Explaining Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Findings:
Moving from Politeness Maxims to Sociopragmatic Interactional Principles
(SIPs)
Helen Spencer-Oatey and Wenying Jiang
To be published in the Journal of Pragmatics
Abstract
This paper focuses on how culture can be treated as an explanatory variable in cross-cultural
pragmatic studies. It starts with a review of pragmatic maxims (Grice, 1989; Leech, 1983; Gu,
1990), discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the concept. It then presents the findings
from a British–Chinese replication of Kim's (1994) cross-cultural study of conversational
constraints, and argues that the notion of maxims should be reconceptualised as
sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs). The notion of SIPs is defined and explained,
referring to the sociopragmatic–pragmalinguistic distinction (Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983)
and other cross-cultural pragmatic approaches (House, 2000; Wierzbicka, 1985). SIPs are
also discussed in relation to Brown and Levinson's (1987) perspectives on the impact of
culture on language use. The paper ends with a call for more research to establish on an
empirical basis the types of interactional principles that exist, and their interrelationships.
1. Introduction
This paper focuses on how culture can be treated as an explanatory variable in cross-cultural
pragmatic studies. All too frequently in pragmatics, no explanation of any cultural
differences are given at all; similarities and differences are simply identified. Yet
incorporating an explanatory element is essential if we are to deepen our understanding of
language use across cultures. One of the frameworks used most frequently in pragmatics to
explain cross-cultural differences is Leech's (1983) Politeness Principle and accompanying
Politeness Maxims. However, this paper argues that we need to move from the notion of
politeness maxims to sociopragmatic interactional principles (henceforth SIPs), and that this
will yield a more powerful...