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This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

ON THE FUNCTION OF IRONIC CRITICISM

presented by
CHUN HUANG

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

MA. degree in Linguistics

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ON THE FUNCTION OF IRONIC CRITICISM
By

Chun Huang

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages

2004

ABSTRACT
ON THE FUNCTION OF IRONIC CRITICISM
By

Chun Huang

This study is a quest for the pragmatic function of ironic criticism. According
to Dews and Winner’s (1995) proposal of tinge hypothesis, ironic criticism should be less
offensive than literal or direct criticism. However, Okamoto’s (2002) study in Japanese
and my pilot study in Taiwan’s Mandarin Chinese indicate that East Asian people in
effect consider ironic criticism more insulting than direct criticism. In search for an
answer to the reported cultural difference, I borrow the insights of Brown and Levinson
(1987[1978]), Ghita (2001), Kinnison (2000), and O’Driscoll (1996), proposing an offset
face analysis with an interactive viewpoint. It is found that the opportunities for
compensating the loss of face-wants in a given irony interaction are not equally available
for the Americans and for the East Asian people. The inequality in negotiating
face-threatening acts contributes to the disparity between the American perception and

the East Asian perception of ironic criticism.

Copyright by
CHUN HUANG
2004

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, my deepest thanks go to Dr. Barbara K. Abbott, my major advisor. Her
calmness, open-mindedness, and orderly yet smooth way of presenting ideas have led me
to the treasure of every complicated thought. Merely sitting in her classes has become
the greatest joy for me in the past two years. If there is anything that melts the Michigan
I snow for an international student from subtropics like me, it would be Dr. Abbott’s
enthusiastic devotion to teaching linguistics.

I amalso very grateful to my other two committee members, Dr. Mutsuko Endo
Hudson and Dr. Yen-Hwei Lin. Endo Sensei has shown me the beauty of Japanese
language as well as Japanese culture. I feel extremely fortunate to have her put some
benevolent pressure on me. Lin Laoshi’s encouragement was the best medicine when I
have had doubts on myself.

My girlfriend, Heng-chieh (Jamie) Wu, is to be thanked not only for her love and
company, but also for her teaching me statistics. My Taiwanese data would not have
become meaningful without Jamie’s assistance. (Yet I am fully responsible for any error
in the paper.) In addition, I feel especially indebted to Mike Li and Roxy Cat for the
warth they have brought to my heart.

Thanks to the wonderful campus of MSU, the trees, the creek, the ducks, the fattest
squirrels in the world, etc., I always feel delightful when walking around each comer,
pondering the details of my thesis. Many people have helped me and made my life as a
Spartan colorful and interesting. I am grateful to have Kyu-Sun Lee, Hsiang-Hua Chang,

Kim Lewis, Bo-Young Kwon, Masaaki Takashima, Stephen Backman, Richard Liang,

iv

Paul Lin, Yen-lin Chen, and Chien-Ho Wang as friends.

Finally, special gratitude goes to my parents for their endless love and support.
They give me the privilege to concentrate on study without worrying about anything else.
Also, I am thankful to my younger sister, Paula. The inner strength that helps her survive

cancer inspires me to keep working hard.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................... ix
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1
1.1 Studies on verbal irony ......................................................... 1
1.2 Definition of ironic criticism ................................................... 2
1.3 Studies on the function of irony ............................................... 3
1.4 Objectives and framework of the study ....................................... 4
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE ............................................................... 6
2.1 Irony interaction ................................................................. 6
2.2 Brown and Levinson’s face theory of linguistic politeness ............... 10
2.2.1 F ace in interpersonal interaction ................................... 10
2.2.2 Politeness strategies .................................................. 11
2.2.3 Ironic criticism as a face-saving mechanism ..................... 15
2.3 The tinge hypothesis ............................................................ 16

2.3.1 Support for the tinge hypothesis: the American pattern. . . . . 17
2.3.2 Findings against the tinge hypothesis: the Japanese pattern. .. 21

CHAPTER 3
A PILOT STUDY ON TAIWAN CHINESE ............................................. 24
3.1 Method ........................................................................... 25
3.2 Result ............................................................................. 26
3.3 Discussion ........................................................................ 28
CHAPTER 4
MODIFICATION OF BROWN AND LEVINSON ..................................... 31
4.1 Defense and modification of Brown and Levinson ......................... 31
4.1.1 Cultural elaboration of face ......................................... 31
4.1.2 Negative and positive faces as wants .............................. 34
4.1.2.1 Basic desires: the wants dualism ........................ 35
4.1.2.2 Face-wants ................................................ 38
4.1.3 Face model revised ................................................... 42
4.2 Face analysis revised ............................................................ 44
4.2.1 From ironist’s viewpoint to an interactive perspective ......... 44
4.2.2 From off-record to offset ............................................ 46

vi

CHAPTER 5

RESOLUTION: OFFSET OF FACE-WANTS .......................................... 49

5.1 The American pattern ........................................................... 49

5.1.1 The American ironist’s face-work ................................. _ 49

5.1.2 The American responder’s face-work ............................. 51

5.2 The East Asian patter ........................................................... 54

5.2.1 The East Asian Ironist’s face-work ................................ 54

5.2.2 The East Asian Responder’s face-work ........................... 55

5.3 Conclusion ........................................................................ 57
CHAPTER 6

DISCUSSION ................................................................................. 62

6.1 Conclusion ........................................................................ 62

6.2 Predictions ........................................................................ 64

6.3 Remaining problem and future research ..................................... 66

APPENDICES ................................................................................. 68

Appendix 1 The Chinese version of the questionnaire ........................ 69

Appendix 2 The English version of the questionnaire ......................... 74

REFERENCES ................................................................................ 79

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Means for Ironic and Literal Criticism by Status Relation. . . . . . . . 27

viii

Chart 1

Chart 2

Chart 3

Chart 4

LIST OF FIGURES

Mean rating scores for the degree of criticism and the degree of insult... 29

Brown and Levinson’s face model ............................................. 42
Huang’s face model .............................................................. 43
Application of the offset face analysis ........................................ 59

ix

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Studies on verbal irony

As a manifestation of non-literal use of language, VERBAL IRONY draws attention
from linguists who are interested in pragmatics and psycholinguistics‘. Over the past
few decades a considerable number of studies have been made on how the ironic
intention of the speaker is conveyed. Among them, the most famous are Grice’s
treatment of verbal irony as a violation of his conversational maxim of quality (Grice '
1975, 1978), Sperber and Wilson’s echoic mention theory (Sperber and Wilson 1998,
Wilson and Sperber 1992), and Clark and Gerrig’s pretense theory of verbal irony (Clark
and Gerrig 1984). Psycholinguistic experiments conducted to test these proposals are
plenty, with suggestions of modification (Kreuz and Glucksberg 1989, Kreuz and Link
2002, Gibbs and O’Brien 1991, Kumon-Nakamura et 31.1995, Giora et al. 1998).

While verbal irony is widely acknowledged as a means of expressing the speaker’s
evaluative attitude toward the addressee or toward a certain state of affairs, there are
various forms with which it is performed. For example, an insincere request such as
“Would you like another piece of pizza?” addressed to someone who just gobbled up a
whole twelve inch pizza, or an exclamation such as “Oh, that’s great!” shouted out
toward someone who just poured a cup of hot coffee on the speaker’s new pair of shoes,

could be perceived as ironic. In my opinion, this multi-incamation nature of verbal

 

' Verbal/conversational irony is distinguished from situational irony or irony of fate. While the former
refers to a figure of speech that appears in natural language, the latter refers to a state of the world that is
perceived as ironic. Further distinction of different types of situational irony has been made; for reference,
see Attardo (2000).

irony contributes to the controversy among the scholars who claim their theories to be
general enough to cover all situations where irony is observed. The fact is, while the
echoic theory seems to be capable of dealing with certain typical situations where the
ironist speaker obviously echoes or copies an expression that was previously produced by
someone else, the pretense theory is more suitable for other cases, e.g., Jonathan Swift’s
ironic essay “A Modest Proposal” which does not seem to echo anyone’s previous
thought, and yet problematic for the rest. Therefore, I suggest that, before reaching a
comprehensive linguistic theory of verbal irony that is applicable to all types, we should
set limitations for ourselves, tackling one type at a time. Hence, in this study, I confined

myself to one single type of verbal irony, that is, ironic criticism.

1.2 Definition of Ironic Criticism

Before we move on, the definition of IRONIC CRITICISM has to be examined. Ironic
criticism has been considered as the canonical type of (Kreuz and Link 2002), or as the
prototype of (Utsumi 2000) verbal irony. It consists of an intention of criticism on the
underlying level and a compliment on the surface. For example, a husband who does
not like his wife’s taste of style might ironically say, “Look at you, what a beautiful

9’
I

dress Note that the reverse order, i.e., surface-criticism-plus-underlying-compliment,
is not inconceivable: a tourist who is visiting the notorious Detroit downtown for the first
time but surprisingly finds it extremely clean and orderly might ironically exclaim, “Wow,
Detroit is really in chaos!” However, although empirical data is still lacking,

researchers have agreed that compared to the frequently encountered criticize-by-praise

type of irony (or ironic criticism), the praise-by-criticism type is much less observed.

For detailed discussion on the so-called “asymmetry of affect of verbal irony,” see Dews

2

and Winner (1995), Dews et al. (1995) and Kreuz and Link (2002). From now on, we
will only focus on ironic criticism that is directed toward the addressee who is also the

target of the ironist’s critical evaluation.

1.3 Studies on the function of irony

Although the studies mentioned above shed light on the mental processing of verbal
irony, and, as a consequence, enhance our understanding on human cognition, they often
ignore another important question: why do people choose to use verbal irony? Why
would a person, who already decided to make a criticism toward another person, not
make his/her statement directly or literally, but, instead, make it indirectly in the form of
irony? There must be some fimction inherent in the use of verbal irony that overrides
one’s demand of efficient communication. Such a function must be significant, so much
so that the speaker cares about it to the extent that the explicitness of his/her expression
can be sacrificed. Unfortunately, there have been only a few attempts made on the
function issue.

Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]), in their book on linguistic politeness, first
conceive of ironic criticism as an off-record politeness strategy that fiinctions to save face.
By “off-recor ” they mean that while the intention of criticism is meant to be recognized,
the speaker does not commit him/herself to it. A direct criticism would be a kind of bald
on-record expression; but an ironic criticism, on the other hand, offers the speaker an
opportunity to retreat. Brown and Levinson(1987[l978]: 212) maintain: given the fact
that the speaker has paid polite lip service, the speaker and the addressee may walk away

from the situation without facing a serious conflict.

Notice that the above argument bears one implication, that is, ironic criticism, thanks
to its function of face-saving and its attendance to politeness, should be less offensive
than literal criticism. Dews and "Winner (1995) and Dews et al. (1995) extend this
implication to their own proposal: the TINGE HYPOTHESIS. Admitting that “lessening the
threat to a face and reducing further conflict seem plausible functions of irony,” Dews et
al. suggest “a more general hypothesis”: “the positive, literal meaning of an ironic
criticism colors [tinges] the interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning, resulting in
a decreased negative tone” (Dews et al. 1995: 349).

The tinge hypothesis, however, is untenable owing to an experimental finding from
Okamoto (2002). In his study where ironic criticism is contrasted with literal criticism
to test the participants’ attitudes, Okamoto indicates that the Japanese participants in
effect perceive ironic remarks as being more offensive than their literal counterparts,
contrary to the findings from some similar experiments conducted by Dews and Winner
(1995) and Dews et a1. (1995) where the American participants perceive ironic criticism

as less critical and less insulting.

1.4 Objectives and framework of the study

My overall goal is to answer the question: what is the fiinction of ironic criticism?
However, it will become clear that such a goal is too huge for a preliminary study like
this one. This study, nevertheless, is kept on the track of pursuing the ultimate answer
by leaving the following traces. First, in Chapter 2, literature regarding irony interaction,
linguistic politeness, and the function of ironic criticism will be reviewed. Secondly, in

Chapter 3, I will discuss the results of a pilot study on Taiwan Chinese speakers’

perception of ironic criticism. The findings will be compared with the American pattern
reported in Dews and Winner (1995) as well as Dew et al. (1995) and the Japanese
pattern reported in Okamoto (2002). I will point out that the Taiwan Chinese pattern
agrees with the Japanese pattern, considering ironic criticism to be more offensive than
literal criticism, and so it also undermines the tinge hypothesis. Later on, I will show
that Brown and Levinson’s thesis, with some modification, can provide an explanation
for the discrepancy between American and East Asian cultures. The modification of
Brown and Levinson’s face proposal as well as a revision of their analytical methodology
is introduced in Chapter 4. Then, in Chapter 5, a new offset face analysis, the
substitution for Brown and Levinson’s off-record analysis, will be applied to the two
earlier observed cultural patterns, indicating a promising alternative. Conclusion of the

study is made in chapter 6.

CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Irony interaction

Not only the linguistic form of verbal irony varies, as has been mentioned in 1.1, the
situation where irony is involved also varies. For example, a person may cry out, “Oh,
great!” while stepping on a bubble gum on the sidewalk when no one else is present; in a
one-on-one and face-to-face situation, a person’s ironic remark may be made toward the
other person, an absent third party, or a state of affairs that is present or not present; still,
an ironic remark may be observed in situations with more than two participants, such as a
small group meeting, or a public speech. This paper is devoted to the one-on-one and
face-to-face interpersonal communication of ironic criticism where the addressee is the
target. In this section, we will study the literature that deals with one-on-one “irony
interaction.”

First of all, we shall always be aware that irony cannot exist out of context. A mere
sentence such as “Look at you, what a beautiful dress!” does not make itself ironic. We
have to be provided contextual information indicating that this sentence is delivered by a
husband who in fact does not like his wife’s dress, that he has employed some kind of
linguistic clue such as intonation to make the remark sound insincere or pretending
(Clark and Gerrig 1984, Kumon-Nakarnura et al. 1995) before we judge the remark as an
ironic one.

Another important point here is that the addressee has to recognize the speaker’s

ironic intention. Moreover, as an interpersonal interaction, the addressee has to show

his/her recognition to the speaker:

(1) Unlike other standard indirect acts, irony cannot be ‘perlocutionarily’ validated
by an actual fulfillment of the speaker’s intention. In using irony, a speaker
does not intend to make his/her addressee DO something, but UNDERSTAND
something concerning attitudes, personal feelings, ideas, beliefs — what is
called cognitive environment. The only validation of the communicative
success of irony is [therefore] the immediate verbal response to it.

(Ghita 2001: 143-144)
In the previous example, if the wife does not give any response to her husband, he would
not be able to know whether his intention has been conveyed or not. Therefore, as Ghita
(2001: 143) points out, “the conversational complicity needed for an ironic transaction of
meaning requires not only a mere understanding of irony, but also an appropriate
responding to irony” [italics added].

Now that we have identified the two constituents of an irony interaction with regard
to the addressee, i.e., the recognition of the ironic intention and an appropriate response,
we shall further inspect what kind of response makes the interaction successful. Leech
(1990[1983]: 82) first proposed an IRONY PRINCIPLE (1P): “if you must cause offense, at
least do so in a way which doesn’t overtly conflict with the PP [Politeness Principle], but
allows the addressee to arrive at the offensive point of your remark indirectly, by way of

implicature.” Following the irony principle, Ghita (2001 : 142) claims that in a
successful irony interaction, “[the addressee] must avoid any overt conflict with the
ironic speaker.” As a result, if an addressee takes an ironic remark too seriously so that

his/her reaction might potentially induce an overt conflict with the speaker, the

interaction is spoiled. Put differently, only if the addressee recognizes the speaker’s

 

2 The Politeness Principle (PP): “minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs”;
“maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs” (Leech 1990[1983]: 81). Leech
contends that this Politeness Principle sometimes overrules the Quality Maxim of Gricean Cooperative
Principle (CP), i.e., “try to make your contribution [to a conversation] one that is true”(Grice 1975:46), as
in situations where expressing one ’3 true thought may be considered as impolite and hence hampers the
smooth flow of a conversation. Irony and “white lies" are among the situations where PP overrides CP.
For detailed discussion, see Barbe (1995: 89-91).

ironic intention and cooperates with the speaker in keeping the intended offense on the
underlying level while superficially maintaining a peaceful flow of conversation will the

irony interaction be considered as a successful one. The following examples help to

illustrate this point:

(2) A: [ironically] That dress is really nice!
a. B: Do you want to start a row?
b. B: Just say if you like it or not, but do not talk ironically to me.
o. B: Don’t worry, darling, I will wear it anyway!
(I. B: If you don’t like it, I will not wear it.
e. B: [Thank you.] I am glad you like it.
f. B: [Thank you.] I bought new shoes for it, too!

g. B: It’s not as ‘nice’ as your green jacket!

(Ghita 2001: 145-146)
In (2) a., B literally invites A to a fight. B informs A that she is taking A’s remark as a
direct criticism instead of an indirect one, and that she is angry because of that.
Similarly, in (2) b., B refuses taking A’s remark as an irony by using a
meta-communicative expression. She attempts to violently force A to withdraw the
ironic rhetoric. Therefore, B’s responses in (2) a. and b. are not considered appropriate
for the reason that they overtly cause a conflict and hence spoil the peacefulness of the
interaction. On the other hand, in (2) c. and d., while B indicates to A that A’s
underlying critical intent is recognized, B also points to A that his ironic rhetorical effort
is useless; hence, the full range of A’s ironic intention is not respected. In either case, B
tells A that “[A’s utterance], although implicit, [is to] be simply understood as non-ironic”
(Ghita 2001 : 146). Although (2) c. may induce a potential conflict while (2) (I. does not
seem to trigger one, both responses ignore the ironic tone in A’s expression, treating it as
a plain indirect speech act. They immediately lead the irony to an end and therefore

interrupt the irony interaction.

Then, let us continue with (2) e. and f. We shall notice that if these two responses

are taken as indications of B’s complete ignorance of A’s ironic intention, that is, as
indicating that B simply misinterprets A’s remark as a sincere compliment, they surely do
not count as parts of a successful irony interaction. It is only on the grounds that B
actually recognizes A’s ironic intention that we conceive of (2) e. and f. as strategic
responses that contribute to successful irony interaction. In this case, B in effect
pretends to take A’s remark as if it is a literal compliment, and B has to employ some
kinds of verbal or non-verbal clues, such as exaggerative intonation, smirking, etc., that
enable A to notice B’s non-seriousness. By doing so, B indirectly informs A that she is
not taking deep offense from A’s underlying criticism, that she can pretend there to be no
such criticism, and hence that no conflict is to be caused. “[B] invites [A] to join in
the conversation, peacefully forgetting the hostile meaning [of underlying criticism]. .
(Ghita 2001: 145). For this reason, (2) e. and f., respectively, paired with A’s remark,
are considered as examples of successful irony interaction. I will refer to this kind of
pretended compliment response as “take it literally” strategy in the later discussions.
Notice that Ghita also mentions another type of response that may carry out an irony
interaction, that is, response with another irony, as illustrated in (2) g. In her viewpoint,
“[B] pays back irony without rejecting its effect, [and] without any feeling of revenge
she simply entertains irony [interaction] as a playful game [where] the feeling of
aggression is replaced by that of competition” (Ghita 2001: 145). It seems to me that
this last conclusion is premature in that it presumes that irony or ironic criticism is not
very aggressive or ofl'ensive. However, as we will see in 2.3.2 as well as in Chapter 3,
in some cultures, ironic criticism is perceived as even more offensive than direct criticism.

For people from these cultures, responding to an irony with another irony may not help to

keep the potential conflict away.

2.2 Brown and Levinson’s face theory of linguistic politeness

One of the most frequently mentioned theories of irony function appears in Brown
and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) face analysis on linguistic politeness. In this section, we
will first go though their general claim of face, its role in politeness, and the polite
strategies in doing face-threatening speech acts. Then, in 2.2.3, we will focus on Brown
and Levinson’s account of irony function as a face-saving mechanism. In addition, we

will examine how this face-saving account is interpreted in other researcher’s works.

2.2.1 Face in interpersonal interaction

For his work on interpersonal communication, Goffman proposes a metaphorical
notion of FACE which is “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself
by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman 1967[1955]:
5). This face concept can hence be considered as one’s self-image that corresponds to
the social expectation on him/her. Moreover, “a person may be said to have, or be in, or
maintain face when the line he effectively takes presents an image of him that is
internally consistent [and/or] is supported by judgments and evidence conveyed by
other participants ...” (Goffman 1967[1955]: 6). Therefore, besides being a
self-clairned image, the maintenance of one’s face requires others’ recognition.

Goffman’s proposal of face is later borrowed by Brown and Levinson (1987[1978])
into their thesis of linguistic politeness. According to Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]:

61), face is not only “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for

10

himself,” “something that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced” and whose
maintenance depends on other participants’ recognition, but it is also endowed with
predominant importance in interpersonal interactions so that each individual would
usually try to attend to others’ faces in order to maintain his/her own:

(3) In general, people cooperate (and assume each other’s c00peration) in
maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual
vulnerability of face. That is, normally everyone’s face depends on everyone
else ’s being maintained, and since people can be expected to defend their faces
if threatened, and in defending their own to threaten others’ faces, it is in
general in every participant’s best interest to maintain each others’ face, that is
to act in ways that assure the other participants that the agent is heedful [of
their faces].

(Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]:61. italics added.)
Furthermore, Brown and Levinson propose that the concept of face is a composite with
two opposing desires: “negative face: the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that
his actions be unimpeded by others,” and “positive face: the want of every member that
his wants be desirable to at least some others” (Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]: 62).
The pivotal role face plays in social interactions, and the mutual acknowledgement of the
interactants’ faces, Brown and Levinson claim, are universal. As a consequence, Brown

and Levinson stand for a pan-cultural applicability of their face analysis on politeness

strategies that is to be discussed in 2.2.2.

2.2.2 Politeness strategies

Given the assumptions of the universality of face and of the rationality held by
normal individuals, Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]) claim that in social interactions,
there are certain kinds of speech acts “intrinsically” threatening to face. They refer to
these acts as “face-threatening acts” (FTAs). In their definition, FT As are “those acts

that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker”

11

(Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]: 65). For example, warnings and threats are
considered as FTAs that primarily threaten the addressee’s negative face for the reason
that the speaker reveals his/her intent to impede the addressee’s freedom of actions; on
the other hand, FTAs threatening the addressee’s positive face include the expressions
where the speaker indicates his/her strong negative emotions toward the addressee such
as hatred, anger, criticism, etc. For more examples concerning the types of faces and the
role of the interactant (speaker vs. addressee) whose face is threatened, see Brown and
Levinson (1987[1978]) pp. 65-68.

Recall that in 2.2.1 we have seen Brown and Levinson’s argument that attending to
other’s face is in most people’s concern for the reason that it is to their own benefit.
Accordingly, a person should basically want to mitigate the threats of his/her intended
FTA. However, we shall also note that there are at least three conflicting thoughts
converging in the speaker’s mind in any given interpersonal interaction involving FT A,
i.e., “(a) the want to communicate the content of the FTA, (b) the want to be efficient or
urgent, and (c) the want to maintain face to any degree” (Brown and Levinson
1987[1978]:68). According to Brown and Levinson, unless in the speaker’s regard (b)
is assigned a heavier weighting than (c), s/he will want to mitigate the threats of the
intended FTA. For example, a person would normally not rudely roar out “Open the
windows!” to someone standing by the windows if all s/he wants is some fresh air.
Instead, s/he would probably ask gently “Do you mind opening the windows?” with some
explanatiOn such as “It’s a little bit stuffy in here” so that s/he can minimize the damage
on the addressee’s negative face, i.e., the want to act freely without others’ imposition.

On the contrary, if the situation was concerned with emergency, say, some toxic gas

12

unfortunately leaking out in the room, the speaker would not hesitate to cry out “Open the
windows!” as loudly as possible.

The damage on face induced by F TAs, therefore, is maneuverable rather than
completely inescapable. To illustrate this point, Brown and Levinson advance a set of

“strategies for doing the F TAs” that may be employed by a rational individual as the

follows:
(4)
a. without redressive action, baldly
on record . . .
< b. posrttve politeness
Do the FT A with redressive action

c. negative politeness
d. off record

e. Don’t do the FTA

(Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]: 69)

First, note that, if performing the intended FTA is not conceived as a necessity, the
speaker can simply choose not to do the FTA at all, as shown in (4) e. If the speaker
does want to convey the content of the FTA, s/he can either go “on recor ” or “off
record.” By “on recor ” Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]: 68) mean that in the
situation, “there is just one unambiguously attributable intention with which witnesses
would concur.” For the speaker who has decided to do an FTA on record, s/he can do it
with or without redress (or “redressive action” in Brown and Levinson’s terminology) to

face. If no redress is complemented, we call the act “bald on-record” as in (4) a.

13

Crying out “Open the windows” directly may be taken as an example of this sort. Bald
on-record FT As are observed oflen when emergency is involved as the gas leakage case,
or when the potential damage is minor given the proper context, e. g., when a command is
directed from a higher ranked officer to a lower ranked soldier. Otherwise, on-record
FTAs may be accompanied by redress to either the addressee’s positive face or negative
face. Brown and Levinson use the term “positive politeness” ((4) b.) to represent the
on-record strategy with redress to positive faces, and “negative politeness” ((4) c.) for
that with redress to negative face. Showing sympathy to the addressee is considered as
an example of positive politeness since that speaker at least appreciates some of the
addressee’s want, for example, “I realize that money is tight for you recently, but, you
know, the payment has been past due for over two weeks.” On the other hand,
expressions that begin with “Do you mind ...?” can often be considered as a case of
negative politeness for the reason that the speaker is minimizing his/her impediment to
the addressee’s freedom of actions. Still, a speaker can avoid damaging not only the
addressee’s face but also his/her own face by rendering the FTA “off-record” as in (4) d.
where “there is more than one unambiguously attributable intention so that the actor [the
speaker] cannot be held to have committed himself to one particular intent” (Brown and
Levinson 1987[1978]: 69). The following is an instance of off-record strategy from
Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]: 69): “if I say ‘Damn, I’m out of cash, I forgot to go to
the bank today,’ I may be intending to get you to lend me some cash, but I cannot be held
to have committed myself to that intent.” Other linguistic realization of off-record
strategies includes rhetorical questions, understatements, metaphor, irony, etc. We will

focus on ironic criticism in the next section.

