Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

152 Workshops
Onyeche, J. (2004) “As Naija pipo dey tok : a Preliminary Analysis of the Role of Nigerian
Pidgin in the Nigerian Community in Sweden”. Africa and Asia 4, 48 – 56, Göteborg :
Department of African and Oriental Languages.
Welcome and introduction to Postcolonial Pragmatics
Janney, Richard W.
University of Munich
janney@lmu.de
The main question this panel wishes to address is: to what extent are the patterns of facesaving
claimed by Brown and Levinson (1978) really universal? Since the publication of
Brown and Levinson’s work, several other works have been published that describe patterns
of politeness and face-saving in Non-western cultures that are distinctly different from those
in Western cultures. Although some researchers have discussed politeness in certain African
and Asian cultures, it is still not established if the further mix of languages and linguistic
identities created by colonialism play a significant role in the way speakers in multilingual
postcolonial speech communities produce and react to speech acts related to politeness and
face-saving. This issue is particularly complex, because language use and abuse play
important roles in many areas of postcolonial life. Language can be a powerful mediator of
understanding, empowerment, and solidarity, or a source of repression, disempowerment, and
discrimination. Choices of what and how (and in what languages) things are expressed stand
at the centre of postcolonial pragmatic interest.
If certain face-saving strategies (hedging, complimenting, understating, distancing, etc.) are
relatively uniform in Western cultures, as Brown and Levinson claim, how are these realised
in postcolonial contexts? What happens to these strategies among speakers who have
complex, hybrid linguistic identities built on mixtures of foreign languages imposed during
colonialism, indigenous languages, and the languages of wider communication (Pidgins and
Creoles)? Do speakers adopt situational faces, using the different languages (and with these,
identities) at their disposal to project such faces? Or do they adopt stabile face-saving patterns
specific to one language and culture in their daily communication? Answers to these
questions could be found by analyzing everyday face-to-face discourse, political and
institutional discourse, print media discourse, literary discourse, and all forms of
electronically mediated communication.
Although the focus of this panel is primarily on face-saving, papers related to the myriad
locutionary forms, illocutionary functions, and perlocutionary effects of language
communication and communication systems in postcolonial contexts are welcome as well.
Papers dealing with natural discourse and issues of cultural displacement, migration,
hybridity, diaspora, and the role of public and government media in shaping perceptions of
postcolonial history, politics, and regional, ethnic, and social identities will also be
considered. With its emphasis on communication and issues of identity, agency,
understanding, and empowerment in different postcolonial contexts, this panel wishes to
provide a common platform for interdisciplinary cooperation between scholars of different
persuasions with interests in language, communication, and postcolonial questions.