Chapter II - Literature Review

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1       INTRODUCTION

Literature review provides readers grasps of the past research done pertaining to the area of the research and to identify remaining gaps in the respective area of research. In this chapter, the researcher will briefly discuss on the theories, past studies, and related conceptual frameworks within the past studies’ review, and also a few models which can be used and are related to the area of (im)politeness the researcher is proposing for this study. 

2.2       THEORIES

2.2.1    THEORY OF POLITENESS

Theory of politeness has been first developed by these pioneers: Brown and Levinson   (1978, 1987) which has significantly been the basis of the new area of sociolinguistics at that time. It is later on developed and extended by other researchers to ‘fill’ in the other aspects unveiled in the earlier version of this theory. Dalton (2013: p.3) claims that this theory is a “robust system that attempts to categorize and predict speech acts and responses typified by Western (primarily English-speaking) societies’ dyads”. He has further discussed that this theory was initially developed to analyze the linguistics universality which is the cross-cultural and cross-linguistics communication corpuses which comprised of and related to a few aspects: “social hierarchy, social distances, and relative forms of imposition have upon the linguistic devices speakers make use of” in relation with the ‘face’ notion of maintenance. In this theory, there are two distinctive types of face which are introduced by these respective pioneers, Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987). The types are:

1. Negative Face:  the want of every competent adult member that his/her actions be unimpeded by others.
2. Positive Face:  the want of every member that his/her wants be desirable to at least some others.

(Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987 in Dalton 2013: p. 4)

Of a few essences in the theory of politeness, intention is one of the most vital indicators which contribute to the politeness occurrences in context.

2.2.2    THEORY OF IMPOLITENESS 

This theory of impoliteness is derived (adapted and adopted) from the theory of politeness, championed by Culpeper (1996) and other scholars such as Mills (2003). It is of crucial to expand the basis of the first theory developed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) which is the theory of politeness, so that the elements analyzed in the impoliteness studies do adhere and counterbalance to the original theory of politeness. Bousefield (2008 in Dalton, 2013) acknowledges that impoliteness “is very much the parasite of politeness” (2008, p. 43). There are 5 points which are reflecting on the politeness theory especially in the use of ‘face’ concept, but are more extended in impoliteness area by Culpeper which are:

1. Bald on Record Impoliteness: A specific and outright attack or intent to cause face damage toward the hearer.

2. Positive Impoliteness: The use of FTAs to attack or cause damage to the hearer’s positive face wants or desires to be accepted. 

3. Negative Impoliteness: The use of FTA’s to attack or damage the hearer’s negative wants value.

4. Off Record Impoliteness:  These impoliteness FTA’s are “conveyed indirectly” and are able to be cancelled should the need arise

5. Withhold Politeness: The deliberate refusal (or silent refusal) to employ a politeness strategy when context or the hearer typically would expect such.

(Bousfield 2008, p. 92-93 in Dalton, 2013) 

According to Dalton (2013) who favours Bousfield’s works on impoliteness, his take on the impoliteness theory, after his thorough analysis on Culpeper’s work, is that, Bousfield’s system of impoliteness is well-detailed, and is more succinct than Culpeper’s model. He is able to address some minor redundancies found in Culpeper’s treatment of face and FTAs. He further added that, Bousfield’s reinterpretation of Culpeper’s work has the benefit of “being successfully applied to extended conflictive discourses” (Dalton, 2013: p. 16).

            Significant point about the theory of impoliteness is the intention of the speaker (or author) to ‘offend’ (threaten/damage face) must be understood by those in the receiver role (p. 17). A series of four impoliteness distinctions that further elaborate upon speaker intentionality and hearer interpretation have been established are:

1. If the Speaker (or someone in the producer role) intends face-damage and the Hearer (or someone in a receiver role) perceives the Speaker’s (Producer’s) intention to damage face… then impoliteness is successfully conveyed.

2. If the Speaker/Producer intends face damage but the Hearer/Receiver fails to perceive the speaker’s intent/any face-damage, then the attempt at impoliteness fails.

3. If the Speaker/Producer does not intent face-damage but the Hearer/Receiver fails to perceive the speaker’s intent/Producer’s utterance as being intentionally face- damaging then this could be Accidental face-damage, which could be caused by one or more of the following: Rudeness; Insensitivity; Hypersensitivity; a clash of expectations; a cultural misunderstanding; misidentification of the Community of Practice or the Activity Type in which they are engaged; some combination of these, or some other hitherto unidentified means of inadvertently causing offense or of perceiving offense when none was intended.  

