David Li
Professor Wilkins
COM 4905
May 12th, 2017
May 12th, 2017
Final
Paper
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines communication as “a process by
which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of
symbols, signs, or behavior”. The Merriam-Webster dictionary also defines
culture as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a
racial, religious, or social group”. Through these definitions we can see a
relationship between communications and culture. The symbols, signs, or
behavior from the communications definition can be the customary beliefs,
social forms and material traits from the culture definition. “Everywhere that
there is a communication system, there is cultural meaning and social
organizations”, “to speak is fundamentally, to speak culturally”, (Basic
assumptions and claim ppt). This sentence means that our cultural backgrounds and social organizations that we are a part of dictate the way in which we communicate with others.
This is based off Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, which Vygotsky stresses the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), as he believed strongly that community and culture plays an important role in the process of understanding and thinking. Vygotsky states cognitive development develops from social interactions as children and their partners create knowledge together. For Vygotsky, the culture in which children grow up with will influence how they think and what they think about. In order to express what we are thinking about, we use speech or language. Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language: social speech which is external communication used to speak with others, private speech which is used towards yourself and serves as an intellectual function of helping you to understand; and finally private speech goes deeper into your mind, stopping in being an audible voice as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner speech which comes to represent your thoughts and the way in which you communicate with others.
According to Vygotsky, language and thought are interdependent. For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems in the beginning, but at around the age of three years old we see these two separate systems beginning to merge together. At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: your thoughts becomes verbal and what you speak becomes a representation of your thoughts .When this happens, children's monologues internalize to become inner speech. The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.(McLeod, 2014). "Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech - it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e. thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings," (Vygotsky, 1962).
Meaning, we use social speech or external communication to interact with others, then we use private speech to help us to understand what we had just communicated with others, our private speech then is used to become our inner speech in which it shapes our thoughts and understandings which also shapes the way we communicate with others. Vygotsky sees "private speech" as a means for people to plan and understand and therefore aid their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-regulation of behavior. Language is therefore an accelerator to thinking or understanding.What you speak and how you communicate represents what your thoughts are, and since according to Vygotsky what you think is influenced by your culture, culture influences how we communicate.
This is based off Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, which Vygotsky stresses the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), as he believed strongly that community and culture plays an important role in the process of understanding and thinking. Vygotsky states cognitive development develops from social interactions as children and their partners create knowledge together. For Vygotsky, the culture in which children grow up with will influence how they think and what they think about. In order to express what we are thinking about, we use speech or language. Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language: social speech which is external communication used to speak with others, private speech which is used towards yourself and serves as an intellectual function of helping you to understand; and finally private speech goes deeper into your mind, stopping in being an audible voice as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner speech which comes to represent your thoughts and the way in which you communicate with others.
According to Vygotsky, language and thought are interdependent. For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems in the beginning, but at around the age of three years old we see these two separate systems beginning to merge together. At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: your thoughts becomes verbal and what you speak becomes a representation of your thoughts .When this happens, children's monologues internalize to become inner speech. The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.(McLeod, 2014). "Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech - it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e. thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings," (Vygotsky, 1962).
Meaning, we use social speech or external communication to interact with others, then we use private speech to help us to understand what we had just communicated with others, our private speech then is used to become our inner speech in which it shapes our thoughts and understandings which also shapes the way we communicate with others. Vygotsky sees "private speech" as a means for people to plan and understand and therefore aid their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-regulation of behavior. Language is therefore an accelerator to thinking or understanding.What you speak and how you communicate represents what your thoughts are, and since according to Vygotsky what you think is influenced by your culture, culture influences how we communicate.
The way that we communicate is based on our culture. Prior to this
class, I have never noticed the subtle differences in the way that I talked to
people based on their background. I would talk to one person this way, and then
talk to another person another way. For example, if I was talking to an older
Chinese person I would not address them by their first name but whenever I am
talking to an older person who is not Chinese, I would call them by their first
name. I always thought that this was something I just naturally did and it was
just the way that I communicated with people. But after learning from this
class and taking an ethnographic approach to this topic, I realized that this
was a result of my culture.
