Abstract
Despite the fact that impoliteness research has spanned over three decades, it has been conceptualized persistently in terms of politeness as its binary opposite. In this paper, we endeavor to provide a theoretical framework for studying impoliteness as significant communicative practice. We aim to introduce Levinas’ face as an alternative to Goffman’s face and identify impoliteness with Levinas’ face for the reason that Levinas’ face, featuring absolute difference, can only be expressed through the discourse of resistance which manifests in various phenomena commonly categorized as impoliteness. We also argue that impoliteness is essentially the discourse of the authentic Self whose uncompromising difference, though potentially resulting in conflictive phenomena, facilitates understanding between individuals, not as actors, but as unique beings with their individualities and differences. We further contend that impoliteness is ethical in that the discourse of resistance does not aim for power but calls for respect for individual difference as well as responsibility for the Other in an effort to seek equality in human relations which are fundamentally power-laden and unequal. We also provide a case study to apply our theoretical construction of impoliteness to a literary classic, namely, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” to illustrate our main points.
Funding source: Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences
Award Identifier / Grant number: 22YJRC11ZD
Funding source: Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang Higher Education Institutions
Award Identifier / Grant number: 2023GH069
About the authors
Chaoqun Xie is Chair Professor at the Institute of Discourse Pragmatics, Zhejiang International Studies University. He is interested in research on internet pragmatics and (im)politeness. His recent publications include (Im)politeness and Moral Order in Online Interactions (John Benjamins, 2020), Approaches to Internet Pragmatics: Theory and Practice (co-edited with Francisco Yus and Hartmut Haberland, John Benjamins, 2021), The Philosophy of (Im)politeness (Springer, 2021), The Pragmatics of Internet Memes (John Benjamins, 2022), Self-Praise across Cultures and Contexts (co-edited with Ying Tong, Springer, 2022) and Advancing (Im)politeness Studies: Cultural, Digital and Emotional Aspects (Springer, 2023).
Weina Fan is a Chinese poet, translator and academic. Currently, she is Associate Professor at the School of English Studies, Zhejiang International Studies University. She is author of two collections of poetry, Poetic Wildness (2010) and Against the Sun (2012), published in Chinese, and translator of Wild Nights! (2011) by Joyce Carol Oates, Grimms’ Fairy Tales (2014), Landline (2018) by Rainbow Rowell and Born to Run (2021) by Bruce Springsteen. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia in 2015. Her key areas of research are English literature, philosophy and (im)politeness.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the reviewers’ perceptive and constructive comments. We are also indebted to the SI editors, Michael Haugh and Jim O’Driscoll, for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Needless to say, all remaining errors are our responsibility.
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Research funding: This research is supported by Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang Higher Education Institutions (No. 2023GH069) and Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 22YJRC11ZD). This work is also supported by a collaborative project between the Institute of Discourse Pragmatics at Zhejiang International Studies University and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Vienna.
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