment, it highly facilitated the elite class, who was literate in English, to occupy the high ranked jobs while the middle and working class was excluded from the main stream of the country (Shah, 1978). ...
This critique is based on the critical analysis of the language and education policies in Pakistan and their impacts on the sociolinguistic situation in the region. The article is poised on the descriptive approach. To evaluate the policy making-decision the historical, socio-political and linguistic scenario of Pakistan is analyzed in detail. It also shades light on the motives behind the decision to announce Urdu
and English, the two foreign languages, as the official languages of the state, ignoring the indigenous regional languages of the newly created state. Focusing on the political decisions, which cause the socio-linguistic unrest in Pakistan, specially, in Sindh, the second largest province of Pakistan; the article highlights the dents caused to the ethnic and sociolinguistic stability due to the language politics.
... 20 Kratzer (1999) points out that with enough priming, we can get pejoratives like the one in (9) to attach to a perspective other than the speaker's, but these contexts are quite difficult to evoke, and are at best unclear whose perspective is being expressed. 21 Brown & Levinson 1978, Anchimbe 2011. 22 Culpeper 2011:69. ...
I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term (and its associations). Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile.
Social media in the last few years has become a place of refuge for most clients who have complaints to make to their respective service providers. According to a recent report by Twitter, about 100,000 customer-service related tweets are sent to the British Airlines on Twitter every month. Thus, Twitter has become a more convenient platform for engagements between telecom network firms and their clients. For this reason, numerous customers prefer to have their issues addressed by their service providers on Twitter.
Using Brown and Levinson‘s politeness model, this study examined the politeness strategies used in the complaints of customers of three telecommunication networks in Ghana on Twitter. It also studied the complaint-response strategies of these service providers, and explored the possible correlation between the various politeness types employed by complainants and the choice of complaint-response strategies adopted by these service providers.
By adopting the mixed research design and analyzing 403 clients‘ complaints, results showed that the politeness strategies the clients used were bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness and off record politeness strategies. These were used in different ways by the clients in a bid to get the service providers to attend to their needs. The service providers, on the other hand, adopted four main customer complaint management strategies in response to the clients‘ complaints: direct (private) message reference, public response, complaint avoidance and delayed response. In trying to ascertain if a correlation exists between the politeness strategies used by the clients and the response strategies of the companies, analysis revealed that even though patterns seem to suggest a correlation, so many other factors, some even nonlinguistic, were at play, so that it is not possible to predict what response strategy would be used just by looking at the politeness strategy the client used.
This article examines the use of sorry as a discourse-pragmatic feature in three African varieties of English: Ghanaian English, Nigerian English and Ugandan English, in terms of its frequencies, forms, positioning, collocational patterns, pragmatic functions and use with different clause types and in various text types. The data for the study, which are extracted from the Ghanaian, Nigerian and Ugandan components of the International Corpus of English, are examined from a variational pragmatic framework, with insights from rapport management theory. The results show similarities and differences in the use of sorry in the three varieties. In all three varieties, sorry appears more often as a single lexical item than in other forms, occurs more frequently with declaratives, and appears more often in the clause-initial position. Moreover, sorry occurs more frequently in Nigerian English than in the other two varieties; it collocates more often with intensifiers and interjections in Ghanaian English, honorifics and politeness markers in Nigerian English, and interjections in Ugandan English. In addition, sorry is used to mark self-repair, regret, empathy, polite redirection, correction, mitigation and interruption at varying degrees in all three varieties. Possible first language influence may have led to some of the differences between the three varieties.
Although names exist in all languages of the world, their formal and functional manifestations show great diversity. Due to their embeddedness in socio-cultural and historical contexts, an anthropological-linguistic approach that brings together linguistic and cultural facts is required to capture the full meaning of names and naming practices. Overall, names are given to entities of cultural importance and of significance for humans in social life; name usage and name-giving practices reflect social beliefs and cultural values; and their meaning is strongly shaped by cultural and historical contexts. This paper provides a typological, cross-linguistic overview of named entities, kinds of naming practices, and types of meanings associated with names, name giving, and name usage, which are illustrated with numerous examples from Australia, Europe, and Africa. Therefore, it also offers a structural framework for the contributions in this issue.