I am Chinese American; my parents
are both from China while I was born and raised in New York. So ever since I
was little, my parents would teach me the “Chinese” way of interacting with
people. They would teach me what the proper ways of greeting people are and the
proper way of addressing them. They would teach me the proper etiquette when I
am in a social setting and what to and not to do. What stuff can be said or not
said in whatever situation you are in, stuff like these. As a child, I thought
that this was how you interact with everybody, so in every situation I would
follow what my parents had taught me. This would be my social speech with others in which was developed through my interactions with my parents as a result of my culture. I would then take these social interactions that I had with people of my community and use private speech to myself and think that this was how you interact with everybody. As a result when I was a child I would address everybody older than me with their last name and not first name.
However, I do not follow the proper Chinese etiquette in every interaction I have now. This is as mentioned before, I am Chinese American. Although at home my parents would teach me the Chinese way of communication, at school and anywhere outside of home, I would be taught and interact in the American way. As I am older, the people whom I interact with more and more now are all American in some shape or form so it has also changed my way of interacting with people. I believe that my communication style is American and is only really Chinese when I am interacting with older Chinese immigrants, but still American for the most part. This is a result of interacting with different people from different communities and culture and so as I grew older, I started experiencing more stuff. My social speech expanded from interacting with many different people of different backgrounds as a result, my private speech with myself also changed. As a result of my changed private speech, my inner speech has also changed which affected my way of communication. Although I still have external communications with Chinese people, I do not think that my way of interacting with people is "Chinese" for the most part because as I am an adult now I have more control of the private speeches and inner speeches that I have, which means that the way in which I communicate has essentially become a choice of mine.
However, I do not follow the proper Chinese etiquette in every interaction I have now. This is as mentioned before, I am Chinese American. Although at home my parents would teach me the Chinese way of communication, at school and anywhere outside of home, I would be taught and interact in the American way. As I am older, the people whom I interact with more and more now are all American in some shape or form so it has also changed my way of interacting with people. I believe that my communication style is American and is only really Chinese when I am interacting with older Chinese immigrants, but still American for the most part. This is a result of interacting with different people from different communities and culture and so as I grew older, I started experiencing more stuff. My social speech expanded from interacting with many different people of different backgrounds as a result, my private speech with myself also changed. As a result of my changed private speech, my inner speech has also changed which affected my way of communication. Although I still have external communications with Chinese people, I do not think that my way of interacting with people is "Chinese" for the most part because as I am an adult now I have more control of the private speeches and inner speeches that I have, which means that the way in which I communicate has essentially become a choice of mine.
Even though I believe my preferred communication style is American for the
most part, I would love to take this paper as an opportunity to have an in
depth analysis and explore more about my Chinese background. Because I am
Chinese American and am part of both worlds, I wish to explore the face theory within the Chinese culture from the perspective of a Chinese American. What is face to a Chinese person? What is face to a Chinese American person? Are we seeing a change in how Chinese people view face with the passing of time? Questions like these are what you can hope to be discussed in this essay. Now there are many other great activity theories that I am interested in like
norms and rules or address terms, but I decided to focus on the face theory
because I believe that in the Chinese culture most, if not all activity theories revolve around the face theory.
According to Erving Goffman in his work "Interaction Ritual, Essays on Face-to Face Behavior," the term face may be defined as "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line other assume he has taken during a particular contact," (Goffman, 5). Line, in this context, "is a pattern of verbal and nonverbal act by which a person expresses his or her view of the situation and through this his or her evaluation of the participants, especially his or herself," (Goffman, 5). Face is basically "an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes," (Goffman, 5). To put this in more simple terms, face is an image of yourself in which you hope to show to others, it can be lost, maintained or enhanced. According to Goffman, face occupies a central role in establishing and maintaining social interaction. It is universal in human nature to be self-regulated, and that socialized interactants are obliged to maintain both their own and other’s face in social encounters. The universality of the concept of face, given the diverse cultural resources, forms of practices, and meaning systems, the universal concern with face can take on various local significations depending on the particular setting in which it is enacted. For the purpose of this paper, I will be focusing on the concept of face in Chinese culture.
