Sperber and Wilson developed the Relevance Theory of communication. It did not take long before it was applied to translation. This dissertation attempts to illustrate the model of the translation of politeness. Translation is a cross-linguistic sociocultural practice, in which a text in one language is replaced by a text with equivalent relevance degree in another. The original contains three variables, which, once summed, give the weightiness of the face-threatening act and the choice of stimulus is decided.
Since the 1950s [
Since the idea of linguistic politeness was led to the stage center of the politeness model raised by Brown and Levinson [
Then how can one make sure in translation that politeness contained in the original is “carried over” in the translation? How can one reach “politeness equivalence” in translation? If there is a theory of politeness in which both the universal points of view and cross-cultural differences in the realization of politeness can be accounted for, it must be a broad and general one, which is supposed to cover the concepts of politeness regarded relevant for translation and attain optimal relevance, as suggested by Gutt [
House explores the relationship between translation and politeness [
Another is that her distinction between “covert” and “overt” mode seems to be based on an idealization, the notion of complete interpretive resemblance that can in practice rarely be achieved, esp. not in the case of translation. This article seeks to explore the relationship between translation and politeness. A number of recent conceptualizations will be critically reviewed. Secondly, the issue of cross-cultural differences in politeness norms will be discussed; it will be concentrated on the description and explanation of differences in Chinese-English norms as they have emerged from contrastive linguistics. Thirdly, the Relevance Theory observations on politeness and translation will be introduced.
Politeness is a sociocultural phenomenon, roughly to be defined as showing, consideration of others [
For many researchers, politeness is a feature of language in use. Thus Brown and Levinson [
As a “real-world goal”, politeness is psychologically taken as the genuine desire to be good to others. It relates to the addresser’s personal motivation and psychological state. It is considered inaccessible to linguists who can only access to what addressers say. So it is considered to be of no relevance to translation theory and practice [
Politeness requires people to show how they think of others or to show that they don’t think more highly of themselves than they should. In Chinese, for instance, this may require someone to show that one respects the social status of others or that one does not admire one’s own social position extensively. But in English, it may require to show that one respects the power of others has nothing to do with imposition, neither one thinks too highly of one’s own right.
What forms showing that one thinks better of others or at very least showing that one does not think evilly of others, and showing that one does not think more highly of oneself than one should do, involves a number of aspects that vary from culture to culture. That is to say, politeness is a phenomenon which is sensitive to cultures.
In the light of communication which reveal an addresser thinks well of others or at least not evilly of others, addressees perceive how others think of them. Addressees perceive how others think of themselves, based on utterances which show that an addresser does not think more highly of himself than he should. As the addressees perceive the utterances appropriate as demanded by social norms, all kinds of types of politeness come up. These social norms change according to different situations and different persons. That is to say, politeness is subtle to situation, and perceptions of it vary across native addressers of a language.
Fraser holds: “The social norm view of politeness assumes that each society has a particular set of social norms consisting of more or less explicit rules that prescribe a certain behavior, a state of affairs, or a way of thinking in a context” [
There are three major pragmatic perspectives of politeness.
1) The Conversational-Maxim Perspective
The conversational-maxim view of politeness depends mainly on the theory of Grice [
2) The Conversational-Contract Perspective
According to the conversational-contract perspective, when starting a dialogue, each part “holds an understanding of some initial rights and obligations that will determine, at least for beginning stages, what the participants can expect from the other(s)” [
3) The Brown and Levinson Face-Saving Perspective
Brown and Levinson construct a Model Person (MP) to account for language usage. Their MP is a fluent addresser of a language who has two special properties rationality and face. By “rationality” Brown and Levinson mean that the MP would be able to use a specific mode of reasoning to choose means that will achieve his purposes. Brown and Levinson [
Brown and Levinson hold that the addresser adopts face-saving strategies in order to be politer. Such strategies permit one to break Grice’s CP. For instance, the statement “Close the window” is agreeable in Grice’s CP, but might be considered impolite by the addressee with the view of Brown and Levinson’s face-saving perspective. This perspective is based on the view that politeness “consists of a special way of treating people, saying and doing things in such a way as to take into account the other person’s feelings” [
Early cross-cultural studies were conducted, e.g., by Fraser [
Later studies include data-based cross-cultural investigations of the impact of isolated social and context factors on norms of politeness. Thus “Social Distance” is examined and found to influence politeness in the realization of speech acts in a complex way. “Social Power” which consists of different cultural and situational factors is also investigated.
