After thoughts (and aforethoughts) 9-2-08

We talked about schema today and its role in figuring out how best to accommodate another person in interaction, esp. when that person comes from another culture with a very different PEG, Pragmatic Expectancy Grammar, which comes from John Oller (1979). If a Korean asks you if you have eaten, an American is likely to think they are suggesting that you go together to eat. In fact they just want to know if you've eaten. (: It is a way of saying that you are healthy and taken care of. Japanese often translate 'genki desuka' directly in English: are you fine? Sometimes I use that wording in English with a twist of humor, but sometimes I think I really forget that it's not a normal greeting in the U.S.

When a Japanese person offers you a refreshment at their home, you should generally decline the first two times and accept the third time. This provides a buffer, because just like in the U.S., sometimes you offer someone something because you feel obligated to but you'd really rather they didn't take you up on it. Eventually the social consequences of accepting an offer can be overwhelming to the adjusting westerner and she may no longer know What she wants! And when she comes back to the states and politely declines an offer, she is just out of luck if she really did want the drink, etc. So the assumption about how honest to be about what you want is a sliding scale with different norms for different situations in different cultures. And the returning American is likely to be hungry and thirsty for most of the first year back. (:

We also talked about the polite fiction in Japanese culture that the other person is higher on the food chain than we are until proven otherwise (in contrast to the pretense that you and I are equals in the U.S.). This gives rise to the significance of the business card, the meishi, which informs the other what your company and position are thus establishing your social status. You then need to worry about bowing lower and perhaps a little longer than the person who is more statusful (a challenge for your peripheral vision I assure you)
(:

Keigo, as you wrote down, is the whole set of language used for extra politeness in Japanese. It's extensive and fairly complicated and quite a memory load for the western student. However, because of the positively evaluated role of formulaicity in Japanese, once you learn the system the decision about exactly what to say in various contexts will be very straightforward. You'll know exactly what each other's relative status is and exactly what corresponding language and behavior are called for. When Japanese learn English and find there are no translations for this huge body of Japanese and there are no grammatical endings that acknowledge relative status of speaker and hearer in English, they understandably often conclude, English is not a polite language, therefore it clearly does not matter how I say whatever I need to say. Which is of course a really dangerous conclusion to make and wholey inaccurate.

The American system of politeness is far more subtle and graduated. The combinations of linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic cues that are drawn upon for the perfect balance of friendliness and respect in a given situation require far more individual stress and scrutiny than does the Japanese system. Consequently a lot more people, I believe, are a lot poorer in their social skills and therefore their integration to their larger communities in the U.S. than in Japanese culture. So the stress for learning polite Japanese occurs at the study/ preparation stage, but for English at the execution in the specific situation that must be assessed and addressed.