In Chinese culture, face would be called mien tze. Mien in Chinese meaning the surface of something and Tze is a suffix attached to Mien. The term mien tze in Chinese culture is "used in relation to one's social status, power, wealth, and one's ability to impress people," (Chen, 111). In Chinese culture, the concept of mien tze is very important and is deeply embedded in the way Chinese people communicate. The way to pronounce mien tze can vary depending on the dialect of Chinese in which the person speaks but the core concept of face or mien tze is the same regardless of the dialect a Chinese person speaks. The word mien, as mentioned before is the surface of something, meaning what is outside that can be shown and seen by others. The other literal meaning would be the literal face of a person. Both are things that can be seen by others, well unless you are wearing a mask, but other than that both definitions show that in Chinese culture we are concerned with what we are showing to others and what others see from us. Mien tze is basically a representative of the self and dictates the way in which a Chinese person communicates. A Chinese person's way of social speech is influenced by mien tze, the private and inner speech is also influenced by mien tze, Chinese people take mien tze seriously, and try their best to not lose mien tze.
To not lose mien tze or to save mien tze, there are basic kinds of face-work in which Goffman has defined. The first one is the avoidance process, in which Goffman defines as "the surest way for a person to prevent threats to his face is to avoid contacts in which these threats are likely to occur," (Goffman, 15). Meaning, that in order to not lose face a person would do anything in order to not be in situations in which his face would be challenged. If there is a situation in which a person feels like their face will be lost, they would do things in order to avoid the impending face lost. These can include things like not participating in stuff that you are bad at or shifting the topic of a face losing conversation. An example can be like not participating in a game that you are not good at because you are afraid that you would lose face if people see that you are bad at a game or when people are talking about embarrassing moments you shift the topic before it gets to your turn to talk. These are all ways which a person can avoid losing face but you cannot avoid face losing situations every time. When you do see yourself having lost face, you can help save your face by using what Goffman calls the corrective process.
Goffman states that the corrective process is used when "the participants in an undertaking or encounter fail to prevent the occurrence of an event that is expressively incompatible with the judgments of social worth that are being maintained, and when the event is of the kind that is difficult to overlook, then the participants are likely to give it accredited status as an incident-to ratify it as a threat that deserves direct official attention-and proceed to try to correct for its effects," (Goffman, 19). Basically what this means is that when a person loses face, the person would bring to attention the situation in that caused said person to lose face in order to explain or correct himself in order to save the face in which was lost. An example of this would be when if someone skips you in line in the grocery store and you call them out on it while attracting the attention of the people around you in order for you to show that you are confronting the person so that you can save your face.
Face is not something that is particular to one social group or culture but is something in which Goffman believes is universal. Not only Goffman, but in Brown and Levinson's(1987) work titled, Politeness: Some universals in language usage, they "treat the aspects of face as basic wants, which every member knows every other member desires, and which in general it is in the interest of every member to partially satisfy,"(Brown and Levinson, 312). Meaning that every human being wants face and we all know that everybody wants face and it is best for everyone to satisfy each other's want for face. Brown and Levinson further breaks down a person's want for face into two particular wants: negative and positive face.
A person's negative face is "the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction," and "the want of every "competent adult member" that his actions be unimpeded by others," (Brown and Levinson, 312). Basically a person's negative face is to be left alone and be able to do what he or she wants. A person's positive face is "the positive consistent self-image or personality (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants," and "the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others," (Brown and Levinson, 312). Basically a person's positive face is being acknowledged and appreciated by others. Everyone wants to maintain their face whether it is a positive or negative face and there are certain kinds of acts which intrinsically threaten face, namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the hearer and or the speaker, these acts are called Face Threatening Acts or FTAs.
Bibliography
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39–285). New York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)
McLeod, S. A. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
According to Erving Goffman in his work "Interaction Ritual, Essays on Face-to Face Behavior," the term face may be defined as "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line other assume he has taken during a particular contact," (Goffman, 5). Line, in this context, "is a pattern of verbal and nonverbal act by which a person expresses his or her view of the situation and through this his or her evaluation of the participants, especially his or herself," (Goffman, 5). Face is basically "an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes," (Goffman, 5). To put this in more simple terms, face is an image of yourself in which you hope to show to others, it can be lost, maintained or enhanced. According to Goffman, face occupies a central role in establishing and maintaining social interaction. It is universal in human nature to be self-regulated, and that socialized interactants are obliged to maintain both their own and other’s face in social encounters. The universality of the concept of face, given the diverse cultural resources, forms of practices, and meaning systems, the universal concern with face can take on various local significations depending on the particular setting in which it is enacted. For the purpose of this paper, I will be focusing on the concept of face in Chinese culture.