14

2.2.3 Ironic criticism as a face-saving mechanism

Brown and Levinson’s analysis of ironic criticism has often been mentioned as an
“off-record face-saving politeness strategy” (Barbe 1995, Kumon-Nakamura 1995).
Below, we will first examine the original Brown and Levinson claim, and then look at
other researchers’ explanations.

As previously mentioned, when an off-record strategy is adopted, the speaker cannot
be held to commit to one particular communicative interpretation. In other words, the
speaker provides him/herself a leeway to escape from the responsibility for doing a
particularly FTA by referring to other possible interpretations (Brown and Levinson
1987[1978]: 211). This strategy is often utilized when the potential threat to face that
may be attributed to the intended FTA is serious (Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]: 210).
Ironic criticism is categorized as an ofi-record strategy for the reason that the speaker can
always opt out from the highly threatening FTA of criticism to the interpretation of
compliment, while at the same time still using some linguistic clue such as intonation or
some non-verbal clue such as facial expression showing insincerity to insure the
addressee receiving his/her critical message as intended. Brown and Levinson
(1987[1978]: 212) conclude, “S [the speaker] and H [the addressee] could both go away
from the interaction ‘knowing’ in their hearts that [the ironic criticism] really was
sarcastic, but because face is largely a matter of surface appearance, S may well get away
with his FT .”

Notice that Brown and Levinson’s analysis of ironic criticism can primarily be
considered as a means of saving the speaker I: face. However, except for briefly

mentioning that “face is largely a matter of surface appearance,” they do not fully explain

15

why the addressee should let the speaker get away from the interaction given that s/he has
noticed the critical intention. Kumon-Nakamura et al.’s (1995: 20) suggestion of seeing
ironic criticism as a “face-saving politeness mechanism” retains the speaker-oriented
perspective: “because the speaker did not commit to any particular intention to insult, at
least not on the surface, the speaker can always offer the defense that no impolite act was
committed.” Alternatively, Barbe, while also holding the “off-record” viewpoint, takes
into account the effect on addressee. She argues that “in using [an ironic criticism], I
[the speaker] did not attack the addressee directly, thereby providing the addressee with
the opportunity to ignore my remark,” with the following elaboration of the face-saving
function: “[Giving a compliment on the surface] provides a means to save face for both
speaker and addressee, neither of whom has to acknowledge the possible criticism when

challenged” (Barbe 1995: 10. italics added).

2.3 The tinge hypothesis

Accepting the politeness proposal of irony function and claiming that “lessening the
threat to a face and reducing further conflict seem plausible functions of irony,” Dews et
al. (1995: 349) advance “a more general hypothesis, one that we suggest may account for
all forms of irony,” i.e., the TINGE HYPOTHESIS.

The gist of the tinge hypothesis is, as Dews and Winner (1995: 4) explicate, “the
evaluative tone of the literal meaning of ironic utterances automatically Colors (or tinges)
the hearer’s perception of the intended meaning.” This hypothesis is claimed to be
“more general (than the face type of analysis)” for the reason that the proponents believe

that it is able to accommodate not only ironic criticism but also the opposite, that is,

16

ironic compliment, the “surface-criticism-plus-underlying-compliment” forrn of verbal
irony as has been mentioned in 1.2.

Specifically, Dews and Winner argue, “in the case of ironic insults [that is, ironic
criticism], the positive literal meaning tinges the negative intended meaning, resulting in
a less critical evaluation; [on the other hand,] the negative literal meaning of ironic
compliments tinges the positive intended meaning, resulting in a more critical evaluation”
(Dews and Winner 1995: 4). In other words, the surface compliment of ironic criticism
functions to mitigate the criticalness of the underlying criticism; the surface criticism of
ironic compliment functions to reduce the praise of the underlying compliment. As a
consequence, the tinge hypothesis predicts: (a) ironic criticism should be perceived as
less offensive than literal/direct criticism, and (b) ironic compliment should be perceived
as more offensive than literal/direct compliment (Dews and Winner 1995, Dews et al. ‘
1995)

Next, I will first introduce some experimental findings that seem to support the tinge
hypothesis in 2.3.1, and then point out another experimental finding which poses a

problem for it in 2.3.2.

2.3.1 Support for the tinge hypothesis: the American pattern

Several experiments have been conducted by Dews and Winner (1995) and Dews et
a1. (1995) to test the two predictions of the tinge hypothesis, i.e., “ironic criticism is less
offensive than literal criticism; ironic compliment is less praising than literal
compliment.” For the reason that our focus is ironic criticism, we will examine in detail

only the two experiments that dealt with this specific kind, and briefly mention another

17

finding concerning ironic compliment.

In the Experiment 3 from Dews et al. (1995), thirty English native speaking Boston
College undergraduates participated. The participants were given sixteen short stories
where two characters interacted with each other, with endings in one of two comment
types made by the speaker toward the addressee - ironic criticism or literal criticism.
Furthermore, three types of the comment topic were distinguished, i.e., comment on the
addressee’s poor performance, comment on the addressee’s offensive behavior, and
comment on the situation. Three sample stories used in the experiment are shown
below:

(5) Topic of Remark Is a Poor Performance
Hal and Mark were amateur golfers who often played golf together. Mark
entered a tournarrrent in which he expected to do well. Hal watched the
tournament and saw that Mark played very badly and kept missing easy shots.
Afterward, Hal said to Mark:
“What a great game, Mark.” (Irony)
“What a lousy game, Mark.” (Literal)

Topic of Remark Is Offensive Behavior

Harry and Joe both considered themselves handymen and often helped on
another with household projects. Harry was renovating one wing of his
house and he asked Joe to help him hang wallpaper. Joe agreed and said
he’d be over the next morning. Harry started working by himself and had
almost finished wallpapering by the time Joe arrived around noon. He said
to Joe:

“You’re just in time to help.” (Irony)

“You’re too late to help.” (Literal)

Topic of Remark Is the Situation

Karen and Sandra were going to movie theatre to see a movie premiere

when the bus they were on got stuck in the traffic. They got there a few

minutes late and the movie was nearly sold out. There were only a few

seats left so they had to sit in the back row and could hardly see a thing.

Karen leaned to Sandra and said to Sandra:

“These are the best seats in the house.” (Irony)

“These are the worst seats in the house” (Literal)

(Dews et al 1995: 354)

The participants were asked to rate on 6-point scales including how critical the speaker

18

was (0 = not at all, 1 = somewhat critical, 3 = critical, and 5 = very critical) and how
insulted the addressee was (0 = not at all, 1 = somewhat insulted, 3 = insulted, and 5 =
very insulted). The data showed that overall, ironic speakers were rated as less critical
than literal speakers, and ironic remarks were perceived as less critical than literal ones
especially when the topic of the remark was a poor performance. Dews et al. (1995: 394)
hence concluded: “These findings suggest that ironic criticism about a person’s
performance may serve to mute the level of criticism conveyed by the remark in order for
the addressee to save face” [italics added]. Also, although the addressees were rated as
less insulted by ironic than literal criticism only when the topic was the addressee’s
offensive behavior, the researchers argued that “[this result] is consistent with the finding
that the ironic speaker is perceived as less critical than the literal speaker” (Dew et al.
1995: 359-360). Generally speaking, the findings were to a great extent in favor of the
tinge hypothesis, especially when the addressee was the target of the ironic criticism.

While in the above experiment, the researchers were mainly looking for the impact
different topic types of critical comments bring to the native speakers’ perception of
ironic criticism, Dews and Winner (1995) conducted other experiments to test whether
the target type of the comment and/or the relationship among the interactants contribute
to any difference in irony perception.

In the Experiment 1 from Dews and Winner (1995), eighty English speaking
undergraduates participated. Thirty two short stories consisting of three characters were
designed, with either ironic criticism or literal criticism as the ending comment. The
comments were made toward either the addressee or the third person (hence, “target

type” as a variable). In addition, the familiarity between the characters was set as

19

another variable: in half of the stories, the characters were acquainted with one another;
in the other half, they were strangers. Two sample stories are shown as follows:

(6) Characters Know One Another
Colleen, Anna, and Melissa had been roommates for one year. One Saturday
night, Colleen and Anna were going out to dinner. Colleen needed navy shoes
so she went to Melissa’s closet and borrowed hers. A few hours later, Melissa
was going to a friend’s house and needed her navy shoes. While she searched
for her shoes, she realized Colleen must have taken them. Later that night,
Anna came home with Colleen who was wearing the navy shoes. Melissa said
to Colleen:
“You’re so considerate.” (Ironic)
“You’re so inconsiderate.” (Literal)

Characters Just Met

Jay, Tony, and Pete were work-study students who got jobs in the library. On

the first day they were introduced to one another and then were put to work. Jay

and Tony worked hard and shelved books as quickly as they could, but Pete

loafed around and flirted with some female students. Tony and Pete were

scheduled to leave before Jay, so the books Pete hadn’t shelved were left for Jay.

As Tony and Jay walked by him on their way out, Jay said to Pete:

“What a good worker you are.” (Ironic)

“What a lousy worker you are.” (Literal)

(Dews and Vlfrrmer 1995: 18)

The participants were asked to answer “To what degree is [speaker’s name] comment
criticism or praise of [offender’s name]?” with ratings from 1 (strong criticism) to 5
(strong praise). The findings showed that the participants rated ironic criticism as
carrying less criticism than literal ones regardless who the target was (i.e., the addressee
or the third person) and/or how familiar the characters were with one another (Dews and
Winner 1995: 10-11). Therefore, the researchers concluded, “irony muted the level of
criticism equally for familiar and unfamiliar people” (Dews and Winner 1995: 11. italics
added). They further argued, “these results provide support for the tinge hypothesis ...
that the positive tone of the literal meaning of ironic insults [ironic criticism] mutes the

negative intended meaning and softens the insult” (Dews and Winner 1995: 12). In

addition, an equivalent experiment design was carried out for the test of ironic

20

compliment in Experiment 2 from Dews and Winner (1995: 14) where it was found that
“ironic compliments were rated as significantly less praising than literal compliments”,
regardless of comment target and familiarity. This finding, again, was considered as
supportive evidence for the predictions of the tinge hypothesis.

In sum, although some differences in the experimental designs of Dews and Winner
and Dews et a1. exist, it is found that American English native speakers generally
perceive ironic criticism as less offensive than literal criticism and ironic compliment as
more offensive than sincere compliment. From this respect, the tinge hypothesis seems

to find its theoretical validity.

2.3.2 Findings against the tinge hypothesis: the Japanese pattern

However, a similar experiment from Okamoto (2002) pointed to an opposite result.
Ninety-one Japanese native speaking undergraduates of Aichi Gakuin University
participated in his Experiment 1. The following are two sample stories from the sixteen
used in the study3 :

(7) Junko came 30 minutes late for the meeting with her friend ’Tomomi.
Tomomi said to Junko:

[Ironic]

J ikan ni seikaku de irrasshaimasu nee.

time on accurate are HON. SP.

Jikan ni seikaku da ne.

time on accurate are SP.

“You are punctual.”

[Literal]

Zuibun osoku o-ide ni narimashita wa nee.
very late came HON-PAST FP. SP.
Zuibun osokatta nee.

very late-PAST SP.
“You have come so late.”

 

3 Okamoto (2002) does not include glosses. I am thankful to Dr. Mutsuko Endo Hudson for her help on
the morpheme-by-morpheme translation.

21

Ichiro Yamamoto made quite a few mistakes in preparing a document. His

boss said to him:

[ironic]

Seikaku-na shorui dc gozaimasu wa ne.
accurate document is HON. F P. SP.
Seikaku-na shorui da ne.

accurate document - is SP.

“Your document is accurate.”

[Literal]

Machigai no ooi shorui de gazaimasu wa ne.
mistake NOM many document is HON. FP. SP.
Machigai no ooi shorui da ne.

mistake NOM many document is SP.

“Your document has quite a few mistakes.”

(Okamoto 2002: 138)
The main purpose of Okamoto was to test the influence sincere vs. insincere use of polite
expressions has upon the perception of irony. He found that utterances with honorifics
were considered more ironical than those without honorifics and hence claimed that this
finding supported the “pragmatic insincerity” proposal of Kumon-Nakamura et al. (1995).
We shall, however, overlook the effect caused by insincere politeness for the reason that
it is irrelevant to our current discussion. What is important to us is the Japanese
participants’ perception of the offensive level regarding the ironic criticism in comparison
with that of literal criticism. In the experiment, Okamoto (2002: 124) asked the
participants to rate on a seven point scale “How offensive is the speaker’s remark to the
addressee?” (1= not offensive at all, 7= very offensive). Interestingly, it was reported
that for Japanese native speakers, ironic criticisms were 1.4 points more offensive than
their literal counterparts, regardless of the sincerity of polite expression (Okamoto 2002:
125). This finding is inconsistent with those from Dews and Winner (1995) and Dews

et al. (1995). It severely undermines the tinge hypothesis given that the prediction that

ironic criticism should be less offensive than literal criticism is not held; for Japanese

22

speakers, the surface compliment seems not to “mute” the negative tone of the underlying

criticism.

