5 - Synchronic Consistency and Variation

Summary

In this chapter, MCP and B&L-E are applied to contemporary politeness phenomena in the Chinese linguaculture. Four areas are selected for analysis: Self-denigration and self-presentation, moral order and morality, conflict resolution, and humorous mockery. These areas – which would seem to be disparate at first sight – are expected to display different politeness principles at work. However, Chen shows that MCP and B&L-E, working together, offer a unified account for all while, at the same time, are capable of revealing differences among them. Humorous mockery, for instance, has been viewed by some as a genre to which politeness does not apply. Chen’s analysis demonstrates that it does, as long as one sees it as a tug-of-war between self-politeness and other-politeness.