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Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 1525–1539
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Historical vs. contemporary Chinese linguistic politeness
Yuling Pan a, Dániel Z. Kádár b,*
a
b
U.S. Census Bureau, 10201 Woodvale Pond Drive, Fairfax Station, VA 22039, USA
Department of Oriental Studies, Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Benczúr utca 33, Budapest H-1068, Hungary
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history:
Received 29 March 2010
Received in revised form 22 July 2010
Accepted 20 October 2010
Available online 15 December 2010
The present paper provides a comparative survey of historical and contemporary Chinese
politeness, hence contributing to postcolonial pragmatics and linguistic politeness
research. There is a unique gulf between historical and contemporary Chinese politeness,
which is largely due to the influence of the 19th century colonization of China. While China
was in fact partially colonized only, the invasion by foreign imperialist powers had a strong
impact on the development of Chinese sociopragmatic norms. By demonstrating the gulf
between ‘historical’ and ‘contemporary’, this paper provides an unprecedented case study
for the influence of colonization on native language use. The analysis is divided into two
parts. The first part, section 2 of the paper, analyzes the ideologies, norms and practices of
historical Chinese politeness, and demonstrates that historical Chinese politeness had
some features that made it vulnerable to large scale socio-historical changes that led to the
birth of contemporary Chinese politeness. Section 3, after reviewing politeness norms and
ideologies in contemporary China, examine the similarities and differences between
historical and contemporary practices of polite communication.
ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Politeness
Chinese
Historical
Contemporary
Postcolonial
1. Introduction
The aim of our paper is to provide a comparative overview of historical and contemporary Chinese politeness, hence
demonstrating the major gap that exists between the politeness ‘systems’ of these two periods. Comparing historical and
contemporary Chinese linguistic politeness is challenging, due to the fact that the practices of Chinese polite
communication underwent a dramatic transformation during the late-19th and 20th centuries. In the course of this
period, which is brief from a diachronic perspective, the historical norms of deferential communication practically
disappeared from Chinese society and were replaced by a new set of politeness norms. This large-scale change – which
resulted in, among other things, the disappearance of the extensive historical Chinese honorific lexicon of several
thousand words (cf. Kádár, 2007) – is a unique phenomenon because in other languages there is no comparable gulf
between ‘historical’ and ‘contemporary’ politeness norms (for example, no linguistic politeness anthology, such as
Hayashi and Mianmi (1974) or Hickey and Stewart (2005) mentions a similar phenomenon). This is not to say that
linguistic politeness does not change in other societies. For example, as researchers such as Kohnen (2008) and Jucker
(2010) demonstrate, politeness in England underwent several large changes in its history; however, the development of
politeness in these languages was continuous and relatively gradual. This unique gulf between ‘historical’ and
‘contemporary’ in Chinese leads many researchers and laymen to formulate ambiguous views on Chinese polite behavior
(cf. Pan, 2000a). As we noted elsewhere,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +36 1 3214 830 179; fax: +36 1 3229 297.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Y. Pan), [email protected], [email protected] (D.Z. Kádár).
0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.018
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[i]t has been a challenge to research modern Chinese politeness due to the multiple layers of societal changes that impact
linguistic politeness in Chinese. There is a disconnection between the modern and traditional Chinese in terms of the
application of politeness formulae. On the one hand, the Chinese people are famed for their long tradition of polite rituals
and polite vocatives, and on the other hand, modern Chinese politeness behavior seems to be quite different and distant
from these ‘famous’ polite phenomena. As a result, there seems to be a myth about Chinese politeness. (Pan, 2008:328)
This topic is of relevance from the perspective of postcolonial sociolinguistic/sociopragmatic studies, that is, explorations
of language use in societies which were previously colonized; it is particularly intriguing from the aspect of postcolonial
politeness research, a relatively new area (perhaps the first extensive volume on this theme was edited by Mühleisen and
Migge in 2005). This is due to the fact that the collapse of historical politeness was initially generated by foreign powers’
invasion of China starting in the 1840s, and the subsequent colonization of certain regions of the country, and so the
formation of modern Chinese politeness is a postcolonial event (see more below). As is discussed elsewhere (Pan and Kádár,
2011), the main motivating factor1 behind the aforementioned large-scale change of Chinese politeness was the fact that the
Chinese suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of previously despised foreign nations. As a result of this, many
Chinese broke with their traditional norms and values first during the latter part of the 19th century and the years after 1911
(the foundation of the Republic of China) and then again after the Communist takeover in 1949. While colonization has
resulted in the gradual disappearance of native languages and sociolinguistic customs in many countries (Spolsky, 2004:
83–86), as far as the authors are aware, there is no other language in which there is such a clear-cut difference between
‘historical’ and ‘contemporary’ politeness. Thus, the analysis in this paper provides a unique case study for the influence of
colonization on native language use. While in many other colonized countries the colonist’s language directly influenced the
local language by language transfers or code-mixing and code-switching (for example, code-switching between English and
Chinese has been accepted as the normal way of speaking in Hong Kong, see Li, 1996), the case presented in this paper shows
a more subtle influence of colonization on native language.
To understand this subtlety, we briefly mention the impact of a series of foreign invasions that turned China into a semicolonized state and its impact on the Chinese elite class that led to anti-traditionalist movement. Starting from the First
Opium War with British forces (1839–1842), China was dragged out with brutal physical force from a self-dependent
isolation that had been in effect since the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The Chinese population looked at their
country as the most ‘civilized’ realm in the world, with unparalleled military and economic power. It is thus not surprising
that the Chinese were dumbfounded by the humiliating defeat suffered during the First Opium War and the subsequent
wars.2 But the shock was due not only to the technology of warfare, but also, perhaps more importantly, to differences in
culture. The Chinese who came in contact with Western invaders3 realized that during the centuries of isolation from the rest
of the world China had been left behind in several respects. The social, legal, scientific, medical and other systems of the
English, and other nations that subsequently formed colonies in China, seemed to be more developed than their traditional
native Chinese counterparts. Seemed to be should be emphasized because the Chinese evaluation of the ‘West’ was at least
partially influenced by imperialist and colonization ideologies.4 Whatever the truth is, the new situation led the Chinese elite
class to turn inward by questioning the value of traditional Chinese culture. Several members of the elite (and those of other
social groups that became the ruling elite in the coming years) began to criticize traditional Chinese culture, in particular,
Confucianism, and argued for the adoption of Western culture (Jin, 1993). Immediate modernization (i.e. ‘Westernization’,
see more in Ruhi and Kádár, 2011) seemed for many to be the correct answer to the menacing situation.
As a result, anti-traditionalist sentiments arose first in 1919, during the so-called May Fourth Movement (Wu-Si-yundong
[TD$INLE]
), which was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement. The movement’s name derives from a student
demonstration that occurred on May 4, 1919, and became an anti-imperialist national movement (Jin et al., 1999). Referring
to the period between 1915 and 1921, the broader May Fourth Movement – or, more precisely, the long-term change it
generated – resulted in a large-scale intellectual endeavour to reform language and culture. After the May Fourth Movement,
traditional culture was left relatively intact until the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong [TD$INLE]
(1893–1976) took
over political power from the Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-Shek (Jiang Jieshi [TD$INLE]
, 1887–1975) in 1949. During the
Communist rule a series of events took place that essentially changed Chinese language and culture.
In sum, the gulf between ‘historical’ and ‘contemporary’ Chinese politeness is a native reaction to the influence of foreign
powers. Thus, while China is rarely mentioned in relation with postcolonial theories, it is reasonable to claim that there is a
strong relationship between the sociopragmatic events during the 19th and 20th centuries and (post-)colonialism. While the
1
It should be noted that the authors do not intend to suggest that colonization was the only motivating factor behind the diachronic change studied; yet,
it can be argued that it was the most important within a group of factors.
2
The First Opium War was soon followed by the Second Opium War (1856–1860).
3
Such encounters took place mainly at the eastern coastal territory of China. The whole of China did not become a colonized country like India or
Singapore, but instead the invading powers conquered certain territories in which they established colonies with extraterritorial rights.
