politeness: An introduction

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Chinese ‘face’ and im/politeness: An introduction

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DÁNIEL Z. KÁDÁR and YULING PAN

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1. Introduction

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This special issue engages in a difficult task. Chines ‘face’ and politeness constitute a massive topic; the overview of which is beyond the scope of a single publication of the present size. Research about Chinese ‘face’ began as early as 1944, with Hu’s now renowned paper “The Chinese concept of ‘face’”, and since that time Chinese ‘face’ has been examined in a large number of studies. Watts’ (2003) claim that ‘face’ research is now a field on its own seems to be particularly valid in the case of Chinese ‘face’ research (see also section 3 below). In a similar way to ‘face’, Chinese politeness has also been explored in a large number of studies. The vastness of the topic studied and the voluminous research literature on it are worrisome to editors who hope to produce a journal special issue which sufficiently contributes to the field without being too narrow in scope. With this problem in mind, the present volume does not even try to attempt to cover the topic comprehensively. Instead, we hope to contribute to the research into Chinese ‘face’ and politeness by providing a collection of studies each of which diverge from the ‘mainstream’ of Chinese pragmatic research in a way that, we believe, is innovative in nature. This special issue has the following two particularly innovative characteristics which provide a cohesive force across the contributions (see also Haugh’s epilogue to this issue):

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2 We have selected studies that approach Chinese ‘face’ and politeness from ‘unconventional’ perspectives. In this respect the special issue reflects the intellectual scope of the Journal of Politeness Research, which is a critical journal that aims to encourage dissemination of findings from lesser studied languages in the critical field of

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discursive or post-modern politeness research. The contributions in this volume make experiments by using lesser studied Chinese linguistic data. That is, the five papers address various matters that are rarely discussed in conventional Chinese ‘face’ and politeness research, including the critical question as to whether ‘face’ is directly related to politeness (Hinze), generational gaps in the conceptualization of ‘face’ and politeness (He), the grammatical (re-)interpretation of Chinese ‘face’ (Lee), conflicts between the speaker and the hearer’s evaluation of politeness (Pan), and the relationship between politeness and rhetoric (Kádár). While these analytic questions/areas seem to be loosely related, an important binding factor behind these contributions is the authors’ attempt to address topics that count as somewhat ‘unusual’ in Chinese politeness research, or even linguistic politeness research, such as the interface between politeness and grammar and that between politeness and rhetoric. 2 The volume brings together historical and contemporary research on Chinese ‘face’ and politeness. While a small group of studies have addressed historical Chinese ‘face’ and/or politeness (e. g., Peng 2000; Skewis 2003; Kádár 2007), they have not extensively studied contemporary issues. In a similar way, modern studies on ‘face’ and/or politeness (e. g., Gu 1990; Mao 1994; Zhai 1994) rarely address historical issues in depth, in spite of the fact that, for example, ‘face’ is a notion with long historical roots (see section 2). The only exception to this trend is Pan and Kádár (2011a, b) and Kádár and Pan (2011), which compare historical and contemporary Chinese politeness norms and practices. Yet, these latter studies leave ‘face’ relatively untouched, and so it is possible to argue that so far no study has addressed both ‘face’ and politeness in historical and contemporary contexts. The present volume fills this gap: two research papers (Lee and Kádár) examine ‘face’ and politeness in historical times, one paper (He) covers the ‘transitional’ era of modernity, while two contributions (Hinze and Pan) engage in the research of contemporary ‘face’ and politeness.

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Dániel Z. Kádár and Yuling Pan

Importantly, while this volume combines studies on Chinese ‘face’ and politeness, it does not argue that these two phenomena are inherently related. In this brief introductory essay we will first say a few words about the history of Chinese ‘face’ and politeness research (section 2), in order to put the contributions into a larger research context, and then we will introduce each of the contributions.

