POLITENESS IN AMERICAN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract. This paper studies the notion of politeness on first and last names by using a short view in verbal Russian and American English, which implies to examine the relationship between the speakers based on social values and beliefs in a daily verbal discourse and cross- cultural pragmatics.

The emphasis in the research has been largely on cross-cultural and cross-pragmatic differences in American English and Russian language, based on social values and beliefs of each culture. The article discusses the value and behavior connection in Russian and American cultural speech communities, where each culture shares their own socio-cognitive behaviors and attitudes, passing from generation to generation. A hierarchical relationship in Russian culture is inevitable in order to comprehend politeness of this language community and to address a person in a correct way.

This study applies a descriptive qualitative research method based on a cross-cultural pragmatic comparative approach of Russian and American English in a verbal discourse. The goal is to identify patterns of target language use which predict pragmatic failure or success. Pragmatic failure has been studied in terms of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic.

In determining similarities between American English and Russian polite discourse there is a tendency among cross-cultural pragmatic researches to assume that all native speakers of one language share the same discourse norms. It is emphasized that social cultural norms could be applied for a particular language community, but cannot be transferred as a cross-cultural pattern. It is discussed that politeness is a matter of social norms and has culture-specific rules based on Brown and Levinson Politeness Theory (Brown P., Levinson S., 1987) constructed on cross-cultural social politeness and a public self-image- ‘face’ and Albert Bandura’s (Bandura A., 1986) Socio-cognitive Theory (SCT), which focuses on observation, learning (modeling), and outcome. It is discussed that face-saving politeness theory cannot be applied universal, and cultural norms of both language communities should be taken into consideration.

Keywords: politeness, cross-cultural pragmatics, sociolinguistics, Russian culture, American culture