4
As Li (2007:23) from the Dutch scholar Hans van de Ven, points out, ‘‘the Qing was ill-prepared to deal with Britain’s naval challenge not because it was a
backward country or a Confucian society with little regard for the military, but because it had faced different sorts of military challenges and followed a
different path of military development than Britain’’. That is, it would be quite simplistic to argue that Chinese society was less ‘developed’ than British
society and was consequently defeated by the latter, an accusation often made by Marxist theorists against ‘feudal’ China. In line with scholars such as van
de Ven and Li above, we would argue that the situation was more complex: the defeat of China was primarily military-based. Although Western social and
scientific results might have seemed to be highly developed and tempting to many Chinese, the social superiority of the British was at least partly a myth,
which served the financial and ideological goals of the conquerors.
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whole of China was never ruled by a single colonial government (unlike, for example, several South Asian states or India),
foreign powers invaded the country, obtained extraterritorial rights and conquered certain coastal regions as colonies, that
is, the country became a semi-colony. Perhaps even more importantly, in Western rhetoric the Chinese were typically
treated as ‘cultural others’, to use Spivak’s (1988) terminology. With this background in mind it seems to be a reasonable
approach to apply postcolonial theorization on Chinese data.
Due to space limitations, the present work only describes politeness in historical and contemporary China, without
providing either an in-depth analysis of the transitional period, during which the replacement of old with new actually took
place, or the driving forces behind the change. In this form, the present paper is a preliminary report on a research project of
the authors (see more in Pan and Kádár, 2011). In other words, our goal is to demonstrate the sociolinguistic/pragmatic
impact of colonization through the change of Chinese politeness ideologies, rather than dealing with the language policy and
norms of the colonization era, that is, the direct influence of colonization on Chinese. Therefore, while we compar the preand postcolonial times, the ‘colonization’ in-between is treated in an abstract way: we presuppose its politeness ideologychanging power, relying on historical studies such as the works of Osterhammel (1989, 2005).
The analysis in the present paper is divided into two parts. The first part, section 2, analyzes the ideologies, norms and
practices of historical Chinese politeness. The goal of this section is to demonstrate that while historical Chinese politeness is
completely different from its contemporary counterpart, it had some features that made it vulnerable to large-scale colonial
and postcolonial changes that led to the birth of contemporary Chinese politeness. Section 3, after overviewing politeness
norms and ideologies in contemporary China, examines the similarities and differences between historical and
contemporary Chinese politeness by analyzing linguistic politeness in the different units of discourse, as well as its
interpersonal distribution. In the conclusion, we argue that while contemporary and historical politeness share some
common characteristics, in fact they are too different to be parts of the same linguistic tradition or ‘system’, which
demonstrates the influence of colonization on Chinese society.
This paper follows a diachronic order by first surveying historical Chinese politeness and then overviewing the norms and
practices in its contemporary counterpart. Before beginning the analysis, a brief description of our theoretical view regarding
politeness should be given. The paper is anchored to some extent to recent theorizations of politeness (e.g., Mills, 2003; Kádár
and Mills, 2011) in that we – somewhat cautiously – do not claim that our interpretation of politeness ideologies and behavior is
valid to every layer of Chinese linguistic politeness in society. As we will make clear below, since we explore major diachronic
changes in Chinese politeness, we are precisely interested in its socially dominant and typical aspects. It should be added that
the present analysis in limited in scope, in the sense that we intentionally limit our analysis only to the formal aspects of
politeness (see more on this problem in Pan and Kádár, 2011).
2. Politeness in historical China
First, the present section studies the dominant ideologies and norms that influenced politeness behavior in late imperial
China, and then it provides a brief practical account of historical Chinese politeness behavior. The aim of the section is to
demonstrate the fact that while historical Chinese politeness fundamentally differed from its contemporary counterpart, for
several reasons it was open to the large-scale change that led to the formation of contemporary Chinese politeness.
Before delving into the analysis, it is necessary to provide a brief account of the historical periods that we are going to
cover. The label ‘historical’ can cover the whole period of Chinese history from ca. the 10th century B.C. until the foundation
of the Republic of China in 1911, and in fact from the perspective of the politeness historian this is rather a homogenous
period in many respects (Kádár, 2007). However, in the present paper only the final phase of historical Chinese politeness is
analyzed, in order to provide insight into the state of politeness just before the collapse. In order to differentiate this period
from other eras, the label ‘late imperial’ is adopted, which describes Chinese politeness during the late 18th and the 19th
centuries. The extracts of the present section, except examples from ancient philosophical sources in section 2.1, are cited
from sources written during this period.
2.1. Historical Chinese politeness ideologies and norms
In order to understand the polite behavior in a given culture, society or a community of any size, it is necessary to look into
the major dominant politeness ideologies that form the group’s politeness norms. In fact, as different scholars argue (Eelen,
1999; Mills and Kádár, 2011), it is improper to equate politeness behavior with a given ideology because in reality several
ideologies interact in social politeness, and also because ruling ideologies may differ across (sub)groups and Communities of
Practice within a society. Also, ruling ideologies often belong to the elite and not the whole of the society. Thus, it seems
impossible to say that politeness in a given society, especially in such a large country as China, is or was solely ruled by X
ideology, and we do not intend to create such a simplistic view. Instead, we follow the views of historical politeness experts,
such as Held (1999) and Watts (1999), who focus on the ideologies of the ruling elite, which unavoidably influence the
politeness behavior of lower classes to some extent. In other words, we focus on the ‘mainstream’ ideological background of
individual politeness behavior without excluding or denying the existence and influence of other ideologies, as well as
interaction and struggle between politeness ideologies (see more on this issue in Fitzmaurice, 2010). This is a feasible way for
us, all the more because we are interested in the diachronic change of Chinese politeness norms, which meant the challenge
of the ideologies and language use of the social elite.
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In the case of historical China the aforementioned ruling ideology should be Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism.
Confucianism or Rujia ]NEIL$D[T
is based on the philosophy of Confucius (Kongzi ]NELI $TD[
, i.e. Master Kong or Kong Qiu ]NELI $TD[
, 551–478 BC), an
ancient thinker who after failing to spread his ideas among the ruling circles took disciples and became the most influential
teacher of his time. When referring to Confucianism as a ‘philosophy’ rather than religion we mean that it is a system of moral
principles aimed at maintaining harmony within the family, community and state, rather than a religion in the Judeo-Christian
sense (see a detailed introduction to Confucianism in e.g. Yao, 2000). Confucianism was rejected by the first Chinese Qin Dynasty,
which united the country in 221 BC, but after the fall of Qin it became the ‘official’ state ideology. While its official status was
challenged from time to time, during the Song Dynasty (960–1279) it gained its final shape as the ideology of the Chinese elite, in
the form of the so-called Neo-Confucianism (Lixue ]NEIL$TD[
). Neo-Confucianism, along with both reforming and conserving certain
Confucian ideals imported elements from 2 other philosophies and religions, namely Taoism (Daojiao E]INL D$[T ]EINL$D[T ) and Buddhism (Fojiao TD[
]EINL$
); cf. Chan (1963). In terms of social philosophy Neo-Confucian thinkers reinforced the ancient ideals of social hierarchy, and
so conserved politeness ideologies until the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Confucian Classics, as well as later treatises on proper behavior, did not define any notion identical to the word
‘politeness’ (or the modern Chinese limao E]INL D$[T
, ‘politeness’). Instead, they described appropriate social communication as part of
the moral concept of li E]INL D$T[ . Li is a complex notion, which means, among other things, ‘(religious) rites,’ ‘social rules,’ and ‘respect’
(Gou, 2002); that is, li is not restricted to proper communication only, but also includes the performance of rites in front of the
spirits of ancestors and other aspects of rituality (Kádár, 2007). Yet, if we limit our study to the communicational aspect of li, its
most important prescription is the following: in the course of proper communication one should be deferential by denigrating
himself and elevating his speech partner, a notion which was introduced to pragmatic studies by Gu’s (1990) groundbreaking
paper. The ideology of self-denigration and addressee-elevation in deferential communication was somewhat similar to the
concept of ‘humility’ in medieval Europe (Curtius and Trask, 1990), and it continuously appears in Confucian morality books.
