The theory of politeness of Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) has remained the most seminal and influential starting point for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contrastive pragmatics. Yet is has also provoked counter...The theory of politeness of Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) has remained the most seminal and influential starting point for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contrastive pragmatics. Yet is has also provoked countervailing arguments from Ide (1989, 1993), Matsumoto (1989), Gu (1990), Mao (1994) and others, pointing out a Western bias in Brown and Levinson’s theory, particularly in their construal of the concept of ‘face’, in their overemphasis on face-threat and their assumption of individualistic and egalitarian motivations, as opposed to the more group-centred hierarchy-based ethos of Eastern societies. This leads to the question in the title of this article: Is there an East-West divide in politeness? The following argument will be presented. There is an overarching framework for studying linguistic politeness phenomena in communication: a common principle of politeness (Leech, 1983, 2002) and a Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP), which is evident in common linguistic behaviour patterns in the performance of polite speech acts such as requests, offers, compliments, apologies, thanks, and responses to these. The GSP says simply: In order to be polite, a speaker communicates meanings which (a) place a high value on what relates to the other person (typically the addressee), (MAJOR CONSTRAINT) and (b) place a low value on what relates to the speaker. (MINOR CONSTRAINT). It is clear from many observations that constraint (a) is more powerful than constraint (b). The following hypothesis will be put forward, and supported by very limited evidence: that the GSP provides a very general explanation for communicative politeness phenomena in Eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as well as in Western languages such as English. This is not to deny the importance of quantitative and qualitative differences in the settings of social parameters and linguistic parameters of politeness in such languages. A framework such as the GSP provides the parameters of variation within which such differences can be studied. Hence this article argues in favour of the conclusion that, despite differences, there is no East-West divide in politeness.展开更多
This paper reconsiders the value of frequency information in ELT, taking into account new evidence provided by corpora of native speakers’ English (e.g. the British National Corpus) and evidence available through new...This paper reconsiders the value of frequency information in ELT, taking into account new evidence provided by corpora of native speakers’ English (e.g. the British National Corpus) and evidence available through new dictionaries and grammars making use of such corpus information. Some examples are given, showing how information about frequency in spoken and written English may cause reappraisal of assumptions common in pedagogical grammar. It is argued that frequency as a principle for the selection and prioritising of language content has been neglected, and the availability of corpus_derived frequency information means that this neglect can now be rectified. However, frequency must be considered alongside other factors that have a bearing on sequencing in ELT materials, such as dispersion, coverage, learnability and communicative need. Also, it is important to bear in mind that findings based on corpora of native_speaker English must be complemented by those based on corpora of learner English, and of the native language of the learners.展开更多
I begin this paper with a brief survey of how frequency — in particular, frequency of words — had a role in language learning in the days before electronic corpora existed. Then I consider how the "corpus revol...I begin this paper with a brief survey of how frequency — in particular, frequency of words — had a role in language learning in the days before electronic corpora existed. Then I consider how the "corpus revolution" made frequency information available in a totally unprecedented way from the 1960s onward. Finally I discuss the usefulness of frequency to the language learner and teacher, and some new directions in applied linguistics favourable to frequency.展开更多
文摘The theory of politeness of Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) has remained the most seminal and influential starting point for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic contrastive pragmatics. Yet is has also provoked countervailing arguments from Ide (1989, 1993), Matsumoto (1989), Gu (1990), Mao (1994) and others, pointing out a Western bias in Brown and Levinson’s theory, particularly in their construal of the concept of ‘face’, in their overemphasis on face-threat and their assumption of individualistic and egalitarian motivations, as opposed to the more group-centred hierarchy-based ethos of Eastern societies. This leads to the question in the title of this article: Is there an East-West divide in politeness? The following argument will be presented. There is an overarching framework for studying linguistic politeness phenomena in communication: a common principle of politeness (Leech, 1983, 2002) and a Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP), which is evident in common linguistic behaviour patterns in the performance of polite speech acts such as requests, offers, compliments, apologies, thanks, and responses to these. The GSP says simply: In order to be polite, a speaker communicates meanings which (a) place a high value on what relates to the other person (typically the addressee), (MAJOR CONSTRAINT) and (b) place a low value on what relates to the speaker. (MINOR CONSTRAINT). It is clear from many observations that constraint (a) is more powerful than constraint (b). The following hypothesis will be put forward, and supported by very limited evidence: that the GSP provides a very general explanation for communicative politeness phenomena in Eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as well as in Western languages such as English. This is not to deny the importance of quantitative and qualitative differences in the settings of social parameters and linguistic parameters of politeness in such languages. A framework such as the GSP provides the parameters of variation within which such differences can be studied. Hence this article argues in favour of the conclusion that, despite differences, there is no East-West divide in politeness.
文摘This paper reconsiders the value of frequency information in ELT, taking into account new evidence provided by corpora of native speakers’ English (e.g. the British National Corpus) and evidence available through new dictionaries and grammars making use of such corpus information. Some examples are given, showing how information about frequency in spoken and written English may cause reappraisal of assumptions common in pedagogical grammar. It is argued that frequency as a principle for the selection and prioritising of language content has been neglected, and the availability of corpus_derived frequency information means that this neglect can now be rectified. However, frequency must be considered alongside other factors that have a bearing on sequencing in ELT materials, such as dispersion, coverage, learnability and communicative need. Also, it is important to bear in mind that findings based on corpora of native_speaker English must be complemented by those based on corpora of learner English, and of the native language of the learners.
文摘I begin this paper with a brief survey of how frequency — in particular, frequency of words — had a role in language learning in the days before electronic corpora existed. Then I consider how the "corpus revolution" made frequency information available in a totally unprecedented way from the 1960s onward. Finally I discuss the usefulness of frequency to the language learner and teacher, and some new directions in applied linguistics favourable to frequency.
