is the theory of politeness pragmalinguistic or

English Linguistics 33: 2 (2017) 511–543© 2017 by the English Linguistic Society of Japan

* I would like to express my deepest sympathies at the passing of Professor Geoffrey Leech just after the publication of the reviewed book in August 2014. I am grateful to two anonymous EL reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions. In addition, I would like to thank Sandra C. Healy for her significant contribution and support in the linguistic and stylistic revision of the entire paper. Needless to say, any remaining errors and shortcomings are my own.

－511－

[Review ARticle]

IS THE THEORY OF POLITENESS PRAGMALINGUISTIC OR SOCIOPRAGMATIC?:

A NEW LOOK INTO THE UNIVERSALITY/CULTURE-SPECIFICITY DIVIDE*

HiRoAki tAnAkA

Kyoto Institute of Technology

The Pragmatics of Politeness (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics) by Geoffrey Leech, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, xvi+343pp.

This review paper focusses on how Leech’s (2014) General Strategy of Politeness and its sub-strategies (maxims) of pos-/neg-politeness work in the naturally occurring data of Japanese and English. The ultimate goal is to explore how people in conversation proceeds interactively by aligning them-selves with each other in order to attain positive/negative politeness goals. Rather than looking at data pragmalinguistically in the sense of Leech (2014), we maintain the view that politeness phenomena are to be analyzed function-ally and sequentially. After reviewing Leech’s most recent approaches, we propose that his (old) cost/benefit or (new) high/low value maxims of polite-ness principle may be applicable to natural data in some way, but need com-plete revision in terms of social and functional perspectives.

Keywords: pos-/neg-politeness, face, pragmalinguistics, sociopragmatics, cost/benefit, universalist, relativist

1. Introduction

1.1. Overview of the Main Claims This voluminous book (henceforth L (2014)) offers a new theoretical framework of politeness, based on Leech’s earlier seminal and groundbreak-ing work, Leech (1983), and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) influential work

ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOL. 33, NO. 2 (2017)512

(henceforth B&L), which is exemplified by hundreds of authentic examples in English taken from British and American corpora. This work is the cul-mination of the work to which Leech has deeply dedicated himself to con-structing for almost all of his academic career. Leech’s thinking has had recourse to the much discussed Speech Act theory by Austin and Searle and the (neo-)Gricean four maxims, and most importantly, to his own six max-ims first presented in Principles of Politeness (POP) in (Leech (1983))—which were increased to 10 in Leech (2003) and L (2014). The original six maxims, tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement and sympathy, were suggested 30 years ago and are still influential today. As the book’s advertisement states,1 “Leech’s 1983 book, Principles of Pragmatics, introduced the now widely-accepted distinction between prag-malinguistic [formerly ‘abusolute’] and sociopragmatic [formerly ‘relative’]2 aspects of politeness; this book returns to the pragmalinguistic side, some-what neglected in recent work.” Leech “rejects the prevalent view [e.g. Watts (2003) etc.] that it is impossible to apply the terms ‘polite’ or ‘im-polite’ to linguistic phenomena.” While not distancing himself from the sociopragmatic approach, Leech adheres to a seemingly non-sociopragmatic style of research: pragmatlinguistic, corpus-driven, non-conversation analytic, and ‘absolute.’ He points out in spite of much criticism against Leech’s (1983) ‘absolute’/‘relative’ politeness distinction (Locher (2006: 250–251) cited in L (2014: 15, note 28) and Watts (2003)), “this [i.e., the (socioprag-matic) argument that polite utterances cannot be uttered out of contexts, but should be made relative to contexts], …, is throwing the baby out with the bath water,” (L (2004: 16)), which is to say that first and foremost, a polite utterance should be assessed on the basis of its semantic default meaning. (cf. Levinson (2000), Jaszczolt (2005) noted by L (2014: 16, notes 29 and 30).

1.2. Chapters of the Book The book comprises three parts and eleven chapters with appendix, references and index. They are: PART I—Laying the foundations; 1. In-troduction; 2. Politeness—Viewpoints; 3. Pragmatics, indirectness and neg-

1 See Oxford Scholarship Online at:http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341386.001.0001/acprof-9780195341386. 2 Henceforth, additions with square brackets are mine (by the present reviewer) in the quotations in this paper.

513IS THE THEORY OF POLITENESS PRAGMALINGUISTIC OR SOCIOPRAGMATIC?

politeness: A basis for politeness modeling; 4. Politeness: The model; PART II—Politeness and impoliteness in practice; 5. A case study: Apologies; 6. Requests and other directives; 7. Other politeness-sensitive speech events; 8. Politeness and its ‘opposites’; PART III—Further perspectives; 9. Methods of data collection: Empirical pragmatics; 10. Interlanguage pragmatics and politeness across languages and cultures; 11. Politeness and the history of English. In part one, Leech first elucidates eight important characteristics in deal-ing with politeness, from not only linguistic but also social and psychologi-cal perspectives. He discusses some key notions, one of which relates to the most controversial debate of politeness from the time of Leech (1983) and B&L (1987), e.g. honorification in Asian languages, such as Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Needless to say, there has been much debate over universality and culture-specificity related to politeness phenomena, which is still great concern in his current research. Some notional dichotomies are needed to provide a good discussion of politeness throughout the book: bi-valent and trivalent politeness, pragmatlingusitic and sociopragmatic polite-ness and pos-politeness and neg-politeness. In Chapter 3, Leech contends that the concepts of “collective, group culture” (East) and “individualist, egalitarian culture (West)” (p. 83)3 are not clearly divided, and they are just “positions on scales.” (p. 83). Chapter 4 deals with the modelling of his theory, based on his earlier consideration of politeness in 1983. Part two provides a broad coverage of speech act types of politeness encompassing face-saving and face-enhancing acts, such as requests, apolo-gies, compliments, offers, invitations, undertakings, compliments, criticisms, thanks, (dis)agreement, advice, suggestions, congratulations, commiserations, and good wishes, all of which are constrained and elucidated by GSP and the 10 maxims. He especially focusses on “requests” and “apologies,” which are a major concern of politeness researchers. His discussion of im-politeness, to which irony (“mock politeness”) and banter (“mock impolite-ness”) are closely related, reflects recent views that fall in line with B&L’s and Leech’s (1983) main claims. The role of politeness in the learning of English as a second language and a new look at more than a thousand years in the history of politeness in English are provided as additional chapters.

3 Unless otherwise stated, page numbers without the author and the year indicate L’s (2014) pages.


2. The Main Reformulation

2.1. GSP and Face The maxims of POP that Leech presented in his 1983 book are reformu-lated and increased from 6 to 10 under the umbrella of one grand strategy, called a General Strategy of Politeness (GSP), cited below. In spite of the added maxims, however, Leech explicitly states that he is “not indulging in the uncontrolled maxim proliferation of which B&L (1987: 4) accused him.” (L (2014: 91)).