In order to illustrate the way in which this concept was discussed by the Confucian Classics, let us cite the following
examples:
(1)
[TD$INLE]
[. . .] Accordingly, the superior man does not elevate himself in his doings or overvalue his own merit, hence seeking
the truth. He does not aim to make extraordinary actions, but instead seeks to occupy himself only with what is
substantial. He displays prominently the good qualities of others, celebrates their merits, and underestimates his
own wisdom. Although thus the superior man denigrates himself, the ordinary people will respect and honor him.
(Book of Rites, Biaoji)
[TD$INLE]
(2)
He does not dare to venture into important matters without [the ancestors’] authorization [through sacrifices], and
thus denigrates himself and elevates his ancestors. (Book of Rites, Guanyi)
[TD$INLE]
(3)
The gentleman is reverent and does nothing amiss, is respectful towards others and observant of the rites, and all
within the Four Seas are his brothers. (Analects XII.5, translation of James Legge)
[TD$INLE]
(4)
Li means the denigration of the self and the elevation of the other. (Book of Rites, Quli, Part One)
) and Analects (Lunyu ]EINL D$T[ ) demonstrate that, according to Confucian
These citations from the Classics Book of Rites (Liji ]NEIL $D[T
thinking, one should denigrate oneself (zibei ]NEIL $DT[ ) and elevate the other (zunren ]EINL $DT[ ), in order to gain respect. Further, one should
avoid elevating oneself (zida ]ENLI D$T[ ), which is in breach of proper behavior. By acting in such a way one will not only gain social ‘capital’
– to use Bourdieu’s (1983) term – and maintain harmony with his family, as illustrated by the first and the second examples, but
will also attain more divine goals such as social harmony and prosperity as shown by example (3). In fact, as example (4)
demonstrates, the denigration of self and the elevation of others is the quintessence of li on the level of language and behavior. Of
course, historical Chinese politeness cannot be reduced to this phenomenon only (see more in Pan and Kádár, 2011), and so it is
reasonable to limit its definition here as the ‘quintessence’ of politeness, rather than equating it with Chinese politeness per se.
Considering the close ties between denigration/elevation and li, it is useful to examine the relationship between li and
social power, in order to gain insight into the social function of the historical Chinese elevation/denigration phenomenon. In
fact, li is not a socially ‘harmless’ notion but a political concept, by means of which the wise ruler and his advisers will be able
to lead the country in an effective way, as illustrated by the following brief citations:
(5)
[TD$INLE]
Confucius said: ‘If a superior man loves li, the people will not dare not to be reverent.’ (Analects XIII.4)
(6)
[TD$INLE]
The Master said: ‘When those above are given to the observance of the rites, the common people will be easy to
command.’ (Analects XIV.41)
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As these citations demonstrate, li is a concept of governance that aids the ruler to properly command his subjects, by making
the commoners respect the elite – what is interesting to note here is that both of the citations make it quite clear that only the
upper classes need to understand li, whilst members of lower classes need only to be deferential. From this social perspective,
li has a similar role to notions of ‘politeness’ in other societies, in particular historical ones, that is, it is a power resource for
the ruling elite.5 And, as it will be demonstrated in the next section, the linguistic manifestation of li, i.e. elevation/
denigration, was designed in a fashion to reinforce this function and distribution of li. Due to the fact that historical Chinese
politeness behavior was associated with Confucian ideology through the notion of li, and also forms of politeness were
designed to reinforce this ideology, harsh critiques against Confucian ideological views, which characterized the birth of
modern China, made historical Chinese politeness vulnerable and subject to criticism, as we will argue in the conclusion of
this section.
2.2. Historical Chinese politeness in practice
In what follows we explore historical Chinese politeness by focusing on the practice of its ‘quintessence’, as we defined it,
elevation and denigration, as well as the vulnerability of this system to social changes. First we will study the manifestations
of elevation/denigration at the lexical and discourse levels, and then we will examine it from the perspective of
grammaticalization.
2.2.1. The manifestation of elevation and denigration on lexical and discourse levels
The concept of elevation/denigration is a representative feature of politeness in traditional East Asian (the so-called
sinoxenic) cultures; its more widely known ‘equivalent’ is the Japanese kenjō-go [TD$INLE]
and sonkei-go [TD$INLE]
. Due to the fact
that Chinese does not allow morphosyntactic changes, this two-fold concept manifests itself in discourse through a large
quantity of honorifics and discursive strategies.
On the lexical level, the most frequently used honorifics are terms of address that denigrate the speaker/writer and
elevate the speech partner/recipient. For example, the term xiaoren [TD$INLE]
(lit. ‘small person,’ i.e. ‘this worthless person’)
denigrates the speaker and gaojun [TD$INLE]
(‘high lord’) elevates the speech partner, while xiaonü [TD$INLE]
(lit. ‘small woman,’
i.e. ‘worthless daughter’) denigrates the speaker’s daughter and qianjin [TD$INLE]
(lit. ‘thousand gold,’ i.e. ‘venerable daughter’)
elevates the addressee’s daughter. The proper use of terms of address was a must for every language user independent of the
given person’s level of education. In order to illustrate this, let us cite the following section from a late imperial vernacular
novel, which was analyzed in Kádár (2008:149–150):
(7)
[TD$INLE]
Having heard the district magistrate call him, the old man became terrified and trembled with fear as he kneeled in
front of the bench and said: ‘‘This worthless person is the undertaker of Gaojia-wa. I respectfully greet Your Honor.’’
[TD$INLE]
Judge Di asked: ‘‘What is thy name, and how long hast thou been the undertaker?’’
[TD$INLE]
The man said: ‘‘This old man hath the family name Tao, his name is Tao Daxi.’’
[TD$INLE]
But before he could even finish his words, the two constables standing by his side cried: ‘‘Thou, old-dog-head, what
an outrageous impertinence this is! In front of His Honor thou durst address [thyself] as ‘old man,’ let us beat thee
two hundred times with the bamboo, and we will see whether thou wilt yet assert that [thou art] ‘an old man,’ or
not!’’
[TD$INLE]
The undertaker, turning pale as he saw that the constables were barking at [him] so angrily, became more humble
and said: ‘‘This worthless person should die for his guilt. This worthless person has been an undertaker for the last
thirty years. How can I serve Your Honor?’’
(Di gong an [TD$INLE]
[The Cases of Magistrate Di] – Chapter 6)
5
Nevertheless, it should be added that the notion of li is relatively ‘democratic’ in the sense that in historical China – in particular from the Han Dynasty
(206BC–220AD) onwards – rank was primarily gained through learning and participation in official examinations and not by birth. Thus, it is somewhat
different from e.g. the notion of ‘being a gentleman’, which originally was a right that could be gained through birth only (cf. Watts, 1999).
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In the course of this courtroom interaction the speaker (the old undertaker) makes a communicational failure by referring to
himself with the honorific term of address laohan [TD$INLE]
(‘this old man’), which is deferential but informal and semantically
implies that the speaker is older (and hence higher-ranking) than the addressee. Thus, he is threatened by the personnel of
the court and at last he refers to himself in a ‘proper’ way, by using the formal self-referring form of address xiaoren [TD$INLE]
(‘worthless person’), generally used by speakers who belong to the lower classes.
Although it occurs in a rather specific institutional context, this citation demonstrates that in historical Chinese language
users were meant to have some command of terms of address, independent of their social status. As mentioned above, this
was due to the fact that along with its social function, deferential communication was meant to implicitly serve the
separation of the lower and higher classes of society and thus maintain the hierarchical patriarchal social order. It should be
noted that here the word ‘class’ does not have any relationship with Marxist ideas: it is used in accordance with a Confucian
notion supposedly formed during the Han Dynasty. According to this notion, society is constituted by the so-called ‘Four
Classes’ (Si-min [TD$INLE]
): shi [TD$INLE] (‘Confucian scholar’), nong [TD$INLE] (‘peasant’), gong [TD$INLE] (‘artisan’) and shang [TD$INLE] (‘merchant’), shi being the
highest and shang the lowest in rank. Even though this is a simplistic and idealistic social description, it reflects the
hierarchical Confucian concept of society. Although according to the Confucian ideology moving between classes is possible,
it is necessary to maintain class-difference in order to have a peaceful and effective society. Considering this social
background it is logical that in extract (7) the old undertaker has to be forced to make a self-correction despite being polite in
a linguistic sense: according to the norms of historical Chinese politeness everyone must communicate in accordance with
her/his social role and thus maintain social order.
