Different Cultures And Social Patterns Matter In English And Chinese .
Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), Volume 7, Issue 3, September 2016Different Cultures and Social Patterns Matter in English and ChineseGreetingsLinqi LiuBeijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, ChinaAbstractGreetings can be found in all languages. Theyare linguistic routines that form part of therepertoire of politeness and serve as means foropening conversations appropriately, establishing,maintaining and negotiating social relationships.While such routines have been studied in disciplinessuch as sociology, anthropology, sociolinguisticsand discourse analysis, there has been not enoughquantitative and qualitative study on the use ofgreetings in and across different languages, culturesand social patterns. Consequently, the present studyaims to undertake such a research in English andChinese. The present study indicates that greatdifferences can be found in the contents, thefrequency, degree of politeness, distribution ofgreeting and its use in the form of address termsbetween English and Chinese. Linguistic routines ofgreeting, far from being relatively meaningless andmechanical social behavior, can be understood asextremely important strategies for negotiation,control of social identity and social relationshipbetween participants in conversation. Problems incross-cultural communication and in different socialpatterns are easily seen in the use of greetingbetween English and Chinese speakers.1. IntroductionGreeting can be described as the exchange ofexpressions, pleasantries or good wishes betweentwo people interacting for the purpose of fulfillingsocial obligations, or for the establishment ofinterpersonal relationships. It takes place at theopening of an interaction or as a marker of itsclosing. It can be regarded as a necessary opening toevery new encounter.Greetings are also linguistic routines that formpart of the repertoire of politeness [1]. It has beenreferred to as an “interactional ritual” [2], “aninteractional routine” [1], or a conventionalizedepisode of interaction in the opening phase of aconversation [3]. It is informed by rules of conduct,and is an inevitable part of everyday conversation.With socio-cultural significance, its realization isusually language specific. The present study is basedon the combination of quantitative and qualitative,theoretical and practical approaches. On-lineresearch was used in order to prove its validity forlinguistic studies. The implications of greetings inCopyright 2016, Infonomics Societyboth languages and their underlying social patternfactors, cultural factors and philosophical sourcesfactors are also explored.2. Literature ReviewGenerally speaking, greetings represent anacknowledgement of the relationship between twoindividuals. Also, the act sets up the possibility forfurther relationships. The kind and number of severalparameters involved in greeting exchanges as aspeech event, according to academics across thethree disciplines, linguistics, sociology, andanthropology, are expectedly mixed. These threedisciplines view greetings across a spectrum ofproximity from micro to macro. Linguists representthe micro view, focusing on linguistic behavior.Sociologists take a step back by looking more atsocial interaction. Lastly, anthropologists have takena larger view, interpreting the linguistic behavior ofgreetings coupled with interaction as representingculture.Schegloff see greetings as a speech eventcomposed of two parts side by side, serial, e greeting exchanges as “access rituals”consisting of two types, passing greetings andengaging greetings [2]. Laver makes a further studyof the rationale for the existence of routine elementssuch as greetings in the linguistic patterns ofconversation [1]. Brown and Levinson put forwardtheir model of politeness. Greetings asconversational routines are part of the linguisticrepertoire of politeness [5].Compared with the study abroad, research ongreetings in China is carried out much later. Mostworks are focused on vocatives. The past threedecades has witnessed the progress of Chinesepoliteness research. Several scholars have also madesome modifications of the Western politenesstheories. For example, Gu Yueguo [6] has made acontrastive analysis of politeness phenomenonbetween Chinese and English and has pointed out thecultural difference in politeness phenomenon. JiaYuxin [7] made a comparison of interpersonalrelationship and intercultural communicationbetween the East and the West. As for greetings,Qian Housheng [8] carried out a contrastive study oflinguistic routines and politeness on greetings andpartings in English and Chinese.2342
Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), Volume 7, Issue 3, September 20163. Research Methodology4. Findings and Discussion3.1. Study Objective and Research QuestionsIn terms of the statistical technique, researcherwill interpret differences in content, frequency ofuse, degree of politeness, address terms in thedistribution of specified English and Chinesegreetings and other related aspects.The main purpose of this study is to examinewhat strategies are employed in English and Chinesegreetings and whether such strategies are influencedby English and Chinese cultures and social patterns.To achieve the objectives, researcher will seekanswers to the following questions: (1) WhetherEnglish and Chinese greetings have significantdifferences? (2)What are the differences in thefrequency, degree of politeness and distribution ofgreetings? What are the differences in the use ofaddress terms as greetings in English and Chinese?(3) What factors cause the differences in the use ofgreetings in English and Chinese?3.2. Design of the StudyThe survey was carried out from 80 nativeEnglish speakers who study or work in the UnitedStates and in the UK, and 100 Chinese speakers whostudy or work in China through the Internet. Thesubjects were chosen randomly. The validquestionnaires are altogether 94 from 47 Englishspeakers and 47 Chinese speakers.There are in total two parts, fifteen questions inthe questionnaires with English version and Chineseversion. The first part includes six major questions ininvestigating the frequency of use of differentlinguistic routines, the perception of degree ofpoliteness, the distribution of routine expressionsamong different types of addressees. And somequestions are put forward in questionnaires to elicitregional varieties of greetings as such expressionsare very restricted in use. The second part is selfreport about the subjects, including nine questionsrelated to age, sex, nationality, hometown, livingtime, speaker-type, regional varieties of English (ifany), educational level and occupation. Afterchecking the answer sheets and excluding the invalidones, the researcher will analyze the E-groups.3.3. Data Collection and Data CodingResults of the empirical study will be presentedrelating to the questions and hypothesis of the studyfrom both quantitative and qualitative perspectives.The 23.0 version of SPSS was applied to do theIndependent-sample T-test, Descriptive Statistics andFrequencies so that it provides the scientific resultsto give the evidence. In addition, individualfeedbacks and personal communication with thesubjects were also used in order to find out otherfactors affecting greetings.Copyright 2016, Infonomics Society4.1. Differences in contentsDifferences in English and Chinese greetings areremarkable. “Good morning/afternoon/evening” arecommon greeting expressions in English, whereas“Have you eaten” “Where are you going?” arecommon greetings in Chinese.We can divide greetings into five kinds ofgreetings.Table 1. Categories of Greeting by the ResearcherIn general, Chinese greeting is more situationaland less dependent on formulaic greetings. They tendto take their subject matter from the circumstances ofa particular greeting. They can therefore be more“personal” than the set phrases or formulae that areused in English. It is argued that the use of terms forChinese greeting depends more on acknowledgementof the setting of a verbal exchange than that inwestern languages. The differences in content onEnglish and Chinese greetings may suggest differentchoice of politeness strategies by the two people.4.2. Differences in Frequency of UseThe differences in the use of greetings betweenEnglish and Chinese were first tested through anumber of experiments on the frequency of use ofspecified common English expressions, followed bythose translated literally from Chinese and viceversa. The English and Chinese informants wereasked to indicate to what extent each of them usedthose expressions to greet to others by marking in theblank before each expression a frequency score of 1to 5 (from very frequent to never), 1 for veryfrequent, 2 for frequent, 3 for sometimes, 4 for rarelyand 5 for never. According to table 1, the greetingswill be explored in details.(1)All-time greetings: Hello! / Hi! Etc.(2)Real-time greetings: Good morning! / Goodafternoon! / Good evening! /Good day!2343
Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), Volume 7, Issue 3, September 2016(3)Formal greetings: How do you do? / How areyou? / How is your work? Etc.(4)Weather greetings: It is a fine day! / It is a fineday, isn’t it? Etc.(5)Inquiry greetings: Have you eaten? / Where areyou going? / What are you busy with? Etc.The related test is the “Independent-Samples TTest.” The lower the score is, the more frequently itis used and vice versa. The scores suggest that bothEnglish and Chinese frequently use “Hello” and “Hi”in their daily life for greeting. Expressions equivalentin literal meaning to the English “Good morning”,“Good afternoon”, “Good evening” are lessfrequently used by Chinese informants. WhileEnglish informants ask people about their healthmore often than about their work in greeting,Chinese informants seem to do the opposite. Englishinformants use greeting expressions with tagquestions less frequently than those without tagquestions, so do the Chinese informants. Questionssuch as “Have you eaten?”, “Where are you going?”and “What are you busy with?” are much morefrequently used by Chinese informants than Englishinformants.4.3. Differences in Degree of PolitenessGreetings are linguistic routines concerned withpoliteness in social interaction. In Brown andLevinson’s [5] model of politeness, five strategiesrelated to the maintenance of “face” are identified.We would argue that this typology may need to besubstantiated by the notion of degree of politeness soas to avoid criticisms of overgeneralization.In our experiments on the informants’ perceptionof degree of politeness in English and Chinesegreetings, we adopted Clark & Schunk’s [9] sevenpoint scale. We put several sets of English andChinese