General Strategy of Politeness: In order to be polite, S expresses or implies meanings that associate a favorable value with what pertains to O or associates an unfavorable value with what pertains to S (S = self, speaker. O = other). (L (2014: 91))

Although the two (un)favorable values of politeness that pertain to O or S are apparently in opposition, they are two sides of the same coin. The first part of the strategy is for raising O’s status when O performs an action and at the same time the second is for lowering S’s status when S performs his/her action. The reason he adopts the term ‘strategy’ instead of ‘maxim’ as in his previous book is that he does not want the terminology to be “easily misconstrued” (Leech (2005)) and using the term maxim implies some kind of moral imperative rather than pragmatic constraint (Thomas (1995: 168)). Another characteristic that features in L (2014) is the pos-/neg-politeness distinction, which supposedly corresponds to, but in actuality has a lack of correspondence with B&L’s positive/negative face. Just as the way of handling face has been under much debate since Leech (1983) and B&L, so the difference between the two types of L’s (2014) and B&L’s pos(itive)/neg(ative) politeness pair is ascribed to how they import Goffman’s (1955) notion of face, according to Fukuda (2005, 2013: 50–54). Compare the two definitions:

Face is the positive self-image or self-esteem that a person enjoys as a reflection of that person’s estimation by others. (L (2014: 25)) ‘Face,’ the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself, consisting in two related aspects. (B&L (1987: 61)) The term face may be defined as the positive social value a person ef-fectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken dur-ing a particular contact. (Goffman (1969: 5) cited by Fukuda (2013))

For L (2014) as well as Leech (2003), face has more bearing on Goffman’s than B&L’s work, in that L’s (2014) is defined as a single ‘self-image’ esteemed by others, while B&L’s is based on public ‘self-image’


claimed by individual ‘wants’; the former develops into pos-/neg- politeness by saving or enhancing face respectively, while the latter consists of two positive and negative faces, which are met with by face-threatening acts, and the about-to-be face-threatened acts are ‘redressed’ by positive/nega-tive politeness. As such, Leech’s face is considered to be a single sided strategy; whereas B&L’s is a two sided one. (Leech (2003), Fukuda (2005: 49–50)). They are close to each other but not the same.

2.2. L’s (2014) Maxims2.2.1. Reformulation of Maxims Having made clear that face is a one-sided concept for L (2014) and that language signifies the politeness phenomena, Leech proceeds to present his 10 maxims as submaxims of the GSP mentioned above, by increasing his (1983) 6 maxims, and acknowledging that 10 may be incomplete, because “[t]hese are simply the most observable manifestations of the GSP, … [b]ut the essential point is that these are not separate, independent constraints; they are instances of the operation of the GSP as a ‘supermaxim’ (p. 98). He adds four maxims not mentioned in Leech (1983): “two pos-politeness Maxims of Obligation (accounting for thanks, apologies, and the responses to them), and two neg-politeness maxims: those of opinion-reticence and feeling-reticence” (p. 92) (see Table 1 and Table 2 below). Below is the list of (pairs of) maxims, their labels and related speech act types. As you look from left to right in Table 1, Leech’s POP or GSP (see the comparison table below) is characterized by lowering/raising what per-tains to oneself/others, and then breaking these into 10 maxims with 5 re-lated pairs of maxims, so that each maxim is realized by a particular speech act event (Fukuda (2013: 49)), such that lowering/raising what pertains to oneself/others is constrained by M1-M10 and its scope is narrowed by giv-ing high/low values to one’s/others’ wants/qualities, etc., resulting in one typical speech act type that conforms to a particular context of an utterance.


Table 1. (L’s (2014: 91) Table 4.1) The component maxims of the Gen-eral Strategy of PolitenessMaxims (expressed in an im-perative mood)

Related pair ofMaxims

Label for this maxim

Typical speech event type(s)

(M1) give a high value to O’s wants Generosity, Tact

Generosity Commissives

(M2) give a low value to S’sWants

Tact Directives

(M3) give a high value to O’sQualities Approbation,

Modesty

Approbation Compliments

(M4) give a low value to S’sQualities

Modesty Self-devaluation

(M5) give a high value to S’sobligation to O Obligation

Obligation(of S to O)

Apologizing,thanking

(M6) give a low value to O’sobligation to S

Obligation (of O to S)

Responsesto thanks andapologies

(M7) give a high value to O’sOpinions Opinion

Agreement Agreeing,disagreeing

(M8) give a low value to S’sOpinions

Opinionreticence

Giving opinions

(M9) give a high value to O’sFeelings Feeling

Sympathy Congratulating,commiserating

(M10) give a low value to S’sfeelings

Feelingreticence

Suppressingfeelings

(In the leftmost column, O is used for ‘Other,’ including hearer and S for ‘Self.’ )

We recognize that there are two important features in the table: one is that odd/even numbered maxims correspond to pos-/neg- politeness, which are S-/O-oriented respectively (the cells of neg-politeness are tinted with gray); the other is that “each maxim [in the left-hand column] is related to a particular class of speech events [in the right-hand column] (e.g. generosity typically applies to commissives, tact to directives, approbation to compli-ments, and so on)” (Terkourafi (2015)). We also recognize that L (2014) uses the word ‘low/high value’ to stan-dardize the parameters on the various scales of values used in Leech (1983), such as ‘cost’/‘benefit,’ ‘dispraise’/‘praise,’ ‘disagreement’/‘agreement’ and ‘antipathy’/‘sympathy’ highlighted in boldface type below.


Table 2. Leech’s (1983: 132) definitions of maxims:In observing the PP, S will (all other things being equal): (I) TACT MAXIM: minimize cost to O, [and maximize benefit to O] (II) GENEROSITY MAXIM: minimize benefit to S, [and maximize

cost to S](III) APPROBATION MAXIM: minimize dispraise of O, [and maxi-

mize praise of O](IV) MODESTY MAXIM: minimize praise to S, [and maximize dis-

praise to S] (V) AGREEMENT MAXIM: minimize disagreement between S and

O [and maximize agreement between S and O](VI) SYMPATHY MAXIM: minimize antipathy between S and O

[and maximize sympathy between S and O].

Compare the descriptions of the Tact maxim in the earlier and new ver-sions of 1983 (I in Table 2) and 2014 (M2 in Table 1). In Chapter 6, in which a detailed analysis of ‘requests’ of O-oriented speech event is given derived from the Tact maxim, L (2014: 136) says, “The defining charac-teristic of requests, and more generally of directives, is that they propose actions to be performed by O at a cost to O—and normally, for the benefit of S.” Viewed from a well-balanced relationship of ‘cost’ and ‘benefit,’ it is possible to combine the two versions. In order for S to successfully perform actions appropriately called ‘requests,’ ‘S needs to give low value to what S wants O to do, i.e. S’s wants (M2 of the 2014 version),’ so that S can (in)directly ‘minimize what would be imposed on O at O’s cost’ for the benefit of S ((I) of the 1983 version)’ (emphasis mine). This double-bind derivation of requests based on the Tact maxim, in which the first half (defined by M2) is more generalized than the second half (by (I)) (the sec-ond is more elaborated than the first), comes from an overarching constraint of GSP, which has a double-bind effect as well. If giving a(n) favorable/unfavorable value with what pertains to O/S is considered to be an overall communicative goal of polite utterance within the constraints of GSP, then there arise two stages of politeness strategies that give rise to speech events such as ‘requests,’ where the first half is naturally followed by the second elaborated half, so that the second is subsumable under the first.


2.2.2. Application of Maxims to Natural Data4

But this is not the whole story when it comes to the application of max-ims to natural data. Consider the next Japanese example from Yabuuchi (2015: 176), and see if it is applicable to the Tact maxim of our combined version:

(1) 01 A: sore totte that pass “Pass that to me.” 02 → B: nan-da sono kuchi-no kikikata-wa what-Cop that mouth-Gen speak.way-Top “Watch your mouth. (Literally, ‘What a way of speak-

ing (you are using)!’)” 03 A: suimasen sore-o totte kudasai sorry that-Obj pass please “I’m sorry. Would you mind passing that to me?”