The fact that denigrating/elevating terms of address were regarded as (a) the basic forms of polite-deferential
communication, and (b) social tools to separate classes, also manifests itself in that every social class had different
inventories of terms of address. As discussed in Kádár (2005), members of low social classes and women had a small and
uniform lexicon of denigrating/elevating terms by means of which they referred to themselves and addressed each
other, while powerful and revered groups – i.e. members of the imperial family, officials of various rank and the
Buddhist/Taoist clergy – had a large and complex inventory of terms. In other words, terms of address ‘framed’
(Goffman, 1974) the speaker and the recipient as either ‘powerful’ or ‘powerless’. Further, they also functioned as
‘resources’ from a discursive perspective: interaction between higher classes necessitated the application of a wide
variety of terms of address, and the higher status a given person had the more sophisticated a set of address terms he
had to use in discourse.
Along with terms of address, there were more sophisticated historical forms to express elevation and denigration. On
a lexical level, elevation and denigration could also be conveyed through verbal forms, that is, verbs that denigrate the
speaker’s action and elevate that of the addressee. For example, baiye [TD$INL E]
(‘visiting a superior with prostration’) refers to
the speaker’s visit to the addressee, and vice versa for shangguang [TD$INL E]
(‘offering one’s brightness’). Besides verbs, there
were other ‘sophisticated’ lexical tools that could express elevating/denigrating meaning in certain contexts, even
though they did not have such a lexical meaning. The most typical example of such lexical items is the class of idiomatic
expressions: e.g. bi-xue-furen [TD$INLE]
(‘to act like a servant girl who tries to behave in a ladylike manner’) expresses a selfdenigrating meaning when it deferentially describes the relative inferiority of the speaker (see more in Kádár, 2010).
The use of the aforementioned ‘sophisticated’ forms of denigration/elevation required a thorough knowledge of Classical
Chinese literature, and therefore were accessible to the learned elite only.
Along with lexical forms, denigration/elevation also played an important role as a discursive politeness strategy in a Brown
and Levinsonian (1987) sense. For example, as the following letter written by the renowned epistolary expert Gong Weizhai [TD
$INLE]
(1738–1811) demonstrates, honorifics, other lexical items, and discursive strategies usually ‘interacted’ in the
expression of the polite-deferential elevating/denigrating message:
(8)
[TD$INLE]
To my nephew Wang Chengzhi
The men of ancient times wrote short letters of a few lines, and even their long epistles exceeded not a page; they
selected their words with skill and expressed themselves in a succinct manner. With a verbose and tedious style one
cannot achieve what Master Confucius called ‘‘concise and lucid writing’’. My humble self does not possess much
literary skill and cannot write in an appropriate manner: I can only express myself in a long-winded way and I know
not how to write in a succinct manner. Therefore, my writings are longer than letters should be, and their style fits not
the rules of the art, and so I would not even dare to call them letters. Nevertheless, I can do naught but call them so
when writing thus, although my ‘letters’ and those of the ancients are as different as the two women of the Eastern and
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Western villages of the Zhuluo Mountain were: both having the name Shi but the Western Shi being beautiful
whilst the Eastern Shi was ugly. Furthermore, my letters cannot be claimed to be adequate due to my inappropriate
style: even the Western Shi, who was beautiful could have not caught the eye of the High Official Fan if she had been
clothed in filthy rags – in fact, he might have stopped his nose when passing her. If you, sir, still wish to study my
letters in depth, I am afraid that you will not find any beauty in them and in reading them your sides will split with
laughter. (cited from Kádár, 2009)
Extract (8) exemplifies the aforementioned manifestation of elevation and denigration on several discursive levels. This
letter is written to the nephew of the author who has lower rank than the author due to age difference. The ‘central’
discursive message of the letter is the inappropriateness of the author’s letters compared with that of the ancients. This is
expressed by drawing an analogy between the relative quality of the author’s letters compared to those of the ancients and
the relative beauty of the so-called Western Shi (Xi Shi [TD$INLE]
) compared with the unattractive Eastern Shi (Dong Shi [TD$INLE]
), an
ancient anecdote from the Taoist Classic Zhuangzi [TD$INLE]
. And, along with this discursive strategy the author uses several
honorifics (e.g. the self-denigrating form of address pu [TD$INLE] , lit. ‘your servant’) and idioms, such as wanxia-wubi [TD$INLE]
(lit.
‘there is no [appropriate] brush [writing] under my wrist,’ i.e. ‘cannot write in an appropriate manner’). In sum, this citation
demonstrates that deferential elevation and denigration has manifested itself on both the lexical and discourse levels.
Furthermore, it also suggests that elevation/denigration, and so the command of politeness, was unequally distributed in
Chinese society: in order to exploit the possibilities of elevation/denigration as in the case of (8), the language user needed to
have a strong command of Classical Chinese culture.6 The complexity and unequal distribution of the elevation and
denigration phenomenon, together with the ‘framing’ nature of historical Chinese terms of address, made historical Chinese
politeness a tool for the conversation of the Confucian hierarchical social order.
2.2.2. Ungrammaticalized honorifics
Section 2.2.1 has demonstrated that the elevation/denigration phenomenon was interwoven with Confucian social
ideologies, which made late imperial Chinese politeness vulnerable to anti-Confucian colonial and post-colonial social changes.
Another characteristic that increased its vulnerability is its ungrammaticalized nature, which made it different from e.g.
Japanese and Korean politeness.7 While in Japanese (and Korean Lee, 1990; Kumatani, 1990) honorific forms and inflection are
profoundly built in as a well-defined subsystem of the grammar, the large historical Chinese honorific lexicon – due to the lack
of morphosyntactic changes – was not grammaticalized (see a considerably more detailed analysis in Pan and Kádár, 2011).
2.3. Summary
In the present section we have overviewed the ideology and practice of historical Chinese politeness, with special focus on
those features that made it vulnerable to the large scale anti-Confucian social change created by the colonization of China in
late imperial times. In what follows, let us focus on the other end of the diachronic development of Chinese politeness during
the 19th and the 20th centuries—that is, let us explore postcolonial (contemporary) Chinese politeness.
3. Politeness in contemporary China
The purpose of this section is to analyze linguistic politeness in different units of discourse, as well as its interpersonal
distribution, and define the way in which it differs from historical politeness. From a postcolonial perspective, the contemporary
period is the time when China became exempt from foreign imperialist and colonizing influence on a political level, and so the
examination of this era provides insight into the postcolonial state of Chinese politeness. Furthermore, the events that took place
during the Communist era were strongly motivated by the collective memory of the Chinese of the foreign invasion of China, and
in the political rhetoric of this time the colonizers and the traditional social elite were usually brought under the same umbrella.
Its impact on linguistic politeness was evidenced in the loss of honorifics that expressed hierarchical order between interlocutors
and the adoption of revolutionary vocabulary that expressed equality and camaraderie. Although this change took place over a
period of time of what we called ‘‘transitional period’’ (see Pan and Kádár, 2011), in this section we only focus our discussion on
the end product of this change, that is, practices of politeness in contemporary Chinese.
Before we describe the characteristics of contemporary Chinese politeness, it is necessary to provide a brief account of the
historical periods that we are going to cover in this section. We use the label ‘contemporary’ in this section instead of
‘modern’ because historically these terms describe two very different political and social systems: ‘modern China’ is a
collective term that may describe post-1911 Chinese history, while the notion of ‘contemporary China’ refers to the post1949 history of the country after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. In terms of political and social changes, the
contemporary era includes the following 3 periods:
1949–1969: Early Communist ruling period
1969–1979: Cultural Revolution
1979–present: China’s Open Policy and Reform era (economic reform and privatization)
6
7
This does not mean, however, that lesser educated people did not have simpler elevating/denigrating idioms and discursive strategies.
