Politeness motivated by the ‘heart’ and ‘binary rationality’ in Thai culture  

Oleh:

Intachakra, Songthama

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdiciplinary Journal of Language Studies vol. 44 no. 05 (2012), page 619–635.
Topik: khwat smkret s?t?[TD$INLINE]aj Heart metaphor Binary rationality Others-come-first ideology Thai culture
Fulltext: Intachakra_S.pdf (293.05KB)

Isi artikel

Most politeness theoretical frameworks are derived from Euro-American ways of thinking, with facework and the notion of rationality often being their common denominators. In this paper, I introduce an aspect of Thai politeness called khwat smkret s?t? aj (KKJ) and propose an alternative model for analysing behaviours that are associated with it. Having the literal meaning ‘fear of hearts,’ in the Thai native speaker mindset, KKJ is more widely construed as ‘consideration or concern for others’ feelings.’ Judged in terms of the supposedly rational ways of doing things prevalent in the West, some KKJ behaviours, despite the lofty moral ideals attached, can be regarded as indications of irrationality, insincerity andmany other negative traits. To make sense of KKJ, I maintain that we need a rationality that is binary in nature: ‘means-to-end’ and ‘rapport-oriented.’ The findings of this study provide evidence for the existence of KKJ in other cultures and suggest that politeness research will benefit from looking beyond the confines of the facemetaphor and a rationality based exclusively on logic and individualism. The paper concludes that integrating ingredients of politeness from different cultures may enable us to realise Emancipatory Pragmatics’s goals of looking locally while shedding new lights on the underrepresented facets of other politeness systems

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