Good-bye, you or I? A study of linguistic patterns in American and Chinese leave-taking after dinner.

摘要

This is a comparative study on linguistic routines used by American and Chinese guests at leave-taking after dinner. Like many other daily routines, leave-taking is highly conventionalized and follows prefabricated routines and has an adaptive value in facilitating social relations. The data collected for this study has shown that, even though both groups employ a number of the same speech acts, there is a marked difference in the structural construction of this speech event, in the frequency of some speech acts, and in the attitudes towards "polite" ways of leave-taking used by the other group. Brown and Levinson's theory of universal politeness provides a sound explanation for the American I-patterned (self-oriented) leave-taking but fails to explain the Chinese you-patterned (other-oriented) farewell. Their failure comes from their western understanding about politeness that focuses on the freedom of self to make decisions without being imposed on, which cannot apply to some non-western cultures where the self is subordinate to others. Applying to O'Driscoll's revision (1996) of Brown and Levinson's face dualism, this paper argues that there is a universal concern for a good face in conducting a polite linguistic behavior. The concept of self is the parameter of this universal politeness, which accounts for various linguistic politeness across different cultures.