23

CHAPTER 3

A PILOT STUDY ON TAIWAN CHINESE

As we have seen in 2.3, Dew et al. (1995) and Okamoto (2002), while using very
similar experimental designs that consist of short stories with either ironic criticism or
literal criticism, present different observations of native speakers’ perception of irony
offensiveness. The reported cultural discrepancy prompted me to do a pilot study on my
native language, Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. My goal was, by conducting a
similar experiment, to examine the Taiwan Chinese speaker’s perception. I wanted to
know whether the Taiwan Chinese pattern accords with the American pattern, with the
Japanese pattern, or neither.

A difference between Dews et al.’s and Okamoto’s design, however, has to be taken
into consideration: in all of the vignettes used by Dews et al., the status of characters
were controlled as equal whereas in fourteen of the sixteen stories constructed by
Okamoto, the speaker was of a higher status than the addressee“. A reasonable
suspicion about the reported cultural disparity is that the speaker’s high status in
Okamoto’s experiment might contribute to the perceived high degree of offensiveness.

In order to exclude the possible impact owing to the status difference between the speaker
and the addressee, my experiment consisted of an equal number of stories with
same-status characters and with a hi gher-status speaker. Therefore, in addition to the

comparison between the participants’ ratings of ironic and literal criticism, a comparison

 

‘ Notice that neither Dews et a1. nor Okamoto uses stories that consist of a lower-status speaker talking
ironically to a higher-status one. I surmise that this choice is due to the little possibility for such situations
to happen in real life. For the reason that it is ideal for me to keep my experimental design as close to
theirs as possible so that the reliability of comparing my findings to theirs holds, 1 left out the lower-status
ironic speaker cases as well.

24

between the two types of status relations were made.

3.1 Method

Participants. Thirty-three undergraduate students (16 men and 17 women) were
recruited from National Chung Hsing University and Tunghai University, both located in
Taichung, Taiwan. All were native speakers of Chinese.

Materials and Procedure. Twelve brief stories were constructed. In each story, a
situation consisting of two characters was described. At the end of each story, one of
the characters made an evaluative comment toward the other. Either of the two types of
comments, ironic criticism or literal criticism, was used as the story ending.

The story characters were acquainted with each other. The comment giver ’3 status
was either higher than (6 stories) or the same as (6 stories) the addressee’s. The original
Chinese version of the questionnaire is shown in Appendix 1; an English translation is
shown in Appendix 2.

Stimulus Presenting. The participants were separated into three groups. A
questionnaire that consists of the twelve stories was sent to each group via e-mail. The
questionnaire used for each group has its own randomly chosen order of comment types
as the story endings. Also, the number of comment types was balanced so that a half of
the stories ended with ironic criticism, and the other half ended with literal criticism.

Following each story were two rating scales. Participants rated the offensiveness
of the evaluative comments on the following 7-point scales: (a) “How critical was the
speaker’s remark?” (0 = not critical at all; 3 = so so; 6 = extremely critical). (b) “How

insulted was the addressee?” ( 0 = not at all; 3 = so so ; 6 = very insulted).

25

Participants were asked to read the stories and then to rate on the scales the degree
of offensiveness of the speaker’s remark according to their intuition. Participants were
asked to send their answers back to the investigator via email. A debriefing process was

performed after the e-mail correspondence was fulfilled.

3.2 Results

Before moving on, it has to be mentioned that although participants’ sex was treated
as an independent variable, no significant effect involving sex were observed. In other
words, male participants and female participants did not perform differently on their
ratings of the offensiveness of criticism. Owing to the lack of interest of these results,
the sex factor is excluded from our following discussion.

How critical was the speaker’s remark? A paired t test performed on ratings of
speaker criticalness showed that ironic criticism was rated as more critical than literal
criticism, t (32) = 5.587, p < .001. Means for this and all the other measures are
reported in Table 3.2-1.

How insulted was the address? A paired t test performed on ratings of the
seriousness of insult on the addressee showed that the addressees was considered as more
insulted in ironic criticism situation than in literal criticism situation, I (32) = 7.345, p
< .001.

In same-status situation, how critical was the speaker’s remark? A paired t test
performed on ratings of speaker criticalness when the speaker-addressee relation was
same-status revealed that ironic criticism was rated as more critical than literal criticism, t

(32) = 3.836, p < .01.

26

In unequal-status situations, how critical was the speaker ’s remark? A paired t
test performed on ratings of speaker criticalness when the speaker’s status was higher
than the address’s revealed that ironic criticism was rated as more critical than literal
criticism, I (32) = 5.261, p < .001.

In same-status situations, how insulted was the address? A paired t test
performed on ratings of the seriousness of insult on the addressee when the speaker and
the addressee was of the same status showed that the addressee was considered as more
insulted in ironic criticism situation than in literal criticism situation, I (32) = 5.477, p
< .001.

In unequal-status situations, how insulted was the address? A paired t test
performed on ratings of the seriousness of insult on the addressee when the speaker’s
status was higher than the addressee revealed that the addressee was considered as more

insulted in ironic criticism situation than in literal criticism situation, t (32) = 0.013, p

< .001.

Table 1 Means for Ironic and Literal Criticism by Status Relation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall Same status Unequal status
Ironic Literal Ironic Literal Ironic Literal
How critical was 4.41 3.00 3.80 2.51 4.85 3.53
the speaker?
How insulted was 4.80 3.15 4.11 2.64 5.31 3.71
the addressee?

 

27

 

3.3 Discussion

The above data show that the state of the characters’ status relation did not
contribute to any significant discrepancy among the participants’ decisions: in either case,
equal-status or unequal- status, ironic criticism was more critical and more insulting than
literal criticism. In addition, from Chart 1 below we can see that status relation did not
affect participants’ perception of how much more offensive ironic criticism was than
literal criticism. In other words, participants did not feel a greater degree of difference
between the offensiveness of ironic criticism and that of literal criticism in
high-to-low-status situation than in equal-status situation. This conclusion is also
supported by Table 3.2-1 which shows that in both status relation types, the means of
speaker criticalness were rated 1.3 points higher when ironic criticism was used than
when literal criticism was used, and the means of addressee insult were 1.5-1.6 points ‘
higher when ironic criticism was used than when literal criticism was used. The only
difference due to status relation was that the overall rating of offensiveness is greater in
high—to-low than in same-status situations. This result can be understood as resulting
from the possibility that when the speaker is in a higher status, his/her possession of

power made the evaluative judgment a more severe one.

28

Chart 1

Mean rating scores for the degree of criticism and the degree of insult

How critical was the speaker? (0-not at all; 6-very critical)

 

I ' ironic

 

 

overall same status high to low

 

 

 

How insulted was the addressee? (0-not at all; 6—very insulted)

 

NOD-#010)

 

 

 

I overall same status high to low

29

In sum, whether the speaker was equal or superior to the addressee in social status,
Taiwan Chinese native speakers found ironic criticism less polite and more hurtful than
. literal criticism. This observation accords with Okamoto’s (2002) report in Japanese.
However, it also differs from Dews and Winner’s (1995) and Dews et al.’s (1995)
findings that for American English native speakers, ironic criticism is less offensive than
literal criticism. In other words, the Taiwan Chinese pattern, together with the Japanese
pattern, pose a severe problem for Dews and Winner’s (1995) tinge hypothesis which
maintains that the compliment on the surface level of the ironic criticism functions to
mitigate the negative tone of the underlying criticism and accordingly predicts that ironic
criticism should be less offensive than literal criticism. In addition, the East Asian
pattern also seems to undermine Brown and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) off-record account
for the reason that it implies that ironic criticism should not be a very offensive form of

critical expression since ironic criticism functions to “save face.”

30

CHAPTER 4

MODIFICATION OF BROWN AND LEVINSON

Thus far we have seen that the tinge hypothesis is too strong: while it succeeds in
offering an explanation for American English speakers’ perception of ironic criticism, it is
unable to accommodate the Japanese and Taiwan Chinese data. In the next two chapters,
I will argue that although Brown and Levinson’s original off-record explanation of irony
function seems to be equally unsuccessful in dealing with the East Asian pattern, it is
certainly more flexible than the tinge hypothesis. In 4.1, I will first provide a defense,
and some modification of Brown and Levinson’s thesis. Then, in 4.2, a revision of the
off-record face analysis will be introduced. In Chapter 5, I will demonstrate how the
modified notion of face and the revised version of face analysis can work together to

explain the observed cultural difference.

4.1 Defense and modification of Brown and Levinson
Before moving on to the discussion of Brown and Levinson’s account of the
function of ironic criticism, I will first provide a defense as well as a modification of their

notion of face in order to clarify some points as a response to the critics.

4.1.1 Cultural elaboration of face
Referring to two Chinese language words which correspond to English ‘face,’ lion
and mianzi, Yu (2003: 1684-1686) examines the connotations of these two words,

pointing to the concepts of communal harmony in Confucian morality, and contends that

31

Brown and Levinson’s “universality claim of face” is inapplicable when confronting
cultural specificity.

However, Brown and Levinson never claim an absolute universality for their notion
of face; in fact, their central notion of face calls for cultural elaboration:

(8) Central to our model is a highly abstract notion of ‘face’ which consists of two
specific kinds of desires (‘face-wants’) the desire to be unimpeded in one’s
action (negative face), and the desire to be approved of (positive face). This
is the bare bones of a notion of face which (we argue) is universal, but which in
any particular society we would expect to be the subject of much cultural
elaboration.

(Brown and Levinson 1987 [1978]: 13. italics added.)
Face is central to politeness: a polite person always pays attention to others’ faces. This
awareness of face in polite interactions is claimed to be universal; nevertheless, what
consists of a good or bad face certainly depends on cultural definitions. In Kinnison’s
(2000: 17) words, “while the desire for a good face is universal, the constituents of a
good face culturally vary ....”

What needs to be specified here is that the word “face” in Brown and Levinson’s
sense should be considered as a technical term that is used metaphorically to portray
human politeness behaviors. It does not necessarily correspond to any specific word in
any particular language. It is true that, in Chinese, lion and mienzi do bear some sense
that concerns politeness and social etiquette, which is doubtlessly idiosyncratic to the
culture and is well covered by Brown and Levinson’s claim of cultural elaboration;
whereas, it would be fallacious to pick out the disparity between the Chinese lexical
meaning and the irnplemental notion of Brown and Levinson and then accordingly argue
that the latter fails to accurately capture the former. Yu’s reference to Confucian

morality in the connotations of Chinese lain and mianzi, therefore, does not constitute a

legitimate argument against Brown and Levinson.

32

Now, due to the fact that we will later re-examine the discrepancy between the
American pattern and the East Asian pattern of ironic criticism that has been mentioned
previously, it is desirable to consider their cultural elaborations here. First, given that a
person’s face is a self-image that corresponds to the expectation of the society to which
this person belongs, as we have seen in 2.2.1, I propose that we take Kinnison’s
(2000:144) suggestion, incorporating the Confucian notion of “subordinate self” into the
Chinese notion of face. Consequently, we can account for the core concept of
Confircian politeness, that is, modesty. As Gu (1990) states, one should always
denigrate self and respect others. Note that although this approach also takes into
account the Confircian morality, it differs from Yu’s proposal in that the Confucian notion
of subordination is identified as a cultural elaboration that is added on the universal
concern of face in polite interaction, not as an absolute substitution for the definition of
face. More specifically, while Yu’s strenuous emphasis on cultural specificity may lead
to the inability to account for the “general shared concepts and dimensions of politeness
[across cultures]” (Yu 2003: 1704), this approach, by acknoWledging the universal part of
Brown and Levinson’s face thesis, preserves for the face analysis a pan-cultural validity.

As far as Japanese face is concerned, I suggest that we can as well borrow in the
notion of subordinate self for the following reasons: first of all, Japan, like other East
Asian countries, has long been recognized as under major influence of Confucianisms; in
addition, modesty is also claimed to be attached with high value in Japanese morality

(Leech 1983:136-138). Following Kinnison (2000) as well, we incorporate the concept

 

5 In Cheng’s (1990) psychiatric paper, he points out that Confucianism, as a socio-political ideology, is a
shared heritage of the so-called Pan-Confucian region in East Asia which includes Japan, Korea, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and Singapore. He examines several shared psychological characteristics among people from
these cultures that can be attributed to Confucian morality such as the relation-based ethic, the lack of
assertiveness, etc. and suggests a new perspective on which we can base our understanding of certain
mental disorders that are specific to East Asian people.

33

of “independent self” into the American notion of face on account of the primary

influence of individualism in the US.