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2. Chinese ‘face’ and politeness research

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2.1. Chinese ‘face’ research

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The Chinese notion of ‘face’ has a surprisingly long history. In historical Chinese there are three basic lexemes for ‘face’, lian 臉, mian(zi) 面 (子), and yan 顏, and a brief etymological overview of them may sufficiently illustrate the historical and sociocultural significance of Chinese ‘face’. Among these words, the first two convey the implicit meaning of ‘honour’, while yan usually refers to one’s physical face only but it can also refer to prestige (e. g., in the compound form houyan 厚顏 ‘thick-skinned’). According to the Ciyuan 辭源 (‘Source of Words’, 1983), perhaps the most authoritative Chinese etymological dictionary, mian(zi) is an archaic word, which occurs in different Classical texts dating back to the 3rd century BC in its present meaning, i. e., as a reference to both physical face and honour (Ciyuan 1983: 1829). Lian was coined as a word for ‘cheek’ during the Han Dynasty (206 BC2 220 AD), and, according to the Ciyuan (1983: 1398), it gained the extra ‘honour’ connotation in the course of its later history. Finally, yan is an ancient word (Ciyuan 1983: 1848), which is already used in the Classic Book of Odes (Shijing 詩經, ca. 10th century BC). In short, with the most modest estimations it is possible to claim that the Chinese notion of ‘face’ in its metaphorical sense has continued to exist for two millennia (and that does not take into account the hypothesis that the above terms might have already have existed in an oral form before written recorded history). It might be thus surprising that ‘face’ has not received much attention until the 20th century. As noted above, Chinese ‘face’ research started with Hu’s (1944) paper, which was soon followed by a related publication by Yang (1945). These studies were far more revolutionary than one would normally assume: before Hu and Yang few native Chinese wrote on ‘face’ because in (Neo-)Confucianist thinking, which traditionally emphasizes morality and rituality over emotions, the emotive-psychological concept of ‘face’ was regarded as a relatively ‘unimportant’ heritage/tradition; xiao-zhuantong 小傳統 (lit. ‘small tradition’) to use the native Chinese definition. As far as we are aware, it was around the 1930s when Chinese ‘face’ received wider (quasi-)scholarly attention beyond occasional descriptions by native scholars and foreign travellers. First, in 1932, the famous writer Lin Yutang 林語堂 (18952 1976) published an essay with the title Lian yu fazhi 臉與法治 (‘Face and ruling’). This essay was followed in 1934 by Qiejie-ting zawen 且介亭雜文 (‘Various essays from the Qiejie pavilion’) written by another literary celebrity Lu Xun 魯迅 (188121936). Both Lin’s and Lu’s essays are heavily loaded with cultural nationalism and they introduce

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‘face’ as a national value of the Chinese people. Precisely because of their nationalism these essays are most interesting documents because they reflect the then newly emerging (yet partly unexplored) nationalistic reinterpretation of ‘face’ as a potential cohesive social force that could save the Chinese nation from the decline and corruption caused by the 19th century colonization of the country. During this period of ‘Westernization’ (Ruhi and Kádár 2011) ‘face’ received attention for the first time, alongside li 禮 (‘politeness ritual’) and other traditional notions of socio-morality. Lu Xun wrote the following noteworthy words on ‘face’:

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面子是中國精神的綱領。

‘Face’ (mianzi) is the quintessence of the Chinese spirit. Turning back to Hu (1944) and Yang (1945), it is a noteworthy fact that these works on the so far unexplored ‘face’ phenomenon were published only a decade after the two nationalistic and political essays. The notion of ‘face’ has been incorporated into communication theories as an etic notion by Erving Goffman’s (1955) renowned paper. While Goffman in this way separated face and Chinese ‘face’, his work stirred plenty of interest in sinology: experts of Chinese studies pursued various analytic approaches to examine Chinese ‘face’, including, most prominently, psychology (e. g., Bond 1991) and anthropology (Yang 1994). In addition to sinological studies, Chinese ‘face’ has also been studied in the field of intercultural research (Scollon and Scollon 1995) and intercultural conflict management (Ting-Toomey 1994), just to mention a few prominent areas. Chinese ‘face’ has also emerged in politeness theories with the publication of two seminal studies written by Yueguo Gu (1990) and LuMing Mao (1994). Gu’s (1990) paper was written as a critique of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) universalistic theorization of linguistic politeness, and in fact Gu’s research is more politeness than face-oriented (see 2.2 below). Yet, Gu made an important contribution to face research through the argument that many of the claimed universal characteristics of linguistic politeness are invalid for Chinese data, partly because the Chinese notion of ‘face’ is different from the etic Brown and Levinsonian understanding of face and facework. LuMing Mao has also argued that Brown and Levinson’s claim to provide a universally valid model of face is empirically inadequate, and with the aid of two insightful case studies he provided an alternative analysis of ‘face’. The studies of Gu (1990) and Mao (1994) proved to be very influential in the field, even though they have generated some controversies (see, for example, Ji’s 2000 criticism of Mao).

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Currently, key topics in Chinese ‘face’ research include 2 just to mention some noteworthy themes in an arbitrary way 2 terminological and conceptual discussions (e. g., Haugh and Hinze 2003, Hinze 2005, Ruhi and Kádár 2011), intercultural explorations (e. g., Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2004), research on the cultural specificity of ‘face’ (e. g., Yu 2003) and analysis of the diachronic change of the Chinese notion of ‘face’ (e. g., Aziz 2005). Along with research theorizations, Chinese ‘face’ also frequently occurs in ‘lay’ literature on Chinese social behaviour (Stadler 2011), which is becoming voluminous with the increasing importance of China.

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2.2. Chinese politeness research

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Chinese politeness research, unlike ‘face’ research, has a long protoscientific native research history. Li 禮 (‘rituality’), the historical predecessor of contemporary limao 禮貌 (‘politeness’), is an ancient term which received a lot of attention from Confucian and Neo-Confucian scholars due to its association with moral philosophy. In fact, originally li was only loosely related with linguistic ‘politeness’ as it meant (both linguistic and non-linguistic) ‘rituality’. According to the Han Dynasty etymological dictionary Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 (‘The explanation of simple characters and the analysis of compound characters’) of Xu Shen 許慎:

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禮 … 所以事神致福也。

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Li [is …] through which spirits are served [in order to] give wealth. (cited in Kádár 2007: 49)

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That is, li was originally interpreted as ‘religious rite/sacrifice’, and it obtained its later ‘rituality’ meaning from this original interpretation (through a religious sacrificial act humans express respect towards the spirits) via semantic widening. In Confucian thinking li gained prominence because of its association with the realm of divine: it was believed that by proper ritual behaviour social stability and prosperity can be obtained (see more in Pan and Kádár 2011a). Various historical texts, most importantly the Confucian Classic Book of Rites (Liji 禮記) codified the proper norms of ritualistic behaviour. According to Liu (2003) and others, the proto-scientific research of li, or li-xue 禮學 (‘li-study’), started well before the beginning of the first millennium, with the advent of Confucianism, which had become the state philosophy of China from the Han Dynasty onwards. It is important to note that this proto-scientific research tradition has exam-

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ined li primarily as a philosophical notion, and it was roughly at the time of the so called Southern Dynasties (4202589) when an intellectual tradition (Nachao-lixue 南朝禮學, i. e., ‘li-study of the Southern Dynasties’) appeared, which could be defined as proto-scientific research of etiquette, including politeness-related matters (Zhou 2003). Yet, irrespective of the question of when this proto-scientific research began, it can be argued that it produced a large body of literature. It is somewhat difficult to determine when modern research into Chinese politeness started because the concept of li received some attention in the cultural anthropological sinological research of the 20th century (for an overview of native Chinese anthropological research see Liu 2003). Apart from anthropologists, Chinese linguistic politeness has been also touched on by various linguists such as Lü (1985). The first very influential work on Chinese linguistic politeness is the aforementioned paper (see 2.1) of Yueguo Gu (1990). Gu’s study, relying on Leech’s (1983) maxims approach, introduced some of the culture-specific features of Chinese politeness, including the importance of the proper use of forms of address in formal communication, as well as the so called elevation/denigration phenomenon. In contemporary critical research of Chinese politeness there are various important topics, such as politeness in institutional settings (e. g., studies in Sun and Kádár 2008; Kong 2010), Chinese politeness in intercultural situations (Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2003; Chang 2008; Pan 2012 in press; Haugh and Kádár 2012 forthcoming) and intracultural contexts (Kádár et al. forthcoming), and research on Chinese discursive rudeness (Pan 2000, Pan and Kádár 2011a, b).

