A Review of "Politeness - West and East" : by Geoffrey Leech and Tatiana Larina

Abstract

  The notions of 'maxims' due to certain moral imposition implications instead they theorize Leech's (1983) maxims i.e., generosity, tact, modesty, approbation, sympathy, and agreement—unanimously as the Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP) inclusive of all politeness principles/maxims. Moreover, the authors developed GSP as a super-maxim to investigate linguistic politeness in communication, they proposed to test GSP in a bifurcate generalized parameter in Western languages like German, English, and Eastern languages like Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Slavic languages in particular Russian. The present study's objective is to summarize the key notion of politeness theory presented from 1983 and onwards. The research approach used in the study was qualitative research, based on reviewing literature and multiple case studies on the phenomenon investigated. The authors accept the numerical importance and idiosyncratic deviations of socio-linguistic dimension in linguistic politeness of German, English, and Eastern languages i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Slavic languages, in particular Russian language. However, GSP as a framework to study politeness may be implied within such variations under investigation. Nevertheless, this research study does not reject the sociocultural differences and changing trends within common cultures and sub-cultures, rather they emphasize generalizability in terms of behaviour that may be found in different cultures. Thus, the present study proposes GSP—despite differences, as a model to study politeness in each language and culture discussed in this article to make a unified system of linguistic politeness norms and strategies. This study is significant for exploring GSP in politeness theory from West and East perspectives.