4.1.2 Negative and positive faces as wants
We now turn to the main concept of Brown and Levinson’s thesis: negative face and
positive face.
(9) (a) negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, right to
non-distraction — i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from imposition.
(b) positive face: the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality’ (crucially
including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of)
claimed by interactants.
(Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]: 61)
The concept of these two types of faces, they maintain, is universal; it should be
applicable to every culture in the world. This claim, however, has been placed under
careful scrutiny and received serious attacks from East Asian scholars. Matsumoto
(1988, 2003), though accepting positive face, argues that the notion of negative face is
not found in Japanese societies where one’s action always takes into consideration his/her
relation with other interactants in the situation and hence is never really free from
imposition. Yu (2003: 1698) also contends that negative face, which seems to be
derived from the emphasis on individualism in Western culture, is irrelevant to
“collectivist cultures” such as Chinese and Japanese.
I believe that this controversy arises on account of Brown and Levinson’s misuse of
terminology as well as their muddling up the relation between “face” and “want.” As
we have seen in (8) from the previous section, Brown and Levinson actually attribute the

origin of negative face and positive face to two “basic desires”: the desire to be

unimpeded and the desire to be accepted by others. However, if, as Brown and

34

Levinson earlier proposed, these two desires are constituents inseparable from the notion
of face, which asks for cultural elaboration, the notion of positive face and negative face
cannot be truly universal such that one definition always applies. To solve this
confusion, I will first, taking Kinnison’s (2000) and O’Driscoll’s (1996) suggestion,
separate the two basic desires out from the notion of face and argue for universalin only
on this stage. O’Driscoll’s term “wants dualism” will be used to refer to these two kinds
of basic wants. In addition, I will use the term “face-wants” to refer to the embodiment

of wants dualism within the concept of face where cultural elaboration matters.

4.1.2.1 Basic desires: the wants dualism

O’Driscoll (1996) proposes that there are two basic desires shared by human beings
and primate animals that are submerged in our BACKGROUND CONSCIOUSNESS? One
refers to the wants to protect self territory or to be unimpeded by others, which we may
call negative wants; the other refers to the wants to feel in-group or to be accepted by
others, which we may call positive wants. To clarify his point, O’Driscoll(1996: 11-12)
takes a pathological viewpoint, referring to the desert traveler Michael Asher’s personal
experience when he and his wife were held in a prison in Chad, and the mind-control
strategies that are utilized by the Moonies cult. Below, I would like to add some
ethological as well as anthropological evidence to further support O’Driscoll’s claim.

Ethology is a science that, by observing animal behaviors, finds evidence of

evolution and of animal instincts as well as human nature. From observation of pigeons,

 

6 O’Driscoll (1996:9) borrows the notions of “consciousness” and “self-awareness" from Schurrracher
(1972) and replaces them with “background consciousness” and “foreground consciousness,” respectively.
Background consciousness refers to the basic ability to respond to stimuli, which is shared by human
beings and other animals; Foreground consciousness, on the other hand, refers to the human-only ability to
be conscious about consciousness.

35

Atlantic salmon, rats, wolves, monkeys, chimpanzees, among other animals, and
archaeological findings about early human species, Ardrey (1966) and Lorenz (1966)
conclude that “aggression” is among the instincts shared by animals and human beings7.
One not only fights with other animals or species but also kills members within the same
group.

(10) There is evidence that the first inventors of pebble tools, the African
Australopithecines, promptly used their new weapon to kill not only game, but
fellow members of their species as well. Peking Man, the Prometheus
who learned to preserve fire, used it to roast his brothers: beside the first traces
of the regular use of fire lie the mutilated and roasted bones of Sinanthropus
pekinensis himself.

(Lorenz 1966: 239)
Ardrey believes that this kind of aggressive behavior is owing to our “imperative instinct
of territorial defense,” or in Lorenz’s terminology, “territoriality.” In his book “Human
Territoriality,” Malrnberg (1980) cited an observation performed by Hutt and Hutt (1970:
150-154) on children between 3 and 8 years of age, who were asked to stay together in
open rectangular rooms, to illustrate the point: “The normal children spend 14 and 17
percent of their time in trying to prevent any encroachment or intrusion upon the area of
which they were in possession.” Bakker and Bakker-Rabdau further argue that due to

our inclination of territoriality and the subsequent aggressive behavior, an individual has

a basic desire for “private domain,” that is, “the specific area which an individual stakes

 

7 In the 1970’s, a group of scholars, including Leakey and Lewin (1977) and Montagu (1976), had argued
against Lorenz’s and Ardrey’s “instinct claim” on the ground that if we endorse aggression as an imperative
human instinct, we seem to ignore the also important asset of human beings, that is, the learning ability.
They contended that aggression is not an ineradicable instinct for the reason that hurrran beings are able to
learn from their past experience and accordingly find ways to prevent the same mistakes that have been
caused by aggressive behaviors toward fellow members. Although it scents to be correct that most human
societies do acknowledge the importance of peace and cooperation, those against the “instinct claim” still
need to provide explanations for modern wars and massacres. In my opinion, the debate between these
two carrrps is basically a political one: while seeing that the “aggression instinct" argument may very
possibly be deliberately utilized to justify some people’s rrrisbehaviors as the Social Darwinism case,
Leakey, Lewin and Montagu’s intention was to reduce such a risk. However, even on Montagu’s
perspective, “aggression” as well as “territoriality” is seen as a “potential” or “inclination” of human nature.
Therefore, their arguments should not be viewed as damaging to our proposal of basic negative wants.

36

out in order to insure his privacy and security” (Bakker and Bakker-Rabdau 1973: 270).
They also propose two aspects of private domain: a physical “personal space” and a
psychological “privacy retreat.” From an anthrOpological viewpoint, Malinowski (1944,
1962) also argues that first and foremost, a person has to satisfy all the needs of his
organism. Among several basic needs mentioned by him, one is “[the need] to protect
himself . .. against external enemies and dangers, physical, animal, or human”
(Malinowski 1944:37. italics added). In sum, the above arguments lead us to conclude
that people have such basic desires or negative wants for self territory and for the
protection of their own privacy.

The other half of our wants dualism, that is, the positive wants, is less obvious from
an ethological point of view due to the fact that while territoriality can be observed in
animal and human behaviors, the desire to feel in-group and/or the desire be accepted by
others is often hidden in individuals’ minds. From a pathological perspective, again,
O’Driscoll refers to the personal experience of Michael Asher to support his proposal of
wants dualism: after being confined in an open yard under a group of soldiers’
surveillance for eight hours where no verbal exchanges were allowed, Asher and his
wife’s need for satisfying their positive wants became enormous so that, “we had almost
reached the stage of wishing that someone would start asking questions, no matter how
brutally, to remind us that we were human beings” (Asher 1988: 216, cited in O’Driscoll
1996). We can also infer positive wants from an anthropological angle. Malinowski
(1944: 39) points out that in order to satisfy various human needs, cooperation is a
necessity: “In order to achieve any purpose, reach any end, human beings have to

organize” [italics added]. The facts that cooperation or organization is essential to

37

human life and that solitary confinement of the kind that Asher had suffered is often
carried out as one of the most severe forms of punishment, together, convince us that
positive wants are basic to human beings.

Notice that constant tension exists between our negative wants and positive wants.
It is hard to imagine that the needs for self territory or private domain and the needs for
in-group feeling can both be satisfied to the greatest extent at once. To maintain one’s
territory, one may cause conflict with others and hence harm his/her positive wants; to
better fit in the group, or to achieve some cooperative goal, one may be required to
sacrifice his/her negative wants. However, in many situations, people are able to
recognize what the most important value is at the moment, and to realize that some

sacrifice is acceptable or even beneficial.

4.1.2.2 Face-wants

Let us turn to another pair of wants that concerns politeness behaviors: negative
face-wants and positive face-wants. This pair of face-wants is distinguished from the
wants dualism in that while the latter reflects our basic biological needs, the former
represents a higher-level cultural embodiment of these needs. Malinowski’s (1944: 171)
“two axioms of the theory of needs” guide us to draw such a distinction: “first and
foremost, every culture must satisfy the biological system of needs, such as those dictated
by metabolism, reproduction, ..., safety from dangerous animals or human beings,
and “[secondly,] every cultural achievement refers directly or indirectly to the
satisfaction of a bodily need” [italics added]. Given that politeness should be

considered as a cultural rather than biological product, we treat our needs for the

38

satisfaction of the basic wants in polite interactions as products of culture as well.

In O’Driscoll’s proposal, the wants dualism is originally submerged in our
background consciousness. It is after it is spelled out within the notion of face that it
emerges into foreground consciousness as positive face and negative face (O’Driscoll
1996:13). Positive face and negative face are not the basic biological desires per se;
they are an individual ’8 need for some “symbolic recognition” of these desires by others
(O’Driscoll 1996:13; Kinnison 2000: 16). Note that O’Driscoll(1996:14) also argues for
a third type of face in addition to positive face and negative face, that is, the
“culture-specific face” which enables every culture to encode its idiosyncratic definitions
of good face and bad face. This three-way distinction seems redundant to me for the
reason that since we conceive of all politeness behaviors as attendance to face, and the
connotation of face is elaborated by idiosyncratic culture norms as mentioned in 4.1.1,
the face-wants, being embodied within the notion of face, should have already borne the
cultural specifications. As a result, I will leave out cultural-specific face and substitute
positive face-wants and negative face-wants for positive face and negative face to refer to
the two types of culturally coated wants.

To summarize, wants dualism is essentially universal, the conflict between two basic
desires, while the pair of face-wants in practice shares some culturally specific
connotations with the concept of face. Brown and Levinson deserve criticism from

Matsumoto and Yu in that they too readily define negative face in the American sense that

 

8 Ide and Yoshida (1999) make a three-way distinction of politeness behaviors that is similar to
O’Driscoll’s distinction of faces. They propose that in addition to positive politeness, i.e., the attendance
to interactant’s positive face-wants, and negative politeness, i.e., the attendance to interactant’s negative
face-wants, there is a third type of politeness pattern that is called wakimae in Japanese, or “discernment”

in English. They claim, “. . .[polite] language use according to wakimae is motivated by the observation of
socially expected norms” (Ide and Yoshida 1999: 447). For the reasons that (a) politeness is attendance to
face and (b) face is the self-image one wants to claim for him/herself in line with social expectation, I
believe that the category of wakimae is redundant.

39

one wants to be free in action from others’ impediment and argue that this notion is
universal. Nevertheless, this is not equal to saying that people in collectivism-oriented
societies do not possess any bit of negative face-wants as Matsumoto’s and Yu’s

arguments implyg. For example, as mentioned in Pellow (1996: 118), Chinese do have

the notion of yin si (Hits) that literally means “hidden self,” representing one’s wants to

be protected from anyone knowing; this Chinese version of negative face-wants is just
less valued than their American counterpart in that it actually carries a pejorative
connotation. Besides, Bakker and Bakker-Rabdau (1973) mention that even in a
Kibbutz Kiryat Yeddim community where subordination of individual for the sake of
group harmony has traditionally long been emphasized,the youngsters’ demand for
privacy had still led to the so-called Youth Movement that drew others’ attention to their
negative face-wants. Furthermore, I would like to stress that the morality of
subordination in Kibbutz Kiryat Yeddim or modesty in Confucianism, may itself emerge
from the emphasis on the attendance to the other participant’s negative face-wants: by
denigrating oneself, one shows his/her inability to impose on a higher-status other.

On the other hand, the fact that Brown and Levinson’s definition of positive face,
that one wants to be approved of by others, has seldom been attacked should not lead us
to conclude that there is no cultural difference in the elaboration of positive face-wants.

Baba (1996) mentions cultural specification regarding the topic of compliments:

 

9 I replace the traditionally-defined “collectivist cultures” with “collectivism-oriented cultures,” and
“individualistic cultures” with “individualism-oriented cultures,” respectively. This replacement is
inspired by a report by Bower (2004: 412) in Science News indicating that “Emerging evidence suggests
that all societies groom people to adopt both collective [collectivist] and individualistic values.” That is,
collectivism and individualism both exist universally in any given culture; “cultures differ primarily in the
number of opportunities provided for expressing each tendency” (Bower 2004: 412). Hence, we
should consider cultural variation of this sort as difference in the degree of tendency instead of difference in

types.
40

“complimenting someone so explicitly on his/her graduation from a certain school and on
being well-bred is unique to Japanese society. . ..Some American compliments on clothes
may annoy French ESL learners” (Baba 1996: 4). This difference in favored
compliment topic may come from the nuance among each culture’s detailed elaboration
of positive face-wants.

Still, as has been mentioned in 4.1.1, there is tension between negative wants and
positive wants. The same sort of tension could also be found between our dual
face-wants. However, the tension is more controlled given that each culture prescribes
its own value system of ethics. Therefore, as we have seen earlier, claiming yin si in
Chinese culture is less encouraged than claiming privacy in American culture; conversely,
subordination is esteemed more highly in collectivism-oriented societies than in

individualism-oriented societies.

41

4.1.3 Face model revised

In this section, we compare our new face model with Brown and Levinson’s in a
graphical way. Below, Chart 2 indicates that while Brown and Levinson require cultural
elaboration for the politeness concept of face, they also subsume into it two universal
components, positive face and negative face. How can some kind of universal notion fit
in a concept that asks for cultural specification? This clash is pointed out with

double-headed arrow.