The conversation proceeds from a blunt directive (an imperative) that im-poses responsibility on B, to an inquiry on the assessment of what type of utterance the previous request constitutes, which is also meant to be used to accuse A of using inappropriate words in making a request, and then goes to the final stage with an apology and a formal, indirect request on the part of A. Yabuuchi reports that people more often than not are required to ar-ticulate how polite requests are uttered in advance, if they are too blatant to be accepted as appropriate requests. Putting aside the matter of power and distance between A and B, A in line 1 casts a heavy burden on B’s required future action, so that B in line 2 has the right to ask for the mitigation of the demand. B’s accusation forces A in line 3 to apologize to B for his/her rudeness and rephrase the original request with a more indirect one. This means that the high cost decreases only for B’s sake as the conver-sation in (1) proceeds. In contrast, on the beneficial aspect of A, what A will get from B’s action should not be given as much importance as might

4 The research I advocate here is for the most part in line with what Arundale (1999, 2009) calls ‘Face Constituting Theory.’ His treatment of the interactional meaning ac-cording to his recent paper in 2009 is: “…, a first speaker’s utterance affords some range of interpretings, but does not determine which one of these interpretings will be operative in the conversation. The adjacent utterance of the second speaker affords another range of interpretings. Both speakers now assess the consistency between the two ranges, and in doing so retroactively constrain their interpretings of the first utterance.” But his examples from Goffman (1967) are limited to utterances that begin with ambiguous, am-bivalent sentences, where participants co-constructively decide the intended interpretation.


be expected from the combined version. As a rule, there may be a well-balanced relationship of cost/benefit on the part of both participants. But how much balance between these values can be achieved resides in the nature of the conversational sequence. This may be a serious problem for a pragmalinguist like Leech. From the CA view, a request sequence like (1) can be regarded as a case without a pre-request sequence among a number of pre-sequence chains in the sense of Levinson (1983: 356ff). Let us compare Levinson’s (1983: 357) canonical example of requests with Yabuuchi’s non-canonical example (repeated below), to which labels for speech act types are added by the present reviewer. (Labels in (2) are Levinson’s).

(1) 01 A: sore totte that pass “Pass that to me.” ((DIRECTIVE; N/A as a PRE-REQUEST)) 02 → B: nan-da sono kuchi-no kikikata-wa what-Cop that mouth-Gen speak.way-Top “Watch your mouth. (Literally, ‘What a way of speak-

ing (you are using)!’)” ((DON’T GO AHEAD)) 03 A: suimasen sore-o totte kudasai sorry that-Obj pass please “I’m sorry. Would you mind passing that to me?” ((APOLOGY & REQUEST)) (2) Levinson’s (1983) example (108) on page 357, originally from

Merrit (1976: 324). 01 A: Hi. Do you have uh size C flashlight batteries? ((PRE-REQUEST)) 02 B: Yes sir ((GO AHEAD)) 03 A: I’ll have four please ((REQUEST)) 04 B: ((turns to get)) ((RESPONSE))


Figure 1. Degree of Cost to O(=B in (1) and (2)) in a request sequence

(Abbreviations: DIR=DIRECTIVE; N/A=NOT AVALABLE, PRE=PRE-REQUEST, DGA=DON’T GO AHEAD, GA=GO AHEAD, APOL=APOLOGY, REQ=REQUEST, RES=RESPONSE)

In line 2 of (1), B stops A from making a blunt request to B. As can be seen in Figure 1(1), there is a sudden drop of cost caused by DGA (DON’T GO AHEAD); otherwise B cannot decrease the cost to A down to the point where he can perform the requested action. In contrast, there is no gap be-tween 01 and 03 in Figure 1(2), because of the preference expressed by the second speaker B in line 2. There is a gradual drop of cost to B, in which case B accepts A’s request more smoothly than the one without pre-request sequence in (1). Note that the degrees of cost to B are different at the onset of the two conversations. Taking account of social factors that have an ef-fect on the choice of request forms, a blunt request in (1) occurring between a son and his angry father (especially in a traditional Japanese home) psy-chologically does more costly damage to B than a casual request in (2) be-tween a customer and a clerk in a local electronics store. This is why the costs imposed on B in (1) and (2) are different from the onset. As for thanks in the M5 cell of Table 1 above, Leech is well aware that “…the need to thank with a greater or lesser degree of intensity is deter-mined by the value of the P[ower], D[istance], and R[ank] social factors [in the sense of B&L]: the degree of vertical and horizontal distance, and the size of the favor for which thanks are due.” (p. 197). Again, let us con-sider another example from Yabuuchi (2015: 176), who finds that thanking is most often caused by an assessment of the offer given. See the labels of speech act types, each of which corresponds to lines 1 to 4 respectively.

(1) (2)

1 1

0.5

0 001 03 01 � 02 � 03 � 04

co

st

co

stDIR; N/A as PRE � DGA� APOL & REQ PR

a gradual drop of cost to O(B)

E � GA � REQ � RES

01 02 0301 � 02 � 03

a sudden drop of cost to O(B)


(3) 01 A: kore ageru this give.in.the.favor.of.hearer “I’ll give you this (for you).” ((OFFER)) 02 → B: hontoni? really “Really?” ((ASSESSMENT INQUIRY)) 03 A: un yeah “Yeah.” ((CONFIRMATION)) 04 B: arigatoo thank.you “Thank you.” ((THANKS))

In (3), B (line 2) questions the truthfulness of the offer given by A (line 1) before expressing thanks for it (line 4), after confirming it (line 3). As with the discussion of lines 1 to 3 in (1), in order for S to successfully perform the actions appropriately called ‘thanking,’ ‘S needs to give high value to S’s obligation to O(M5 of 2014 version), so that S can (in)directly return the favor that “O has done for S.” (p. 197). (emphasis mine). The problem is how much one should do for another before he is given full thanks for the favor he thinks he has done, i.e., “the size of the favor thanks are due” (p. 197). People do not thank others for what they have done to/for them until they fully recognize that the favor, the offer in the case of (3), is real. In line 1, the beneficial verb ageru (give) indicates that the action ‘giving’ is done on behalf of the hearer, (thus ‘for you’ in the translation), but a bare beneficial is used, (ageru is used without an honor-ific form, sashi (ageru)), because A is ranked higher or older than B, or at least they are peers in the same position, which is why it is a little difficult to accept A’s offer as it is. For B, the offering is rather abrupt and difficult to accept it as it is, which is also why B asks whether the offering is real or not. The process of B’s returning of the favor begins at this stage (line 3) all of a sudden, leading to a flat ‘thanks’ with a very steep rise to the fi-nal stage as shown in Figure 2(3). Generally, thanks ritually goes to individuals for petty favors they do for the people who thank them, so that a sequential pattern like 01 to 03 above is usually missed or unnoticed for an adjacency pair such as “Wanna ride?”—“Oh, thanks.” But more often than not, people accumulate a cer-tain amount of favor by exchanging (dis)confirmations and reach the final stage of thanks. Compare (3) and (4) and see the difference in Figures 2(3) and 2(4).


(4) Sheri, a single mom in her mid thirties, and her son Steven (age 11) talk while Sheri prepares dinner. She is looking for a bottle of pizza sauce, and Steven finds it. (Adapted from Santa Barbara Corpus #58)

01 Steven: What’s here. (.) You mean this? (..) Pizza sauce? ((CONFIRMATION INQUIRY))

02 → Sheri: Yep that’s exactly what [I was looking for] ((CONFIRMATION)) 03 Steven: [It was right he]re ((RE-CONFIRMATION)) 04 Sheri: (.) Thank you babe ((THANKS))

Figure 2. Degree of favor that (S feels that) O has done to S

(Abbreviations: OFFR=OFFER, ASSESS.INQ=ASSESSMENT INQUIRY, CONF=CONFIRMATION, TNK=THANKS, CONF.INQ=CONFIRMATION INQUIRY, RE-CONF=RE-CONFIRMATION)

Note that the white box in (3: 02) and the black box in (4: 02) in Figure 2 contribute to the difference in the steep or gentle rising of the favor “for which thanks are due” (p. 197, for further discussion, see above). In (3: 02), ‘white’ means that B has not acknowledged A’s offer as real, whereby B hasn’t yet started to incorporate it into his/her thanking strategy. In con-trast, in (4: 02), ‘black’ means that the thanking strategy has already started because Sheri (the mother) confirms that Steven (her son) has found what she was looking for, i.e., the favor she owes to him has already been actual-ized at this stage, so you can see a gradual increase of the favor to the final stage of thanking. The sequence in (4: 01–04) is a step-by-step process to attain a full range of one speech event, called ‘thanking,’ as opposed to an interrupted process of thanking in (3: 01–03). As such, (3: 01–03) and (4: 01–04) display a mirror image of (1: 01–03) and (2: 01–04).

