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(Im)politeness and Relationality

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Book cover The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness

Abstract

The chapter illuminates some of the under-explored relational aspects of (Im)politeness in interpersonal pragmatics. It consists of two case studies explicating how conversational participants manifest and interpret relationships in interaction. Specifically, case study 1 illustrates how reciprocity (balancing obligations) as a social norm can be used in interpreting relationality in terms of (Im)politeness. Case study 2 demonstrates how relationality is manifested in mediation interactions, where the participants evoke their interrelated relational ties and relational entitlements in order to achieve their interactional goals. The two case studies in both Japanese and Chinese, in particular, highlight the significance of studying emic concepts of relationality and related concepts, including the ‘balance sheet of obligation’ in Japanese contexts, and ‘relational ties’ and ‘relational entitlements’ in Taiwanese interactions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd edition (2010) online. Retrieved 11 October 2015 from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/definition/english/relationship.

  2. 2.

    Guanxi may have some negative connotations depending on the context. It may imply ‘going through the back door’. Guanxi itself, if used independently, is neutral. Renji guanxi refers to ‘interpersonal relationship’. However, in the latter phrase, the emic notions of obligation and entitlement embedded in guanxi are not necessarily implicated. For that reason we prefer to use the term guanxi.

  3. 3.

    It should be noted that Arundale’s FCT is primarily a theory of a particular aspect of relationships/relating, not ‘face’ as it is commonly understood in the field.

  4. 4.

    Recipient design refers to ‘a multitude of respects in which the talk by a party in a conversation is constructed or designed in ways which display an orientation and sensitivity to the particular other(s) who are the co-participants’ (Sacks et al. 1974, p. 727).

  5. 5.

    Relational ties and relational entitlement emerged as key aspects of face-as-relationship in Chang’s (2016) analysis of business interactions. This will be further discussed in the case study in Sect. 4.2.

  6. 6.

    Key for abbreviations: Ag: agreement; Ans: answer; COP: copulative verbs; D: denial; FB: Feedback; Res: Respectful form; Hum: Humble form; IP: interactional particles; N: Nodding; Passive: passive form; P-suffix: Polite verb suffix; Q: question; Qm: question marker; SD: self denigration; Sta-V: stative verb; Tag: tag question; @: laughing.

  7. 7.

    See Ohashi (2013) for the use of denial as a self-denigration in thanking episodes in Japanese. Self-denigration is a significant form of relational work and politic behavior in many contexts in Japanese.

  8. 8.

    This is a count of each participant’s utterances by character as a unit.

  9. 9.

    Transcription symbols and abbreviations used in morphological glosses (Jefferson 2004)

    (.):

    micro-pause

    -:

    cut-off of prior sound in a word

    underlining:

    stressed word or part of word

    ><:

    rushed or compressed talk

    %:

    code-switch (between Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese)

    Abbreviations used in morphological glosses (Wu 2004)

    ASSC:

    Associative (-de)

    CP:

    Complement

    C:

    Classifier

    INT:

    Interjection

    N:

    Negation

    PRT:

    Particle

    Q:

    Question marker

  10. 10.

    Member of Legislative Council.

  11. 11.

    MLC, member of Legislative Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jun Ohashi

  2. University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Wei-Lin Melody Chang

Authors
  1. Jun Ohashi
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  2. Wei-Lin Melody Chang
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Correspondence to Jun Ohashi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Linguistics & English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Jonathan Culpeper

  2. School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Michael Haugh

  3. Dept of Linguistics and Modern Languages, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, United Kingdom

    Dániel Z. Kádár

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Ohashi, J., Chang, WL.M. (2017). (Im)politeness and Relationality. In: Culpeper, J., Haugh, M., Kádár, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7_11

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