POLITENESS IN WORKPLACE

Introduction

Politeness theories have been extensively used for analyzing workplace discourse, which is often characterized by power asymmetry and hierarchy. Linguistic politeness draws extensively on Goffman’s notion of “face”, which is further developed by Brown and Levinson (1988) as ‘face-threatening act’, a concept which describes the challenges to interlocutors’ face wants. Park (2007) highlights the rationality of a person in choosing the suitable politeness strategies based on distance, power and imposition.  Whether a linguistic form is considered as appropriate and polite is subjected to the cultural context in which an interaction occurs. It should be noted that culture is not solely determined by ethnicity, but is constituted by the established practices within a community. This section explores several key notions within the politeness theory, supplemented by the ethnographic observation in a law firm in Hong Kong.

Theoretical Basis: Politeness Theory

Face and Face Threatening Act

As developed by Brown and Levinson (1988), the politeness theory has its roots in anthropology and sociology. This section first discussed Goffman’s notion of ‘face’ which is central to the theory. Goffman (1967) uses the term ‘face’ to refer to the situation of being embarrassed. Building on Goffman’s ‘face’, Brown and Levinson (1988, p.61) define ‘face’ as ‘the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself. The scholars further develop the concept of ‘face’ as a type of wants, which is desired by the participants in an interaction. This justifies the rationality of choosing a particular type of politeness strategies in interactions to avoid being face threatening to co-participants. Therefore, this creates a tension between the participants, on one hand, the participant needs to address the face wants of the co-participant, on the other hand, the utterances may be face threatening in nature. In connection with this dichotomous situation, Brown and Levinson (1988, p.69) suggest several strategies of performing a Face Threatening Act (FTA). If one decides to perform the FTA, there are four possible strategies as shown in figure 1, which can be on record or off record. On record refers to the strategy which allows the participants to have clear access to the communicative intention, whereas off record is more ambiguous and indirect. When one decides to make the intention clear to his/her co-participants, s/he may either do the FTA baldly, or with redressive actions which can be in the form of positive politeness (for example, treating the hearer as an in-group member) or negative politeness (maintaining social distance). These strategies will be useful in the subsequent data analysis as they manifest how participants address the face needs of the others by adopting different communicative practices, both linguistic and non-linguistic ones.

Figure 1. Possible strategies to perform FTAs (Brown and Levinson, 1988, p.69)

Speech Act

Brown and Levinson (1988) also shed light on politeness and indirect speech acts, and suggest that indirectness as a politeness strategy is not just confined to the English language, but is universally applicable. Therefore, this subsection gives a brief account of the speech act theory developed by J.L. Austin. In his agenda-setting publication How to Do Things with Words, Austin (1955) proposes a framework consisting of three aspects to analyze an utterance, namely the locutionary force, illocutionary force and perlocutionary force. In Austin’s speech act framework, he considers locutionary act as “roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference, which again is roughly equivalent to ‘meaning’ in the traditional sense” (Austin, 1955, p.109). For illocutionary acts, Austin (1955, p.109) suggests them as “utterances which have a certain (conventional) force”. In other words, illocutionary acts is the meaning conveyed in an utterance. Perlocutionary acts are “what we bring about or achieve by saying something” (Austin, 1955, p.109). For example, in a stuffy and warm classroom, the student produces an utterance “is the air conditioner on?”. Then the teacher walks to the switch and turn on the air conditioner. In this example, the locutionary force of the utterance is simply a question, however, the illocutionary force is to make a request to switch on the air conditioner, and the perlocutionary force, which is the result, is that the air conditioner is switched on. Not only can this example illustrate Austin’s speech act theory, it is also central to our discussion of politeness. In Brown and Levinson’s ways of performing an FTA which covered in the previous subsection, off record strategies can be analyzed through the interplay between locutionary and illocutionary force. Using the classroom example, it is more face threatening for the student to make a bald on-record request, such as “turn on air conditioner!”. Therefore, to make the request less face threatening, the student can frame and mitigate the request (illocutionary force) in the form of a question (locutionary force).

These two aspects of the politeness theory will be central to the subsequent analysis on the law firm observation. The participants made extensive use of these strategies to mitigate their utterances in communicating with both the superiors and the subordinates.

Case Study

The workplace considered in this section is an international business law firm based in Hong Kong. The staff composition of the firm consists of both Chinese and non-Chinese. This is plausibly explained by the international outset of the firm. Regarding the composition and the international orientation of the firm, linguistic exchanges within and without are both conducted bilingually. In terms of the setting, the office is drawn into sections cubically, which constructs a landscape with clear mapping of the firms actual division of labour.  This cues a clear structural nature of the firm.

