Politeness of service encounters in Hong Kong

Politeness, as a linguistic phenomenon, has been extensively studied in the past.The most wellknown example is Brown and Levinson's model of politeness (1987), which has been applied in various settings, from casual service encounters to EFL classrooms.However, Brown and Levinson's model has been criticized for being too geared to Western (especially American) notions of 'independence' and, hence, for its limited applicability in Asian contexts.One of the most puzzling features of Chinese politeness behaviour to Westerners has been the direct and blunt approach people take in casual service encounters, in which almost no greeting and facework are required of both participants involved.Customers simply go to the service counters, say what they need, take it with their outstretched hands, and then leave.To explain this phenomenon, the distinction between in-group and out-group relationship has been proposed.Scollon and Scollon (1991) argue that, to the Chinese, there are two types of relationship governing their behaviour: inside (nei) and outside (wai).Inside relations are those of intimate regular contacts, including family members, friends, colleagues, whereas outside relations involve temporary contacts in service encounters, such as sales interactions.Sophisticated face redressing strategies are not required in dealing with a wai relationship.Hwang (1987) made an even finer distinction by classifying Chinese relationships into three categories: Expressive ties, such as those with family members; mixed ties, such as those with friends and colleagues; and instrumental ties, such as those with strangers and outgroup members with whom there is only a short-term relationship.The expectations and resulting interaction patterns will vary according to the relationship one is in.However, in proposing the 'mixed ties' between the two poles of inside and outside, Hwang has, in fact, recognized the cross-cutting nature of in-group and out-group relationships and the resulting difficulty in distinguishing in-group and outgroup behaviour.Yang (1992) made a similar distinction in understanding interaction patterns of the Chinese by using terms such as sheng 'raw or DOI: 10.1075/prag.8.4.04kon 556 Kenneth C.C. Kong outside', shu 'cooked or inside', and jia 'family'.However, these distinctions have come into question.One of the most obvious problems is that the politeness behaviour of some outgroup relationships, such as those between salesmen and clients in service encounters, is quite varied and, in some situations, resembles closely the politeness behaviour found in in-group relationships.In a recent study of sales interactions in privately-owned shops in China (Pan 1996), a large number of facework is found; in other words, an outgroup relationship has been turned into an ingroup's, in contrast with the commonly-known Chinese direct blunt style used by participants in 12 state-run shops.On the other hand, in recent decades, the traditional ingroup relationship has been 'penetrated' by commercial activities, such as network marketing; hence, ingroup behaviour among friends and colleagues may contain politeness patterns that used to belong to outgroup behaviour.