Except these cross-cultural investigations of the influence of social variables on politeness, specific features of speech acts such as “the imposition” sustained through the act have been contrasted, e.g. requests, apologies and complaints.
The complex interaction of the various contextual and participant variables has also been contrasted with reference to the realization of requests. Moving away from isolating contextual variables, researchers have increasingly concentrated on exploring the constitutions of politeness in different communication environments, such as everyday face-to-face interpersonal talk or communication in workplace.
Vast criticism has recently been directed at the universal claims of politeness inside the cross-cultural pattern, e.g. by Ide et al. [
The maxim-and-principle perspective of politeness is supposed to be useful to explain cross-cultural differences in the constitutions of politeness. Thomas [
In order to illustrate both cross-culturally different social norms and negotiable realizations of maxims and principles, and to provide a better basis for linking translation and politeness later, some samples are briefly summarized here:
1) Directness vs. indirectness: Chinese are found to prefer more direct expressions.
He shows difficulty in distinguishing between imaginary and factual material.
2) Explicitness vs. implicitness: Chinese tends to be more explicit. I know better.
3) Self-referencing vs. others-referencing: Chinese is more self-oriented. You have my apologies.
4) Addressee-approbation and self-modesty of Chinese: Your school, I.
Given these cross-cultural differences in social norms that reflect politeness standards, one can hypothesize that the Gricean Maxims of Quantity and Relation tend to be interpreted differently in Chinese and English. Within the frame of reference provided by Lakoff [
Sperber and Wilson [
Sperber and Wilson differ from Grice in the thing which guides the interpretation of intention. Grice suggested that communicators follow a number of norms when engaging in communicative behavior and that a tacit agreement leads the addressee to the intended interpretation. He based these norms on considerations of truth, relevance, clarity and informativeness. In contrast, Sperber and Wilson argue that what guides the interpretation of communicative behavior is not the observation of a set of conventions, but the way human central cognitive systems have developed.
Since the outline of communication has been discussed, the question of what is communicated by linguistic politeness can be dealt with. As noted in the introduction, Brown and Levinson [
“Politeness is then a major source of deviation from rational efficiency, and it is communicated precisely by that deviation.” [
For the relevance theorist, this position causes some questions: How does the communication of politeness influence the mutual cognitive environment? What is the real meaning of the text? And does this indicate that politeness is usually uttered, as Brown and Levinson suggest? Or is politeness communicated only in particular cases, and if so then how can these be recognized?
There are two “messages” that politeness could surely convey, and communication of the first is a precondition for the second. According to Brown and Levinson’s model the choice of strategy depends on three variables: the power advantage (±P), if any, that the addressee has over the addresser; the social distance that exists between the addresser and addressee (±D); and the ranking of that imposition in the culture concerned (Rx). Totally, these three factors constitute the weightiness (Wx) of the face-threatening act and a linguistic form/prag- matic strategy is chosen that can reflect this. However, the relation between strategy and the weightiness of a face threatening act (FTA) is the key to the first message that politeness might communicate. P, D and Rx are socially determined values and one would expect them to be mutually manifest to participants in a communication. However, if one party involved in communication should employ a strategy which does not fulfill these expectations, the result will be a change in the addressee’s cognitive environment. Moreover, a form or strategy of this type would be highly relevant to the addressee as it would be the evidence that the addresser ranked one of the three variables in a manner incompatible with the addressee’s assumptions about their mutual cognitive environment. And being thus relevant, it would encourage the addressee to infer which variable he had mis- ranked, which causes his reassessing the variable whose ranking was not strongly manifest to him [
As illustrated in the previous section, it is obviously hard to hold that the reason for engaging in what is generally called polite behavior is to communicate politeness. It has been discussed that politeness is only recognized―when some aspect of the addresser’s behavior provides evidence for the addressee that the addresser holds addressee in higher or lower position than the latter had assumed. From this perspective, many examples of what a linguist could define instances of polite behavior even might not be noticed by the communicators. One aim of this section is to show that there is indeed an acceptable substitute.