(3) (4)

1 1

0.5 0.5

0 0

OFFR � ASSESS.INQ � CONF � TNK

01 � 02 � 03 � 04

f av

or

01 � 002 � 03 � 04

CONF.INQ � CONF � RE-CONF � TNK

f av

or

a gradual rise of favor

a sud

den r

ise of

favo

r


In this section, I demonstrate that maxims of both the 1983 and 2014 ver-sions are applicable to real life data, but taking account of sequential (inter-rupted/step-by-step) processes gives more importance to politeness strategies than accounts of formulaic expressions.

2.2.3. Some Other Questions (Yet) to Be Answered As Watts (2003: 68–69) observes, in Leech (1983), there are a number of questions as to (i) how we can “define these 6 parameters,” (ii) whether or not they are “universal values,” and (iii) whether or not they are “taken into consideration by the speaker as well as the other maxims of CP or Irony Principle,” to which L (2014) only gives a partial answer. Rather, he reformulates the entire terminology of values from the ones applied to a particular case to a more generalized one, i.e. ‘value,’ so that each maxim attains equal status with the other maxims of CP or the Irony Principle in the sense of his 1983’s book and Grice (1975). Still, he has not answered Watts’s questions satisfactorily. The change of parameters from many to one does not escape from the “inherently evaluative nature of (im)polite-ness.” (Watts (2003: 49)) (see the discussion on ‘low value’ and ‘humble’ in 3.3 below). As Watts (2003: 50–51) observes in Leech’s (1983) and B&L’s (1987) politeness strategies for putting too much weight on “evalua-tive framework in which (im)politeness is used,” one problem for “egoistic” models like Leech’s and B&L’s is that what is (im)politely evaluated by some might be easily evaluated by others differently. Once they use such terms as ‘value’ (or ‘cost’/‘benefit’) to describe a (generalized) model of politeness, the notion cannot but obtain the “inherently evaluative nature,” which is invariable and all-purposeful, according to Watts and other dis-course politeness theorists. Whether or not such an ‘evaluative framework’ is shared by individuals or the society in which we live, a model of polite-ness needs to accommodate a request from variable pressures of context. Rather than abandoning the ‘cost’/‘benefit’ scales, Leech reuses them to account for “sociopragmatic scales to assess the appropriate degree of po-liteness,” (p. 103) but he does not use the other pairs of parameters. So, there are three fundamental sociopragmatic scales with ‘cost’/‘benefit’ scales in the third place. As he defines them,“[t]he degree to which it [i.e. POP] is observed is sensitive to (i) the vertical distance (upward), (ii) the horizon-tal distance between S and O, and (iii) the “weightiness” (in terms of cost or benefit) of the transaction (corresponding to B&L’s P[ower], D[istance], and R[ank of imposition] factors, though not restricting R to impositions), as well as other factors;…” (p. 99). These three are the essential ‘drive


units’ that comprise two (pos-/neg-) combinatory accounts of politeness, within which bivalent politeness, which is composed of (i) and (ii) above (formerly ‘authority’ and ‘social distance’ respectively in the 1983 version), involves measuring the appropriate degree of politeness, i.e. the degree of ‘honorific usage’ as in Japanese ‘keigo (honorifics),’ and trivalent politeness in relation to (i), (ii) and (iii) which involves other major types of polite-ness. As such, L (2014) repeatedly stresses that there are two types of politeness, bivalent and trivalent. But he points out that these two are not totally separated, showing that honorifics are placed at the upper end of bi-valent politeness with the Power and Distance factors non-trivial and large, and vocatives of ‘camaridie’ such as buddy, guy are at the other end of scales with the two (P and D) factors trivially small, (L (2014: 108–109)), so that trivalent politeness lies somewhere midway between them. There-fore, for Leech, three dimensional, trivalent politeness meets the normal strategy of polite behaviors with ‘values’ taken into account, inasmuch as the third R (or weightiness) factor comes into play. See Figure 3.

Figure 3. 2 and 3 Dimensional Factors of Politeness / Bivalent and Tri-valent Politeness

If we look into the correlation between the 2 dimensional zone of politeness behaviors indicated by dotted lines and arrows, such as vocatives some-where on the 0–0 points of power and distance axes and (Japanese and Eng-

0

2

46

810

0

2

4

6

8

10

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

0-2 2-4 4-6 6-8 8-10

Range of normal polite behaviors

Vocatives (buddy, guy)

Honorifics

(Horizontal) Distance between Sand O

Rank

of i

mpo

sitio

n (w

eight

ines

of

cost

and

bene

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lish) honorifics on the 10–10 points, and the 3 dimensional zone indicated by solid lines and arrows, we see that there is always discrepancy between the two dimensions. So far, so good, if we follow Leech’s and B&L’s lines of thought properly. However, the two dotted and solid arrows shown in the two zones of bivalent and trivalent politeness do not pair perfectly in proportion to the rise or decline of the degree of their influence. True, L (2014: 10) acknowledges a dynamic aspect of politeness features, saying, “… bivalent politeness relates to “persisting” sociolinguistic features (i.e. features relatively stable through time), whereas trivalent politeness refers to “dynamic” (pragmatic) features of language that develop over time in the course of interaction.” But even the use of bivalent politeness, such as ad-dress terms and honorifics, more often than not, not only develops over time into the highest points (10–10–10) of politeness factors but also fluctuates between the lowest and highest points. The fluctuation is contingent on sociopragmatic factors such as a role shift from husbands/wives to fathers/mothers as I will discuss below, and a perspective shift that comes from a sense of belonging to the in-/out-group. Generally, the more formulaic ex-pressions of politeness a language has, the more frequently the development, the fluctuation or the shift occurs.5 There is another important characteristic attached to the pairs of pos-/neg-politeness in Table 1. The key to this is the hearer-/speaker orientation of maxims (see the discussion on the use of apology below). “Generally, the hearer-oriented maxims are more powerful than the speaker-oriented ones,” as L (2014: 91) points out, with emphasis that “the Tact Maxim (M2) is generally felt, at least in Anglophone societies, to be more powerful than

5 One reviewer commented on the draft of my paper that “Leech attempted more gen-eralized discussion, though focusing mainly on politeness phenomena in English, which he conducted more as a pragmatlinguistic foundation of this discipline…” Was his dis-cussion not generalized? Yes, it was. I totally agree with the reviewer’s comment and the implication that Leech’s main focus on English data alone made it look like he was generalizing politeness strategies that are only applied to English. The problem is, how do his generalizations give some motivation—whether it is linguistic or non-linguistic (or even social)—for people to use (im)polite expressions on one occasion, not another? As far as I can see, the bottom line of his model is still ‘cost’/‘benefit’ offset, i.e., the speaker’s cost is offset by the hearer’s benefit, and vice versa. ‘Cost’/‘benefit’ or some other pairs of values that allegedly involve generating politeness phenomena do not reside in the cause, motivation or cue of the articulation of the phenomena, but come out as a result of it as I showed in (1)–(2) and (3)–(4), because these values are more of a nature that involves a person’s principled course of action, just like Grice’s (1975) four maxims that need manipulation when some forms are linguistically realized.


the Generosity Maxim (M1).” In the same vein, we will add that the Mod-esty Maxim (M4) is generally felt, in some societies, such as Japan and Korea, to be more powerful than the Approbation Maxim (M3). Compare the hearer- and speaker-oriented maxims again. The difference is just that the former give high values to O’s qualities and the latter low values to S’s qualities. But why is the former maxim more powerful than the lat-ter? The answer is that politeness strategies are, by definition, ‘altruistic,’ not in the sense of ‘genuine altruism’ in which people tend to “show a wish to help or bring advantages to others, even if it results in disadvantage for themselves,”6 or “to say or do something unselfishly for the other person’s sake,” (p. 4) but in the sense of ‘communicative altruism’ that people some-times communicate with ‘selfish’ motives for doing something for other people (emphasis mine). However, for Leech, being more powerful is for pragmalingusitic rea-sons, and he says that “to heighten or intensify those [high and low] values [rather than to decrease the values] is to increase the degree of absolute po-liteness” (Leech (2003)). For a language with abundant linguistic resources for showing politeness, such as in the case of honorifics in Japanese, it is easier to use O- in O-namae wa? (Your name is?) (similarly, very much in Thank you very much), in order to heighten the effect of politeness, rather than plain expressions without the honorific o or (very much). It is just a matter of degree of absolute (pragmalinguistic) politeness to further en-hancing/diminishing face. In actuality, however, it is not just a matter of formulaic expressions, but of a wide variety of value sets that can be appli-cable to real-life data.