Rooted in African postcolonial pragmatics, this research pays particular attention to the strategic use of code-switching and other linguistic strategies for relationship maintenance in instant messaging communities that constitute translanguaging spaces. To this end, by means of a quantitative and computer-mediated communication discourse analysis, we examine the naturally-occurring interactions, on WhatsApp, of a group of 74 former university classmates who studied Spanish Philology in the mid-2000s at a Cameroonian university. The close observation of the group’s interactional strategies for relationship maintenance shows that members construct their online famille – their new social space for self-presentation – by means of (1) sociolinguistic and pragmatic norms drawn from indigenisation; (2) kinship terms as forms of address, in English and Spanish in texts mainly in French; and (3) the inclusion of religious terms as a politeness strategy. The use of Spanish as the tie-sign of the group is not as relevant as initially expected.
Adopting a socio-pragmatic view on linguistic choices, this study aims to show how proper names come to function as an ideologically-significant resource for identity construction, impression management, and the negotiation of meaning-making. Drawing upon twelve opening addresses from the penalty phase of capital trials, the research identifies the forms, functions and frequencies of the naming choices that the prosecution and defense use to reference the defendants and victims. The findings reveal characteristic patterns in the two sides’ speeches both in terms of the naming choices and purposes for which such choices are (not) used. It is argued that, despite the defense’s attempts to neutralize the damaging effects, this value-laden practice potentially construes distance and exaggerates differences between the person on trial and the victims, and shapes the relationship between the defendant and jury in such a way that hinders empathy and understanding, thereby becoming one of the aggravating factors itself.
One core feature of postcolonial writers, especially Nigerian writers, is the intermixing of codes. Despite such productive language-mix, even a cursory survey of the literature points to inadequate research in this direction. Thus, in an effort to account for this scholarly lacuna, this chapter purposively selected Eno Nta’s Prayer for my Children and other Poems by examining the poetry text from a postcolonial pragmatics perspective in order to unpack the poet’s microcommunicative formulation of postcolonial identities. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, the 40 code-switched items that were analysed revealed the poet’s intermixing of English with six indigenous Nigerian languages: Efik/Ibibio, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ejagham and Beni in order to index social solidarity, identity construction, and politeness in different socio-discursive contexts. Five pragmatic categories of code switching, namely, music and dance, address and honorific terms, clothing and skin marks, greetings, and food were also identified to have been calibrated by the poet to indicate her multisocio-cultural world view. The chapter further highlighted the poet’s linguistic consciousness, that is, the matrix of multilingualism and hybridised identities as exemplified in postcolonial literary works. It concluded that strict Western frameworks which are largely individualistic in nature cannot adequately account for the diverse postcolonial African writings which mostly thrive on collectivism.
Keywords: Postcolonial pragmatics, postcolonial writers, code-switching, multiculturalism and multilingualism, identity construction.
