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Ellen Bunker Dissertation.pdf (1.71 MB)

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A Cross-Cultural Study on Politeness and Facework among Russian, American and Russian-American Cultural Groups

Bunker, Ellen Lydia
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397767873

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures.
Politeness and facework are important aspects of communication that vary from culture to culture. They are influenced by factors such as the degree of social distance, the relative power of the participants, and the type of imposition or face-threatening act present in any given situation. Due to variation in the implementation of politeness and facework across cultures, locutions that may be interpreted as polite in one culture may be taken as rude in another, or they may simply fail to communicate the desired illocutionary force. This study investigates how differences in power, distance, and weight of imposition influence the choice of facework strategies across three participants groups: speakers of American English, Russian speakers residing in Russia, and Russian emigres in the U.S. It evaluates their use of politeness by having them envision 12 social situations and write an email, text message, or dialogue as if they were actual participants in the situations presented. These responses were evaluated and categorized for each cultural group using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. Then the data for the three cultural groups were compared against each other to determine similarities or differences in the use of politeness and, in particular, to evaluate how differential power, distance and weight of imposition affected each group’s production of facework. The responses of the Russian-American participant group were also specially evaluated to assess whether there was any effect of L2 influence on their production of politeness and facework in their L1. The results of this study indicate that the use of positive politeness across the participant groups was relatively similar, while the use of negative politeness had more noticeable differences. In addition, the Russian-American groups did demonstrate clear L2 influence on their use of politeness and facework in the L1, but also diverged from both the American and Russian groups in some aspects of certain situations, which suggests that a politeness interlanguage may have formed.
Daniel Collins (Advisor)
Brian Joseph (Committee Member)
Donald Winford (Committee Member)
361 p.
Linguistics
Politeness; Russian; Russian-American; Facework, American

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Bunker, E. L. (2014). A Cross-Cultural Study on Politeness and Facework among Russian, American and Russian-American Cultural Groups [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397767873

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Bunker, Ellen. A Cross-Cultural Study on Politeness and Facework among Russian, American and Russian-American Cultural Groups. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397767873.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Bunker, Ellen. "A Cross-Cultural Study on Politeness and Facework among Russian, American and Russian-American Cultural Groups." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397767873

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1397767873
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.