2.3. L’s (2014) and B&L’s (1987) Maxims Is there a match between L’s (2014) 10 maxims (each 5 allotted to pos-/neg- politeness) and B&L’s positive and negative politeness that break down into 10 positive and 5 negative politeness strategies? The answer appears to be ‘no,’ as is shown by the comparison in Table 3. Leech’s pos-/neg-politeness strategies are given rise to by maxim-based strategies, which are derived from formulaic expressions that have default semantic meanings; whereas B&L’s are based on FTA-redressing, which are derived from non-formulaic expressions that have non-default contextual meanings. The

6 Adapted from the website of Cambridge.dictionary.on.line at:http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/altruistic.


fundamental difference between these two close-but-not-the-same approaches comes in the partial matches of each of the cells shown below.

Table 3. Possible Correspondence of L’s (2014) Pos/Neg Politeness with B&L’s (1987) Positive/Negative Politeness Strategies.

L(2014): Pos/Neg Politeness B&L (1987): Positive/Negative Politeness Strategies

(M1) give a high value to O’s wants / Generosity Maxim / Offers, invitations, and promises, etc.E.g., You must come and stay with us next time. I won’t take “no” for an answer!

P10. Offer, promise

POS Politeness

(M3) give a high value to O’s qualities / Approbation Maxim / ComplimentsE.g., Your garden looks so lovely / What a pretty dress!

Positive Politeness StrategyP1. Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods)P2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)P3. Intensify interest to H

(M5) give a high value to S’s obligation to O / Maxim of Obligation (of S to O ) / Apologizing, thankingE.g., I’m (terribly) sorry. / Please excuse me. / I’m afraid I’ll have to leave early.

P15. Give gifts to H (goods, sympa-thy, understanding, cooperation)N6. Apologize*

(M7) give a high value to O’s opinions / Agreement Maxim / Agreeing, disagree-ingE.g., A: It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it? B: Yeah, absolutely gorgeous.

P5. Seek agreementP6. Avoid disagreement

(M9) give a high value to O’s feelings / Sympathy Maxim / Congratulating, commiserating, condolence, etc.E.g., Congratulations! / Well done. / Have a good time! Enjoy your meal. / I was so sorry to hear about your father. . .

P2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H)P15. Give gifts to H (goods, sympa-thy, understanding, cooperation)


N/A P4. Use in-group identity markers **P7. Presuppose/raise/assert common ground***P8. JokeP9. Assert or presuppose S’s knowl-edge of and concern for H’s wants***P11. Be optimisticP12. Include both S and H in the activityP13. Give (or ask for) reasonsP14. Assume or assert reciprocity

(M2) give a low value to S’s wants / Tact Maxim / Direc-tives, requestsE.g., A: Could I help myself to a tiny sip of sherry? B: Of course you can! Have as much as you like

N1. Be conventionally indirectN2. Question, hedgeN3. Be pessimisticN4. Minimize the imposition, RxN5. Give deferenceN7. Impersonalize S and H: Avoid the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’N8. State the FTA as a general ruleN10. Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebtingN

EG Politeness

(M4) give a low value to S’s qualities / Modesty Maxim / Self-devaluationE.g., A: . . . I’m so dumb, I don’t even know it. hhh! Heh B: Y-no, y- you’re not du:mb

Negative Politeness Strategy

N5. Give deference

(M6) give a low value to O’s obligation to S / Maxim of Obligation (of O to S)Responses to thanks and apologiesE.g., That’s all right. / You’re welcome. / No problem. / Glad to be of help. / It was a pleasure.

N/A

(M8) give a low value to S’s opinions / Maxim of Opinion Reticence / Giving opinionsE.g., I think, I guess, I don’t suppose, It might be that. . . .

N/A

(M10) give a low value to S’s feelings / Maxim of Feel-ing Reticence / Suppressing feelingsE.g., A: Hi, how are you? B: Oh, fine. Actually though. . ..

N/A


N/A N9. Nominalize

(In the right column of B&L’s positive and negative politeness strategies, P in P1 to P15 stands for positive politeness and N in N1 to N10 for negative politeness. This table is adapted from L (2014: 91ff) and B&L (1987: 102, Fig. 3; 131, Fig 4)).

Notice that, as is well known to many politeness researchers, B&L’s negative politeness strategies are numbered from 1 to 10 corresponding to the strength of ‘mitigating’ FTAs, by not ‘imposing’ on the others’ face; whereas the positive politeness scales of B&L from 15 to 1 are lined in order to the strength of ‘redressing’ the others’ positive face, i.e. the wants that the self-image be esteemed by others. (emphasis mine. Cf. Yabuuchi (2015: 173–175)). Similarly, “[o]n the whole, it seems (as was already noted) that neg-politeness maxims are more powerful than the pos-politeness maxims, and that the maxims higher up the list are more powerful than those lower down. But this is likely to be culturally variable and needs further investi-gation.” (p. 98). Leech’s maxims from 1 to 10 are in order of the strength of saving/enhancing negative/positive face. At first sight, the five pairs of maxims of pos-/neg-politeness are lined up separately and equally, giving high/low values to other’s self-image, ranging over one’s wants, qualities, obligations and opinions (there may be more, as he says). And it appears that this doesn’t mean that one pair of maxims with low numbers are more or less powerful than another pair with high numbers. However, the Max-im of Tact, which was given a relatively higher ground than the others in the 1983 book, still gets paid attention to in the present book. So far, so good. But several questions arise that should be answered concerning the match of the two types of maxims. First, there is a mismatch of maxims relating to “apologizing” between L (2004) and B&L (1987) (see the N6 cell underlined with one asterisk in the right column (B&L) of Table 2). For B&L (1987), ‘apologizing’ (for negative politeness) is the only politeness strategy that differs from L’s (2014) politeness constraint (‘apologizing’ for pos-politeness). The dif-ference comes in how they define (positive/negative) face. For L (2014), ‘apologies’ are:

“What kind of speech event is an apology: pos-polite or neg-polite?” then instinctively we might feel it must be neg-polite—since its main function is one of repair: to repay the debt, to redeem S’s loss of face. However, it is the intended effect of a speech act on H that is crucial: an apology is meant to be face-enhancing to H rather than


face-threatening. Harking back to Table 4.1 (p. 91), an apology is a transaction that gives value to O. That is, by apologizing, S not only acknowledges a fault but pays a debt to the face of O (emphasis mine). (p. 121)

He also points out a close similarity between thanking and apologizing, em-phasizing that they are different in the imbalance of S’s offence to O and O’s favor to S.