Academic mobility is on the increase. So are the challenges that accompany it, one of which concerns communication. Therefore, it is necessary that pragmatic studies in intercultural communication investigate communication in academic communities, especially in the international campuses. This study is a cross-cultural analysis of student-lecturer communication on two campuses which represent two different cultural contexts namely, Nigeria and Germany. The similarities and differences between the linguistic realisation strategies of fifty Nigerian students and fifty German students at the University of Bayreuth are analysed using communicative acts categorisation frameworks from Anchimbe (2018), Cohen et al (1981), and Trosborg (1995). Three research questions guide the analysis in this work. The first two research questions guide the analysis of data collected by means of discourse completion task (Blum-Kulka 1989, Anchimbe 2018); what are the similarities and differences in preferred apology, complaint and request strategies in both contexts and what are the social norms invoked by Nigerian students? The third research question seeks to identify transfers of preferred greeting strategies by Nigerian students at the university of Bayreuth, cases of irritations and how repair is achieved. Results show that there are more differences than similarities in group preferences. Nigerian students’ strategies portray social norms, such as consideration and respect for age, gender and social status, social roles of older persons, social value for family and education, the role of finance in education, and religious beliefs, etc. Transfers of Nigerian students’ preferred greeting and address forms are confirmed in the thirty electronic mails collected from Nigerian students at the University of Bayreuth. Student’s metainformation confirm cases of irritation in which lecturers at the University of Bayreuth initiate repair by caution and suggestion of contextually appropriate forms either per email or in class. Based on these findings, group-specific orientation schemes are highly recommendable if relieve on student-lecturer communication, ease of integration of international students and generally, effective interaction on international campus are in focus.
This study investigates the classroom talk of Iranian EFL novice versus experienced teachers with emphasis on the quality of communicative features through a linguistic lens provided by the SETT (Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk) framework and TTFS (Teacher Talk Functional Scale) checklist. In so doing, 10 intermediate-level classrooms running by five novice and five experienced teachers were observed, each case twice. Eight distinctive communicative features of TT emerged upon the initial analysis of database obtained from the audio-recordings of 20 class sessions, totaling 30 hours of naturally generated input. Subsequently, the audio-recorded materials were carefully transcribed and analyzed in correspondence with the observation data in an attempt to compare how novice and experienced teachers present their talk. The results indicated both novice and experienced teachers enact communicative aspects of classroom talk; however, the quality of presentation in the case of the experienced group was far better. This in turn highlights the importance of raising awareness regarding TT features in teacher training courses. New communicative aspects of teacher talk highlighted in this study, including the use of L1 and language Amir Ghajarieh, Nastaran Jalali,Mohammad-Amin Mozaheb 101 gradation, would help define new research paths exploring the classroom discourse. Further research inspired by this study needs to explore other aspects of teacher-student interactions in various educational settings.
This study investigates the classroom talk of Iranian EFL novice versus experienced teachers with emphasis on the quality of communicative features through a linguistic lens provided by the SETT (Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk) framework and TTFS (Teacher Talk Functional Scale) checklist. In so doing, 10 intermediate-level classrooms running by five novice and five experienced teachers were observed, each case twice. Eight distinctive communicative features of TT emerged upon the initial analysis of database obtained from the audio-recordings of 20 class sessions, totaling 30 hours of naturally generated input. Subsequently, the audio-recorded materials were carefully transcribed and analyzed in correspondence with the observation data in an attempt to compare how novice and experienced teachers present their talk. The results indicated both novice and experienced teachers enact communicative aspects of classroom talk; however, the quality of presentation in the case of the experienced group was far better. This in turn highlights the importance of raising awareness regarding TT features in teacher training courses. New communicative aspects of teacher talk highlighted in this study, including the use of L1 and language gradation, would help define new research paths exploring the classroom discourse. Further research inspired by this study needs to explore other aspects of teacher-student interactions in various educational settings.
Keywords: classroom talk, teacher talk, discourse, novice teachers, teacher education
REGISTER JOURNAL, 1979-8903 (PRINT)- 2503-040X (ONLINE) is open access, peer-reviewed, International Journal which has the perspectives of languages and language teachings. This journal aims at presenting and discussing some outstanding issues dealing with Applied Linguistics and English Language teachings.
This journal is published every June and December by IAIN Salatiga, Indonesia and it has has been accredited by the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (RistekDikti) of Republic of Indonesia in SINTA (Achieving SINTA 2) since 24th October 2018. The recognition is published in Director Decree (SK No. 30/E/KPT/2018) and it is effective until 2021. This journal has been successfully indexed at CLARIVATE ANALYTICS, Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) of Web of Science since June 2019 and ACI (ASEAN CITATION INDEX) since April 2019.