4. If the Speaker/Producer does not intend face-damage but the Hearer/Receiver constructs the Speaker’s/Producer’s utterance as being unintentionally face damaging then this could be one of the following: Incidental or Accidental face-damage… which could be caused by one, or more of the following: Rudeness; Insensitivity; Hypersensitivity; a clash of expectations; a cultural misunderstanding; misidentification of the Community of Practice or Activity Type in which they are engaged; some combination of these, or some hitherto unidentified means of inadvertently causing offense or of perceiving offense when none was intended   (p.72- 73.

(Dalton, 2013: p. 16-17)

Significant points on impoliteness theory which have been critically discussed by the scholars such as Culpeper and Dalton (2013) can be used in this study to analyze the data later.

2.3       DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

2.3.1    PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE

Persuasive language is being used in many aspects nowadays. It is usually used in the advertisements where there are products promoted, its functions, the strengths and the images used are manipulated and exposed the best as they can. This persuasive language is also used in the text will gives impacts to the attitude or behaviour of someone when they see, listen or read it. Better yet of it, it gives positive impacts to the audience. The audience will think about what they have heard, seen or even read, in this context. 

            The audience will think what they have read, seen, or listened and consider what action they should take, either do something about it or just ignore it. From here, it can be seen the language used is effective or not effective at all to the audience. This thus can be shown by this discussion,

First, people may consider affect when they are unable or unwilling to process more complex information, such as the arguments contained in the persuasive message. In addition, people with low motivation and ability may fail to determine that their extraneous affective reactions are irrelevant to the judgment they are about to make, and, consequently, affect may have an influence.

(Petty & Wegener, 1999 Albarracı´n & Kumkale, 2002 )

This discussion brings to the ultimate action taken when of the audience are given a space for them to think and decide and have enough motivation to take an action about the message that is being delivered to the audience. Thus, the persuasive language plays crucial roles in order for it to successfully apply in the text itself.

            In this article, it is mentioned by the researchers that the readers, in this context, favor to a strong argument or statement shown in the text than the weaker argument because it has an “extraneous affect” that influencing on behaviour of one. Percentages are shown as such: 73% vs. 54%” (Albarracı´n & Kumkale, 2002).

            On this discussion for this paper, entitled “Language used in Health Awareness Campaigns”, the persuasive language is strongly recommended as the best way to be used as to give the impacts towards the self of audience and to achieve the expected goals or purported aims. In terms of language bias, the persuasive language used is not bias on any particular party or what. It can be used to analyzed the language used in the text or media, and can be related to the target audience in that particular readers of that particular text or media. It is purported to deliver the important message and information to the audience to create awareness that there are such diseases in the time.

One of the focuses of this paper is to show that persuasive language used is divided into two arguments, the strong and weaker. The strong version is usually can give impacts towards the audience. It is shown that it has this “extraneous affect” that influencing on behaviour of one. 

2.3.2    MEDIA DISCOURSE

As far as media study is concerned, it has different notions in order for it to work. Media plays vital roles in spreading-off the information to the readers as well as to deliver important messages, to promote product as well as to entertain to the audience or readers. For instance, advertisements via Internet, radio stations, and television are effectively and widely used in this era. However, all these are in a different discourse than the printed or written discourse. They may fall into a spoken discourse. Magazines, for instance, is one of a media discourse but it is in a written discourse. What is media discourse?

            According to Joshi (2000) pertaining to the media discourse, the discourses of Mass media are even more difficult to be analyzed. He added that in the media discourse, there are many dogmas. The ideologies than had been simplified as such,

The first of them is the paradigm of Left, Right and Center. The other is that of status quo and anti status quo, male chauvinistic and feminist. .. Interestingly, these paradigms are also not that straight as they appear. There will be numerous discourses within each of these categories…

(Joshi, 2000 in http://www.suite101.com)

In media discourse, American scholars have discussed much about Right, Left and Center paradigm. They discussed about it to explain to the generation of media discourse, “which is claimed to be objective and neutral”.  This shows that anything that the matter to be published in the media is either propagated or just neutral with no bias.

Cohen in Joshi (2000) his paper Propaganda from the Middle of the Road: The Centrist Ideology of the News Media states that,

There is a notion -- widely believed in the mainstream media -- that while there is propaganda of the left and propaganda of the right, there is no such thing as propaganda of the center. In this view, the center doesn't produce propaganda, it produces straight news.

(Cohen in Joshi, 2000 in http://www.suite101.com)

Again, this shows that anything that to be published in the media should be either propagated or just neutral with no bias.

In media discourse as well, the journalists claimed that they can accept the ideology of conservatism or ‘rightism’. These ideologies are carried with it “certain values and opinions, beliefs about the past, goals for the future. They can accept that leftism carries with it values, opinions, beliefs” (Joshi, 2000 in http://www.suite101.com).