expressions in random order and asked ourinformants to evaluate the degree of politeness ofsuch expressions by marking a score of 1 to 7 (fromvery polite to very impolite) for each expression. (1for very polite, 2 for fairly polite, 3 for somewhatpolite, 4 for neither polite nor impolite, 5 forsomewhat impolite, 6 for fairly impolite, or 7 forvery impolite)Table 2. Politeness Scores of Specified EnglishGreeting ExpressionsCopyright 2016, Infonomics SocietyAccording to “Descriptive statistics” of SPSS23.0, let us examine the mean scores of perceiveddegree of politeness in specified English and Chinesegreeting expressions indicated by the informants inTable 2 and Table 3.Table 3. Politeness Scores of Specified ChineseGreeting ExpressionsThe scores in the above tables indicate thatEnglish and Chinese speakers have an intuitive senseof the degree of politeness in greetings. The lowerthe score is, the more polite it is. Based upon thesetwo tables, the following general statements can bemade: First, in both English and Chinese, greetingexpressions with terms of address are perceived to bemore polite than those without. Second, terms ofaddress used as independent greetings are perceivedto be more polite in Chinese than in English.4.4. DifferencesGreetinginAddressTermsasAs shown in Section 4.3, the use of terms ofaddress as politeness intensifiers can be evaluatedthrough a comparison between the scores ofgreetings with and without address terms in Englishand Chinese.Chinese has evolved a much more complexsystem of address terms in kinship than English [10].For Chinese, kinship means a tie based first on birthand second on marriage. We can easily see thatrelatives outside the parents-children configurationhave much more significance for Chinese than forEnglish. Another difference in the terms of addressbetween English and Chinese is how to addressperson of various social status and professions.Chinese has evolved a set of terms of direct addressfor them according to their specific social status andprofessions.The questionnaires were undertaken in the formof judgmental tests. English and Chinese informantswere asked to indicate what terms of address theywere likely to use for each specified type ofaddressees in Table 4.2344
Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), Volume 7, Issue 3, September 2016Table 4. Percentage of English Informants UsingSpecified Terms of Address to Different Types ofAddresseessocial value, is most probably universal in some formor other.5.1 Social factorsNote: PAR parentsS/D sons/daughtersW/H wife/husbandFRI friendsSUP superiorsINF inferiorsSTR strangersTable 5. Percentage of Chinese Informants UsingSpecified Terms of Address to Different Types ofAddresseesTable 4 and Table 5 show that first name is usedmore widely in English than in Chinese. It is used toaddress parents and superiors in English but not inChinese. The percentage of the use of first names tochildren, wife or husband, and inferiors is also higherin English than in Chinese. However, while lastname and full name are almost not used by Englishspeakers as direct terms of address, they are widelyused in Chinese. Title plus first name or full name isnot normally used in English conversations but theyare used in Chinese to superiors, inferiors andstrangers. Professional title is used more widely andmore frequently in Chinese than in English.5. Main Factors Causing the DifferencesDue to the different socio-cultural norms andvalues, the connotations of politeness, itsmanifestations and judging standards vary crossculturally. It seems reasonable to assume that theconcept of politeness, which represents an abstractCopyright 2016, Infonomics SocietyWhy should greetings involve such a complexsystem and what is the rationale for the existence ofgreeting paradigms? The answer may lie in the socialreality and the interactant’s communicative intentionas many linguistics researchers suggest. Politenessstrategies are related closely to the interactant’s face:they are used when doing FTAs (face-threateningacts) to maintain the interactants’ negative face or toenhance their positive face to any degree. We need toconsider the social factors that affect the use ofgreetings in the choice of appropriate strategies.Social power and social distance are consideredtwo major factors influencing the choice of greeting.Variables determining the selection of a particulargreeting form are numerous, including not only thequalitative characteristics of the speakers—age, sex,kinship relation, occupation, wealth, education,family background—but also more general factors:for instance, the content of the conversation, thepresence of the third person. The notion of powerand distance are used widely in linguistics. Severalclassic studies have helped the establishment ofpower and distance as key variables. Spencer-Oateyemphasized one or more of following aspects: (1)Power of control; (2) Social status or rank; (3)Authority or the legitimate right to exert influence;(4) A general notion of equality-inequality [11].In a society where hierarchy is emphasized,people with a higher occupational status imply morepower. The status relationship between people isstrongly relevant in selecting appropriate greetings.Distance is another main factor in determining thechoice of suitable greetings. A considerable numberof other terms are also used: solidarity, closeness,familiarity and relational intimacy.5.2. Cultural factorsSince western culture stresses individual rights,freedom and independence, showing respect to one’sliberty, rights and independence is considered polite.Individualism is also deeply rooted in westernculture and is highly valued by English people.English speakers are known to be rather moreconsiderable. They are particularly sensitive abouttheir negative face as well. Questions such as“Where are you going?” or “What are you doing?”which sound impeding may not be proper to most ofthem, and thus are not accepted as greetings.Politeness in English culture has been closelyassociated with the norms of social conduct.To achieve harmony, Chinese people emphasizeimplicitness, indirectness, ambiguity and selfrestraint. Collectivism remains at the very core of2345
Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), Volume 7, Issue 3, September 2016Chinese culture. As opposed to “individualism”,“collectivism” is a cultural pattern, consisting ofclosely linked individuals who see themselves as partof their collectives and give priority to group goalsover their own personal goals [12]. It is based on arigid social framework that makes a distinctionbetween in-groups and out-groups.Privacy is valued in all cultures, but it is morehighly valued in the English culture. Members ofindividualistic cultures tend to engage inenvironmental control to assert their unique identityand to claim private space than members ofcollectivistic cultures do. The Chinese attach greatimportance to mutual care, which is equallyimportant as modesty.5. 3. Philosophical source factorsThe most important dominant orientation—equality and human rights in English countries andthe principle of Ren and Li—the key concept ofConfucianism in China actually act as shapers of thepatterns of interpersonal relationship, they are alsothe philosophical sources which affect interactionsand communications such as greetings.What is emphasized in English culture isindividualism and as a result equal or horizontalrelationship is highly valued. What is advocated ishumanitarianism and human rights of each memberand thus the slogan: everybody is born equal—democracy, liberation of the individual iseverybody’s wish. In this case, the love andbenevolencehumanitarianism advocatesaresymmetrical in nature. The relationships aresymmetrical in that behavior which is appropriate toone person in each pair is identical with what isappropriate to the other person. This symmetrypresupposes role equality rather than differentiationas is the case in China.6. ConclusionsThe empirical study focuses on an investigationof greetings that reflects differences in cultures andsocial patterns in the notion of people betweenEnglish and Chinese. The study indicates that greatdifferences can be found in the contents, thefrequency, degree of politeness, distribution ofgreeting and its use in the form of address termsbetween English and Chinese. Greetings areexchanged not just in order to inform, not just in thecase to connect people in action, but to convey thesocial relationship that the speakers assume or try toestablish. It is important to raise our cross-culturalawareness and to develop our communicativecompetence so as to minimize and/or on across different cultures and socialpatterns.Copyright 2016, Infonomics Society7. AcknowledgmentThis study was supported by Beijing Universityof Posts and Telecommunications Teaching andResearch of Postgraduate Education Project(Y2016004)8. References[1] Laver. J., “Linguistic Routines and Politeness inGreetings and Partings”, In Coulmas, F., editor,Conversational Routine, The Hague: Mouton, 1981,pp.289-304.[2] Goffman, E., Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to FaceBehavior, New Brunswick, N.J.: Aldine Transaction, 2005.[3] Ferguson, C.A., “Structure and use of politenessformulas”, Language in Society, 5(2),1976, pp.129–136.[4] Schegloff, E. A., “Sequence in ConversationalOpenings”, American Anthropologist, Vol.70, 1968.[5] Brown, P. & Levinson S., Politeness: Some Universalsin Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1987, pp.62-87.[6] Gu, Yueguo, Politeness phenomenon in modernChinese, Journal of Pragmatics, 1990, pp.237-257.[7] Jia, Yuxin, Cross-culture Communication, Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1997.[8] Qian, Housheng, Greetings and Partings in English andChinese: A Contrastive Study of Linguistic Routines andPoliteness, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign LanguageEducation Press, 1996.[9] Clark, H.H. & Schunk D.H., “Polite Responses toPolite Requests” Cognition, (8), 1980 pp.111-143.[10] Li, Mian, “The Analysis of the Level of the EthicalCulture in China from the Kinship Terms”, Central ChinaNormal University Journal of Postgraduates, (12) 2012,pp.102-105.[11] Spencer-Oatey, H., “Reconsidering Power andDistance”. Journal of Pragmatics (26), 1996, pp.1-24.[12] Triandis, H. C., Individualism and Collectivism.Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.2346
choice of politeness strategies by the two people. 4.2. Differences in Frequency of Use . The differences in the use of greetings between English and Chinese were first tested through a number of experiments on the frequency of use of specified common English expressions, followed by those translated literally from Chinese and vice versa.
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