The purpose of this study is to identify differences in the use of Address Forms for an unfamiliar
addressee in British and Indian English and explain them through a sociocultural context. Given the fact that
address forms are dependent on both situational and geographical parameters, and taking into account the rich
cultural diversity of India, the study is limited to address forms used by residents of the two capital cities – London
and Delhi. The material was collected through observations and questionnaires and was analysed with a comparative
analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) and reference to the theory of cultural differences, intercultural pragmatics,
politeness theory and the theory of culturally specific communication styles or communicative ethnic styles. For
clarification of the results, the interview method was also used, attempting to establish the regularity with which
the representatives of the given cultures use nominative address forms for an unfamiliar addressee, the choice of
address forms for different age groups and gender and the sociocultural factors affecting the choice of address
forms. The analysis of experimental data shows significant differences both in the choice of address forms and in
their functioning, it convincingly demonstrates the influence of the Hindi language and local culture on the Indian
version of the English language, on the communicative behaviour of Indian bilinguals in the given situation and
their communication style in general.
This study seeks to understand how the use of names serves to accomplish the process of identity construction in institutional discourse. Drawing upon six opening addresses from three high-profile trials, the study analyzes the forms, functions, and frequency of names that lawyers use to refer to defendants and victims in their narratives. The quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals that the prosecution and the defense differ starkly in how they use names to construct the identities of the characters. Such systematic differences contribute to ascribing polarized identities to the characters, which in effect negotiates reality by (de)legitimizing guilt and responsibility claims and mediating jurors’ perceptions.
This chapter investigates the linguistic behaviour of speakers of Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE)—pidginophones, in relation to the use of address strategies or terms of address. The analysis of naturally-occurring data carried out here reveals that users internalise various sets of sociolinguistic and pragmatic norms or patterns drawn from different cultures and languages existing in Cameroon, which they then use strategically in their interactions in CPE. These languages include Camfranglais (the emerging mixed language used mostly by urban youths), French and English (the official languages), and the over 270 indigenous languages. The choice of address form is determined to various degrees by social and relational variables such as age, sex, education, ethnicity, religion, societal status, occupation, geographical origin, and degree of familiarity.
The address terms discussed in this chapter help interlocutors avoid face threats and solidify interpersonal and group relations. These terms include modified personal names, kinship terms, general honorifics from the religious, cultural, and professional domains, indexical naming, and in-group markers and references. The use of these terms is always culturally-determined in line with contextual requirements.
This introductory chapter outlines the aims and objectives of this book, i.e. to further illustrate, using authentic, naturally-occurring data, processes of indigenisation in two ex-colonial languages, English and French, and a Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin English, in Cameroon. Additionally, the volume investigates patterns of indigenisation beyond the level of grammar but at the level of discourse and social interaction from pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspectives. To achieve these aims, and by way of explaining the line of thinking in the chapters, this chapter defines the concept of indigenisation and situates it within current descriptions of postcolonial language varieties. It identifies the linguistic levels of indigenisation expounded on in the volume; explains the varied sources of indigenised features; and discerns the status of each language and their contribution to indigenisation within this multilingual setting.
The aim of this chapter is to investigate the types of tag questions commonly used by Cameroonian men and women in both formal and informal and single-sex and mixed-sex interactions in Cameroon English. A major question we seek to answer is: do the tags used by Cameroonian women suggest tentativeness, hesitancy, and powerlessness as implied by literature in western contexts? The analysis of the naturally-occurring data carried out here reveals on the contrary that the use of tags, especially by Cameroonian women, is conditioned by the respect of sociocultural norms of society and the desire to be polite, deferent, and acceptable. From a more general point of view, tag usage is highly context-dependent, i.e. in relation to the physical location, the discourse context (formal or informal), the participants involved (age, parent-child, gender), and the relationship between the participants (symmetrical or asymmetrical).