In terms of function, thanking, again like apologizing, is a move to re-store the equilibrium, the balance of comity between people, when one is indebted to the other. In the case of apology, the imbalance has oc-curred because S offended O. In the case of thanking, the imbalance is due to a favor or good turn that O has done for S. Both speech events are basically face-enhancing for O, in fulfillment of the Max-im of Obligation (of S to O) (emphasis mine). (p. 197)

If we look more closely into “the intended effect of a speech act on H that is crucial” (p. 121) and “in fulfillment of the Maxim of Obligation (of S to O)” (p. 197), we see that a particular speech event called ‘apologizing’ is a goal-oriented act for Leech (as a neo-Searlean). That is, the strategy be-hind it is something like: ‘S apologizes to O for what (typically) S has done (to O), insomuch that H(O)’s face, or ‘self-image’ esteemed by others is en-hanced effectively.’ But such an effect on H(O)’s side is never linguistical-ly realized. Or rather what is linguistically realized when apologizing (per-haps, cross-culturally) is the reason clause that shows why S should make an apology to H(O). For example, sumimasen (‘sorry’) in Japanese, is frequently collocated with shite which consists of shi (an inflected form of suru (‘do’)) and te (a conjunctive particle corresponding to ‘for’ or ‘that’ in English), as in X (o) shite sumimasen (‘sorry for doing X’), so as to show the reason of apologies. Apologizing is closely connected with the reason clause, as is evidenced in Japanese and probably many other languages. For B&L, ‘apologizing’ is the redressing of a face-threatening act, which is not for “repaying the debt, to redeem S’s loss of face” (as in the words of Leech above), but for “showing the speaker’s reluctance to impinge on H’s negative face.” (B&L (1987: 187)). This is why they present an ex-ample with a reason clause for apologizing: Can you possibly help me with this, because there is no one else I could ask? (‘Give overwhelming rea-sons,’ which is a substrategy of Strategy 6: Apologize). That is, the reason clause in the second half of the sentence implies that the speaker has to say ‘sorry’ for what troubles/disturbs/annoys the hearer, as well as other types of apologies, such as I’m sure you must be very busy, but… (‘Admit the


impingement’), and I normally wouldn’t ask you this, but… (‘Indicate reluc-tance’). (B&L (1987: 188–189)). Frequent uses of apologizing with a reason clause and the implication of apologizing being given rise to by such clauses as reason, admittance and reluctance support the negative politeness view that B&L have main-tained. Apologizing focusses on what troubles O(H) most by S before ut-tering an apology, rather than what effect S has on O(H) after uttering an apology. Such support for B&L’s view is not marred by L’s (2004: 121) claim that apologies are oriented towards both S and H.

(5) Oh I’m sorry I forgot about that other class. [LCSAE141701] (S-oriented)

(5′) Oh I’m sorry (I troubled you because) I forgot about that other class.

(6) I’m sorry you had to wait. [LCSAE145502] (apparently O-oriented)

(6′) I’m sorry you had to wait (because it is my fault, i.e., I troubled you).

Note that the sources of trouble with round brackets in (5′) and (6′) that I have added to the original (5) and (6) are what the speaker wants to convey most. It is not the future effect that S has on O(H), but the past infringe-ment on O(H) by S that is mainly conveyed by apologies, so that we should be more careful in deciding which aspect of politeness—negative or posi-tive is maintained. See the difference that L (2014) claims exists between thanking and apologizing in Table 4.

Table 4. (L’s (2014: 120) Table 5.1) The Territorial Relations of Vari-ous Politeness-sensitive Speech Events (modifications and emphasis mine)

Maxims of the GSP

Typical speech event types

Pos- or neg-po-liteness

Typically S- or O-oriented

Maxims 1–4, and 7–10 are omitted for the sake of clarity.M5a. Obligation (S to O)

Thanking Pos-politeness O-oriented

M6a. Obligation (O to S)

Responding to thanks

Neg-politeness S-oriented

M5b. Obligation (S to O)

Apologizing Pos-politeness(Neg-politeness)

S-oriented(or O-oriented)

M6b. Obligation (O to S)

Responding to apologies

Neg-politeness O-oriented


The underlined two columns for apologies may appear to be misaligned at first blush, but if you look at the source of the trouble that makes one apologize, you will see that the act is oriented in either direction (S or O), and that it is not problematic at all if there no match between pos-/neg- po-liteness and S-/O-orientation. Second, note that there are some other features that are excluded from L’s (2014) column, one of which is the use of in-group identity markers (P4 which is underlined with two asterisks), such as hey, bro, and so on. L (2014: 99) addresses an important difference between his pos-politeness and B&L’s positive politeness, in which he states why he excludes the maxim of P4 from his pos-politeness:

I have already signaled (in 1.2.2) the difference between B&L’s “posi-tive politeness” and mine, terminologically distinguished as “pos-po-liteness.” B&L (1987: 101–129) define positive politeness so broadly as to include any claim of common ground or solidarity. I would say that strategies of this sort, such as the use of familiar forms of address, are directed toward reduction of social distance, so that when the fac-tors P and D are very small the PP applies minimally if at all. This assertion of familiarity or camaraderie is likely to have one effect that resembles pos-politeness: it promotes concord or cordiality. But the reasoning behind it is different: instead of showing asymmetry (high evaluation of H, low evaluation of S), S claims solidarity with H, the implication being that closeness makes politeness between S and H unnecessary. Hence I am defining pos-politeness more narrowly than B&L’s positive politeness, to exclude the solidarity strategy that Robin Lakoff called camaraderie.

It is not problematic if he excludes the solidarity strategy, i.e. camaraderie, because for Leech a politeness strategy is always a matter of asymmetry, showing higher and lower evaluation to either participant in the conversa-tion. But this is not the whole story. Address terms usually change between husbands and wives in Japanese families after they have a baby. Instead of calling their partner by name or some other titles, they start to call each other otoosan and okaasan (father and mother), in other words by their rela-tion in terms of their children.7

7 It also reminds the present reviewer of an experience that I had a few months ago. One of my American colleagues who is younger than I left school before he


I will not pursue the problem in more detail here. For Leech, it is nei-ther possible nor advisable to include address terms in his politeness strate-gies, but for us, it is possible or even advisable to give them proper treat-ment, because a range of possible politeness strategies are involved in their use (see section 3.3 on N7 and N9 with three asterisks in Table 3).

3. The Division between Eastern and Western Cultures: Universalist or Relativist?

3.1. Pragmalinguist or Sociopragmatist? The Western oriented Tact Maxim has been placed as the central issue in most studies on politeness and so has been much criticized. Terkourafi (2015) states that B&L claimed that negative politeness strategies, which are to be used for avoiding FTA, are placed in a relatively higher position than positive ones, when they said, “… it is safer to assume that H (i.e. hearer) prefers peace and self-determination [which concerns decisions regarding negative politeness expressions] more than that he prefers your [i.e. speak-er’s] expressions of regard [i.e. positive politeness expressions], unless you are certain of the contrary” (B&L (1987: 74)). As Terkourafi (2015) puts it, “[y]et, for all of its theoretical sophistication, the proposed view does not break with the tradition of associating politeness with the avoidance

reached retirement age (65 years of age in the case of my university) and went back to the United States. When he was an associate professor, he called me X-sensei—X being my family name (sensei: ‘Professor X’ or literally ‘Teacher X,’ but it is a more casual ad-dress term between (associate) professors in Japanese universities) for almost ten years, probably because he was following the Japanese (traditional) way of using address terms he acquired during his stay of more than fifteen years. He was able to speak Japanese a little. I called him M with no (endearment) title—M being his first name, after I felt I had made friends with him. Whether or not one is called X-sensei depends on a wide variety of social factors we face in everyday setting of interactions in Japan, such as age/position differences (which means older/more powerful persons should be addressed with a title), and intimacy between the two, and so on. After he left, he emailed me several times. In the first email of his, he abruptly began the (rather formal) email with ‘Dear H (H being my first name).’ I was surprised to read that first line. Was this a shift of intimacy, friendliness, or even the age difference between us? I then realized that a change similar to that of address terms between Japanese husbands and wives had oc-curred between this American ex-colleague of mine and myself (as a university profes-sor). Since our professor-younger colleague relationship had ended, he no longer had to use sensei (‘Professor’) when he addressed me. Instead of calling me X-sensei, he had started to show his solidarity or in-groupness with me by using my first name following an American strategy of address terms.


of imposition, which has been shown to be of limited applicability cross-culturally.”8

