Politeness principle as a strategy in business negotiation

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Politeness principle as a strategy in business negotiation

1. Introduction

1.1 Research background

Negotiation In business is a common means through which exporters and importers bridge the difference and reach a deal which is fair and mutually satisfactory. Business negotiation plays an important role in business because before the buyers and the sellers conclude a transaction, they need to communicate and negotiate. It can be seen that business negotiation is a kind of economic activity through which the two parties seek the respective max gains. In negotiation, both parties have to compete against each other for the economic interest, but at the same time they have to cooperate with each other. Therefore, in spite of competition, the seller and the buyer endeavor to keep the cooperative relationship through certain strategies and tactics. Language is a chief measure used in business negotiation. However, language is often ignored by people because it is used every day, and its powers can not be examined unless serious problems arise. Negotiators may focus their attentions on the material aspects of a business and neglect the important role of language in the representation of the aspects. However if the language is used inadequately for its purposes leading to the representation is misunderstood, the whole negotiation may fail. Successful negotiators should not take language for granted in the difficult and complex human interaction world.

1.2 The Brief Survey of business negotiation

According to Robert Maddux, in his book Successful Negotiation, negotiation is the process we use to satisfy our needs when someone else controls what we want. Nierenberg, author of The Art of Negotiating, the first book on the formalized process of negotiation, stated: “Whenever people exchange ideas with the intention of changing relationships, whenever they confer for agreement, then they are negotiating.”

Usually, negotiations take place between human beings. It is a common form of social interaction. Everybody in the world is almost involved in negotiations in one way or another for a part on any given day. People negotiate over everything, such as: which movie to watch, where to go for dinner or how to split household chores.

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In The Roots of Sound Rational Thinking, negotiation is defined as follows: the ability to deal with business affairs, to arrange by discussion the settlement of terms, to reach agreements through treaties and compromise, and to travel through challenging territory in its modern sense. All of these definitions suggest a purposeful effort to resolve problems by talking and intellectual maneuvering. Negotiation includes bargaining, consultation, mediation, arbitration, and sometimes litigation.

Being independent is very important for business negotiation. Two sides are locked together on account of the final goals. A seller and a buyer can not separate with each other, and this determines this relationship between them. In plenty of business negotiations, two parties hide their intentions and goals to get better chances of making best deal as much as possible. Because this is an open secret, good mutual understanding and smooth communication will go difficult to some degree, and this does easily lead to misunderstanding. Both parties will have to decide how open and honest they should be about personal preferences and needs to achieve more satisfactory results, and to what extent they should trust each other.

The focus of negotiations is exchanging offers and proposals. In a “good” negotiation, an offer is made to be accepted or returned with a counter-offer. There is an unspoken assumption in negotiation that two sides should show their exchange of offers in the process of finding a solution by making concessions to the offer of other side. And in the process of offer and counter-offer, a point is reached on which both sides will agree. A successful negotiator needs to be able to understand the events that are taking place during the exchange of the offers, knowing how to use them to get advantage and keeping the other side from using them to the negotiator’s disadvantage.

2. Politeness Principles and Strategy

2.1 Politeness Principle

Politeness as a social interaction can be observed in all languages and cultures, and it has been made an important object of study in linguistics for long. According to Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, politeness is defined as the combination of interpersonal consideration and linguistic interactions. (Richard 352) Politeness is important criterion of human social activity and the symbol of human civilization. Politeness is also an

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important code of human social activity. Language activity, as a kind of social activity, is also restricted by the same code. Politeness principle, in the same conditions, is minimizing the expression of impolite beliefs. Politeness is the attitude of one party to another party. The United States social linguist Robin Lakoff puts forward three principles: first, don’t impose, which means not revising the affairs of others. Second, provide the choices and let the listener decide what to do. Third, treat each other friendly and establish one kind of equal relations among each other. The expression of all the countries about politeness principles may be different, but its basic form is consistent with each other in generally. Robin Lakoff’s idea is practical and it is accepted by all kinds of cultures.

