Directness and Indirectness Across Cultures

Directness and Indirectness Across Cultures

Also by Sara Mills GENDER AND POLITENESS LANGUAGE GENDER AND FEMINISM (co-authored) LANGUAGE AND SEXISM POLITENESS IN EAST ASIA (co-authored)

Directness and Indirectness Across Cultures Karen Grainger and Sara Mills Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Karen Grainger and Sara Mills 2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-34038-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-55871-1 ISBN 978-1-137-34039-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137340399 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grainger, Karen, 1958 Directness and indirectness across cultures / Karen Grainger, Sheffield Hallam University, UK ; Sara Mills, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. pages cm Summary: Directness may often be considered rude in English, but in other languages it signals closeness and honesty. Equally, indirectness can be judged to be polite in English, whereas in other languages it can be regarded as cold and distancing. This book analyses why this is and provides the reader with a set of tools to investigate directness and indirectness in interaction. The authors examine the way that these differences in evaluation may lead to misunderstanding in conversations, focussing on the difficulty in clearly defining and isolating directness and indirectness. Situated within a discursive theoretical perspective, the book shows, through the analysis of role plays, naturally occurring data and interviews, how it is possible to analyse interactants evaluations and assessments of directness and indirectness Provided by publisher. 1. English language Usage. I. Mills, Sara, 1954 II. Title. PE1460.G685 2015 401'.45 dc23 2015021451 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

For Mandla Sibanda, a special Zimbabwean, who is sadly no longer with us

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Contents Acknowledgements Transcription Conventions viii ix 1 Introduction: Language, Culture, (Im)politeness and (In)directness 1 2 Theoretical Perspectives on Indirectness 34 3 Theoretical Perspectives on Directness 51 4 Zimbabwean English and British English: A Case Study of Directness and Indirectness Across Cultures 74 5 Situated Directness and Indirectness: Monolingual English Speakers 102 6 Linguistic Ideologies: Bilingual Speakers Evaluations of Indirectness and Directness 122 7 Conclusions 149 Notes 159 Bibliography 163 Index 173 vii

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Brigid, Agnes and Derek, the anonymised participants, for appearing in our role plays and for giving us permission to use these recorded role plays in our interviews. The interviewees were Ying Fang, Siavash Moshiri, Laure Astil, Zainab Kerkam, Isabelle van der Bom and Yonatan Shemmer. We would like to thank the interviewees for their contributions to understanding indirectness and directness in other languages, and also how they operate in English. All of the interviewees and the actors in the role plays were very generous with their time and for this we are very grateful. Discussions with Zainab Kerkam about directness and indirectness in Arabic and English were very insightful. We would like to thank Ethel Dhlamini Maqeda, Sitshengisiwe Laiza Sibindi and members of SOSA-XA!, the African choir, for allowing us to study their interactions and for talking about southern African indirectness with us. The Linguistic Politeness Research group has been a wonderful research group in which to discuss the ideas in this book and more generally the discursive approach to the analysis of politeness and impoliteness. Special thanks are due to Christine Christie, Andrew Merrison, Bethan Davies, Sandra Harris, Louise Mullany, Jodie Clark, Jim O Driscoll, Daniel Kadar, David Peplow, Alison McHale and Barbara MacMahon. The Arabic politeness research group at Sheffield Hallam University has also been a good forum for working out some of the ideas in this book, and thanks are due to Zainab Kerkam and Fathia Mansor specifically. We would like to thank our faculty at Sheffield Hallam University for awarding each of us a study leave to complete research for this book and bring it to completion. Thanks are also due to the faculty for funding the transcription of the interviews. We are grateful to Christine Ellis, who did the transcriptions extremely efficiently. viii

Transcription Conventions (adapted from Atkinson and Heritage 2000) (.) pause of less than 1 second (1.0) pause showing length of time in seconds [ ] overlapping speech = contiguous speech/latching speech (( )) unclear speech? functional question (non-verbal activity such as gesture or facial expression) ix