Although overall the statistics presented here show women as using more tags than men, the specific types of tags used are influenced by the contextual factors listed above. This chapter only opens up a field of sociolinguistic and pragmatic research that has still not been extensively explored within Cameroon English discourse. It is our wish that more in-depth studies be carried out that reveal inherent patterns of social interaction across gender and languages not only in Cameroon but also in other postcolonial communities.
This article presents “IO” as a politeness marker carrying different functions during interactions among the people of Kempo community in West Manggarai Regency, the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia. The aim therefore is to present the functions of the “IO”marker in interactions. The data were obtained by means of observing and recording formal and non-formal dialogues and by interviewing key informants for data validation. The results show that “IO” marker functions to initiate saying prayers, to initiate formal talks, to say agreement, to initiate saying disagreement, to induce in a request way, and to reply a call. These different functions appear in different contexts indicating that the Kempo speech community express a unique politeness marker that is contradictory to the idea that language varies according to social context in sociolinguistics. However, such findings confirm that politeness is universal but to express it is differently from ethnics to ethnics. In addition, the politeness strategy used by Kempo speech community is contributive to enrich the concept of politeness of Brown and Levinson as well as the theory of cost-benefit scale of Leech. The study can also inspire other researchers to do study on the socio-cultural phenomena of the Kempo speech community in particular and of the Manggarai people in general.
Keywords - Descriptive Study, Functions of Politeness Marker “IO”, Manggarai Language, Kempo speech community
Descriptions of regional pragmatic variation in French are lacking to date the focus has been on a limited range of speech acts, including apologies, requests, compliments and responses to compliments. The present paper, a systematic analysis of invitation refusals across regional varieties of French, is designed to add to the research on intralingual regional pragmatic variation in French. Using questionnaire data collected in France and Cameroon, this paper examines the strategies employed by French speakers in Cameroon and in France to decline an invitation to a friend’s birthday party, an invitation by a classmate to have a drink and an invitation to attend a talk given by a professor’s colleague. The findings reveal some parallels in both varieties of French with respect to the preference for face-saving refusal strategies (indirect refusal and adjuncts to refusals and internal modification devices). However, many differences emerged with respect to the choices of indirect refusals. Also, the Cameroonian participants tend to produce more complex utterances and to use more relational address forms than the French.
The aim of this book is to investigate and attain new insights on how and to what extent the wider sociolinguistic context of language use and contact impinges on formal grammatical structures. The papers contained in the book approach this important problem from various points of view by focusing on language evolution and change, on multilingualism, language mixing and dialect variation, on spoken language, and on creole languages. Given the theoretical perspectives, methodological focus, and analyses, the book will be of interest to theoretical linguists as well as sociolinguists, from undergraduate students to researchers.
Compares naming practices in the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean and in Afro-American culture. Author asks how one is to interpret multiple identities and the parallel practice of taking over the names of the powerful as is common in both Afro-creole and Afro-American culture. He argues that Afro-creole culture is not a culture of resistance but an oppositional culture. It is a subaltern culture in part derived from a dominant culture which it can only oppose from within.
In this article I present a tentative model for the study of politeness in Zulu against the background of politeness theory. I argue that such a model may not solely reflect verbal means of expressing politeness, but must further draw on non-verbal aspects and on discourse conventions more generally. This in its turn necessitates locating a study of politeness in the context of the cultural values of the speech community concerned. These considerations lead me finally to query the link between politeness and indirectness, which has been proposed as a linguistic universal.
