Anglocentrism and `Involvement'Politeness Strategies
Francesca Bargiela, Corinne Boz, Abdurrahman Hamza, Sara Mills, Manana**,Nino **,
Anglocentrism and 'Involvement' Politeness Strategies
Francesca Bargiela, Corinne Boz, Abdurrahman Hamza and Sara Mills
Plan
1. General introduction: aims etc.
2. Eurocentrism and Anglocentrism
3. Politeness and universalism (Brown and Levinson and critique)
4. Positive and negative politeness and involvement and distancing strategies
5. Differences between Anglos and others
6. Culture and language repertoire
7. Analysis of data or anecdotes/observations ?
8. Possible strategies
9. Conclusions
1. General introduction: aims etc.
In this article, we would like to investigate the way that Anglocentrism seems to manifest itself in initial encounters between British/American people and foreign speakers of English, and we will focus on the way that this is manifested in the negotiation of politeness strategies.
2.Eurocentrism and Anglocentrism
Eurocentrism is a form of implicit racism which has been described by many post-colonial theorists (Shohat and Stam,1994). Masquerading as `common-sense', Eurocentric knowledge works in two ways: firstly, it poses Western forms of social organisation and conventions as the common-sense norm or as the standard (and hence, implicitly posing other forms of social organisation as aberrant). Thus, Western forms of rationality are posed as a universal base-line rationality against which other forms of rationality are perceived as debased. Western metropolitan-based capitalism is seen to be the model for civilisation against which other forms of social organisation are viewed as `developing' or `primitive'. Secondly, Eurocentrism assumes that European forms of thought and ways of behaving are simply better than any other knowledges and behaviours. Eurocentrism has developed over centuries of colonial expansion and rule, and even though British colonialism is at an end, American neo-colonialism seems to fuel current Eurocentric thinking. Whilst Shohat and Stam argue that Eurocentrism is largely at the moment being developed by `the "neo-Europeans" of the Americas, Australia and elsewhere' , we would argue that it is important to analyse the distinctness of the form of Eurocentrism associated with those who speak the English language, which we will be calling Anglocentrism (Shohat and Stam, 1994:1). We will be primarily concerned to detail the implied racism of Anglocentrism of American and British speakers of English.
3. Politeness and universalism (Brown and Levinson and critique)
4. Positive and negative politeness: involvement and distancing strategies
[Positive and negative politeness here]
It seems to us that that the `involvement' strategies which British and American speakers generally use when they first meet a stranger create great unease and difficulty on the part of the foreign language speaker. Involvement strategies are so labelled by Scollon and Scollon to describe Brown and Levinson's positive politeness strategies without using an overtly evaluative framework. [Scollon and Scollon, (1995) Most British and American people of a particular age range (i.e. under around 40-50 years of age) in initial encounters insist on first names being used as quickly as possible, whether the interaction is between relative equals or those in a hierarchical position. Reciprocal first name seems often to be taken by British and Americans to indicate that the encounter with a stranger is proceeding well and that an equality of interaction has been established. However, for many foreign speakers of English, this strategy of first name use produces a certain embarrassment caused by seeming overfamiliarity. Because involvement strategies and seeming egalitarianism in general are viewed by Americans and British as self-evidently better than the hierarchical and deferent alternatives which are often preferred by certain other language groups in such encounters (i.e. the use of formal titles, such as Doctor, Professor, Mr. or Mrs.), then these involvement politeness strategies are insisted on, so that very often the foreign language user is corrected by the native speaker if she or he uses a more `distancing' strategy. This phenomenon has been described by the Scollons in their work, but what we would like to investigate more is the possible strategies available to both native speakers and second language English speakers which could be adopted in order to allow a more true egalitarianism in decisions about politeness strategies in cross-cultural encounters.
5. Differences between Anglos and others
There are significant differences in the linguistic behaviours of English speaking groups, particularly in relation to politeness; for example, Americans, Australians and British speakers of English
6. Culture and language repertoire
Although it is fairly easy to demarcate the stereotypical linguistic attributes of national groups or cultures, (for example, the Finns are silent, the Dutch are very direct, the British are reserved, Americans are brash, and so on), a reliance on stereotypical features blinds us to the way in which the notion of a homogeneous culture is intensely problematic. As Foley argues: `If culture is the domain of cultural practices, those meaning creating practices by which humans sustain viable trajectories of social structural coupling, it is obvious that culture should not be understood as a unified domain whose contents are shared by all' (Foley, 1997: 21). One's national identity is cross-cut by other variables such as class, ethnicity, gender, age, education, income, profession and so on, and these variables determine to a large extent the degree to which you will have access to these stereotypes of national linguistic behaviour - simply put, not everyone feels that they are a stereotypical British person, and therefore they may not feel that they can adopt stereotypical linguistic features of Britishness easily. Thus, a young white working class female shop-assistant may not necessarily feel that she is included in the national characteristics associated with Britishness to the same extent that a white middle class middle-aged businessman might, and therefore their linguistic performance may differ markedly.
That is not to say that some of these features associated with cultural groups do not have some basis in factual observation of the tendencies of certain members of these cultures, and that these stereotypical features themselves may be adopted and creatively used by members of that culture when they are constructing a particular position for themselves in relation to members of other cultures and even in relation to members of their own culture. However, what we would like to do here is problematize the notion that cultures necessarily speak in particular ways. What we would like to argue is that these stereotypes act as a form of paradigm for linguistic behaviour against which individual members of that culture can position themselves.
7. Analysis of data or anecdotes/observations ?
8. Strategies
Many would argue that these politeness strategies are simply considered to be appropriate in these encounters in English and that if you learn the English language you have simply to adopt these strategies wholesale, but perhaps what we are arguing for here is a reconsideration of this `When in Rome...' philosophy in language use, so that there may be other strategies available to foreign learners of English and to English native speakers when speaking to those foreign learners. The consequences of a more flexible approach to politeness strategies, where for example the director of an American company would discuss the naming strategies which each participant from overseas companies would prefer (so that there might be some degree of non-reciprocal first-naming), or where a certain degree of reciprocal distancing might be used by all speakers (i.e. reciprocal use of titles), might lead us to question the assumption that all learners of English simply have to adopt cultural attitudes wholesale. It might also lead to a re-evaluation of deference and distancing strategies.
9. Conclusions
References
Foley, W. (1997) Anthropological Linguistics, Blackwell, Oxford
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (1995) Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach, Blackwell, Oxford
Shohat E. and Stam, R. (1994) Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, Routledge, London.
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Date: 13th October 2000