MYTHS OF MANNERS: A LITTLE POLITENESS GOES A LONG WAY
I cannot tell you how many—pardon my French—connards I have heard utter the statement:
‘X is a very polite language.’
My Japanese teachers spouted this sentence countless times. And similar remarks have been made by speakers of other languages with politeness discourse strategies[1].These misinformed connards or connasses may have even gone so far as to say ‘X is a very respectful language’, instead. But behind all that indirectness, deep down, we know what they truly mean–X language is more polite than English or, more precisely, English lacks a form of discourse which my language possesses. And dear reader, if you agree with that, then—would you, good sir/ dear lady, ever so kindly continue reading this article, if you please?
KNOW THE CODE
Linguistically-encoded politeness (or whatever you want to call it) can be broken down into three general categories: respect, formality, and humbleness. In some languages, these categories are very distinct in how they are expressed—different verbs, nouns, and/or pronouns per category (e.g. Japanese, Korean), while in other languages there is a considerable amount of overlap (e.g. English and most European languages).
For these three categories, I do not mean personal respect (e.g. my mother’s admiration for Bill O’Reilly of Fox News), personal humility, or personal formality (whatever that may be), but actually what a CULTURE requires people to express through linguistic means.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, WE LIKE THAT HIERARCHY
Linguistic respect is a system that applies to different people in different situations. It can be dependent on age (children, parents, elders) or status/occupation (those of ‘fame’ or ‘prestige’[2], employers, teachers, doctors). The language you speak might belong to a culture which requires you to use words/patterns/phrases that seemingly ‘gratify’ these respect-deservers (thereby expressing respect regardless of your opinion). And if you fail to use linguistic respect appropriately[3], you may be seen as either rude[4], ignorant, foreign, or a combination thereof.
Japanese has sonkeigo—a discourse used for gratifying respect-deservers: bosses, teachers, customers, doctors etc. When speakers use sonkeigo, they use a very different set of verbs, nouns, and pronouns to convey the linguistic respect required by Japanese culture for the situation at hand. Let’s look at a sentence in sonkeigo vs. ‘plain’ Japanese (a discourse for those of equal or unknown status, e.g. colleagues):
Sonkeigo: go-ran-ni-natte kudasai honourable-viewing-PARTICLE-become bestow.upon.me ‘Please have a look.’ Plain: Mitte kudasai. Look bestow.upon.me ‘Take a look’.
Wow! A whopping three syllable difference between these Japanese forms—have you ever heard such wonderful manners? Indeed, Japanese language students need to memorize tables and tables of different forms to master sonkeigo. (And as far as I know, Korean is similar in this matter).
WE HATE TABLES
But just because the English language does not have tables and tables of prescribed forms for linguistic respect, does NOT mean that we do not encode it at all. In fact, our way of encoding linguistic respect is far more subtle[5]. We do not simply substitute X verb for Y verb to denote a respectful way to speak (see ‘look’ in the example above). There are an array of strategies at the English speaker’s disposal:
Sir/Madam, have a look. [using the respectful form of address] Please have a look. [using ‘please’] If you have time, have a look. [this is called hedging, ‘if…’] Would you have a look? [question, using modal ‘would’] Sir/Madam, supposing you have time, and if you don’t mind, would you please have a look? [all strategies above]
POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE
Like linguistic respect, the categories of linguistic humbleness and linguistic formality are encoded with separate strategies in Japanese (cf. kenjyougo/kensongo and teineigo). However this is not the case for English.
SHOW SOME HUMILITY
Linguistic humbleness essentially puts the speaker down in order to acknowledge or ‘raise’ the status of the listener(s). Some (elderly) Japanese men, when talking about their wives, use gusai—‘my stupid wife’, to encode humbleness[6]. Similarly, in Old Chinese, speakers used ‘stupid’ to refer to themselves.
In English,although we have situations where context often requires a display humbleness (e.g. losing an election, stating an opinion ‘in my humble opinion’, making a fool of yourself ‘maybe this is a stupid question’) or a display of formality (e.g. making an appointment to see the shrink, speaking to the owner of an over-friendly dog in the park), we may use similar strategies as those listed above for linguistic respect.
IT’S JUST A FORMALITY
Linguistic formality[7] is when the speaker acknowledges that although they are not familiar with the listener, the 'matter at hand' needs to be discussed (this can be for a number of reasons). Many European languages encode linguistic formality explicitly through pronouns, e.g. tu/vous, du/sie, tu/usted, ty/wy, ty/pan(i). English once had such a distinction (thou/you) but lost it over time. Danish[8] and Swedish have also done away with formal you—but this was a conscious decision made by those governing bodies which oversee these languages.
That being said, English often encodes formality by avoiding contracted forms of modal verbs. Generally, the more contracted a form is, the less formal it is deemed. (Contraction can be seen as ‘loss of articulatory effort’ when speaking or ‘making something less understandable due to sound reduction’ and therefore informal—but this is a whole different topic in itself). Contraction also involves de-stressing vowels to become schwa (the ‘uh’ sound as in the final vowel of ‘wanna’).
I am going to… I’m going to… I’m gonna… I’m gon… I’m’a… and Would you like to… Would/Do you want to… Would/Do you wanna… Would/Do ya wanna… D’ya wanna… Ʒa wan(na)…
WHADDAYA KNOW
The main difference between English and Japanese (and may be the case for other languages) is that English mixes multiple strategies (e.g. ‘would’, ‘please’, and ‘sir/madam’—just to name a few) for linguistically respectful, humble, and formal situations. Whereas Japanese has particular strategies for each category, and mixing of strategies between categories is more limited than English. Politeness is essentially a social tool used by speakers, it has a various linguistic realizations—some languages are more demanding than others, but that does not make one language more polite than another.
For Further Information:
Brown, P., Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mizutani, O., Mizutani, N. (1987). How to be Polite in Japanese. Tokyo: The Japan Times.
[1] Arabic, Korean, Tamil, Thai, Twi (Akan)—to name a few.
[2] For example: famous writers, researchers, Nobel prize winners etc.
[3] Or formality or humbleness for that matter.
[4] Rude, because you look like you are unrightfully implying that your ‘status’ is higher than the listener’s.
[5] Prosody a.k.a. intonation is often used. In formal situations, speakers might use a rising intonation make their statements sound like questions: [at the front reception of a doctor’s office] ‘I’m here to see Dr. Smith.’
[6] This is but one strategy, and a very outdated one at that.
[7] Linguistic informality is the opposite (cf. contractions in English). Often this is used to express familiarity with someone. Parents might use it when speaking to children. Older speakers may use it to assert their status in situations where they may be addressed with linguistic respect, humbleness, or formality. The ‘plain form’ of Japanese is the middle ground for this, e.g. equal status of all speakers.
[8] De (you formal) is still used to address members of the royal family.
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