6 - Diachronic Stability and Change

Summary

Chapter 6 examines the diachronic aspect of Chinese politeness. Changes are identified in all three areas selected for analysis: the marriage ritual, end-of-dinner food offering, and compliment responses. In the first, modern Chinese marriage is found to show more gender equality between the bride and groom. In food offering, dinner hosts offer food to guests much less (if at all) than what they were found to do fourteen years earlier. In complement responses, Chinese are found to accept complements overwhelmingly as opposed to reject them overwhelmingly seventeen years earlier. MCP and B&L-E, however, can account for these changes coherently: they are diachronic variations on the same “theme,” the theme that is captured at higher level of generalization by the two models of politeness.