L’s (2014) presumable answer to this kind of criticism would be more satisfying to critics such as Terkourafi and Wierzbicka. While Leech was well aware of the accusations made by Wierzbicka (2003) that he is “paint-ed in the same universalist color as B&L” because of the non-applicability of the1983’s politeness principle to non-western cultures (L (2014: 82)), he maintains that he never used terms such as ‘universal maxims’ or ‘universal-ist.’ He proceeds to claim that “a model of politeness should be generaliz-able to various cultures” and “there should be no divide between politeness in Anglo societies (where … [individualist, egalitarian culture is the main value]) and other societies [where collective, group culture is predominant as in China and Japan].” (p. 83). As Pat (2015) says in the review of the book, “the Eastern preference for group ethos does not contradict Western individualism, but rather “they are not absolutes; they are positions on a scale” (L (2014: 83)),” denying both an absolute universalist position and a completely relativist one. True, it is always a matter of degree to what extent one principle/maxim is applicable to two extreme cases if you are pursuing a ‘generalizable’ prin-ciple, as L (2014: 83–84) says, but the more distinct or differentiated an ex-emplar it covers between these two extremes, the more cognitively/socially/pragmatically examined a generalization you need to have. Otherwise, such a generalized principle, whether you call it theoretical or not, will be an omniscient, all-powerful, mega theory (see the discussion on Relevance Theory by Levinson (2000)). L (2014: 105ff) adopts a cautious stance toward having a mega theory, observing that it is possible to maintain the two extremes—pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic facets, at the same time. He says, “In general, the lin-guistic resources for politeness [i.e. the former] and the cultural values [i.e. the latter] they allow S to express reinforce one another, although there can

8 Terkourafi’s (2015) criticism against L’s (2014) ‘heavy reliance on English data alone’ and the ‘limited inapplicability to cross-cultural data’ had provided some motivation for me to use a lot of Japanese examples, despite the comment by the same reviewer above that “there seem to be too many discussions on Japanese phenomena,” and “[t]he propor-tions of the whole argument are unbalanced.” L’s (2014) argument on Japanese (as well as Chinese) data is for the most part limited to handling ‘bivalent’ politeness such as honorifics and address/kinship terms; although these expressions are not stable for various (specifically sociopragmatic) reasons which I show in the discussions of (1) to (8).


be some mismatch, (p. 105)” although he continues to take a more pragma-linguistic-biased view until the very end of the book. This is not to say that Leech holds a view of politeness theorization with inconsistencies, but that the semantic-pragmatic, linguistic-extralinguistic, core-peripheral distinction has always been blurred since the days of his book in 1983, if not earlier. As might be expected from the correlation of the two facets of politeness, he claims to account for the interdependence of pragmaticlinguistic and sociopragmatic features. It may be that the former is likely to be encoded linguistically, whether it is morphologically, syn-tactically or lexically realized through such devices as honorifics, modals, hedges and dimunitives to name a few, which more often than not are con-ventionalized or pragmaticalized, and the latter contains socio-cultural fac-tors. Leech seeks to reconcile these two extremes and so he consequently implies that we need to be cautious about taking a unilateral approach.

3.2. L (2014) as a Non-extremist Just taking up one or two examples from many is enough to account for such a non-extremist position like that of Leech. Two opposed types of norms of politeness may be compared to suggest that people tend to give a higher rating to ‘Modesty’ in Japanese and Korean and to ‘Tact’ in English, which, in the present reviewer’s view, is why corpus and frequency based studies of politeness place a disproportionate emphasis on a culture-specific conclusion. If you look at, say, corpus data of one language alone, you are inclined nearer one conclusion in relation to another. The more linguisti-cally encoded data you find, the more difficult it is to reach a conclusion that is applicable to pan-cultural, pan-social dimensions. Since Leech (1983) and L (2014) focus on authentic examples mostly from English, it is no wonder that ‘Tact’ or negative politeness in terms of B&L’s politeness theory are focused much more on than might be expected. The heavy reli-ance on English data alone leads to the criticism that Leech pays too much attention to the Tact maxim (L (2014: 85)). However, just because Leech has allegedly focused too much on the Tact maxim and English data and his POP gives the book a universal-ist flavor does not mean that he takes a pro-universalist view. He knew what it would mean if he ended the discussion without touching upon various culture-specific data before, at the time and after he wrote the 1983 book. And he takes a firm stance on his midway measures, saying rather moderately, “Although I do not want to underestimate the large differences among societies in polite linguistic behavior, I tend to agree with B&L that


there is a common pragmatic and behavioral basis for them, so that (for example) when Chinese speakers talk of lǐmào and English speakers talk of politeness they are not talking about totally unrelated phenomena” (emphasis mine) (p. 111). Here are some of the defenses used against his alleged neglect of cross-cultural variation of politeness. (a) All polite communication implies that the speaker is taking ac-

count of both individual and group values. It is likely that in the East the group values are more powerful, whereas in the West individual values are. (p. 83)

(b) If there were not a common pattern shared by many languages or cultures, it would be meaningless to apply a word like “polite-ness” or “face” to those cultures, … (p. 83)

(c) Probably the scales of value in 4.4.5 [i.e., sociopragmatiac scales to assess the degree of appropriate politeness] are very widespread in human societies, but their interpretation differs from society to society, just as their encoding differs from language to lan-guage. I suggest this is the basis on which a well-founded cross-cultural pragmatic research should proceed. The question to ask is, Given these scales of value, what sociocultural variants of them are found in particular cultures, and what pragmalinguistic variants in terms of linguistic form are used to encode these variants? (p. 111)

(a) and (b) are the arguments for a moderate view that a common pat-tern entails a variation and vice versa. The defense is analogous to B&L’s (1987), when they were criticized for giving too much importance to the universal aspect of face management (see the discussion on the universal-ity/diversity of face in Brown (1995, 2005, 2015)). For Leech, politeness strategies come from operating the six (1983) to ten (2014) maxims, so that as Brown (2005) says, “cross-cultural differences derive from the differ-ent importance attached to a particular maxim.” Therefore, the view and the questions put forward in (c), together with those in (a) and (b), give us a moderate answer that relates a maxim to a particular linguistic behav-ior. “The [maxim of] Modesty requirement may lead one to be humble not only about oneself [in addressing out-groupers] but about other members of one’s family” (L (2014: 104)). For example, there is a culture-specific difference in the particular use of terminology for one’s wife by a husband in Japan, which depends on to what extent he regards her to have in-/out-group membership. The Modesty maxim, which enjoins one to ‘give a low value to S’s quality,’ is operative, once she (wife) is admitted to his (hus-


band’s) domain, so as to be modest enough to call her ‘his humble wife’ before others (see the use of nyōbō/kanai/tsuma below). Leech concludes “Hence in Korean and Japanese, and traditionally in Chinese, different terms are used for ‘my wife’ and ‘your wife,’ the former being to varying degrees uncomplimentary and the latter to varying degrees complimentary (honorific)” (p. 104) (compare nyōbō/kanai/tsuma vs. okusan/okusama in Japanese). But by its very nature, the use of ‘humble wife’ has changed recently, in accordance with a rapid change in husband-wife relationships even in traditional Japanese society. There is a gap between generations, occupations and many other factors that give much variation on how Japa-nese people refer to their spouses. L’s (2014) application of a culture-specific scale of values such as in-/out groupness to the maxims sometimes is compatible and sometimes incompat-ible with the theorizing of his GSP. The various terms used to describe wife used in Japanese are such a case. An example is the newly intro-duced use of uchino yome (literally ‘our family’s bride’) in reference to ‘my wife’ recently used by fairly young husbands. According to a FAQs’ page of a popular living survey website,9 yome was traditionally used by a hus-band’s parents and family in the old family system of Japan, as if the wife was in possession of her husband’s family. Although it has almost gone out of use in this sense, the new use of uchino yome has been increasing steadily as an alternative to nyōbō/kanai/tsuma by younger husbands. The website adds a footnote to the actual usage of the term, noting cautiously that many women, both married and unmarried, dislike the use of the term, because they may feel depreciated by their husbands. Various reasons are given to justify the use by both sexes, i.e. whether they are psychological, sociological, or politically correct, but Leech would probably say that the use is just an addition to the list of in-/out group terms of wife in Japanese (Cf. Ide (1989), Ide (2006), Matsumoto (1989)). Leech’s solution to add in-/out-groupness to the Modesty requirement, i.e., ‘(M3) to give a low value to S’s quality’ is apparently an easy way out in order to “attach a particular importance to a particular maxim in a spe-cific culture” (Brown (2005), modification and addition mine). However, his solution is too simplistic to cover the many aspects of one culturally specific use of the word, in that he just extended S, which is Self or Sub-ject, to include in-groupers. If you choose some key words that describe