Chart 2
Brown and Levinson’s face model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FACE

in need of cultural elaboration
I universal I
I negative face positive face I

 

 

 

42

Chart 3 is an indication of our face model where the dual universal basic wants, the
needs of territoriality and the needs of in-group feeling, are separated from the symbolic
face-wants that bear idiosyncratic cultural traits. In addition, it also shows the relation
between basic wants and face-wants: while the former is seen as the origin of the latter,

the latter is considered as the incarnation of the former within the concept of face.

Chart 3
Huang’s face model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I negative positive 5

I wants wants I—_ universal
FACE 5
with cultural elaboration I

.................... t

I negative positive 5

I face-wants face-wants I

 

 

 

43

4.2 Face analysis revised

Here, we return to the function of ironic criticism. Note that, as discussed in 3.3,
our finding that Taiwan Chinese speakers perceive ironic criticism as more offensive than
literal criticism, together with the Japanese pattern, pose a problem not only for the tinge
hypothesis but also for Brown and Levinson’s off-record face-saving proposal.
Additionally, I argued that while the tinge hypothesis is too restrictive, the face type of
analysis remains adjustable. Before we move on to Chapter 5 to reexamine both of the
American pattern and the East Asian pattern, a revision of the off-record method is

suggested and will be introduced in the next two subsections.

4.2.1 From ironist’s viewpoint to interactive perspective

First, let us review Brown and Levinson’s analysis. Ironic criticism is claimed to
help both the speaker and the addressee to save face for the following reasons: (a) The
speaker does not display his offensiveness baldly on record; instead, s/he hides the
criticism on an underlying level and goes off record by giving a (insincere) compliment
on the surface. By doing so, the speaker reserves for him/herself a retreat. The
speaker can always decline that s/he has committed an offensive behavior and hence save
his/her face. (b) The addressee may appreciate the fact that the speaker has made effort
of being polite at least superficially. Thus the addressee may feel that his/her face was
taken care of and therefore does not fight back. Again, this is beneficial to the speaker
for the reason that s/he may well get away from a potential conflict.

A problem for this analysis is that it is tilted toward the speaker’s end. The

addressee may appreciate what the speaker has done superficially, but also may not. It is

44

very possible that the addressee is hurt deeply by the speaker’s critical intent and hence
does not want to let the speaker walk away easily. Except for the uncertain appreciation
of the speaker’s superficial politeness, what else the addressee may do in order to
mitigate the damage on his/her own face remains unexplained by Brown and Levinson.

To solve the problem, our first step is to move from the speaker’s/ironist’s viewpoint
to an interactive viewpoint. We have seen in 2.1 that a successful irony interaction
requires (a) the speaker’s ironic intention is recognized, and (b) no further conflict
between the interactants is aroused. The fulfillment of (a) and (b) depends not merely
on what the speaker has done but also on how the addressee responds, namely, how the
addressee cooperates. As Ghita (2001) has shown us, the most useful strategy in
replying an ironic criticism is “take it literally.” In other words, when the addressee
responds to the insincere compliment as if it was a literal one, s/he is showing the speaker
that “I can handle the situation. See, I am not taking deep offense and we can play a
pretense game.”

Therefore, I suggest incorporating “take it literally” into irony interaction as a
responding move of the addressee. In addition, on account of the fact that in such an
interactive scene each interactant has his/her own move, I will refer to them as IRONIST
and RESPONDER. The effect of taking this interactive perspective will become
significant when I demonstrate how different cultural conventions of compliment

responses contribute to different perceptions of ironic criticism in Chapter 5.

45

4.2.2 From off-record to offset
Our second step toward a more comprehensive face analysis is to replace the
off-record method with a calculation of offset effects. While the off-record analysis
does not explicitly mention what kinds of face-wants are damaged and/or paid off
through the course of an interaction, I believe that these details are worth examining for
the reason that when we look into the face-works done by both interactants we find
balance of effects on face in certain cultural pattems while unbalance in others. More
importantly, these findings may provide us explanations for cultural differences.
Each and every aspect listed below is to be checked when we apply the offset
analysis:
(11) (a) the kind(s) of face-wants of the addressee that is/are damaged and/or
attended to due to the speaker’s face-work
(b) the kind(s) of face-wants of the speaker that is/are damaged and/or
attended to due to the speaker’s face-work
(c) the kind(s) of face-wants of the speaker that is/are damaged and/or
attended to due to the addressee ’s respondent face-work
(d) the kind(s) of face-wants of the addressee that is/are damaged and/or
attended to due to the addressee ’s respondent face-work
Then, with these effects on face at hand, we look for potential offsets. For example, a
threat to the addressee’s positive face-wants and an attendance to his/her positive
face-wants are, together, considered as an offset of effects; on the other hand, an
attendance to the addressee’s negative face-wants is not taken to offset the damage on
his/her positive face-wants.
I believe that this kind of offset analysis can apply to interactions involving not only
ironic criticism. Let us look at an example from Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]: 69)

that is also categorized as off-record politeness: A wants to borrow some money from his

friend B. Instead of making a direct request for money, he says, “Damn, I’m out of cash.

46

I forgot to go to the bank today.” Note that what A really wants is 8’3 knowing A’s true
intent of getting money from him and therefore if B does not react to A’s intent, the
interaction is interrupted. Therefore, A would employ some method such as winking to
insure his intent being conveyed. Now, what kind(s) of B’s face-wants is/are damaged
and/or attended to due to A’s face-work? Underlyingly, A wants B to do something B
might not be willing to do, i.e., lending money to him; hence, A’s intent presents a threat
to 3’5 negative face-wants. Superficially, however, A does not make the request;
therefore, he avoids the possibility of intruding B’s freedom of action and by doing so
attends to B’s negative face-wants. These two effects on B’s face are considered as
reaching a state of offset. Still, A’s intent of borrowing money induces a potential threat
to his own positive face-wants: given that A truly wants B to take out some money, A
would worry if B might think of him as an annoying person. Now, let us turn to 3’3
face-work. Still, remember that our working premise is that the interaction has to
progress smoothly, but not that B must agree to lend money to A. Underlyingly, B feels
the threat to his negative face-wants when he recognizes A’s request. B may respond to
A by saying “Well, if you want, I can lend you some”; by doing so, B indicates that his
decision is of his own volition (attendance to B’s negative face-wants) and hence offsets
the threat. Also, B is not showing any resentfulness toward A and therefore relieves A
from the worry about the potential damage to his positive face-wants. Altematively, B
may say, “Oh, that’s too bad. I am really sorry and I hope you’re doing ok” to show his
sympathy toward A and hence offset the threat to A’s positive face-wants. B’s response
also helps him to reduce the threat to his own negative face-wants since B’s freedom of

not giving money away is protected.

47

So far, two points have been stressed: (a) language use should be examined from an
interactive point of view, and (b) effects on interactants’ faces/face-wants need to be
examined more carefully. Accordingly, an interactive offset face analysis is proposed.

We will see how it works for ironic criticism in the next chapter.

48

CHAPTER 5

RESOLUTION: OFFSET OF FACE-WANTS

We have seen in 2.3 that while Dews et al. (1995) find that American English
speakers perceive ironic criticism as less offensive than literal criticism, Okamoto (2002)
indicates that Japanese speakers’ perception actually points to the opposite direction.

Our pilot study on Taiwan Chinese, which was discussed in Chapter 3, accords to the
Japanese pattern. In addition, I have argued for a revision of Brown and Levinson’s
(1987[1978]) face analysis that can help us explain the observed cultural difference. As
a result, an interactive offset face analysis was introduced in 4.2. In the following two
sections, I will illustrate how this new analysis is applied to the American pattern and to
the East Asian pattern, respectively.

Before we move on, one more implemental point needs to be added: in the following
discussions, I will use Ito represent the ironist, the first speaker who delivers an ironic
criticism, and R to represent the responder, the target of I 3' critical intent who is also the

one who responds to Is remark.

5.1 The American pattern

5.1.1 The American ironist’s face-work
What I does with ironic criticism is, as has been reiterated in this paper, to hide
his/her criticism toward R on the underlying level, and to speak out an insincere

compliment on the surface level. Unlike Barbe (1995), Brown and Levison

49

(1987[197 8]), and Kumon-Nakamura et al. (1995), however, we are not satisfied with
mere consideration of this maneuver as an off-record politeness strategy. We want to
understand what types of face-wants of R is affected by I on each level, as mentioned in
(11) a. In addition, we also want to find out what effects on I s face have been brought
about with his own act as pointed out in (11) b.

First, recall that positive face-wants refers to an individual’s wants for his/her needs
of in-group feeling or of acceptance to be recognized by others, that is, for this individual
to feel approved of or appreciated by others. We find that, on the underlying criticism
where I expresses a derogatory attitude toward R, a major damage on R 3‘ positive
face-wants is induced"). However, on the surface level, a compliment that attends to R 29
positive face-wants is observed. Therefore, we may surmise that the superficial
attendance to R Is positive face-wants quite possibly functions to counteract the
underlying damage on it. In other words, from Its stance, the malign and benign effects
on R Is positive face-wants reach the state of offset.

The above argument may seem very similar to the claim of tinge hypothesis, on the
one hand, for the reason that we talked about the “tinge” function of the compliment on
the surface, and to Brown and Levinson’s analysis, on the other, for the reason that we
looked for the benefit from 13 point of view. However, my argument does not st0p here.
We still want to know what effects on 119 face have been induced. First of all, we can
observe a potential damage on I 3' positive face-wants: since what I truly wants is R 3'

recognition of 13' negative evaluation of R, I has to worry about the fact that R may hate I

 

'0 It is acknowledged that other than the positive face-wants, the negative face-wants of R may also be
threatened given that I 3' personal evaluative judgment may interfere R’s freedom of action. However, I
still consider the major damage on R 3' face to be a theart to the positive face-wants that directly emerges
from I is attitude of unappreciation or disrespect.

50

because of this recognition. The fact that R may take deep offense and does not
appreciate so much whatever I has done superficially presents a threat to I 3* positive
face-wants of being approved of by others. Also, since what really concerns I is his/her
intended criticism being taken, we do not have to worry about what effects on I Is face
regarding the surface compliment may be given that it is just a tactical maneuver whose
meaning is not to be taken truthfully. Secondly, we have to recognize the major
satisfaction of I Is negative face-wants. After all, if I does not want to hurt R Is feeling,
s/he can simply hold the FT A, namely, the criticism, back. The reality is: I does let go
the criticism, although indirectly. Therefore, I is negative face-wants of acting without

others’ hindrance has to a great extent been satisfied.

5.1.2 The American responder’s face-work

Here, let me emphasize again the point that irony only exists in interaction, not in a
mere individual’s intention. Ghita (2001: 143-144) mentions two levels of cooperation
that consist of an irony interaction: one is “illocutionary cooperation,” i.e., the addressee
has to correctly recognize the speaker’s ironic intention; the other is “perlocutionary
cooperation,” i.e., the two interactants have to cooperate with each other in keeping the
interaction progressing, or, more specifically, they have to cooperate in avoiding conflict.
From this interactive perspective, we exclude from our analysis of irony function cases
where the addressee does not receive the critical intent and/or mistakes the speaker’s
superficial compliment as a sincere one, where the addressee initiates a conflict, as has
been shown in (2) a. and b. in 2.1, and where the addressee ignores the speaker’s ironic

maneuver, as examples (2) c. and (1. Excluding these cases, then, we have to ask: what

51

kind of response is effective for the addressee to keep the irony interaction going? From
Ghita (2001), we have found that “take it literally” seems to be the most useful.
Therefore, in this section, we will examine the effects on face that have been brought
about when R pretendingly takes 13s superficial compliment as a literal one and
accordingly responds to it in a conventional way.

Before moving on, we shall first examine the American norm of compliment
response. Many scholars on compliment response mention acceptance as the norm for
American English speakers (Chen 1993, Fukushima 1990, Leech 1983, Shih 1986, Yu
2003, Yuan 1996). However, these accounts are mostly based on intuition and with little
support from empirical data. Baba (1996), on the other hand, does provide statistical
figures behind others’ intuition. She found that while positive polite strategies, where
the responder attends to compliment giver ’5 positive face-wants, constitutes 78% of all
the American compliment responses, acceptance contributes 49% of the positive
politeness category (Baba 1996: 83 & 89). Therefore, we can safely conclude that
Americans normally respond to compliments with positive polite strategies, and, often in
particular, with acceptancel ‘.

Back to our model, we first notice that the starting point for R is the awareness of a
lurking threat to his/her positive face-wants attributing to Its true intent, namely, the
criticism. In addition, R should also be able to notice [is polite effort of pressing down
the criticism to the underlying level. Therefore, when searching for a proper response,

R may possess an uneasy feeling: on the one hand, R knows that had I let go a direct

 

” When accepting or agreeing with other ’5 conrplirnent, one basically expresses that “I know what you
have done to me is meant to let me feel good. I appreciate your effort by showing you that I do feel good
because of it.” This appreciation is considered as attendance to the compliment giver ’s positive
face-wants.

