Volume 2, Issue 1

Introduction The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research arose from a workshop which took place at the University of the West of England, Bristol, in February 2003 entitled ‘Politeness and (business) communication across national borders’. The aim of the workshop was to draw together researchers on politeness in business contexts or in the workplace working mainly on British English with others working on politeness in other cultures or in cross-cultural contexts. Some papers focus more closely on the workplace (Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris; Mullany); others more closely on politeness in different cultural settings (Kerbrat-Orecchioni; Beeching on French; Arnáiz on Spanish) and others on cross-cultural phenomena (Daller and Yıldız on Western European cultures such as the UK and Germany in contrast with Turkey, Belarus and Uzbekistan; Traverso on French and Syrian). The studies, moreover, cover a range of levels of analysis from an extralinguistic to a macro- and micro-linguistic level. The subject of some studies involves a broad consideration of cultural factors, including power and distance, that of others involves an exploration of speech events and linguistic rituals, whilst still others study the implementation of politeness at a micro-level. All of the researchers acknowledge the primacy of the Brown and Levinson politeness framework yet many attempt to adjust the theory so that it accounts in a more satisfying way for the sometimes apparently contradictory nature of the empirical data investigated.

In this article we will attempt to address some of the issues that arise in researching politeness in the workplace, especially, though not exclusively, in the context of multicultural and multilingual encounters. We propose to look at debates around the nature of politeness and their relevance for research in work settings and to discuss the contribution made to these debates by analyses of politeness in the workplace. Finally, we will discuss some of the methodological problems that field researchers will face when conducting research on the field, especially in intercultural work contexts. These will include, for example, issues such as the choice of methodology/s, confidentiality, the nature of the involvement of the researcher, making use of multi-method approaches, the comparability of analytical categories across different languages and culture. Finally, we suggest, very briefly, some directions for further research.

The present study investigates power distance in a number of countries which have seen dramatic changes in their political systems in the past and developed an orientation towards the West (Turkey, Belarus, and Uzbekistan). The present paper is mainly based on Hofstede's framework (1980a, 1980b, 1991, 1994 and 1997) where dichotomies such as “high/low power distance” or “high/low uncertainty avoidance” are used to describe national business cultures. The factor power distance is chosen because power is closely related to politeness strategies (e. g., Brown and Levinson 1987(1978), Spencer-Oatey 2000 and Holmes and Stubbe 2003). In total 236 questionnaires were distributed to business students in the countries under investigation. The main question is whether political and social change in a country leads to a change in power distance relationships at work or whether underlying values such as power distance prevail over time. The present study shows that, despite the fact that the countries involved have made enormous efforts to adapt to the Western market economy, local cultural values still play an important role. This is equally true for countries that changed their political orientation relatively recently (within the past two decades: Belarus and Uzbekistan), and for a country that had already changed its political system more than 80 years ago (Turkey). Despite all these political and socio-economic changes local cultural values prevail over time, and cross-cultural research in human behaviour (including politeness) is only possible if these cultural differences are taken into account.

Politeness at work is examined in this paper by focusing on small talk as a form of linguistic politeness in relation to gender in business meetings. The paper embarks on a theoretical discussion of politeness and small talk, and also critically examines recent theoretical developments in the area of language, gender and politeness. Politeness is conceptualized from a communities of practice (CofP) perspective (Mills 2002, 2003). Butler's (1990) model of performativity, along with the CofP approach and the notion of gendered discourses are integrated to form an overall framework for the data analysis. Small talk is analyzed in managerial meetings, drawing on data taken from two ethnographic studies of UK businesses. Small talk is highlighted as a multifunctional device and the importance of power when analyzing politeness in the workplace is emphasized. The analysis indicates that, despite being stereotypically associated with unimportant, trivial feminine discourse, small talk is utilized in powerful ways in the public context of workplace meetings. Women managers use small talk strategically to create solidarity/collegiality, as an in-group identity marker, and also as a device to place social distance between themselves and men within their CofPs.