See more on the grammaticalization of Chinese honorifics, and their comparison with Japanese honorifics, in Peng (2000).
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These periods have their distinct ideologies that affected the development of linguistic politeness behavior. It is beyond the
scope of this paper to discuss the debates on ideological shift in contemporary China. What is interesting to note here is how
these waves in ideological standings affect the politeness norms and behavior to the point where contemporary Chinese
politeness has become seemingly inconsistent to some extent, and intricate and complex for researchers to attempt to
describe. It is, therefore, necessary to give a snapshot of contemporary Chinese ideologies that depart from the traditional
ones as a prelude to our description of contemporary Chinese politeness.
3.1. Ideologies for contemporary Chinese politeness
The Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong (1893–1976) seized political power in 1949. During the first period of
early Communist rule (1949–1969), the main task of the new Chinese government in terms of ideology was to establish a
new way of thinking and new social practice that embraced the idea of ‘equality’ in Communism. This is a transitional
period transferring the traditional (Neo-)Confucian ideology and other ideologies of the Republic of China to the
Communist ideology. As we noted earlier, the dominant ideology for politeness in imperial China was Confucianism, which
prescribed norms for proper communication through the linguistic means of self-denigration and other-elevation. The key
concept for politeness in (Neo-)Confucian ideology is the acknowledgement of hierarchical order between social members.
After the Chinese Communist Party established power in China in 1949, it launched a series of political campaigns or
societal reforms to instill a new ideology of equality among social classes, thus directly challenging the traditional (Neo-)
Confucian ideology.
During the second period of 1969–1979, which is known as the ‘Cultural Revolution’ period, the Communist ideology can
be considered at its most radical and extreme peak. The Cultural Revolution was launched in 1969 by Mao Zedong, Chairman
of the Communist Party from 1949 to 1976, as a political and ideological campaign to denounce Chinese tradition and
culture, as well as to get rid of his political opponents. During this period, (Neo-)Confucian ideology and traditional Chinese
norms of politeness behavior were demolished. The following renowned passage from Mao Zedong clearly shows why
conventional polite expressions were pushed out of use in Chinese communication:
(9)
[TD$INLE]
[TD$INLE]
([TD$INLE]
)8
Revolution is not entertaining guests or having dinner parties. It is not writing a paper, nor is it working on a
painting or embroidery. It cannot be done in a refined, calm and composed manner. It cannot be done in a cultured
and polite way. Nor can it be done in a temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous fashion.
Revolution is a rebellion. It is a violent action by one social class against another social class.
(Mao Zedong: Report on Investigating Hunan Peasants’ Movement, March 1927)
This passage from Mao Zedong denounced various aspects of the traditional Chinese cultural view on polite behavior, such as
being refined, kind, courteous, and restrained. This quote was chanted as a slogan by Red Guards9 during the Cultural
Revolution as they raided ordinary households one after another in order to get rid of the ‘Four Olds’ (Si-jiu [TD$INLE]
), which
include ‘old thinking, old customs, old culture, old tradition’ (jiu sixiang, jiu xiguan, jiu wenhua, jiu chuantong [TD$INLE]
[TD
$INLE]
). Household items, artifacts, books, paintings that fell into these four categories were destroyed by the
Red Guards. Along with the removal of the ‘four olds’, gone are the conventional polite expressions, as they represent old
customs and tradition.
The economic reform era of 1979 to the present has witnessed a wave of new ideologies and new practices rushing into China
from the ‘West’, and at the same time, a restoration of traditional practices as well as a yearning for the revival of (Neo-)
Confucian ideology. After 10 years of its isolationist policies and practices towards the external economy adopted during
the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party implemented the so-called ‘Open Policy’ in 1979 to reform China’s
centrally planned economy by introducing foreign trade, foreign investment, and a market economy to China. With the
arrival of foreign trade and foreign capital, there rushed in countless foreign goods and practices, McDonald’s, and Karaoke
bars. Transition in social practices leads to ideological shift. Disillusionment amongst the Chinese, especially the younger
generation, with the Communist ideology has left ‘‘an ideological vacuum which the Party has been slow to fill. In the meantime
the youth have turned towards music, dance, religion and materialism.’’ (Howell, 1993:251). This is the period in which the old,
the new, the Chinese, and the Western ideologies are all present and competing. This shift in ideology has a huge impact on
Chinese politeness behavior and the use of linguistic politeness in social interaction; however, historical Chinese politeness has
not been revived in its original state and contemporary politeness continues to be largely different from its historical
counterpart.
8
Two Chinese writing systems (traditional and simplified Chinese) are used in this paper with the purpose of representing both historical and
contemporary Chinese.
9
Red Guards were civilians, mostly students and other young people, who were mobilized by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution.
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3.2. Politeness practice in contemporary China
Having laid out the landscape of postcolonial ideological change in contemporary China, we are now turning to politeness
practices since 1949 and compare it with historical politeness. It should be noted that although the system of Chinese
address terms is part of the Chinese lexicon, it has its own unique characteristics and retains a special place in Chinese
politeness. It embraces the concept of self-denigration and other-elevation in traditional Chinese. Therefore we will deal
with it separately before discussing lexical and syntactic issues on a more general level.
3.2.1. Terms of address
The system of terms of address in contemporary Chinese has seen the most drastic change after the People’s Republic of
China was founded in 1949: the elaborate historical Chinese system of honorifics and the denigration and elevation terms of
address collapsed within a short period of time, and was replaced by a single, uniform, and unisex term of address tongzhi [TD$INLE]
(‘comrade’).10 Historically, the Chinese Communist Party adopted this term of address in order to express its association with
the Soviet Communists; during pre-1949 times, this term had been used within the Communist Party and the Communistled military forces, but it was never used at a societal level as a common term of address. It gained ‘popularity’ between the
1950s and the 1970s and was gradually made the official term of address in formal and official occasions, as well as a
common term of address in social settings.
From a sociolinguistic point of view, tongzhi has various ideological and social as well as politeness implications. Its
ideological and social implications are in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s egalitarian ideals of the ‘new’ social order
and promotion of equality among its members in particular, and society in general. In terms of politeness implications, this
term of address appeals to the ‘positive face’ of the hearer and focuses on the claim of solidarity. The introduction of this new
term of address signals the demolition of the long-held tradition of the hierarchical system of terms of address, which
presupposed some interpersonal distance and difference in rank even when appealing to positive face.11
With tongzhi as an overarching term of address for most social occasions, there appeared a variety of sub-system terms of
address that were used to satisfy different socio-pragmatic requirements. One such requirement is the acknowledgement of
hierarchical structure (power) that has long existed in China. The second requirement is the need for acknowledgement of
solidarity or familiarity among group members or between the speaker and the hearer. According to Scotton and Zhu
(1983:484–485), there is a variety of usage for tongzhi:
Tongzhi (title alone): ‘comrade’
Wang tongzhi (surname + title): ‘Comrade Wang’
Wang Weiguo tongzhi (full name + title): ‘Comrade Wang Weiguo’
Zhuren tongzhi (two titles): ‘Comrade Director’
It is also possible to use tongzhi with a first name, especially from superior to inferior or between people of equal standing in
formal letters as a sign of closeness. When power difference12 is present, the hierarchy structure is signaled through other
linguistic devices. One common way to do this is adding a prefix before a surname to indicate age difference, as in the case of
the following two examples:
Lao-Zhang tongzhi ]NELID$[T
Xiao-Li tongzhi ]NELID$[T
(‘Old Comrade Zhang’)
(‘Little Comrade Li’).
Notice here that in China, seniority in age is respected and is one-step higher in the hierarchical structure in a dyadic
interaction. Therefore, the first one is a deferential term showing respect to the addressee, while the second is a term of
endearment to show benevolence from someone in a position higher than that of the addressee.