There are a lot of activities done with mass media. Media has such a power to give impact to either the hearers, or readers. In short, they are the audience. There are four identifiable and recognizable reasons for the use of mass media for language and communication. According to Bell (1995) in Bell & Garrett (1998), the four factors are

Firstly, media are a rich source and readily accessible data for research and teaching. Secondly, media usage influences and represents people’s use of and attitudes towards language in a speech community. Thirdly, (and related) media use can tell us a great deal about social meanings and stereotypes projected through language and communication… Fourthly, the media reflect and influence the formation and expression of culture, politics and social life.

(Bell (1995) in Bell & Garrett (1998)

This is why the media is widely being used nowadays since it has its power to influence the people’s attitude, beliefs, thought and so on. These reasons can be used later in Part Four when the researcher wants to explain her data.

2.4       PAST STUDIES

2.4.1    A Tentative Study on Impoliteness Phenomenon in Computer-mediated           Communication by Shuang L., 2010

The qualitative study intends to analyze the applicability of the politeness principles based on Face to Face (FTF) communication into Computer-mediated Communication (CMC). Shuang (2010) has used Politeness theory, proposed by Leech (1983) to justify her findings. She has transcribed her data for the analysis purpose.

This study discovers that traditional politeness principles and maxims based on FTF are “often violated and readapted in synchronous on-line chat”. In addition, through this study too, she has found out that despite of the mentioned finding on FTF, the violation and adaptation are found to fulfill different social and interpersonal functions in CMC. These include fostering solidarity between the participants, venting one’s emotions, improving the efficiency of communication. In the researcher’s point of view, in terms of clarity, it is best suggested if Shang (2010) could elaborate more on some of the concepts which appear unfamiliar to the readers such as “synchronous on-line chat”.

In sum, the finding of this study shows that (im)politeness employed in CMC reflects on the social identity of the virtual community and is used to express emotion and assist in effectiveness of communication among the members of discourse.

2.4.2    Linguistics Impoliteness: A Small Corpus Analysis by the Use of Impolite Language among Children by Murni S. M., & Solin, M. (2012)

This study aims to analyze the linguistics impoliteness among Indonesian children. This study is a qualitative design in nature where it analyzes and describes the findings thoroughly. In order to analyze the data, the researchers have transcribed the conversation.

This study has taken the Violation of the Qur’anic Principles of Politeness as the guideline for their data analysis. The concept ‘impoliteness’ defined by Bousfield (2008) as “behaviour that is face aggravating in a particular context” (p.1) is taken by the researchers to clarify their take on the impoliteness concept since there are other definitions given by other scholars on this term. According to Bousfield (2008), the ‘impoliteness’ concept is understood as an action which will negatively affect on its’ interlocutor’s or hearer’s face. They have also outlined the three categories of impoliteness which are affective, coercive an entertaining impoliteness which the researcher has briefly discussed in the previous chapter. In this research they have used the Violation of the Qur’anic Principles of Politeness as the guideline for their data analysis. They have emphasized and categorized their findings into three Arabic concepts: Qaulan Ma’rafa (speaking nicely), Qaulan Karima (speaking honourably) and Qaulan Layyina (speaking softly). They have also related moods and the lexicons as part of the concepts used to analyze their data. Lexicons are divided into three categories: animal (the meaning), physical appearance (metaphore) and behaviour assessment (bad term). They concluded that the categories identified that in the small corpus of children, the language impoliteness are affective and coercive.

In conclusion, this study which focuses on speech, is a good study where it has brought a new insights on looking at the concept of ‘impoliteness’ and it has enlightened the concept of ‘impoliteness’ from the religion guideline (Islam perspective) to analyze their data instead of only depending on the established theories in (im)politeness area as other studies did.

2.4.3    Linguistic Impoliteness and Social Disruption in Literary Discourse by                      Abbas N. F., (2012)

This study is qualitative study in nature.  Abbas (2012) has taken Montgomery’s (2003) novel entitled Anne of Green Gables as the study context. This study basically aims at probing the model of 'impoliteness', as first proposed by Culpeper (1996) and as revised and developed later by Culpeper et al (2003) and Culpeper (2005) which focuses on the impoliteness and social disruption aspects in the novel chosen by Abbas (2012). It contended on how the impoliteness perceived and responded in relation to the face threatening aspects in the chosen literary text. Concepts such as 'face' and 'sociality rights' are used in this study to further scrutinize and explain on some character traits since impoliteness is an essential part of the communicative process to promote and maintain social harmony. This study is in short one of the examples of studies completed in ‘impoliteness’ area where text (novel) is taken as its discourse.

2.4.4    Impoliteness in Computer Mediated Communication by Dalton E. J., (2013)

Being aware of the aggressiveness and antagonistic posts in the virtual words, specifically Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), this problem has driven Dalton (2013) to analyze the disrespectful of speech acts happening in the social interaction, namely communication.