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While the above overview is quite brief and unavoidably arbitrary in nature, it nevertheless helps to show how the papers in this special issue contribute to the field. Carl Hinze’s paper, which examines the relationship (more precisely, the lack of a clear relationship) between Chinese ‘face’ and politeness, provides a fundamental contribution to the field. In much of the literature discussed above, in particular the pre-2000 research, it was an axiomatic claim that Chinese ‘face’ and politeness correlate. Hinze revisits this issue by analyzing authentic business interaction, and his research not only contributes to the current “terminological and conceptual” research on ‘face’ mentioned above, but also 2 and perhaps even more importantly 2 it makes a bold break with traditional concepts in the Chinese field.

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A noteworthy characteristic of Yun He’s paper is that it provides a bridge between historical and modern research on Chinese politeness. As was noted above, historical and contemporary Chinese data have been traditionally studied separately, except for some works, for example, by Sun (2008), Pan and Kádár (2011a, b) and Kádár and Pan (2011). Yun He provides an interesting addition to historical research by studying the way in which ‘face’ has changed across generations. This approach is not only innovative because it connects modern history with contemporary times but also because, as far as we are aware, diachronic research on Chinese did not examine the change of ‘face’ in depth. The contribution of Cher Leng Lee provides an analysis of semantic2pragmatic interface, by revisiting the meaning of personal pronouns in the Confucian Classic Analects. This approach makes a link between traditional linguistic research on Chinese pronouns (e. g., Lü 1985) and politeness research, and it brings fresh blood to the vein of politeness theorization by connecting politeness behaviour with grammar. Furthermore, Lee’s research exemplifies the way in which pragmatics can resolve grammatical puzzles: as the paper shows, the meaning and function of historical Chinese pronouns can only be properly analyzed in communication. Yuling Pan’s contribution not only adds to previous research on Chinese institutional discourse, but also represents the merging of Chinese politeness research and discursive approaches to politeness. That is, the paper brings the theoretical politeness inquiry as to whether the speaker’s intention is more important than the hearer’s evaluation to the Chinese field. Apart from its theoretical contribution, Pan’s research is relevant to readers with an interest in cultural issues because it illustrates the importance of ambiguity in Chinese discursive behaviour. As innovative feature of Dániel Z. Kádár’s paper is that it merges discursive research with rhetoric, by adopting the notion of ‘rhetorical pattern’ in the analysis of certain behavioural forms. This approach is relevant to both historical pragmatics and the analysis of contemporary written genres. Another innovation of Kádár’s work, by means of which he connects historical Chinese politeness research with discursive/postmodern concepts, is that, unlike contrastive rhetoricians, he attempts to identify Chinese cultural discursive values without claiming that there is an East2West rhetorical divide.

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4. Acknowledgements

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We would like to express our gratitude to a number of colleagues for their kind support. First, we would like to say thank you to the Editors

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Karen Grainger and Derek Bousfield for kindly inviting us to edit this special issue and encouraging us in the course of our editorial work. We owe a big thank you to Michael Haugh for writing a most insightful Epilogue for this special issue. We are indebted to the following colleagues (in alphabetical order) who helped our work as referees: Chris Christie, Jonathan Culpeper, Karen Grainger, Michael Haugh, Kenneth Kong, Wenzhi Li, and Helen Spencer-Oatey.

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