Another influential theory on politeness is Leech’s politeness principles. Leech sets politeness principles as a member of a set of principles which he called “Interpersonal Rhetoric”. Other important principles within Interpersonal Rhetoric include the Irony Principle and the Co-operative Principle. These principles, socially constrain communicative behaviors in various ways together with other principles within Textual Rhetoric. They do not provide the main motivation for talking, but serve as regulative factors to ensure that once conversation is under way, it will not become fruitless or disruptive. Based his theory on the notion of face, Leech patterns on Grice’s Co-operative Principle and divides politeness principles into a number of maxims, namely, Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Approbation Maxim, Modesty Maxim, Agreement Maxim, and Sympathy Maxim. The concern of politeness of Leech distinguishes self and other and the relationship of the two parties. To act on the maxims he has specified, the participants of conversation should minimize cost to other and maximize benefits to other (or maximize cost to self and minimize benefit to self). Leech divides the principle into six maxims:

(1) Tact Maxim a. Minimize cost to other; b. Maximize benefits to other

(2) Generosity Maxim a. Minimize benefits to self; b. Maximize cost to self

(3) Approbation Maxim a. Minimize dispraise of other; b. Maximize praise of other

(4) Modesty Maxim a. Minimize praise of self; b. Maximize dispraise of self

(5) Agreement Maxim a. Minimize disagreement between self and other; b. Maximize agreement between self and other

(6) Sympathy Maxim a. Minimize antipathy between self and other; b. Maximize sympathy between self and other

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Each maxim has two sides: the former is other-centered and the latter is self-centered. Tact maxim and generosity maxim relate to the benefits between the speakers and the listeners, and they are applicable in directives and commitments. Further, tact maxim is applicable to requests of other and generosity maxim is about how to help others. Modesty maxim and Approbation maxim put particular emphasis on the evaluation to self and others and they are applicable in expressiveness and assertiveness. Compliments should be paid while others should be praised. As to modesty maxim, praising oneself is impolite and devaluing oneself is polite. Agreement maxim and sympathy maxim try to focus on self-attitude to others and they are applicable in assertiveness. Agreement maxim addresses no direct disagreement with others. This could explain why we say apologies firstly before making different opinions. The six maxims are often used in interpersonal communication.

The central concept of politeness principle is “face”, which is regarded to be important to individuals in both positive and negative aspect. Brown & Levinson put forward the face theory. Face means the public self-image of a person as a technical term. It refers to social and emotional sense of self that everyone has and expects anyone else to recognize. Within everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their expectations concerning their public self-image, or their face wants, will be respected. If a speaker says something that represents a threat to expectations regarding self-image of another, it is described as a face-threatening act. Alternatively, if certain action might be interpreted as a threat to another’s face, the speaker should say something to lessen the possible threat. This is called a face-saving act. There are two aspects: positive face and negative face. Positive face of a person indicates the need to be accepted, even liked by other, to be treated as a member of the same group and to know that other share his or her wants. Negative face of a person refers to the need to be independent, to have freedom of actions, and not to be imposed on by others. According to Brown&Levinson, people involved in communication should use effective measures and strategies to save each other’s face in order to keep smooth communication. The rule is same in negotiation. The polite language is the best pragmatic strategies.

2.2 Politeness Strategy

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Brown and Levinson outline four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record or indirect strategy. First, the bald on record strategy do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer’s face. This strategy is most often utilized by speakers who closely know their audience. With the bald on record strategy there is a direct possibility the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy. For example, the bald on record strategy might be to tell your mother “do the washes. It’s your turn.” The second strategy is positive politeness and it attempts to minimize the threat to the hearer's positive face. This strategy is commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well. Hedging and attempts to avoid conflict are used quite often. For example, a positive politeness strategy might be the request “It would be great if you could do the washes for me.” The third strategy is negative politeness and it presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the listener. The potential for awkwardness or embarrassment is greater than in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies. The desire to remain autonomous is Negative face. Therefore, a request without consideration of the listener’s negative face might be uncomfortable: if fifty dollars is outside the listener’s financial capabilities “I need $50” is awkward. But if the speaker knows that the listener wants to maintain their autonomy and adds an out for the listener like “I know you’ve been kind of strapped for cash, but could I borrow $50?” the listener is more likely to give the money because the request shows a respect for his ability to maintain autonomy.

The final politeness strategy of Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy. This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing. Such as, a speaker using the indirect strategy might say “wow, it’s getting hot in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the air conditioning without directly asking the listener to do so. Positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy and off-record politeness strategy should come first in Brown and Levinson’s five politeness strategies mentioned above. Positive politeness strategy: It orients to preserving the positive face of other people. Informal pronunciation, shared dialect, slang expressions, nicknames, more frequent reference to speaker and hearer as we and less indirect requests are the common ways of the positive politeness strategy. Negative politeness strategy: It orients to preserving the negative face of other people. This is more likely if there is a social distance between the speaker and the hearer. Then nicknames, slang and informal pronunciation tend to be avoided and requests tend to be more