Since tongzhi denoted a revolutionary tone, after 1979 (the onset of China’s market-oriented reforms) the status of this term
has gradually decreased, and the term itself has been falling out of daily usage,13 although it remains in use as a respectful term
of public address among middle-aged Chinese and members of the Communist Party of China. Within the Communist Party,
failure to address a fellow member as tongzhi is still seen as a subtle but unmistakable sign of disrespect and enmity.
With the decline of tongzhi job title has become another common way to indicate power difference in official ranking,
such as Li juzhang [TD$INLE]
(‘Bureau Chief Li’) and Li laoshi [TD$INLE]
(‘Teacher Li’). More precisely, job titles were reintroduced
10
It should be noted that previously this term was not the ‘property’ of the Communists: the Kuomintang [TD$INLE]
(‘Nationalist Party’) also had a tradition of
using it in order to refer to its members, usually as a noun rather than a title. But the Nationalist Party later abandoned it, in order to distance themselves
from the Communists.
11
For example, huixiong [TD$INLE]
(lit. ‘wise elder brother’) appeals to the addressee’s positive face but it also presupposes some difference in rank between the
interactants, due to the fact that an elder brother is higher ranking than the younger. Similarly, forms such as laodi [TD$INLE]
(‘older younger-brother’) appeal to
the addressee’s positive face and social rank but also implicitly convey that the speaker is somewhat higher-ranking than the recipient, at least on the basis
of age difference.
12
The power difference can be attributed to age, rank, or social status.
13
In fact, as Yuan (2004) demonstrates, it is possible that tongzhi’s decline started even before this time: during the civil war-like state during the ‘Cultural
Revolution’ it became dangerous to be associated with others as ‘comrades’ due to the fact that political power frequently changed amongst political groups.
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because this way of addressing was not only popular during Republican times but also had historical Chinese roots. In
contemporary times, the use of job title as a term of address was first confined to the workplace, in particular, governmental
organizations or official settings, sometimes together with tongzhi prior to the 1980s. On the surface, job title as a term of
address does not connote power differentiation. However, in a culture that traditionally categorized trades and professions
in a social hierarchical scale, what someone does for living places that person in a murky system of hierarchy.
When solidarity and familiarity are strong, there are a number of forms that can be used in contemporary Chinese. One
common usage is the kinship terms such as da-ge [TD$INLE]
(‘big brother’). Kinship terms can be used in all social interactions to
signal solidarity and familiarity or as a politeness strategy to claim closeness. For example, in Pan’s studies (Pan, 1995,
2000b), she found that the kinship term a-sao [TD$INLE]
(‘sister-in-law’) was used strategically by sales persons in privately owned
stores in South China to claim familiarity with the customer as a way to show politeness and to persuade the customer. It
should be noted that the class of kinship terms is perhaps the most ‘conservative’ in the category of terms of address, that is,
many of the historical forms of kin address were preserved in modern Chinese. In fact, familiar forms of address have a long
history in Chinese (see Lin, 1998) and they have been thoroughly studied by historical Chinese philologists (see Kádár, 2007).
Their importance continued into modern times and also after the Communist takeover, due to the fact that while the
Communist leadership aimed to reform family life, family continued and continues to be the perhaps most traditional social
unit (cf. Freedman, 1958). Yet, even the familiar lexicon was not preserved intact. Firstly, the number of familiar forms of
address critically decreased, partly because the size of families also decreased. Furthermore, the traditionally complex
system of family honorifics largely disappeared from the colloquial: historically, speakers had to use different forms of
address when referring to their or the addressee’s inmates, and also there were gender-specific ways of referring to family
members, for example, a wife had to use a specific honorific lexicon towards the members of her husband’s family and vice
versa for the husband (Yuan, 1994/2004). Although some elements of the historical system remain, e.g. it is still a custom to
politely refer to one speech partner’s father as fuqin [TD$INLE]
(lit. ‘father relative’) and not simply by using the ‘in-family form’ baba
[TD$INLE]
(‘father’), such lexical items are few in number. Secondly, many of the denigrating/elevating familiar forms of address
disappeared from the colloquial, in particular self-denigrating familiar forms became unusual: for example, it would be
anachronistic to refer to one’s own son in a denigrating way as xiaoquan [TD$INLE]
(lit. ‘small dog’) in modern times.
In sum, contemporary Chinese terms of address differ from their historical counterparts: they are less explicitly
hierarchical on the semantic level, even though they can be used to maintain hierarchy. Also, in a certain respect their proper
use necessitates a more complex undertaking than that was required by historical terms of address, which were designed to
acknowledge social power: the contemporary Chinese speaker must find the proper form of address through utilization of
various and not explicitly-settled sociopragmatic norms. In fact, some of the traditional terms of address re-appeared in
Chinese communication during the reform period from 1979 to the present. For example, the traditional way of addressing
males as xiansheng [TD$INLE]
(‘Mr.’) and females as xiaojie [TD$INLE]
(‘Miss’) regained popularity in the 1980s due to an upsurge in contact
with overseas business people. However, these terms do not express elevation, unlike in historical texts, and also such forms
are small in number. Furthermore, self-denigrating honorifics have largely disappeared from colloquial language, as we can
also see in the case of familiar forms of address.
3.2.2. Conventional politeness expressions at lexical and syntactic level
As we already discussed in section 2, in historical China self-denigration/other elevation not only manifested itself in
address terms but also in other lexical items and conventional polite expressions. One phenomenon worth noting is that
Chinese politeness is traditionally represented mainly by lexical items. Unlike many ‘Western’ languages where politeness
can be indicated by a change in syntactic structure, such as the use of question format or various conventional indirectness
formats, historical Chinese politeness utilized its elaborate honorific lexical items to signal politeness appropriate to the
hierarchical structure between the interlocutors. Conventional politeness in Chinese is more often observed at the lexical
level than the syntactic. Empirical studies on Chinese indirectness (Zhang, 1995) show that ‘‘rules operating on the
directness-indirectness distinction were different in English and Chinese’’ (p. 82). While English indirectness is manifested at
the syntactic level, the representation of Chinese indirectness occurs at the discourse level, realized either by small talk or
supportive moves. Another observation made by Zhang (1995) is that Chinese indirectness is often associated with
information sequencing, which was also supported by Scollon and Scollon’s (1991:115) description of topic instruction in
Asian cultures. That is, ‘‘the Chinese and other Asians generally defer the introduction of the topic until after a considerable
period of small talk.’’ They labeled this speech behavior as the ‘‘inductive pattern of topic introduction’’, as opposed to the
‘‘deductive pattern of topic introduction’’ (Scollon and Scollon, 1995:75). This speech pattern and indirectness rules in
Chinese point to the fact that polite lexicon and discursive strategies play a more crucial role in Chinese politeness than
differing syntactic structuring of an indirect sentence.
Keeping in mind the richness and importance of polite lexicon in Chinese politeness phenomenon, let us now consider the
change and loss of many of the polite lexical expressions and the impact on Chinese politeness behavior. With the change in
political system and social order in 1949, there erupted massive changes in linguistic politeness. There were some dominant
forces influencing language use change in the Communist era (Chi, 1956): a desire for progression to transform the ‘old
China’ into a ‘new China’; a functional purpose—‘‘the natural pressure for new terms and expressions brought forth by new
political and social needs’’ (Chi, 1956:12); and the mobilization of the ‘voice of the masses’, which at least as the Communists
claimed had previously been unheard. The use of traditional polite lexicon was thus seen as a reflection or reminder of ‘old
China’. Thus, the extensive traditional honorific lexicon was dropped. Furthermore, even conventional polite expressions such
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as qing ]NELID$[T (‘please’), xiexie ]NELID$[T
(‘thank you’), and duibuqi E]INL$TD[
(‘sorry’) were seen as indicative of ‘old China’ and were reserved for
use in very formal communication or in writing only, and for daily interaction it was regarded as old-fashioned or even petit
bourgeois to use them. As a result ‘common speech’, that is, speech style that the Communist rulers of the country interpreted as
the style of the ‘masses’ (workers, peasants, soldier and students), was held as the standard. From a sociolinguistic point of view,
so-called ‘common speech’ should not be viewed as less polite or less effective, as language use does vary by social classes and
groups (see Labov’s, 1972 authoritative work on this theme). What is interesting in the Chinese case is that ‘common speech’ is a
term equivalent to speech that employs lexical items with strong revolutionary flavor, suggestive of the communist ideology.
