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2.3 Communicative Underpinnings
The preceding pages have been used to identify and outline the extant
body of research comparatively addressing English and German communicative
style. Various discourse phenomena have been addressed, ranging from
specific speech acts (House 1981,1989; House and Blum-Kulka 1989), through
cultural variations in politic work (Watts 1989), interactional and conversational
style (Byrnes 1986; Straehle 1997), to variations in preference organisation
(Kotthoff 1989,1991,1993,1994). Although varying in terms of their empirical
and analytical focus (see 2.4), one common thread runs through these works -
that of face. More specifically, what is apparent is that face concerns are
normatively and routinely oriented to differently in the two cultures across
arrange of communicative practices. How then should one make sense of these
differences. Fundamentally, how might these differences be interpreted in terms
of some universally applicable framework for understanding how facework
informs everyday discourse?
If we work from the premises set out in the previous chapter, that face is
a universal concern (Brown and Levinson 1987), and facework is a universal
condition of interaction (Goffman 1967), it appears that English and German
interactants convey politeness and maintain 'ritual equilibrium' by routinely
employing culturally specific facework strategies at a discourse level. First, in
terms of the underlying assumptions of conventional approaches to politeness
(Lakoff 1973; 1979; Leech 1983) it appears that the thesis that politeness
usually supersedes clarity requires some amendment in respect of German
norms, with Germans apparently employing and preferring clarity over
politeness. More specifically, in terms of what was noted earlier about
politeness as being associated with conversational indirectness and mitigation
of potentially face-threatening verbal behaviour (Brown and Levinson 1987), it
appears that the equation of politeness with indirectness and mitigation of such
face-threatening acts is less applicable to German communicative style than it
is to English. This is clearly evidenced by the observation that Germans are
routinely and normatively more direct in realising specific face-threatening acts
such as requests and complaints. One must assume that this is not a
manifestation of routine and normative impoliteness or routine and normative