By using the theory of politeness by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), theory of (im)politeness (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 1996; Culpeper, 2005; Lachenicht, 1980),  understanding the basic politeness, the concepts of veil, flaming (w4x0r: 2003; Meri: 2005, Tony, 2003; and Anataka: 2007 in Dalton, p. 19: 2013), and trolling in virtual (Entity, 2002;  Exitium, 2003; Makur, 2004; Pachmoedius, 2009; and Hardaker, 2010 in Dalton, 2013), Dalton (2013) is able to analyze and justify his data. He also studies on the concept of virtual community as to understand the pragmatics (im)politeness in his research. He has also discussed in depth on the discourse concept since this study is clearly related to another area of linguistics which is the discourse of virtual community. Communication discourse has changed from face to face to CMC. He has chosen MSN forum comments posts as his data by using Halo 3 and video recordings as the mean to collect his data.

‘Flaming’ and ‘trolling’ have been found out to be the significant forms of (im)politeness in his study. In his work, Dalton (2013) has defined the ‘flaming’ concept as conflictive expression of antagonistic behaviour, while the ‘trolling’ concept has been termed as skulking for an online community who is looking for trouble. The major similarity of this study with Shuang (2010) study, idiosyncratic patterns of speech have been also significantly identified as a marker for the solidarity and communicative identity of the CMC community.

The concepts identified in this study are proportionate with the current issues in language and technology pertaining with impoliteness. Readers and CMC community discourse should be updated with the dynamic concepts in CMC as well.

2.5 Proposed Models for An Investigation of (Im)politeness:                                                                                                   13^th  Malaysia General Election Issues on SNS Pages among Non-Political Observers

Most studies have used theory of politeness by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) and also (im)politeness theory by Culpeper (1996). In this study, instead of using these two    well-established theories, the researcher would also like to adapt the possible adapted and adopted models used in the past studies.

Figure 1.1.The adapted and adopted model, extended by Brian in Bousfield (2008) as part of guideline for his analysis.

Figure 1.2 The model proposed by Cashman (2006) which is adopted from Culpeper (2005), and used by Abbas in analyzing his data in response to enlighten the definition of impoliteness.

Based on these proposed models, the researcher will identify the related criteria to be used as her fundamental guideline for this study.

2.5       Conclusion

In conclusion, there are actually many studies done on impoliteness area, but in this chapter of proposal, only a few studies chosen to show the gap for this study. It can be concluded that impoliteness has been analyzed in the area such as speech, conversation, internet (chat and MSN), political TV debates by Kerbat- Orecchioni, C,. in Culpeper (2013). However, still, the researcher feels that research studying on impoliteness in political discourse in CMC especially in the one of the latest Social Network Sites (SNS) is still lacking. To recapitulate, the researcher intends to analyze the (im)politeness towards 13^th  Malaysia general election issues on SNS pages in Facebook among non-political observers.

References

Bell, A., & Garrett P., 1998. Approaches to Media Discourse. Wiley-BlackwellPublisher.

Albarracı´n, D., & Kumkale, G. T., 2002. Affect as Information in Persuasion: A Model of  Affect Identification and Discounting. University of Florida. Retrieved on February   2010    from http://home.ku.edu.tr/~tkumkale/affect.pdf

Culpeper J., et. Al. 2013. Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness. Aspects of Linguistic   Impoliteness, Edited by Jamet D,. and Manuel. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 

Culpeper J., 2009. Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence: Full Research Report    ESRC End of Award Report, RES-063-27-0015. Swindon: ESR.

Dalton E., J., 2013. Impoliteness in Computer Mediated Communication. San Diego State University.

Joshi, H., 2000. Discourse Analysis of Media. Retrieved on February 2010 from            http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/mass_communication/42498

Jourdan, C., & Tuite K., 2006, Language, Culture, and Society: Key Topics in Linguistic.   Cambridge University Press.

Murni S. M., & Solin M., 2012. Linguistic Impoliteness:  A Small Corpus Analysis on the               Use of Impolite  Languange by Children. Universitas Negeri Medan, Indonesia. Aceh          International Journal of Social Sciences, 1 (1): 11-15 April 2012 

Perelmutter R., 2010. Identity construction through impolite responses to confessionals in   Russian women's forums University of Kansas.

Junhua H., 2010.  Impoliteness in Reality Show --A Pragmatic Account. Nanjing University

Tyurikova  Y,. 2008. Expression Of Politeness/Impoliteness Via The Aspectual Forms In The         Imperative In Russian. Ohio State University   

Shuang-shuang L., 2012.  A Tentative Study of the Impoliteness Phenomenon in Computer mediated Communication. Cross-Cultural Communication  Vol. 6, No. 1, 2010, pp.      92-107