Volume 15, Issue 2

The present paper provides an intergenerational perspective on Greek conceptualizations of (im)politeness. Based on interviews eliciting narratives of impolite behaviour of our participants’ parents’ generation, the study illustrates the contested and changing nature of politeness in contemporary Greece. Through critically evaluating the older generation’s behaviour, the participants not only provided insights into their own politeness norms but also showed a clear understanding of the previous generation’s politeness norms. The discrepancy between what is perceived as polite by the two generations points to a distinction between empirical (is) and moral (should) norms (Haugh 2010), with the former allowing the participants to classify their parents’ impoliteness as non-intentional and the latter reflecting the emergence of new conceptualizations of politeness in Greece. While Greece has been unanimously characterized as a positive politeness culture in previous research, the present study illustrates an increasing emphasis on values and norms associated with negative politeness.

Although hotel service encounters have been widely studied, the literature presents two main shortcomings: 1) receptionist-guest communication has not received much attention from a politeness perspective; and 2) the scarcity of studies regarding politeness1 (i. e., the interlocutors’ perception of politeness) has been overshadowed by the vast amount of literature concerning politeness2. Regarding customer perception, understanding what appropriate communicative behaviour is - i. e. whether (non)verbal actions are conducive to variation in terms of customer perception and satisfaction - is crucial to understand service success or failure. In this context, our study examines the opinion and perception of 183 Spanish participants who had stayed at national and international hotels and who assessed, on the one hand, to what extent the receptionists were polite or impolite, and why; and on the other, how communication with customers could improve in terms of politeness. The findings indicate that, despite the participants’ general preference for friendliness and solidarity, the politeness strategies that participants valued as adequate in this context are not necessarily those traditionally related to Peninsular Spanish (i. e. directness and/or involvement). Also, this study shows that what lay people consider politeness encompasses a great number of variables in which linguistic production is but one of them.

This article presents a detailed analysis of (im)politeness in a naturally occurring multi-party conversation and in doing so challenges the theoretical premise of dyadic communication in traditional politeness research. Informed by the classical theories of Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1987), traditional politeness research has largely been framed in the dyadic model of communication, without taking into full consideration the influence of other participants. Following a number of discursive theorists, we propose that (im)polite utterances are not always addressed exclusively at one hearer or one party of hearers. More often than not, the other parties present exert considerable influence on the design and interpretation of (im)polite utterances as well. Our analyses of three extracts of a multi-party conversation from a Chinese dinner table demonstrate that in a triad involving a relational coalition of two participants, the (im)politeness in some speech acts can be extended or transformed in specific contexts. In particular, a compliment directed at one member of the coalition tends to be polite at the same time to the other member; and a criticism between the coalition members may be polite to the third party under some circumstances. It is argued that the extension and transformation of (im)politeness in a multi-party context are culturally motivated and conditioned by the interpersonal relationships among the different parties. The study points to the need for further research on (im)politeness in a multi-party context.

There is a growing consensus that (im)politeness is associated with participants’ situated evaluations vis-à-vis the moral order (Haugh 2013a, 2015b; Kádár and Haugh 2013). This paper focuses on impoliteness as evaluative practices underpinned by the moral order of qingmian (lit., affection-based face). Drawing on data from Chinese interpersonal conflicts, the study reveals that unmet renqing (favor) expectations and unmet mianzi/lian (face) expectations are often evaluated as qingmian threats by participants, and thereby cause conflicts and disharmony. Our analysis investigates three key issues: (1) qingmian threat as the cause of interpersonal conflicts, (2) cultural factors influencing expectations associated with ‘taking offence’ in Chinese and (3) the implications of qingmian threat for (im)politeness theory at the etic level.

Linguistic impoliteness appears to be an important feature of online reviews. This paper examines how impoliteness is realized in English and Chinese negative reviews, and how these reviews are responded to. The data sets are composed of 32 English and 32 Chinese negative reviews with responses respectively from the websites TripAdvisor and Dazhongdianping . Building on the work of Culpeper (1996; 2011), English reviewers are found to adopt more of a mixture of approval and criticism, and “stuff-oriented” pointed complaints, while Chinese reviewers employ more indignant exclamations and “staff-oriented” pointed complaints. This suggests that the latter are more concerned about their own face needs, and thus have the potential to be perceived as more impolite and aggravating than the former. However, it is also found that Chinese respondents are potentially more polite and indirect than English respondents. Chinese respondents pay more attention to reviewers’ face wants rather than that of their own, while English respondents attach greater importance to maintaining a positive image for a restaurant, and hence attending to their own face needs. This paper reveals a sharp contrast in the use of impoliteness and its link to the concept of face in English and Chinese negative reviews and responses.