This trend of the Communist policy of language use embraced the idea of the deliberate manipulation of the language to carry
out ‘psychological warfare’. As Chi (1956:23–25) notes, this includes among other things the usage of:
‘‘militant vocabulary’’ applied to everyday usage, and
‘‘extravagant terms both in praise and blame’’ (grandiosity).
During the 1980s this tendency was changed, and militant language use has gradually disappeared from colloquial
language. However, Chinese remained exempt from polite formulas, not mentioning the historical honorific lexicon, and
such formulas occur mainly in the speech of the ‘powerless’ party in a discourse interaction. One example to illustrate this is
service encounter interactions. A service encounter is an interaction in the public domain, with a person (customer)
requesting a service, and another person (service person) rendering a service. This kind of social interaction normally
consists of a request for a business transaction or service, and entails the use of ritual politeness in American and British
English speaking cultures, including opening remarks (e.g. ‘Can I help you?’) and pre-closing and closing remarks (e.g. ‘Thank
you’) rendered by the service person as well as the customer (Merritt, 1976, 1984). Linguistic politeness is applied in service
encounters as a means of smoothing the process of business transaction and social interaction between two strangers.
However, the empirical studies of Pan (1997, 2000a,b) and Sun (2005, 2008) demonstrate that ritual greetings between the
service person and the customer, pre-closing remarks of thanks, and closing remarks are frequently missing in Chinese
service encounter interactions, particularly in state-run businesses (although recently this situation has somewhat
changed). If politeness occurs between the customer and the service person, it is unreciprocated – more precisely it is the
customer who tends to make an effort to employ politeness strategies in the interaction. Sun attributes the asymmetrical use
of politeness to the institutional power that the service person has in such an interaction. In other words, in contemporary
China the person who has power tends to avoid the use of polite formulas (see more in section 3.2.4).
In sum, in a way similar to the terms of address in section 3.2.1, there is a major difference between historical and
contemporary Chinese politeness on the level of other lexical items: historical Chinese honorifics, together with polite
formulas, have disappeared from colloquial Chinese. Although politeness markers occur in cases, they are limited to the
speech of the ‘powerless’ parties in institutional interactions.
3.2.3. Politeness at discourse level
The diminishing and gradual disappearance of honorifics and other polite lexical items boosted the application of
discursive strategies in interactions to indicate politeness. This aspect of politeness communication became the most
important means of conveying politeness, particularly in informal situations and daily interactions. This phenomenon is in
line with Goffman’s view that deference and tact have a sociological significance altogether beyond the level of table
manners and etiquette books (Goffman, 1971:90) and Brown and Levinson’s original view that politeness concerns the
foundations of human social life and interaction (Brown and Levinson, 1987:1). In other words, in spite of the destruction of
the traditional politeness system in Chinese, interpersonal interaction still requires some form of politeness to meet the
sociopragmatic requirements of power and distance. Social interactions still need some form of linguistic strategy to
regulate the relationship between the speaker and the addressee. The shift from honorifics and lexical politeness to
discursive strategies is a response to the change in Chinese society at the time on the one hand, and on the other hand, an
attempt to meet the requirements of social interaction. It should be noted that we do not intend to suggest that in historical
Chinese discursive strategies did not exist, but rather that they co-existed with honorifics and so even if they were
important they were not as salient as in modern times. In fact, the prominent role of strategies can be well-observed in the
historical letter cited above (cf. extract 8), but, to provide a dialogical example, it is pertinent to cite again the following
sentence from (7):
]NELID$[T
Your honor today have what order? (literal translation)
How can I serve Your Honor?
In this sentence situated in a courtroom, the old undertaker makes use of the question form, along with using the honorific
form of address taiye [TD$INLE]
(‘your honour’) and also he strategically speaks about the recipient’s ‘order’ (fenfu [TD$INLE]
) instead of e.
g. ‘request’ (yaoqiu [TD$INLE]
), in order to strategically express deference towards the magistrate.
Some of the most frequently used Chinese discursive strategies include question-answer pattern, topic control, speaking
turns, small talk, code-switching, joking tone, bantering, irony, teasing, or mockery. These strategies are used, in place of
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traditional honorifics or lexical politeness, to achieve the interactional goal and the sociological factors of power and distance
identified in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness model.
An example of such strategies is small talk, which has a significant role in discursive politeness in Chinese face-to-face
interaction. Zhang (1995) noticed that small talk (e.g., conversation on topics other than those related to the intended action)
is a central component of Chinese indirectness when redressing a ‘face-threatening act’ such as a request. Small talk even
became part of the ritual greetings in daily life. For example, expressions like Chi le ma? [TD$INLE]
? (‘Have you eaten?’, i.e. ‘How
are you?’) and [TD$INLE]
[TD$INLE]
Ni qu nar? (‘Where have you been?’) were used as a greeting between acquaintances in
contemporary Chinese up to the reform period. These phatic expressions originally functioned as ‘small talk’ and gradually
became ritualized in social interaction.
Another example to summarize how discursive politeness takes precedence over lexical politeness in contemporary
Chinese comes from Pan’s study (Pan et al., 2002) on a consultation with an American telecommunications company. The
consultation was on monitoring the professionalism and politeness of the company’s Chinese-speaking sales
representatives. The training manager of the telecommunications company was trying to get their Chinese-speaking
sales representatives to use politeness markers such as the equivalents of English ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ when making sales
pitches. The sales representatives were given a Chinese script translated from the English, and they were rated on a scale of
0–3 based on whether they used these politeness markers at every possible point in the conversation where it would be
appropriate in American English. They got 3 points if they did this in a ‘natural’ manner. During the 3 days of performance
evaluation, 10 Chinese-speaking sales representatives were monitored. Of these 10 people, 9 got 0 points for politeness level
because they failed to use ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ in their conversation with Chinese customers. Only one person got 1 point
out of 3 for this item. As a result they all failed in their performance evaluation because their politeness level was not up to
the company’s standards. However, the calls monitored were polite by Chinese standards, and most of the sales
representatives succeeded in signing up their customers for the company’s service. This example demonstrates that it is not
natural to use conventional expressions in contemporary Chinese conversations. These terms are reserved mostly for use in
very formal occasions because they sound too formal to the extent that they create a large social distance between the 2
speakers. If sales representatives were to use these polite terms excessively in their conversation with customers, they would
sound ‘fishy’ and could give the impression that they were setting up a trap to get customers to buy a service. So in spite of the
rigid training, the Chinese-speaking sales representatives still refused to use them, and instead they applied other
expressions that were commonly found in contemporary Chinese communication, including repetition of verbs, adjective
phrases, tag questions, small talk, tone of voice, intonation, rate of speech, and even pauses. This example shows that the use
of conventional polite expressions or polite lexicon is associated with formality and asymmetrical power relationships. As a
result, its usage entails other negative meanings or associations, such as distancing, fakeness, pretentiousness, or aloofness.
3.2.4. Asymmetrical use of politeness
Along with the manifestation of politeness at the different levels of discourse, another domain where the contemporary
differs from the historical is the interpersonal distribution of politeness. The analysis of this issue demonstrates that the
demolition of the Chinese linguistic honorific system did not lead to a fundamental change in the ideological view regarding
hierarchy. The traditional hierarchical structure was simply replaced by a new hierarchical view of linguistic interactions.
Therefore discursive tools are applied in contemporary social interactions to satisfy the socio-pragmatic requirements of
acknowledgement of power differences and social distance.