9 See the website at: http://trend-town.info/archives/1854.html.


the fundamental concept of the maxim, such as ‘low value’ and ‘humble wife,’ you will see that there is an Anglophone prejudice embedded in them. When people feel ‘humble,’ they will not only feel ‘not proud or ar-rogant, or modest,’ but also ‘have a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, and subservience.’10 A ‘humble’ person, by definition, is depicted by the two aspects of humbleness, in terms of being modest and inferior to other peo-ple. It is this latter sense that makes westerners, esp. English speakers, feel it awkward, if not bizarre, when they hear someone other than themselves degraded, given ‘low value,’ or ‘abased’ as in the citation below.

In traditional Japanese society, for example, the in-group concept has a powerful influence on politeness, including the use of honorifics: the speaker’s family is by association part of his or her in-group, and so in addressing an out-group member, a pater familias has to apply the conventional self-abasement not only to himself but to his wife and children. … This polite abasement of the speaker’s in-group may be foreign to English speakers … (emphasis mine). (p. 20)

It is not that English speakers cannot take account of group values like Jap-anese speakers do. Inclusive, paternal and editorial ‘we’s’ are such cases, to name a few, but their in-group concept appears to be more grounded in reality than that for Japanese speakers. English speakers need some sort of ‘disguise’ if they wish to degrade their own group’s value in reality. For Japanese speakers, degrading or giving low value to their own group is not only a matter of tradition and more of a matter of linguistic resources, such as honorifics and terms of addressing in-group persons, and sociological resources, such as terms of addressing a relationship of higher and lower status, and so on, although they may feel humiliated if they degrade or are degraded too often in actual interaction. So Leech’s extension of Self to ‘our’ group is only sufficient to account for awkwardness felt by English speakers when they confront a situation where they have no choice but to disparage their friends. But, for Japanese speakers, the extension needs more specification.

3.3. Japanese Mo (‘also’) as a Pragmalingustic Marker of Pos-/Neg-politeness Generally, interaction using mo in Japanese is characterized by additional sequences synchronized through the joint efforts of the participants in con-versation, in order not to talk or allow others to talk excessively. This use

10 The definition is cited from the website at: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/humble?o=1.


of mo comes from one of the hallmarks of Japan, which is called a ‘hori-zontally egalitarian society, (where everyone behaves in the same orderly manner),’ and which enjoins that people should do what others do. They avoid threatening others’ negative or positive face and make their relation-ship smoother, by the use of reserved speech as in (7) and a kind of com-pliment in (8). For example:

(7) 01 → Father, shop owner: watashi mo moo toshi dakara I also already old because 02 kaette kite kure n kato come-home Ben Neg Q-N ‘As I’m ((also)) very old (as a shop owner), I want my

son to come back (from a workplace in a big city as ev-eryone else does.)’

(Senobura (Strolling with Senoo), 02/21/2012, Asahi TV, Japan) (8) In a Japanese TV talk show, Yakumaru (the main interviewer

of the program) is asking a young pop singer, Yuuko Oshima of a girls’ group (called AKB 48) about another singer, Atsuko Maeda, who has recently made a press release announcing she will drop out of the group and pursue a different career in show business. Yuuko and Atsuko have been good friends but at the same time were rivals when they were competing for the main singer position in the group. Showing Yakumaru some photos taken after the last show with Atsuko the previous night, Yuuko seems to have mixed and ambivalent feelings towards her while reporting what they talked about:

01 Yuuko: watashitachi tte >hontoni< raibaru we QT really rival 02 toshite yattekita kedo(0.1) as perform.the.favor.of but 03 moo korekara wa zutto:: AKB toshite ja from.now.on Top all.time AKB as Cop 04 nakute: shin-yuu toshite soshite raibaru Neg-and best.freinds as and.also rival 05 toshite nareru n da yone tte hanashi o as can.become N Cop FP QT talk Obj


06 otagaini ° shite ° each other do ‘“We have really been performing as rivals, but from

now on we will no longer be a group mate of AKB 48, but can be best friends and also rivals as long as we can be,” we were talking to each other like that and…’

07 The other interviewers: a:: u:n u:n ‘Oh. Uh huh, uh huh.’ 08 → Yaku: (0.1) °ma(.)° soremade mo zutto naka well until.that.time also all.time relation 09 ga yokatta to omou n Sbj. good.PST Comp think N 10 desu kedo:: Cop-Hon but ‘Well, until then ((also)), you two have been in

good terms with each other, I think, so …’ (Hanamaru Market, 08/29/2012, TBS TV, Japan)

Both uses of mo in (7) and (8) contribute to the establishment of neg- and pos- politeness strategies. In (7), the old shop owner places himself in a group of people who are old enough to let their sons take over their family business. Articulating that he is as old as many other seniors in the world, he hopes to justify his wants by saying he is very old. Standing in the same position as everybody else his age does, the shop owner avoids stand-ing out and explains himself in a humble way. In (8), things are a little more complicated. In one sense, Yakumaru does not want Yuuko to lose face, because being rivals with Atsuko gives a possibly mistaken impression that she has not been on good terms with her. In another sense, he is attempting to encourage her with the prospect that she did/does/will maintain good relations with Atsuko as always. By the use of mo, he not only confirms that they will be on good terms (as Yuuko says in the prior utterance), but also gives rise to their supposedly good relations in the past, hence enhancing her positive face. By additionally aligning with each other in the use of an additive particle like mo in Japanese, one can assert common ground that S and H suppos-edly share in order to promote their relations in terms of B&L’s positive politeness strategies 7 and 9 (see Table 3 above). But at the same time, pragmalingusitically speaking, mo is a good way to mitigate and enhance negative and positive face respectively, although English also (too) does not


seem to encode such functions.

4. Concluding Remarks

As we read further in this book, we realize that we may be able to achieve the goal of combining pragmatlingustic and sociopragmatic ap-proaches of politeness altogether. But as Jonathan Culpepper says in his obituary to Leech, “He saw this [i.e., his book The Pragmatics of Politeness bolstering the formal or pragmalinguistic side of his work] as something of a corrective to the concentration of recent studies focusing on the ‘big-pic-ture view of how politeness relates to social behaviour and society in gen-eral’ (Leech (2014: ix)),” he is a linguist of “more micro and more focused linguistic matters” (Culpepper (2014)).

Transcript Symbols (Adapted from Heritage and Clayman (2010) and Hayano (2012))

[ Left brackets indicate a starting point of overlapping talk.] Right brackets indicate an ending point of overlapping talk.° The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet or

soft.> < The combination of “more than” and “less than” symbols indicates that the

talk between them is compressed or rushed.(0.0) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in seconds.(.) A dot in parentheses indicates a micropause.(..) Two dots in parentheses indicate a little long micropause that is not measure-

able in seconds.? A question mark indicates rising intonation, not necessarily a question.

List of Abbreviations Used in the Gloss

Ben Beneficial auxiliary Comp ComplementizerCop Copula FP Final particleHon Honorifics Gen GenitiveN Nominalizer particle Neg Negative particleObj Object particle PST Past tenseQ Question particle QT Quotative particleSub Subject particle Top Topic particle


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[received April 9, 2016, revised and accepted September 6, 2016]

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Kyoto Institute of Technology Matsugasaki-Hashigami-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606–8585 e-mail: [email protected]

is the theory of politeness pragmalinguistic or

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