Forms of address in the Caribbean are part of a complex politeness system which developed as a result of the socio-historical conditions of the plantation system, the transfer and continuities of socio-pragmatic rules from West African and European cultural and linguistic traditions, as well as new creolized or innovative practices. Terms of address are not only indicative of the social position and identity of a person in a community but are also often used strategically in situations of potential conflict. Many of the nominal terms of address and their adaptation to specific conversational situations may be explained in the light of the specific postcolonial cultural and linguistic ambiguity in the Anglophone Caribbean. Like numerous non-standard Englishes, Caribbean Englishes and Creoles also have second-person pronominal distinction. Since the plural form is neither used for obligatory plural marking nor as a honorific as in many European (T/V) languages, this distinction has so far been regarded as insignificant and little or no research has been devoted to systematically investigating the possible strategic meaning of second person plural forms like allyuh (Trinidad) or unu (Jamaica). Based on empirical research in Trinidad, I will argue in this paper that the plural form is used either to emphasize the existence of plural addressees or for face management in positive and negative face threatening situations. To either single or multiple addressees, the plural form can be used as a politeness strategy in specific situations, for instance to express vagueness or indirectness when a speech act could be otherwise interpreted as face-threatening.
Interethnic communication in Cameroon is sometimes characterized by a derogatory discourse on the ethnicity of others. This discourse generally appears in the form of insults, jokes, teases, etc. built into narrations, songs, fiction and telecasts, and is transported from one generation to the other. This article describes some of the strategies used to denigrate the ethnic identity of others in Cameroon. The analyses, based on data (questionnaires, participant-observations, interviews) collected in Yaoundé and other regions of the country, show how Cameroonians use borrowings, nominal compositions, metaphors, semantic shifts, metonymies, etc. to denigrate, downgrade, dehumanize, or demonize members of certain ethnic groups and/or to erase, minimize or contest the ethnicity of others and their ethnic groups.
The concept of Ubuntu has recently received a lot of attention in spite of the fact that there is no consensus about its meaning. African scholars have strived to attain a common meaning and English translation, and while they agree that it is typically and solely African, the closest some have come up with is ‘African humanism’. A South African saying is frequently used to illustrate the core tenet of the ethics of Ubuntu: ‘unumtu ngumumntu ngabantu’, which translated into English means: ‘A person depends on others to be a person.’ The principles underlying the way of life proposed by Ubuntu are transferred from generation to generation through fables, sayings, proverbs and by tradition through the socialization of children in which the whole community is involved. Bearing in mind that traditional values may become diluted or lost during times of change and urbanization, 215 South African black children of two different age groups and from three geographical areas—rural, urban and semi‐urban—were interviewed about their understanding of the concept of Ubuntu. A content analysis of their responses refutes the belief that the traditional ethics of Ubuntu are disappearing with the changes taking place and the rise in urbanization. While the replies of the children sometimes reflected the prominence of those facets of Ubuntu which might have had more significance in their specific milieu and age, perhaps denoting that the community selected views of Ubuntu which made more sense to them, from the results of this study, it can be said that Ubuntu is still alive and thriving as far as these children were concerned.
This study investigates the generation and maintenance
of multiple personal names in an Anglophone Creole-speaking
community of Panama. Nearly every Afro-Panamanian resident
of the island of Bastimentos has two given names, one
Spanish-derived and the other Creole-derived. The Creole or
“ethnic name” is virtually the exclusive name used
locally for reference and address. It is argued that these ethnic
names are preferred for reference and address because they
reflexively define who members of this speech community are
in terms of culture and ancestry. A typology of nicknames and
pseudonyms as well as a brief cross-cultural presentation of
multiple or alternative personal names is provided. Ethnic name
usage in Bastimentos is discussed within an acts of identity
framework.
This study describes some aspects of lexico-semantic variation in Nigerian English. The causes and types of variation are discussed within a sociolinguistic framework. Typical Nigerian English innovations are related to the local socio-cultural and linguistic context of Nigerian culture and society. Five major classes of lexico-semantic variation are identified: transfer, analogy, acronyms, semantic shift or extension, and coinage or neologisms. The paper also discusses the implications of such variation with reference to international intelligibility and communicative strategies.
