Politeness in East Asia

This book examines politeness and impoliteness in a range of East Asian languages, including Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese.

Dániel Z. Kádár (Edited by), Sara Mills (Edited by)

9781107007062, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 September 2011

330 pages, 4 b/w illus. 8 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.58 kg

'… a fundamental milestone and an overdue change of direction, this collection will doubtless become one of the 21st century's reference works for politeness research.' Dr Derek Bousfield, University of Central Lancashire

We use politeness every day when interacting with other people. Yet politeness is an impressively complex linguistic process, and studying it can tell us a lot about the social and cultural values of social groups or even a whole society, helping us to understand how humans 'encode' states of mind in their words. The traditional, stereotypical view is that people in East Asian cultures are indirect, deferential and extremely polite - sometimes more polite than seems necessary. This revealing book takes a fresh look at the phenomenon, showing that the situation is far more complex than these stereotypes would suggest. Taking examples from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Singaporean Chinese, it shows how politeness differs across countries, but also across social groups and subgroups. This book is essential reading for those interested in intercultural communication, linguistics and East Asian languages.

Foreword Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini
1. Introduction Dániel Z. Kádár and Sara Mills
Part I. Politeness in East Asia - Theory: 2. Politeness and culture Sara Mills and Dániel Z. Kádár
3. Honorifics: the cultural specificity of a universal mechanism in Japan Barbara Pizziconi
4. Methodological issues in East Asian politeness research Yuling Pan
5. Intercultural communication and East Asian politeness Stefanie Stadler
Part II. Politeness in East Asia - Practice: 6. Politeness in China Dániel Z. Kádár and Yuling Pan
7. Politeness in Japan Michael Haugh and Yasuko Obana
8. Politeness in Korea Alan Hyun-Oak Kim
9. Politeness in Vietnam Grace Chye Lay Chew
10. Politeness in Singapore Cher Leng Lee
11. Epilogue Michael Haugh.

Subject Areas: Sociology: customs & traditions [JHBT], Cultural studies [JFC], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Sociolinguistics [CFB]