52

criticism a much more serious confrontation is to be ignited, and hence s/he feels the need
to appreciate the face-work I has done; on the Other, given that I, for satisfying his/her
own negative face-wants, has still expressed the negative thought toward R, R may not
feel like to let I escape so easily. By pretending to take Is compliment at its face value,
an American R may respond with a simple acceptance such as “Thank you. I am glad you
like it,” or with a compliment to I, “You look terrific, too.” In either case, R shows to I
his/her appreciation, and hence attends to 12s positive face-wants. Notice that in the
previous section we have mentioned I is recognition of a threat to his/her own positive
face-wants due to the uncertainty of whether or not R may appreciate his/her face-work.
In light of this, R Is positive feedback can be considered as offsetting I Is worry.

Now that we have examined (11) c., “the kind(s) of face-wants of I that is/are
damaged and/or attended to due to R s respondent face-work,” and found R .’s attendance
to I Is positive face-wants, we can switch to the next item, i.e., (11) d., “the kind(s) of
face-wants of R that is/are damaged and/or attended to due to R Is respondent face-wor
What seems especially interesting is that although R has shown his/her appreciation
toward 1, R is actually agreeing with I on Its superficial compliment, not on the
underlying critical intent. We can also think of the American R is insincere compliment
response as an off-record polite strategy: while R is true intention, i.e., refusal to accept 1's
criticism, if exercised badly on record, would become a serious FTA that may cause
conflict and hence spoil the peacefulness of their interaction, it sneaks through safely off
record with the help of R .'s obvious pretending in the compliment response. This
enables R to avoid being victimized by Is criticism and therefore offsets the damage to

R is positive face-wants. In addition, if R has chosen to respond to 11s compliment,

53

which is an approval of R is deed, with acceptance, R can even further fortify his/her

positive face-wants.

5.2 The East Asian pattern

5.2.1 The East Asian ironist’s face-work

The East Asian I is face-work is basically the same as the American I is. On the one
hand, I hides his/her critical intent on the underlying level while still wanting it to be
recognized and hence presents damage to R is positive face-wants. On the other, [is
pretended compliment on the surface level is hoped to offset the underlying damage.
This maneuver works for I only if R highly appreciates [is fake politeness to the extent
that R is willing to accept the whole concept of [is ironic criticism without hesitation,
which is not very likely to happen; therefore, the possibility that R may more or less still
have some hurt feeling contributes to a potential threat to [is positive face-wants, namely,
to be appreciated by others.

To summarize, it is R is positive face-wants that have been threatened due to the
underlying criticism hidden within [is face-work; conversely, R is positive face-wants are
also paid attention to by I ’s superficial compliment. On the other hand, [is negative
face-wants are satisfied given the fact that his/her critical intention has been expressed
without others’ impediment; I is positive face-wants, however, confront a potential threat
owing to his/her awareness of R is possible disagreement. Still, the overall smoothness

of their interaction has to depend on R is next move.

54

5.2.2 The East Asian responder’s face-work

Here, again, an inspection of the East Asian norm of compliment response is
necessary before we move on to examine the Japanese as well as the Chinese R is
face-work. Fukushima (1990) and Leech (1983) on Japanese, Chen (1993), Gao (1998),
Yu (2003), and Yuan (1996) on Chinese, and Han (1992) on Korean all point out that in
these cultures, rejection is considered as the norm of compliment response. Baba’s
empirical findings from Japanese, however, show that while self-mockery actually
occupies the highest percentage, 56%, rejection or refusal takes only 17% of all negative
polite compliment response (Baba 1996: 90). Note that whether the compliment
response takes the form of rejection or self-mockery. it is a means for the humble
responder to reward the compliment giver with attendance to the latter’s negative
face-wants. As we have discussed in 4.1.2.2 on the morality of modesty, by denigrating
self, one shows his/her inability to impede others’ freedom of action. Still, in Baba’s
(1996:83) data, the negative politeness pattern resides in as high as 71% of all Japanese
compliment responses. Although empirical data from Chinese and Korean are still
lacking, we would consider negative politeness as the norm of compliment response
shared by all of the East Asian cultures with Confucian heritage which dictates the
subordination or modesty morality (see footnote 5).

What happens when the East Asian R takes the superficial compliment of [is ironic
criticism literally is thus, s/he may say iie (“No, no, not really!”) in Japanese or no li no It
(“Where, where, I can’t see it.”) in Chinese, or use certain kinds of self-mockery
expressions. By doing so, R shows his/her unwillingness to intrude on I is freedom of

action. This attendance to [is negative face-wants, however, not only does not help to

55

offset the potential threat to [is own positive face-wants that was mentioned in the
previous section, leaving I with [is worry about R is possible resentment toward him/her, it
also helps to strengthen [is negative face-wants that have already been satisfied with [is
letting go his/her negative opinion on R. In addition, the conventional negative polite
compliment response also asks R to sacrifice his/her own positive face-wants since R is
not allowed to accept right away the compliment that carries [is (insincere) appreciation.
We have to admit that given the Confucian norm of subordination which in effect
encourages the sacrifice of self’s positive face-wants in replacement of the attendance to
other’s negative face-wants, the threat to R is positive face-wants might be minor.
Meanwhile, we shall also remember that what concerns us now is not a situation of
sincere compliment but a fake one. Hence, we have to consider the possibility for this
minor damage to combine together with the damage to R is positive face-wants emerging
from [is underlying criticism; when both threats are perceived, the damage may become
huge and insurmountable. In conclusion, the East Asian R 's negative polite face-work
brings about the following effects: (a) an attendance to [is negative face-wants, and (b) a
sacrifice of R is own positive face-wants. While (a) does not help to offset the threat to
I '3 positive face-wants, (b) does not help to offset the damage on R is positive face-wants,
either.

One might wonder why the East Asian R does not adopt the positive polite
compliment response in this particular irony situation since it works well for the
Americans. The problem is, again, the cultural norm of subordination and modesty.
Immediately accepting another’s compliment would normally incur condemnation in

Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese societies. If an East Asian R blatantly

56

responds to [is superficial compliment with acceptance, though as fake and untruthful as
it may appear, s/he is running the risk of trapping him/herself into being further attacked
by [ as being rude, arrogant, or impolite. Already being attacked by [is underlying
criticism, who would like to surrender another chance for [ to further attack? Positive
polite compliment response is hence of little help for East Asian R.

Since “take it literally” does not seem to be an effective strategy for East Asian R to
survive an irony interaction, one may want to argue that there must be some alternative
choice. Unfortunately, the alternative is not really imaginable. The only components
of ironic criticism are compliment and criticism, and nothing else. R cannot reply to the
criticism for the reason that s/he will become the initiator of a conflict, and being
condemned as invoking a conflict is not beneficial; accordingly, replying to the

compliment becomes the unbearable burden that R must take.

5.3 Conclusion

Our discussion in this chapter is illustrated as Chart 4. The left column indicates
the American pattern; the right column indicates the East Asian pattern. In each column,
the upper half shows [is face-work, and the lower half shows R is face-work. [is
face-work includes the expression of the intended criticism, the use of a superficial
compliment to mute the face threat caused by the criticism, and the satisfaction of I '3
negative face-wants of free expression plus a side effect that is embodied as potential
damage to [is positive face-wants that comes from I is worry about R is feeling about the
critical intent. R is face-work, i.e., “take it literally” strategy, includes the effects

off-record compliment response has on [is face-wants, and that on R is face-wants.

57

Under each face-work the effects on [’s face and those on R is face have been sorted out
separately. (a)-(d) leading these effects correspond to the items that we have proposed
for offset inspection in (11) on page 46. Dotted lines with arrow indicate the offset
between certain attendance to and damage on face-wants. The offset may be initiated by
I is face-work as well as R is face-work toward certain damage on either his/her own
face-wants or the other’s face-wants. Also note that the term ofliset does not imply that
the potential damage is completely erased; it is merely used to demonstrate either I is or

R is effort of keeping the interaction flowing smoothly. My purpose is to provide a
general picture of irony interactions, as for to what degree an interactant’s perception of
face damage is counteracted by his/her acknowledgement of other’s effort is left open for
further exploration. Finally, the squares indicate the face-wants that have not been taken

care of with any offset attempt while in effect confronting certain threats.

58

Chart 4
Application of the offset face analysis

 

[Ame. Pattern] Ironic Criticism

[Ch. and Jap. Pattern] Ironic Criticism

 

[ ’sface-work

(a) Effects on R is face

Underlying Criticism: Potential damage to

R is msitive face-wants
4

0"

Surfacze Compliment: Attendance to R ’s
positiv'e face-I‘wants

|
|

(b) Effects on I is face

Satisfaction of [is own negative

face-wants

Potential damage t9 [is own
positive face-wants;
‘ I

\ I
\ \
\

I ’sface-work

[a] Effects on R is face
Underlying Criticism: Potential damage to
R is positive face-wants

A

Surfac:e Compliment: Attendance to R is
positive face-wants

(b) Effects on [is face

Satisfaction of [is own negative
face-wants

Potential damage to [’s own

face-wants

 

 

R ’sface-work mositive polite compliment

\
\
\ “
\

response)

\ I
\ |
‘ \

to] Effect on I 3' face‘, I,

\

Attendance to [ is ppsitive face-wants

\
I
t
|

(d) Effect on R is face ‘i‘

Fortification of R is own ppsitive
face-wants

R ’sface-work (negative polite
compliment response)

to) Effect on [is face

Attendance to [is negative face-wants

((1) Effect on R is face
Sacrifice of R is own face-wants

 

 

59

 

A closer look at Chart 4 indicates that [ from both cultures have tried to reduce the
threat to R is positive face emerging from his/her underlying criticism by giving an
insincere surface compliment: a dotted arrow shoots from [is attendance to toward 1 is
damage on R is positive face-wants. However, only the American English speaking R
has made some effort that helps releasing [ is worry about the possibility that R may
dislike I: a dotted arrow fiom R is attendance to shoots toward [is own damage on [is
positive face-wants. Furthermore, the American R can also fortify his/her positive
face-wants by pretending to accept [is surface compliment: a dotted arrow from R is
attendance to his/her own positive face-wants, again, is aimed toward [is damage on R is
positive face-wants. On the other side, the East Asian R, owing to the convention of
negative polite compliment response, seems to be unable to do what the American R has
done and, even worse, presents a new problem for him/herself: the squared positive
face-wants of the East Asian 1 and that of East Asian R illustrate my last point.

For the following reasons, I believe that the interactive offset face analysis provides
an explanation of the disparity between the American and the East Asian perceptions of
ironic criticism. First, in the American column, we can hardly find any noticeable
damage on face-wants that has not yet been taken care of. In addition, given that each
interactant has made some efforts to assure the other that s/he does not want to provoke a
serious fight, the irony interaction as a whole is not considered as a very offensive one.
The negotiation between American ironist and responder might even seem to be
“playful,” as Ghita (2001: 142-143) surmises. On the other hand, in the East Asian
interaction, not only the ironist’s worry about the potential damage on his/her positive

face-wants is unrelieved, the responder’s negative polite compliment response also

60

strengthens the potential damage on his/her positive face-wants that have already been
initiated by the ironist’s expressing a critical judgment. Notice, it is quite possible that
an East Asian responder holds a strong resentment toward the ironist for the reason that
s/he might suspect that the sacrifice of his/her positive face-wants is also calculated by
the ironist at the first place. Consequently, if the relationship between the two
interactants is not a very solid one, this unpleasant experience of irony interaction may
imperil their further connection. The uncertainty of face damage and the potential
danger to the interactants’ relationship, I believe, render ironic criticism a more offensive
situation than direct criticism where the initiator takes the responsibility of causing a
conflict and the receiver can legitimately fight back. Finally, notice that although in
Chart 4 “[ is face-works” in both columns seem quite similar, an East Asian person in real
life may be much more reluctant than an American English speaker to become the [
(ironist/ ironic speaker) owing to his/her awareness of the high offensive level of the
whole irony interaction in the culture. This may account for McClain’s (1994) personal
observation made when he was teaching English in Japan that “irony is conspicuously
absent from Japanese culture”.” My personal experience in Taiwan also confirms that

even between close friends, ironic criticism targeted toward someone present is not very

welcome.

 

'2 Although the citation from McClain scents to imply that irony is totally absent in Japanese language, we
shall not take the implication as a fact. After all, scholars present studies on Japanese verbal irony
(Adachi 1996, Okamoto 2002). McClain’s statement hence should be interpreted as an impression of how
unwilling Japanese people are to talk ironically.

