Lecture 7: Cultural Sustems 2: Face and Politeness

Face and politeness: very interesting! I never realised we employ these kind of Maxims and Strategies to "maximize benefit, minimize cost blah blah". haha and in Singapore, I can already see (from this systems), that there are SO MANY MANY MANY cultural types. Much more than the CMIO - within chinese alone there are so many! For instance maybe compare university-educated chinese and the non-educated. The way we save "face" or "politeness" is already so different! (I feel) University-educated tend to be more "western" in our strategies, while others are more "asian".

So much for PAP's constant iteration that Singapore is a "CLASSLESS" society! hrmmm! statistics simply show Singapore has an ever-increasing social inequality. And this, can be illustrated through cultural systesms, where different groups of people have different cultural systems simply due to education (and exposure to international cultures).

Power also plays a part in language use. This brings to mind the concepts by some sociologists, that argue that everything in society, is about negotiation of power - power struggle. From politics, to mundane things like marriage. Perhaps, language is also part of this concept? A lecturer (as given in the example), may use less "polite" or "face-saving" strategies to assert his power, while a student is unable to do so as he is powerless and to do so would mean risking a failure!