On our arrival, we were briefed about the silent-environment to be expected at the law firm by one of the seniors. This, as he explained, is a norm shared by most law firms. We were also briefed about the structure of the firm and were told explicitly “it is hierarchical”. Cohering to these noted expectations, we observed that the dominantly silent environment marks significant the limited verbal (observable) exchanges in reflecting the hierarchy constructed within the workplace. Politeness strategies, such as the use of off record strategies and positive politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987), are observed to be employed in co-constructing and maintaining the hierarchy. In other words, the hierarchy is sustained implicitly in the established practices, rather than through explicit monitoring.

Off record strategies

While off record strategies essentially means communicative behaviours holding the speaker’s intention implicit (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p.69), indirect speech act appears to be the most frequently used strategy among others. For instance, when the head of the firm requests his subordinates to modify their strategies for handling the cases, rather than directly stating the amendment required, he is inclined to begin his request with mitigation phrases like “I think” and “I suggest”. This frames the request as an additional idea, preventing the face-threatening act of explicit denial. Even in cases where negation is more obvious, there is no direct denial. Rather than stating “this is not important”, he would say “the more important thing is…”.  In other words, the illocutionary act --- denial, is performed as a suggestion. This however does not affect the perlocutionary act of making amendments accordingly. The subordinates are inclined to agree to and accept their superiors’ suggestion. Accordingly, subordinates are also inclined to use off record strategies when requesting superiors to fulfil their job duty. For instance, when asking their superior to sign a certain document, rather than stating bluntly “sign this/here,” they would frame it as a request “would you please…” This prevents the subordinate from being positioned as giving orders.

By comparing the off record strategies used by the superiors and the subordinates, we could observe the construction of hierarchy through epistemological power. While superiors could give suggestions to subordinates in requesting for amendments, subordinates could not do so. Rather, subordinates are inclined to frame their request as a question. In other words, the superiors’ requests are, though mitigated, linguistically assertive, while the subordinates’ requests, after mitigation, are linguistically formed as open to denial. This presupposes that superiors know better in how things should be done and what should be prioritized. Such presupposition, however, is not spelt out explicitly, but is made true and affirmed through putting it in practice. The linguistic behaviour observed is the reflection of the underlying establishment. Politeness, in such case, is used to construct and reinforce the hierarchical structure through its practice.

Negative politeness

The institutional hierarchy is not only reflected from the off record practices, but also the choice of language in general. This concerns the matter of negative politeness, which, in essence, refers to the actor’s use of politeness in affirming the counterparts’ face.

It is observed that Cantonese/English bilingual speakers working in the firm are inclined to speak to each other in Cantonese, with a certain degree of code-mixing. For instance, when inquiring about whether there is coffee-mate in the office, the staff said “有冇milk呀我地 (do we have milk),” rather than asking the question in just Cantonese. It is also observed that Cantonese speakers would switch to English while speaking to English monolingual speakers in the firm. Such phenomena could well be explained as an outcome of economic aims i.e. to get things done. Yet, if we reflect on it, we would notice that English speakers in the firm do not, in turn, speak to Cantonese speakers in Cantonese. This might still not seem striking at first sight, given that English speakers in the firm are monolingual. The worth noticing point, however, is that English speakers in the firm do not have to speak in Cantonese, which in turn indicates that Cantonese speakers have to speak to English speakers in English. The point is thus on the necessity to use English. Given that Cantonese bilingual speakers in the firm are subordinates, and that English speakers in the firm are superiors, it is plausible to explain the language choices in terms of subordinates conforming to their superiors’ language choice. This places the authority of language choice in the hands of the superiors. While having this authority placed in the superiors’ hands, the subordinates would not be confronting their superiors by code-switching. This authority, however, is not an active authority, but a kind of passive authority. In other words, it is the subordinates’ practices that created and reinforced this authority. This, as initiated, is likely to be an act of negative politeness that is aimed at affirming the institutional status of the superiors. As it develops, it becomes a norm that constitutes the authority addressed.

Reflection

The significance of these observations, however, is not to suggest that there is certain language dominance or linguistic exploitation. We are, by pointing this out, aiming at revealing the spontaneous nature of the correlation between linguistic norms in a workplace and the constitution of hierarchy within it. Politeness practices emerge and are used in ways conforming to the established norms and structure in hierarchical workplaces. They are thus the source affording the creation and reinforcement of hierarchy. Knowing how politeness is done and on what basis are they practiced, we believe, would help understanding the workplace’s structure and improving communal efficiency.

References

Austin, J. L. (1955). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Park, J-r. (2007). Western Politeness Theory and Non-Western Context. In Shi-xu Discourse as Cultural

Struggle, pp.123-142. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.