To find out why different linguistic forms and pragmatic strategies are applied to perform the same speech acts, it is of necessity to reconsider the process of utterance explanation. From the related theoretical view, utterance interpretation can be taken as primarily a process of selection rather than one of decoding though decoding is, of course, involved.
Of course, this will be confined by the need to use an optimally relevant stimulus, one which guides the addressee to the intended interpretation without any unnecessary processing effort. Nevertheless, there are further restrictions. Communicators have their different purposes which can be short or long term. In the short term , a person’s purpose will be direct that he will try to convince the other one of something; while, in the longer term, his aims may involve to merge himself into a desired group and accepted by the group members. Based on that illustration, it is obvious that communicators will be confined by the strong will to fulfill the aims. Meanwhile, a speaker will plan to choose a stimulus to the achievement either his long or short term aims.
Surly, simply providing the proof that you hold may not necessarily lead to an understanding of agreement. On one hand, the fact you represent must be closed relevant, be worthy of the hearer’s attention and trust according to his social knowledge. You must hold your evidence in higher position than he had assumed to be. On the other hand, it must be sincere; that is to say, the addressee must believe that the evidence you offer actually reflects the position in which you hold him. He must not think that your behavior is motivated by an attempt to raise, however indirectly, your own standing in his eyes by insincerely indicating that you hold him in higher position than is in fact the case. Thus similar understanding may start beneficially in one context.
To conclude, addressers, when they choose linguistic strategy, are likely to offer evidence as to the position where they hold the addressee. Addressers with the purpose to achieve their aims long or short term will select strategies that they believe will offer facts that the addressee’s evaluation of the position, which is equal to the unidentified social coding view of politeness. Or, addressers may choose a strategy that will constitute evidence that he holds the addressee from a higher position than the latter had assumed. As far as repair is concerned, the addresser will be joyful to be obvious to the addressee for his aim.
Thus we can see that the relevance theoretic view emphasizes how addressers manipulate their utterances in a particular method to find out contextual characteristics with the purpose of forming their addressees’ cognitive environments. When it is used to linguistic politeness, it is able to adjust the argument and observations of many linguists. But most importantly, it provides a substitute to the view that polite verbal behavior is motivated by the desire to communicate politeness. As such, the view of politeness suggested by Relevance Theory is to be preferred to that offered by norm-based accounts.
Since this study is based on the relevance-theory, it is necessary to introduce a few essential concepts of it here.
In Relevance Theory, the concept of “context of an utterance” is “a psychological notion, the addressee’s assumptions about the world”, more specifically, it is “the set of premises used in interpreting utterance” [
Note that this notion of context also includes the text surrounding an utterance, what has sometimes been called the “co-text”.
A second significant feature of context is that it is taken to be organized, and that this organization influences the accessibility of a certain piece of contextual information on a certain situation. For example, having just talked about childhood memories, information about some of your toys may be very easily accessible. On another occasion, though, it might take considerable effort to remember the color of your first big toy. Thus there is a relation between the accessibility of information in our minds and the effort required to recall it. With this clarification about context we now return to the question of how it is possible for addressees to find and use the contextual information which the addresser intended them to use and which is necessary for understanding him correctly.
According to Sperber and Wilson [
This claim guides the addressee in capturing the addresser-intended context for a given utterance to optimal relevance in the following way. It makes him expect that the contextual information needed for the correct interpretation is readily accessible. So he begins the interpretation process from information most readily available to him at that time. Furthermore, he will assume that, when combined with the right context, the utterance will yield an interpretation that is worth the effort.
On these assumptions, the addressee will proceed with the interpretation process until he arrives at an interpretation that measures up to both conditions: it is derivable without unnecessary effort and yields adequate contextual effects. That is to say, the request to optimal relevance guides the addressee to accept the first interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance as the addresser-intended interpretation. Thus, the search for optimal relevance guides the addressee not only to the addresser-intended context but also to the addresser-in- tended understanding. It ought to be added here that people sometime are insensitive to these interpretation procedures in their thoughts; they happen unconsciously.