61

CHAPTER 6

DISCUSSION

6.1 Conclusion

Evidence from Japanese and Taiwan Chinese has shown that Dews and Winner’s
(1995) tinge hypothesis, introduced in 2.3, is untenable: while the tinge hypothesis argues
that for ironic criticism the surface compliment functions to mitigate the degree of
offensiveness in the underlying criticism, Japanese and Taiwan’s Chinese native speakers
actually perceive ironic criticism as more offensive than direct criticism. In addition, we
also found questionable the original Brown and Levinson off-record face analysis of
irony function. If, as the proponents suggest, “face-saving” is the primary function of
verbal irony, ironic criticism should be considered as some kind of polite expression and
hence not as hurtful as direct criticism. The inadequacy of Brown and Levinson’s
theory comes from their partial treatment of irony interaction that leans toward the
ironist’s viewpoint: ironic criticism is not brutally offensive for the reason that the surface
compliment allows the speaker not to commit him/herself to the hostile comment on the
underlying level, and the addressee would appreciate the superficial polite work that the
speaker has just executed. However, as I pointed out in 4.2. 1, that the addressee would
appreciate the speaker’s effort is not guaranteed. Thus, I proposed an interactive
perspective as an alternative that encompasses the addressee’s responding move, i.e.
“take it literally” strategy (or off-record compliment response).

Distinguishing the ironist’s face-work from responder’s face-work and the moves on

the surface level from those on the underlying level, this new approach further

62

encourages us to look into detail what threats to which interactant’s face/face-wants have
appeared and how they might be counterbalanced by the attendance to the face-wants.
As a result, I referred to our approach as the “interactive offset face analysis” and applied
it to the earlier mentioned American pattern and East Asian pattern in Chapter 5.
Consequently, we found that while for American English native speakers the threats to
faces is to a great extent negotiable and forgivable through out the course of an irony
interaction, a comparable solution is hardly available for the East Asian. Put differently,
while the American ironist and responder can cooperatively maintain their faces and
hence render the interaction a not very offensive one, the East Asian interactants cannot
find a proper antidote to each face damage popping up in an irony interaction and hence
are forced to leave the unpleasant encounter with a bad taste in their mouths.
Specifically, after an irony interaction, the East Asian ironist is left with an uncertainty of
how much his/her relation with the responder is damaged by the recognized critical intent,
and the East Asian responder is left with an reluctant acceptance of the ironist’s
underlying critical judgment since s/he really could not find a decent way to retort.
Following this vein, I concluded that East Asian people conceive of ironic criticism as
more offensive than direct criticism for the reason that while in the latter case a strong
defense or an overt counterattack is justifiable, in the former case all hurt feelings must
be pressed down deep inside the interactants’ minds without comfortable release.

In sum, neither the tinge hypothesis nor the off-record face analysis succeeds in
accommodating the East Asian perception of ironic criticism. However, while the tinge
claim of the surface muting ftmction is too restrictive, the distinction of the surface

linguistic form from the underlying intention remains promising. The crucial

63

modification we need is to take into consideration both interactants’ moves instead of
merely sticking on the ironist’s side. Once we take a closer look at the responding
choice available to the irony receiver that corresponds to the idiosyncrasy of each culture,
we would realize that ironic criticism does not present for East Asian people an
interactive environment that is as amiable as the one it presents for the Americans in
terms of the opportunity of face-saving. In light of this, I believe we find an answer to

the reported cultural disparity in irony perception.

6.2 Predictions

The readers should have already noticed that the foundation of this paper is the
pivotal role the metaphorical notion of face plays in human social interactions, following
Goffman (l967[1955]) and Brown and Levinson (1987[1978]). If this assumption of
social face remains as solid as it has been through the past decades, I would expect the
interactive offset face analysis to be as general as possible whenever face-to-face
communications are taken into account while recognizing» some exceptions including the
situations where emergency is the predominant concem and where each interactive move
has been conventionally prescribed in the context, e.g., an interrogation on the court. In
other words, I believe that this new face analysis is not limited in accounting for
interactions involving ironic criticism but is applicable to many other social encounters.
An example of the general applicability of this analysis can be found in 4.2.2 where one
interactant was trying to get some cash out of the other’s pocket indirectly.

In addition, I also expect my new face analysis to be more comprehensive and more

fundamental than Brown and Levinson’s version. Recall the five categories of

64

politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson mentioned in 2.2.2: bald on-record,
positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record, and “don’t do the FTA.” While
Brown and Levinson have to provide for each category a distinct explanation of why the
situation is or is not considered to be polite, our offset calculation only requires a handy
chart that is similar to Chart 4 on page 59, listing all the threats and attendance to
face-wants that emerge from the interactants’ moves/face-works. Then we can inspect if
there is any potential offset between the treats and attendance: the more potential offsets
the more polite the interaction; the less potential offsets the less polite the interaction.
Our final prediction is particularly addressed on irony perception. Note that in
Footnote 5 from 4.1.1 I have briefly introduced Cheng’s (1990) psychiatric paper which
points to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore as the “Pan-Confucian
Region” in view of their sharing of the Confucianism culture. Cheng’s study also
appears in favor of the commonly held folk notion that people from these countries
display great similarity in their social behaviors. In addition, I have mentioned in 5.2.2
that many researchers in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean coincidentally consider
“rejection” as the cultural norm of compliment response for the native speakers.
Although I have pointed out that Baba’s (1996) study on Japanese compliment response
in effect finds a higher frequency of usage of “self-mockery” response, her study
nevertheless led us to think that when responding to a compliment, East Asian people
would usually choose to attend to the compliment-giver’s negative face-wants with their
positive face-wants at stake, thanks to the Confucian “subordination” or “modesty”
morality. This Confucian norm of compliment response, as analyzed in 5.2.2,

contributes to the East Asian responders’ inability to compensate their loss of positive

65

face-wants in a given irony interaction and hence it furthermore contributes to their
perception of ironic criticism as highly offensive. Given the shared bearing of
Confucian morality, especially the subordination ethic, our interactive offset face analysis
model would predict that people in Korea, Singapore, and Mainland China should display
very similar perception patterns like what we have observed in Japan and Taiwan. That
is, people from the Pan-Confucian region should equally perceive ironic criticism as a

very offensive form of expression, quite probably more offensive than direct criticism.

6.3 Remaining problem and future research

Finally, let us pick up our initial questions in Chapter 1: “Why do people choose to
use irony?” and “Why would a person, who already decided to make a criticism toward
another person, not make his/her statements directly or literally, but, instead, make it
indirectly in the form of irony?” It has been quite clear that ironic criticism is not meant
to tone down the offensive level of the critical intention. In addition, within an irony
interaction, ironic criticism does not always ensure the opportunities for the participants
to save their faces. At least, the opportunities are not equally granted to American
people and East Asian people. The bottom line is one can still conceive of
“face-saving” as one of the pragmatic function of ironic criticism, in particular for the
American English speakers; however, s/he will have to give up the idea that this function
is universal. Otherwise, we may claim the universal function of ironic criticism to be
“the avoidance of overt conflict” for the reason that even in the less pleasant East Asian
irony interaction the conflict is kept low on the underlying level.

Also, while I have argued in 5.3 that the perceived high level of offensiveness in

66

irony interaction may lead to East Asian people’s unwillingness of using ironic criticism,
empirical data showing the frequency of irony being used in East Asian societies is in
need for confirming my suspicion. In addition, it is desirable to have data that indicate
how people from different cultures interact in situations involving direct criticism. If we
have the patterns of “criticism interactions,” we can place them into the offset face model,
inspecting the offensive level of such interactions, and then compare the findings with
those that we have found in “irony interactions.” By doing so, we might find a clearer
explanation of the perceptual difference in offensiveness between ironic criticism and
direct criticism than that I have proposed with mere observation on irony interactions.
Still, surveys and researches about verbal irony carried on in other languages and
cultures are encouraged. It would be interesting to see what results are to emerge from
other norms of compliment responses and/or whether there exist other responding
strategies than “take it literally,” especially how they affect the face correlation within
irony interactions. More cross-cultural comparative studies of these sorts are hoped to

enrich our knowledge of the pragmatic and social function(s) of verbal irony.

67

APPENDICES

68

APPENDIX 1

The Chinese Version of the Questionnaire

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Barbara Abbott, University Professor, Linguistics & Languages, Michigan State
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BjZElI§§z 202 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.

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73

APPENDIX 2

The English Version of the Questionnaire

Reaction to Comments: A Case Study on Taiwan Chinese

Thank you very much for agreeing on participating in this research. You will read 12
short stories consisting of two interactants. In each story, one of the participants will
make a final comment on the other’s performance. Please answer the questions that
follow each story and base your answer on your intuition.

The investigators appreciate your time. If you have any further questions about the
research, please contact: Barbara Abbott, University Professor, Linguistics & Languages,
Michigan State University, abbottb@msu.edu, 517-355-9739. Or, in Chinese or
Taiwanese Southern Min, contact: Chun Huang, graduate student, Linguistics &
Languages, Michigan State University, huangc20@msu.edu. 517-333-5781.

If you have questions or concerns regarding your rights as a study participant, or are
dissatisfied at any time with any aspect of this study, you may contact - anonymously, if
you wish — Peter Vasilenko, Ph. D. Chair of the University Committee on Research
Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS) by phone: 517-355-2180, fax: 517-432-4503,
email: ucrihs@msu.edu. or regular mail: 202 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.

Before moving on to the next page, please identify your gender and age as follows:
My age is:
My gender is:

Thank you! The stories will begin from the next page.

74

Zhu and J iao are sisters. They participated in a model competition.

When Jiao was performing a catwalk, she tripped and fell over the stage.

Zhu said to J iao,

“You are so good at catwalk!”

“You are bad at catwalk.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Zhu’s remark? (0- not critical at all;
3- so so; 6— extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was J iao by Zhu’s remark? (0- not at
all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Lin and Ling are friends. They practiced dancing in the same ball room.

Ling was dancing awkwardly and could not keep up with the tempo.

Lin said to Ling,

“You really have a good sense of rhythm!”

“You have a poor sense of rhythm.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Lin’s remark? (0- not critical at all;
3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Ling by Lin’s remark? (0— not at
all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Suei and Lian are friends. They went to a Lotus pond together to shoot photos.

When Lian was posing for a shot, she slipped into the pond.

Suei said to Lian,

“You are pretty good at posing!”

“You are bad at posing.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Suei’s remark? (0- not critical at all; 3-
so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Lian by Suei’s remark? (0- not at
all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

75

Chang and Chao are freshmen at the Biology Department.

When Chao saw the dead bodies of an animal in a class, he was so scared that he

couldn’t help but fainted.

Chang later said to Chao,

“Dude, you are so brave!”

“Dude, you are timid.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Chang’s remark? (0- not critical at
all; 3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Chao by Chang’s remark? (0- not
at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted) ‘

Wei and Ming are close friends.

A couple of days ago, Ming spent lots of money to buy a CD player. Unfortunately it

was a fake and could not perform any function.

Wei said to Ming,

“Your CD player is so cool!”

“Your CD player is a crap.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how serious was Wei ’5 remark? (0- not critical at all; 3-
so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Ming by Wei ’5 remark? (0- not at all;
3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Sian and Kan went to a pub to have drinks.

Kan was so drunk even after only two glasses of beer.

Sian said to Kan,

“You are pretty good at drinking!”

“You are poor at drinking.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Sian’s remark? (0- not critical at all; 3-
so so; 6« extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Kan by Sian’s remark? (0- not at all;
3- so so; 6- very insulted)

76

Hwei broke a china vase when she was cleaning the living room.

Her mother-in-law was angry when she witnessed it.

The mother-in-law said to Hwei,

“My son really couldn’t find a better wife than you!”

“My son found himself a lousy wife.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Hwei’s mother-in—law’s remark? (0-
not critical at all; 3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Hwei by her mother-in—law’s
remark? (0- not at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Secretary Chang asked her assistant ang to make some copies of exam papers.

ang didn’t concentrate on working so that the capies she made were too bad to

be used for the exam.

Chang said to Ying,

“You surely are careful!”

“You are so careless.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was Secretary Chang’s remark? (0- not
critical at all; 3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Ying by Secretary Chang’s remark?
(0- not at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Nini is an assistant of hairstylist Nana.

When Nini was asked to prepare some hair-dye, she messed up the color.

Nana said to Nini

“How skillful you are!”

“How clumsy you are.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was the manager’s remark? (0- not critical
at all; 3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Siao by the nurse manager’s
remark? (0- not at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

77

10. Yuan played for a baseball team. His performance in certain game was so bad that he

11.

12.

not only had no hit but collected 3 consecutive strikeouts.

The coach said to him,

“Your condition has been perfect!”

“You condition has been so bad”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was the coach’s remark? (0- not critical
at all; 3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Yuan by the coach’s remark? (0-
not at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

De is a news anchor.

When he was reporting, he made quite a few mistakes.

His supervisor said to him,

“Wow! You are really articulate.”

“You don’t even know how to talk.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was the supervisor’s remark? (0- not
critical at all; 3- so so; 6- extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was De by the supervisor’s remark?
(O-not at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Salesperson Lio failed to earn his company an important business case.

His boss said to him,

“You are so reliable!”

“You are very unreliable.”

(1) On a seven-point scale, how critical was the boss’s remark? (0- net critical at
all; 3- so so; 6— extremely critical)

(2) On a seven-point scale, how insulted was Lio by the boss’s remark? (O-not
at all; 3- so so; 6- very insulted)

Thank you! You have finished all of the questions.

Please attach this questionnaire with your replying email to the researcher (the
subject of the email need not be changed). And, in the text of the email, please
identify your age and gender.

78

REFERENCES

79

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