In Chinese culture, face would be called mien tze. Mien in Chinese meaning the surface of something and Tze is a suffix attached to Mien. The term mien tze in Chinese culture is "used in relation to one's social status, power, wealth, and one's ability to impress people," (Chen, 111). In Chinese culture, the concept of mien tze is very important and is deeply embedded in the way Chinese people communicate. The way to pronounce mien tze can vary depending on the dialect of Chinese in which the person speaks but the core concept of face or mien tze is the same regardless of the dialect a Chinese person speaks. The word mien, as mentioned before is the surface of something, meaning what is outside that can be shown and seen by others. The other literal meaning would be the literal face of a person. Both are things that can be seen by others, well unless you are wearing a mask, but other than that both definitions show that in Chinese culture we are concerned with what we are showing to others and what others see from us. Mien tze is basically a representative of the self and dictates the way in which a Chinese person communicates. A Chinese person's way of social speech is influenced by mien tze, the private and inner speech is also influenced by mien tze, Chinese people take mien tze seriously, and try their best to not lose mien tze.
To not lose mien tze or to save mien tze, there are basic kinds of face-work in which Goffman has defined. The first one is the avoidance process, in which Goffman defines as "the surest way for a person to prevent threats to his face is to avoid contacts in which these threats are likely to occur," (Goffman, 15). Meaning, that in order to not lose face a person would do anything in order to not be in situations in which his face would be challenged. If there is a situation in which a person feels like their face will be lost, they would do things in order to avoid the impending face lost. These can include things like not participating in stuff that you are bad at or shifting the topic of a face losing conversation. An example can be like not participating in a game that you are not good at because you are afraid that you would lose face if people see that you are bad at a game or when people are talking about embarrassing moments you shift the topic before it gets to your turn to talk. These are all ways which a person can avoid losing face but you cannot avoid face losing situations every time. When you do see yourself having lost face, you can help save your face by using what Goffman calls the corrective process.
Goffman states that the corrective process is used when "the participants in an undertaking or encounter fail to prevent the occurrence of an event that is expressively incompatible with the judgments of social worth that are being maintained, and when the event is of the kind that is difficult to overlook, then the participants are likely to give it accredited status as an incident-to ratify it as a threat that deserves direct official attention-and proceed to try to correct for its effects," (Goffman, 19). Basically what this means is that when a person loses face, the person would bring to attention the situation in that caused said person to lose face in order to explain or correct himself in order to save the face in which was lost. An example of this would be when if someone skips you in line in the grocery store and you call them out on it while attracting the attention of the people around you in order for you to show that you are confronting the person so that you can save your face.
Face is not something that is particular to one social group or culture but is something in which Goffman believes is universal. Not only Goffman, but in Brown and Levinson's(1987) work titled, Politeness: Some universals in language usage, they "treat the aspects of face as basic wants, which every member knows every other member desires, and which in general it is in the interest of every member to partially satisfy,"(Brown and Levinson, 312). Meaning that every human being wants face and we all know that everybody wants face and it is best for everyone to satisfy each other's want for face. Brown and Levinson further breaks down a person's want for face into two particular wants: negative and positive face.
A person's negative face is "the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction," and "the want of every "competent adult member" that his actions be unimpeded by others," (Brown and Levinson, 312). Basically a person's negative face is to be left alone and be able to do what he or she wants. A person's positive face is "the positive consistent self-image or personality (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants," and "the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others," (Brown and Levinson, 312). Basically a person's positive face is being acknowledged and appreciated by others. Everyone wants to maintain their face whether it is a positive or negative face and there are certain kinds of acts which intrinsically threaten face, namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the hearer and or the speaker, these acts are called Face Threatening Acts or FTAs.
Bibliography
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39–285). New York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)
McLeod, S. A. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. New York, NY: Doubleday
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness:
Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