This study aims to show that a distinguishing feature of interactions in small shops in France is the very large number of polite formulae, which seek to “polish” and soften the transactional process. Having briefly presented the descriptive model employed (a “Brown et Levinson revisited” model), the author describes the main forms of politeness to be found in this type of situation: opening and closing rituals, and the formulation of requests and thanks. The study is based on corpora recorded in different small shops in the town of Lyons. The author concludes with some comments of an intercultural nature.

This paper presents a data-based comparative study of polite behaviour in French and Arabic (Syrian) service encounters. It focuses on the use of conversational routines and rituals, which are not only an important component of interactions in any service encounter, but also a prominent characteristic of Arabic interaction. The first part of the paper is devoted to a presentation of these two notions. The methodological problems raised by contrastive data analysis are then discussed, especially that of choosing comparable situations for conducting fieldwork, and of establishing a linguistic grid of reference for the contrastive analysis. The results of the study presented in part four lead to a discussion of what appear to be specific features of polite behaviour in the French and Syrian corpora. The corpora are composed of interactions audio-recorded in small shops.

This paper focuses on the role of translation in the exploration of intercultural communication and the issues that second person forms of address raise when translating humorous texts from English to Spanish, since Spanish differentiates between singular and plural second person pronouns and English does not. With examples taken from film and literature, it will be argued that in translating from English to Spanish, the translator can achieve different humorous effects, such as satire, irony or sarcasm through the conscious choice of tú or usted. It will also be argued that when the translator is translating texts into English s/he should take into account the role of tú and usted as encoders of social relationships and potential face-threats to the speakers. It is for these reasons that address terms should be considered in the translation of humour in order to achieve pragmatic equivalence in the target text. The paper suggests that politeness theory can provide a framework within which to analyze the way in which translators can exploit the potential of second person address forms in the rendering of humour. In this article I will largely be focusing on the filmic representation of workplace relationships and the way that second-person pronouns play a key role in the representations of positions of power and distance.

Post-posed quoi is traditionally stigmatized as a meaningless filler or “tic” and considered inappropriate in formal or polite speech. The usefulness of “small words” in smoothing social interaction has more recently been recognized, at least as far as English is concerned (see, for example, Hasselgren 2002), and this article aims to explore the extent to which “quoi” is employed in workplace contexts in France. Interviews in shops, Tourist Offices and professional contexts across France have been extracted for detailed study from the Bristol Corpus (1988–1990) and the Corpus de Référence du Français Parlé (2002). The data amount to a total of 524,334 words; 108,272 words and 52 speakers in the workplace context and 416,062 words and 147 speakers in the private context. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to explore the frequency and function of quoi in both contexts. Rates of usage of this stigmatized marker in workplace and professional contexts exceed rates in the “private” interviews in the corpora. The data appear to suggest that social and power differentials are bridged by the symbolic use of the markers of “camaraderie”, the possessors of information downtoning their expertise in a bid to politely engage the interest and adherence of interlocutor(s).

Holmes, Janet and Maria Stubbe (2003). Power and Politeness in the Workplace: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work . London: Longman. Paperback ISBN 0-582-36877-4; 208 pp. Price: £20.99.(Karen Grainger) Vine, Bernadette (2004). Getting Things Done at Work: The Discourse of Power in Workplace Interaction . Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hardback ISBN 90-272-5366 (Eur) / 1-58811-521 6 (US); 276 pp. Price: USD $114.00/Euro 95.00.(Sandra Harris) Lee-Wong, Song-Mei (2000) Politeness and Face in Chinese Culture . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Paperback ISBN: 3-63132-022-1. 344 pp. Price USD $57.95.(Bethan Davies) Pan, Yuling (2000). Politeness in Chinese Face-to-Face Interaction: Stamford: Ablex. Hardback ISBN 1-56750-492-2; Paperback ISBN 1-56750-493-0; 161 pp. Price: Hb: USD: $115.00/£66.00. Pb: USD $34.99/£19.99.(Catherine Hua Xing)