Politeness and Camaraderie
Considering the summary critique of politeness theories by Gino Eelen (Eelen, 2001), and apart from various
theories of politeness (Leech, 1983; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Spencer-Oatey, 1992; Lakoff, 1990; Fraser &
Nolen, 1981; Gu, 1990; Ide, 1989; Blum-Kulka, 1992; Arndt & Janney, 1985; Watts, 1989; Thomas, 1996;
Coupland, 2000) Jumanto is trying to define what politeness is (Jumanto, Pragmatics: Linguistic World is Broad,
2011b). Jumanto proposed a theory of politeness among Javanese speakers, advocating the theory of Gunarwan
(Gunarwan, Implicatures of Linguistic Codes Selection in some dialogues of Ludruk, 2001). Many of the politeness theories above are the results of violating Grice’s Cooperative Principles (Grice, 1975), though some
proposed a new atmosphere. However, few have proposed a working definition of politeness. Jumanto tried to
offer a definition that politeness is everything good that has been uttered as well as acted by the speaker to the
hearer within a particular context, to maintain their interpersonal face as well as their social face (Jumanto,
Pragmatics: Linguistic World is Broad, 2011b).
The notion of face in politeness has come into high attention and importance since it was borrowed by Brown
and Levinson (Brown & Levinson, 1987) from Goffman (Goffman, 1959, 1967).
In Goffman’s grand theory,
everyone in interaction has two faces, positive face, and negative face. Face refers to the will, intention, and other associations of ideas and values in the self of the speaker. In short, positive face refers to an appreciation of the
speaker’s self and negative face refers to no depreciation of the speaker’s self. The elaboration of face by Brown
and Levinson has resulted in face management for two major politeness strategies, positive politeness strategies
(which refer to positive face) and negative politeness strategies (which refer to negative face).
Under the light of this face management theory, Jumanto (Jumanto, Pragmatics and Character Language
Building, 2011c) argues that the politeness theories in verbal interactions fall into or lead to two major poles, i.e.
one is directed to distancing politeness and the other is directed to closeness politeness. Distancing politeness
refers to Goffman’s negative face (Goffman, 1959), Brown and Levinson’s negative politeness strategies (Brown
& Levinson, 1987), Renkema’s respect politeness (Renkema, 1993), and Jumanto’s politeness (Jumanto, Phatic
Communication among English Native Speakers, 2008); (Jumanto, Pragmatics: Linguistic World is Broad,
2011b). Closeness politeness, on the other hand, refers to Goffman’s positive face (Goffman, 1959), Brown and
Levinson’s positive politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson, 1987), Renkema’s solidarity politeness (Renkema,
1993), and Jumanto’s friendship or camaraderie (Jumanto, Phatic Communication among English Native
Speakers, 2008); (Jumanto, Pragmatics: Linguistic World is Broad, 2011b).
This tendency has been well-strengthened and highlighted by the results of Jumanto’s research on phatic communication among English native speakers (Jumanto, 2006).
From the accounts above, with high gratitude to the former theorists and researchers, we can see clearly that
distancing politeness and closeness politeness are in line with distant language and close language the writer has
just proposed above. Here, so far so good, we can sum up that distant language brings politeness, and close language brings friendship or camaraderie. Distant language and close language to show politeness and camaraderie finally meet the demand of language as a means of communication, i.e. a real-life everyday use of language
in all situations or pragmatic use of language in a diglossic situation.
3
An inspiring opinion given by Professor Asim Gunarwan, during his pragmatic classes, at University of Indonesia, in 2002-2006. 4
Types of hearer can be further seen in Brown and Gilman (1968) or Brown and Gilman in Jumanto (2011b).
Towards a Character Language: A Probability in Language Use (scirp.org)
