5 - Effacing talk

Summary

We come now to another significant part in the puzzle of Chinese inscrutability. In previous chapters, we saw how subtlety and evocative open-endedness arise out of indeterminate endings. We observed that Chinese communicative rituals cater to a bone-deep sense of social harmony and interdependency that inspires people to seek possibilities for mutual engagement and joint action.

In this chapter, we turn to Chinese concerns about face and form and the cultural expression of hierarchical respect and deference that has alternately charmed and confused Westerners. We proceed by enlisting the help of Chinese-speaking bilinguals to analyze and assess an actual communication of a Chinese subordinate making a suggestion to his superior in Chinese, and supplement our discussion with scattered accounts of superior-subordinate relations in Chinese workplaces. This excerpt will also let us see that the rhetorical ideals and strategies described for traditional Chinese poetry and literature can be generalized to everyday discourse. Indeed, the evocative and participatory thrust in Chinese rhetoric becomes even more pronounced and more definitely formalized when talking to someone of greater power and authority.

By all accounts, Chinese communicative rituals require a constant attendance to hierarchical status and the rituals of social deference: markers of respect must be articulated and meaningful ritual action personalized. These are core values that still permeate Chinese social existence and reveal themselves in the strategems and signals of face-redress. Particularly in Chinese discourse, strategies of face-redress must be put “on record.”