Scollon and Scollon ([1995] 2001) were among the first group of scholars to point out a unique characteristic of Chinese
politeness, i.e. the asymmetrical use of politeness strategies between the interlocutors, which they define as the
‘hierarchical’ politeness system. That is, there is always some kind of hierarchical order between two speakers in
contemporary Chinese interactions, in a similar way to the historical setting (Kádár, 2007). The hierarchy can be based on
rank, age, gender, social status. The person in the higher position of the hierarchical order uses one set of politeness strategies
(usually ‘positive politeness’ or ‘involvement strategies’), and the person in the lower position uses another set of politeness
strategies (usually ‘negative politeness’ or ‘independence strategies’). This hierarchical politeness system is based on the
recognition of and respect for social differences that place one in a super-ordinate position and the other in a subordinate
position (Scollon and Scollon, 2001:55).
An interesting outcome of empirical studies of contemporary Chinese interactions is that the asymmetrical power relation
also leads to the lack of politeness on the part of an interlocutor who is in a super-ordinate position. This has systematic
differences from historical Chinese politeness or the ‘hierarchical politeness system’ as described by Scollon and Scollon. In
historical Chinese politeness or the hierarchical politeness system, both parties would be more likely to use different
politeness expressions, not the lack of politeness, for the sake of ritual self-display and, alternatively, to acknowledge their
interpersonal relationship (see Pan and Kádár, 2011). For example, as Kádár (2008) argues, even in the rather hierarchical
historical courtroom settings the magistrates were institutionally obliged to use honorifics in order to avoid being looked upon
as ‘oppressive officials’ by the public. But in contemporary Chinese politeness communication, the lack of politeness is often
observed in the speech of the ‘powerful’ (i.e., the person higher in the hierarchy) and in that the use of conventional polite
expressions is associated with the ‘powerless,’ i.e. the person lower in the hierarchy (see Pan, 1995, 2000a,b; Sun, 2008).
For example, Sun (2008) demonstrates that when the service person is associated with an institution and thus is
perceived as more ‘powerful,’ there is a tendency for them to simply use a ‘bald on-record’ strategy and the customer tends to
use more polite expressions in getting the service. Pan’s studies (Pan, 1995, 2000a,b) show that this phenomenon is widely
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observed across the social settings of official and business meetings, family gatherings, and service encounters. A more
recent study conducted by Pan et al. (2006) has reconfirmed this finding. In that project, Pan and her colleagues interviewed
24 recent Chinese immigrants residing in the United States on their perception of translated documents issued by the United
States Census Bureau. We asked our Chinese-speaking respondents to review a survey letter signed by the U.S. Census
Bureau director. The first paragraph of the letter states:
Dear Resident:
The U.S. Census Bureau is conducting the American Community Survey. A Census Bureau representative will contact
you to help you complete the survey. I would appreciate your help, because the success of this survey depends on you.
From interviews with recent Chinese immigrants and debriefing sessions with Chinese language experts from the research
team who conducted the interviews, the research team found that the Chinese respondents commented that the letter was
written in an overtly polite tone because the director of a government agency would never thank the people, nor show open
appreciation to the people. This finding illustrates that politeness is related to the perceived power relation. In a way, the use of
traditional polite expressions is a symbol of the ‘powerless’ – to be used to plead for something. Thus it is not a very desirable
thing to employ linguistic politeness in social interaction. In other words, contemporary Chinese ‘politeness’ communication is
a one-way street: there is an obvious lack of politeness on the part of the ‘powerful’ in many settings. The conventional polite
lexicon or expressions are used by the ‘powerless’ or are reserved for very formal occasions. Thus they can function to distance or
classify speakers. This phenomenon of asymmetrical use of politeness can be puzzling to many who view politeness as a twoway street, and it makes contemporary Chinese politeness different from its historical counterpart.
The examination of the differences between contemporary and historical politeness in section 3 has demonstrated the
impact of sociopragmatic diachronic changes that took place between the colonization of China and contemporary times. In
what follows, let us briefly conclude this paper.
4. Conclusion
The present paper has contributed to politeness research and postcolonial pragmatic studies by looking into the major
gap that exists between historical and contemporary Chinese politeness. It can be argued that this unprecedented large-scale
diachronic change was generated primarily by the foreign invasion of the country during the 1840s and the following few
decades, which has directly influenced the history of the country until the second half of the 1940s, but indirectly continued
to influence Communist thinking and rhetoric. In fact, we can only show indirect evidence for the influence of the foreign
invasion and partial colonization of the country, due to limitation on space, that is, the existence of a gap between historical
and contemporary Chinese politeness. Nevertheless, the existence of this gap and the coincidence of the birth of this gap with
the time when China was first invaded by Western powers seem to us to confirm the conclusion that the phenomena studied
fits into postcolonial theorizations. With this in mind, it can be claimed that the large-scale changes in politeness norms and
practice, which have been explored by the present work, represent a noteworthy example of the influence of colonization on
native cultures and languages.
The present work has also contributed to politeness research by demonstrating that although the practice of politeness
has been changed in modern China, one cannot claim that the collapse of the historical practice actually meant the
disappearance or simplification of Chinese politeness. In fact, from some perspectives modern Chinese politeness can even
be claimed to be more complex than its historical counterpart. Although we did not have enough space to analyze this issue,
it should be mentioned here that this replacement of the ‘old’ system with a similarly complex ‘new’ one does not mean that
the changes lead to functionally equivalent systems. Consequently, historical and contemporary emic interpretations of
‘politeness’ differ considerably. For example, modern terms of address that express positive politeness through emphasizing
equality and in-group relationship between speaker and addressee, such as pengyou [TD$INLE] [TD$INLE] (‘friend’), might not have been
evaluated as ‘polite’ in historical interactions necessitating politeness.
In fact, this paper has a limited scope and many issues that would be relevant from the perspective of postcolonial
pragmatics have remained untouched. Among these issues perhaps the most important is the in-depth analysis of the
influence of the colonization on native Chinese ideals of politeness. Another issue is the comparison of Chinese politeness
norms, as well as the evaluation of certain manifestations of ‘politeness’, across social sub-groups. Such issues are studied in
Pan and Kádár (2011).
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous referees of this paper for their invaluable comments. We also
owe a great deal of gratitude to Eric A. Anchimbe for his continuous support. Our gratitude goes to Ben Mousley for checking
the style of the paper. All the remaining errors rest with the authors.
This research used some data that came out of a project funded by the U.S. Census Bureau, for which Yuling Pan is deeply
grateful. However, the views expressed in the paper are that of the author and do not reflect those of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Dániel Z. Kádár would like to express his gratitude to the following two organizations for their kind support: The
Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (‘OTKA’), whose Post-doctoral Research Grant (PD 71628) made it possible for him to
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devote his time to the research of Chinese politeness; and The Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly
Exchange (CCKF), Taiwan, whose long-term Research Grant (RG003-U-07) provided the necessary financial backing for
fieldtrips and book acquisitions.
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Yuling Pan is a Sociolinguist at the U.S. Census Bureau, where she leads the Language and Measurement Research Group. Her research interests include linguistic
politeness, intercultural communication, discourse analysis, cross-cultural pragmatics, and multilingual survey research. She has published widely in the field of
sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication, and survey methods research. Her publications include Politeness in Chinese Face-to-Face Interaction (Ablex, 2000),
Professional Communication in International Settings (co-authored with Suzanne Scollon and Ron Scollon, Blackwell, 2002), Politeness in Historical and Contemporary
Chinese (co-authored with Dániel Z. Kádár, Continuum, 2010), Chinese Discourse and Interaction: Theory and Practice (co-edited with Dániel Z. Kádár, Equinox,
2011).
Dániel Z. Kádár is a Research Fellow at Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His fields of interest include linguistic
(im)politeness (with focus on East Asia), discourse analysis, historical and contemporary sociopragmatics, and Chinese letter writing. His recent publications
include volumes such as Politeness in East Asia (co-edited with Sara Mills, CUP), Historical Chinese Letter Writing (Continuum), Politeness across Cultures (co-edited
with Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, Palgrave Macmillan), Politeness in China and Japan (co-written with Michael Haugh, John Benjamins), and Politeness in Historical
and Contemporary Chinese (co-written with Yuling Pan, Continuum), as well as papers in different journals of international standing such as Journal of Politeness
Research.

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