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Explaining cross-cultural pragmatic findings: moving from politeness maxims to sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs)

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Spencer-Oatey, Helen, 1952- and Jiang, Wenying, 1965-. (2003) Explaining cross-cultural pragmatic findings: moving from politeness maxims to sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs). Journal of Pragmatics, Vol.35 (No.10-11). pp. 1633-1650. ISSN 0378-2166

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Abstract

This paper focuses on how culture can be treated as an explanatory variable in cross-cultural pragmatic studies. It starts with a review of pragmatic maxims [Grice, H. Paul, 1989. Logic and Conversation. William James Lectures, 1967. (Reprinted in Grice, H.P. (Ed.), Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 22–40); Leech, Geoffrey N., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman; Journal of Pragmatics 14 (1990)237], discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the concept. It then presents the findings from a British-Chinese replication of Kim's [Human Communication Research 21(1996)128] cross-cultural study of conversational constraints, and argues that the notion of maxims should be reconceptualised as sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs). The notion of SIPs is defined and explained, referring to the sociopragmatic-pragmalinguistic distinction [Leech, Geoffrey N., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman; Applied Linguistics 4(1983)91] and other cross-cultural pragmatic approaches [House, Julianne, 2000. Understanding misunderstanding: a pragmatic-discourse approach to analyzing mismanaged rapport in talk across cultures. In: Spencer-Oatey, H. (Ed.), Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. Continuum, London; 145–164; Journal of Pragmatics 9 (1985)145]. SIPs are also discussed in relation to Brown and Levinson's [Brown, Penelope, Levinson, Stephen C., 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. CUP, Cambridge (Originally published ad ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomenon’ In: Goody, E. (1987), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. CUP, New York.)] perspectives on the impact of culture on language use. The paper ends with a call for more research to establish on an empirical basis the types of interactional principles that exist, and their interrelationships.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Applied Linguistics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Intercultural communication, Interpersonal communication and culture, Pragmatics -- Research, Language and languages -- Philosophy, Politeness (Linguistics)
Journal or Publication Title: Journal of Pragmatics
Publisher: Elsevier BV
ISSN: 0378-2166
Official Date: October 2003
Volume: Vol.35
Number: No.10-11
Page Range: pp. 1633-1650
Identification Number: 10.1016/S0378-2166(03)00025-0
Status: Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version: Open Access
References:

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URI: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/2685

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