Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

Politeness and Social Dynamics in the Chat Communication 117
(Im)politeness, on the contrary, is a salient communicative behaviour, i.e. a
behaviour that exceeds what participants perceive to be appropriate to the ongoing
social interaction. It represents “any linguistic behaviour which goes beyond the
bounds of politic behaviour [and] is open to potential classification as ‘polite’,
which includes potential irony, aggressiveness, abuse, etc” (Watts 2003:161).
But how do participants recognize or have knowledge about the appropriate
behaviour (politic behaviour) in the ongoing social interaction? How do they
know when the use of some communicative strategies and linguistic structures
exceeds what is expected and represents a salient communicative behaviour? I
will firstly attempt to answer both questions through some of the social
phenomenological considerations developed by Schütz & Luckmann (1994a/b).
3.1 World knowledge, politic behaviour and communication as an intersubjecttive
activity
Our world knowledge is gained trough social interaction. This knowledge consists
of experiences which are to a higher or lower degree typified. Trough these
experiences, the individual orients herself in her social environment (cf. Schütz &
Luckmann 1994a:29). They can be examined or modified during the ongoing
social interaction. In this way, the individual acquires new experiences which are
again typified and serve to interpret later communicative situations. These
typified experiences facilitate relative stable interaction practices (cf. Tophinke
2001:44), the construction of a particular social reality and the maintenance of a
specific ritual order. Such typified experiences represent a certain type of an
acquired world knowledge, which can be designated as cognitive schemata.
Typified personal experiences turn into acts, when the individual connects
them with a specific motivation or purpose (cf. Schütz & Luckmann 1994a:
253ff). However, an individual has access only to her own personal experiences.
In order to identify and interpret such experiences as acts by other participants,
the individual shows a correlation between the utterance and a determined
linguistic behaviour. That behaviour is provided with some indicators or contextualization
cues (cf. Gumperz 2001:221), by means of which participants can
recognize and interpret the meaning of the utterance, according to their own
typified experiences and the cognitive schemata related with those experiences. In
the same way, the individual interprets the meaning of other participants’
utterances trough their linguistic behaviour, the contextualization cues shown in
that behaviour and the individual’s own typified experiences and cognitive
schemata. The meaning of an utterance is consequently not self-determined by the
individual but by the others (cf. Schütz & Luckmann 1994b:18). The social reality
is thus constructed in an intersubjective way and not exclusively in a subjective or
rational manner.
The individual’s cognitive schemata are determinant in interpreting other
participants’ linguistic behaviour as (in)appropriate in the context of the ongoing
social interaction. The correspondence of this linguistic behaviour with the