Читать книгу The Politeness/Impoliteness Divide. English-Based Theories and Speech Acts Practice in Moroccan Arabic онлайн

6 страница из 36

The dialogue between a theoretical discourse and the empirical field which this discourse describes is articulated here in two stages. In the first, an intercultural contrast (a theory originally based on English and Anglo-Saxon culture sets against empirical data from MA) allows us to identify specific cases of what concerns a polite behaviour. It is precisely this contrast with the theoretical discourse that leads us to pay a special attention to the aspects of a polite behaviour in MA that might not have been seen as meriting explicit reflection had they not been questioned from outside the culture. Indeed, the contact and contrast with other cultural contours is the only instrument at our disposal to identify singularities of the culture itself. In the second stage, these singularities are re-examined and through this they cease to be loose and discordant pieces of the theoretical discourse, inasmuch as their inherent internal logic now becomes apparent. In this way, the empirical field described becomes a true interlocutor with the theoretical discourse, which must adapt the assumptions and the scope of its proposals if the aim of a universal description is to be achieved. Politeness is definitely a universal phenomenon, so to think about politeness requires a dialogue between complementary visions adopting a transcultural position.