Entry 7: What does "being polite" really mean?

This week, our topic is on face and politeness, and you know what, I found that from a culturally vast point of view, politeness is like perfection:

Politeness: marked by an appearance of consideration, tact, deference, or courtesy.

Perfection: Freedom from fault or defect.

The above definitions are taken from Merriam-Webster, and they're readily understood by people. Simply put, people know what they mean intuitively. But can you give a universal example for each of them? It's not as easy as you think. The idea of "Ladies first" is commonly understood to be a form of politeness in probably any modern society.


However, in historic Japan (think late 19th century), especially in traditional areas such as Kyoto and Tochigi, it's rude for females to walk in front of men. People have criticised that this is somewhat sexist, but this was just how they do things back then. It's still observable these days, albeit more unusual. But were traditonal Japanese people necessarily rude with this instance? You can't say that, because females walking behind men was deemed the polite thing to do.


What about perfection? You can define it, but can you exemplify it? Invididual A can define say, the "perfect spouse". But if you ask Individual B the same question, you would get a different answer. Ask 1000 people the same question and you'd get 1000 different answers.


Let's be more relevant from here onwards. According to Leech (1983), there are 6 differents maxims to classify politeness:

1. Tact - minimise cost to others; maximise benefit to others
2. Generosity - minimise benefit to self; maximise cost to self
3. Approbation - minimise dispraise of other; maximise praise of other
4. Modesty - minimise praise of self; maximise dispraise of self
5. Agreement - minimise disagreement between self and other; maximise agreement between self and other
6. Sympathy - minimise antipathy between self and other; maximise sympathy between self and other

For discussion purposes, I want to "play around" with the above maxims.


Situation #1:
I have had a long day, and I receive a call from my mother to do some grocery shopping. Learning how tired I am, she changes her mind and tells me to forget about the errand. However, now I'm obliged to do the errand. 


This scenario challenges both the tact maxim and generosity maxim. Frankly, it's something I experience everyday too. Who's being tactful here: me or my mother? My mother wants to minimise cost to me now (tact), but I want to minimise benefit to myself (generosity).


Situation #2:
I praise someone generously because I really think this person is that admirable. The person doesn't feel comfortable with my praises and thinks I'm patronising her, so she rejects them. I don't take it well because I think she lacks self-esteem.

This scenario challenges both the approbation maxim and modesty maxim. I approve her because I feel like doing so; she deserves to be praised. Instead of being grateful, she feels a little uncomfortable and rejects my praises. I then think she's lacking self-esteem because by denigrating oneself, she's actually taking a beating at her own self-image.

The scenarios above show that tacit & generosity maxims, and approbation & modesty maxims are complementary (or "un-complementary") to each other.  Now, what about the agreement and sympathy maxims? I feel that there's a missing link between them. Thus, I think that there should be a seventh maxim: Distance maxim. My proposed maxim works as the following:

• Distance - maximise social closeness between self and other; minimise social distance between self and other

Social distance can affect the agreement and sympathy maxims, and I'll give scenarios to illustrate (NOTE: there is no sarcasm in play for the below scenarios):

Scenario #3:

My close friend and I watch a movie. I think the movie sucks big time, but my friend says it rocks. We argue (not quarrel) about it as a form of daily conversation.

Chances are, if the other is not my friend, I would've agreed but I didn't because of social closeness; he's my friend. If I had agreed instead, it'd be like I'm cutting the conversation. By disagreeing, we're creating a topic. Agreement is a positive thing, but this doesn't necessarily make disagreement something negative.

Scenario #4:

My close friend's long-sick dog has passed away. Rather than feeling sad, I feel happy for him because I'm happy that his pooch isn't suffering anymore (euphemistic, I know).

Social distance plays a part here because if the dog's owner is someone socially distant from me, I wouldn't use antipathy in a direct manner. Since he's my friend, I feel more readily okay to feel antipathy (although tact must come before becoming antipathic).

In terms of culture, nothing is absolute. The old adage "There are always two sides to a coin" applies to cultural (communication) studies and the above theory is just one of the ways to classify for research purposes.