This paper contributes to the debate on the precise nature of face as a universal phenomenon, and the cultural variability within it. Specifically, we bring the ‘Southern’ perspective to the debate by discussing the previously neglected African dimension. Recent scholarship suggests that the concept of face and the notion of self in traditional African culture may have more in common with Eastern collectivist cultures than with Anglo-American culture. We examine the interactional management of an encounter between a Zimbabwean English speaker and British English speakers in a community singing group. We argue that, while face needs may be universally relevant in such a situation, the way in which they are oriented to in interaction depends on cultural understandings of which aspects of face are paramount in particular circumstances. Since these assumptions are deep-seated and invisible they are not easily open to explicit negotiation and hence can lead to misinterpretation. By conducting an ethnographic study of the communicative event and combining it with a detailed examination of the co-construction of meaning in this interaction, we show how the participants’ contributions can be related to differing – and potentially conflicting – interpretation frameworks. These frameworks are informed by culture-specific notions of appropriate self-presentation.
This paper seeks to describe the pragmatic content of a particular honorific form in Japanese, i.e., the productive o-Verb (stem)-suru form of nonsubject honorific. The account demonstrates the pragmatic variables that determine the acceptability of a form that is still often considered to be fully determined by ‘syntactic’ rules. In identifying what representation of the world is necessarily implied by that form, the paper claims that the determination of the target of honorification depends not only on the socially perceived relative position but also on the consonance of the action or state that is described in the sentence with a pragmatic notion of benefactivity; more specifically, with a notion of benefit transfer. At least in the conventional use of the o-V-suru form, there is an implied relationship of benefit between the two participants, in which the exalted nonsubject referent is either the beneficiary or the source of benefit, depending on the predicate and on the context. This pragmatic account also serves as a starting point for analyses of the social meaning of the use of the form in various contexts, and it is shown that certain ‘deviant’ usages suggest the outlines of the emerging pattern.
This paper presents an account of politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. The modern conception of politeness as well as its historical origin are discussed. A critical comparison is made between western notions of face and politeness and their Chinese counterparts. Four politeness maxims are formulated and illustrated. The relation between politeness on the one hand, and language and conversation on the other, is also discussed.
The concept of ‘face’, central to Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness and claimed by them to be a universal, has of late been frequently contested and indeed rejected, in that it is claimed to presuppose an ‘individualistic’ Western-type society. This article seeks to rehabilitate ‘face’ by first reconsidering some of the assumptions underlying this debate: Goffman's usage of the concept, and the term ‘collectivist’ as applied to a wide range of non-Western societies. It then tests the applicability of ‘face’ to an African language, the Bantu language Zulu, by means of a discussion of the Zulu hlonipha system and the analysis of a role-played request scenario. Mutual face is shown to be maintained in Zulu interaction by a wide range of verbal, non-verbal and discourse politeness strategies.
This discussion note evaluates Mao's (1994) debate with Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) about their politeness theory based on the notion of face. The conclusion is that Mao's arguments against their theory are not convincing. Two points are clarified during the discussion. First, for face to operate as a motivating factor for politeness at all, it must be related to every one in a community as a self-image. Second, the nature of politeness strategies favored by a particular culture should be established on an empirical basis rather than from the alleged connotations of certain words.
Politeness phenomena have been studied from multidimensional perspectives. A subset of these phenomena, linguistic politeness, or the manifestation of correct and proper socially sanctioned and expected behavior through the verbal channel, has equally been the concern of interactional sociolinguists, social psychologists, ethnomethodologists, and anthropologists. Although no consensus definition of linguistic politeness has emerged, there is general agreement that it involves verbal strategies for keeping social interaction friction free. The actual operations of these strategies in specific social settings tend to differ to the extent that the cultures operational in those settings differ.This paper has three objectives. First, it reviews some current approaches to the study of linguistic politeness as well as some recent work on non-Western politeness. Secondly, Brown and Levinson's notion of face is discussed to show that as formulated, it differs from the ways the Igbo of Nigeria conceptualize face; the notion of face in Igbo has a dual manifestation: ‘group’ and ‘individual’ face. Thirdly, the paper relates the notion of face to the notion of imposition, arguing that many activities that would be regarded as threats to face, and therefore as impositions, in Western societies, are regarded differently in Igbo society.
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