Balancing power and solidarity through indirectness: A case study of Russian and Kazakh meeting chairs
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Aisulu Kulbayeva
Aisulu Kulbayeva received her PhD in Linguistics from the Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University. Her primary research interest is the discourse analysis of cross-cultural communication in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, with a specific focus on how cultural norms regarding gender, age, and social status shape linguistic aspects of social interactions in interpersonal communication and institutional encounters. Using various methods of discourse analysis, she examines the under-researched communities of Kazakh-speaking Kazakhs and Russian-speaking Kazakhs and Russians.
Abstract
The study combines Brown and Levinson’s (1987) work on politeness techniques and Tannen’s (1981, 1993) work on indirectness and power-solidarity dynamics to extend research on workplace discourse. I examine how two female Russian-speaking chairs (one of Russian and another of Kazakh origin) differently perform face-threatening acts (FTAs) of criticisms and directives during teacher meetings at a community college in Kazakhstan. Specifically, the Russian chair employs fewer politeness techniques (e. g., hedging with “please”), issuing criticisms and orders with no mitigation, thereby foregrounding the power asymmetry within the group. The lack of mitigation surfaces through explicit usage of pronouns (“I” vs. “you”); action verbs inflected for the 2nd person plural and imperative mood; words with a negative and moral connotation; and phonological modifications for emphasis. Differently, the Kazakh chair utilizes a larger number of politeness techniques, including hedging (e. g., “please”, “unfortunately”), impersonalizing negative actions (through indefinite pronouns and agentless verbs), and manipulating of tense and space. Thus, she performs indirect FTAs that highlight the solidarity aspect of group relations. I relate these findings to studies of management leadership in post-Soviet states that have revealed the tendency of Kazakh managers to use a nurturing leadership style.
About the author
Aisulu Kulbayeva received her PhD in Linguistics from the Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University. Her primary research interest is the discourse analysis of cross-cultural communication in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, with a specific focus on how cultural norms regarding gender, age, and social status shape linguistic aspects of social interactions in interpersonal communication and institutional encounters. Using various methods of discourse analysis, she examines the under-researched communities of Kazakh-speaking Kazakhs and Russian-speaking Kazakhs and Russians.
Acknowledgment:
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my family (my mother Mariam Kulbayeva and my younger sister Saltanat Raspayeva) for their incredible help with data collection in Kazakhstan. With the same degree of gratitude, I would like to thank my amazing academic advisor Dr. Cynthia Gordon for constructive feedback, proofreading of this manuscript, and moral support along the writing process. Similarly, I would like to thank my friends and classmates, Didem Ikizoglu for help with defining an initial idea and Adrienne Isaac for support, as well as the administrative staff of the Department of Psychology, at Georgetown University, Nancy Swartz for support and Molly McGeady for support and proofreading of this manuscript. I also would like to thank my WV friend Patricia Patton for help with proofreading and incredible moral support. Finally, I would like to thank the administrative staff of the participating community colleges with assistance and the teachers who volunteered to participate in this project.
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Balancing power and solidarity through indirectness: A case study of Russian and Kazakh meeting chairs
- Co-constructed oppositional stance and facework in an office hour interaction
- Terms of address and fictive kinship politeness in Lori
- Cultural outsiders’ evaluations of (im)politeness in Finland and in France
- Towards an emic understanding of Mianzi giving in the Chinese context
- Book Reviews
- Terkourafi, Marina (ed.). 2015. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on (Im)politeness. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, Hardback ISBN 9789027205322. 279 pp., Price: €95.00 / $143.00.
- Giora, Rachel and Michael Haugh (eds.). 2017. Doing pragmatics interculturally. Cognitive, philosophical and sociopragmatic perspectives. Berlin and Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, xii + 420 pp., Hardback ISBN 978-3-11-054384-1. Price: Hb GBP £ 91/€ 99.95.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Balancing power and solidarity through indirectness: A case study of Russian and Kazakh meeting chairs
- Co-constructed oppositional stance and facework in an office hour interaction
- Terms of address and fictive kinship politeness in Lori
- Cultural outsiders’ evaluations of (im)politeness in Finland and in France
- Towards an emic understanding of Mianzi giving in the Chinese context
- Book Reviews
- Terkourafi, Marina (ed.). 2015. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on (Im)politeness. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, Hardback ISBN 9789027205322. 279 pp., Price: €95.00 / $143.00.
- Giora, Rachel and Michael Haugh (eds.). 2017. Doing pragmatics interculturally. Cognitive, philosophical and sociopragmatic perspectives. Berlin and Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, xii + 420 pp., Hardback ISBN 978-3-11-054384-1. Price: Hb GBP £ 91/€ 99.95.
