Chen’s concluding chapter is a full-fledged defense of Brown and Levinson against their critics. In terms of theoretical assumption, Chen argues that rationality, per Brown and Levinson, does not belong to Westerners only, neither is individualism monopolized by them. In terms of utility, Chen demonstrates that Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness is perfectly capable of accounting – and, in fact, was designed to account – for the dynamism of social interaction. The accusations that it cannot stems from an insufficient appreciation of the richness of the theory, particularly the formula for measuring the weightiness of face threat. The second part of the chapter is a critique of the research strand “politeness evaluation.” Chen argues that this strand suffers several weaknesses. It is proposed as a reaction to the norm-based approach in politeness research but ends up being norm-searching. It is meant to capture variation, but what it has offered the field is little more than a list of facts that were expected in the first place. Finally, it is claimed to investigate the “moment of evaluation,” but such a moment – the judgment of politeness at the time of speaking – is practically impossible to capture.

Chen compares Chinese politeness with English politeness in this chapter, focusing on what has been called a “East-West Divide” debate. To advance the position that East and West are fundamentally different, the author argues that Chinese politeness has its own characteristics but not unique; that the speech act of request in Chinese is conducted under similar principles and are subjected to similar constraints as seen English; that persistence in benefit offering occurs in English, too; that speech acts that are assumed to carry high levels of face threat (e.g., criticizing and disagreeing) also offers evidence that there is no East-West Divide in politeness; and that – finally – even the drastic differences in the speech act of lying between English and Chinese can be shown to be motivated by similar considerations. Culture differences are often times differences on the surface: the different symptoms of similar underlying principles. With a set of principles on which cultures may converge and a set of parameters on which cultures are likely to vary, Chen believes that B&L-E meets the challenge of being a universal theory that captures the commonalities between cultures, commonalities that transcend, and therefore account for, differences.

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.

This is a chapter in which Chinese politeness is compared with politeness in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. With their respective morphological systems of honorification, Japanese and Korean languages are structurally different from Chinese, an isolating language that has hardly any inflectional morphology. These linguistic differences, however, do not prevent the three linguacultures to demonstrate a remarkable degree of similarity in terms of politeness at a deeper level of analysis. The three linguacultures, for instance, seem to be similarly hierarchical in social structure, although they differ in the relative weight a particular factor on a hierarchy has in a given context. The architectural features of language, Chen argues, are not as determinant in politeness as scholars have believed. A culture value such as self-denigration, which often presents itself in terms of politeness, is expressed regardless of how the language is structured linguistically. Vietnamese, on the other hand, is typologically close to Chinese, its culture shares much with Chinese culture, but it was under the French rule for several decades (1985-1954). And yet, B&L-E is shown to be capable of capturing the similarities and differences between it and Chinese in terms of politeness.

This opening chapter first discusses the important position politeness research holds in pragmatics. Four areas of research are selected for the purpose: speech acts, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and interaction on the Internet, with the overarching aim to show that politeness offers insights for how meaning is made and transmitted in each of these areas. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the discussion on the important role Chinese politeness plays in politeness research in general. Since the notion of Chinese face is a pillar of Brown and Levinson’s notion of face, an in-depth understanding of Chinese face and, subsequently, Chinese politeness, stands to benefit the understanding of Brown and Levinson’s thinking in their theory. In addition, research on Chinese face has been drawing an increasing amount of attention from scholars of politeness in recent decades, accumulating a literature the size of which few other languages can parallel and offering insights to the understanding of politeness that are unique and significant, a thorough exploration of Chinese politeness can inform the field about politeness theorizing.

In this transitional chapter, Chen proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP): “Politeness is the judgement of a behavior – both linguistic and otherwise – that it is appropriate in context for the purpose of harmony.” Appropriateness, further, is defined in terms of the position of the speaker and hearer; the maintaining of face, and the avoidance of friction between all parties involved. Chen then moves to the proposal of a general politeness theory based on Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation into it notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The theory – Brown and Levinson extended (B&L-E) – is a set of causality relations: waht a speaker does (either benefitting or hurting) to face (either self-face or other-face) leads to a particular type of politeness or impoliteness. The benefitting of other-face, for instance, often leads to the evaluation of politeness. The benefitting of self-face, on the other hand, may (or may not) result in a judgement of impoliteness to other. Of the two models, Chen argues, MCP is a cultural specification of B&L-E. His view is therefore that there should be a universal theory of politeness such as B&L-E, which is capable of subsuming under it culture-specific models such as MCP.

In Chapter 2, Chen takes his readers to the roots of Chinese face and politeness: the social structure of hierarchy and the social value of harmony. Both features are traced to Confucianism, a codification of a society in which every member knows the rung they are at on the ladder of the social hierarchy and is expected to behave accordingly. To keep such a society stable, the notion of harmony is championed by Chinese philosophers, most notably Confucius. To promote harmony, Chen demonstrates, Confucius prescribes an elaborate system of behavioral rules for people of all walks of life. The monarch and the ruling class should be benevolent, subordinates loyal; parents should be caring; children filial; husbands should be responsible, wife faithful. Finally, every member of the society should strive for ren, which includes all that is good, and treat others with deference and respect. Lastly, Chen argues that the notions of hierarchy and harmony have been remarkably stable across the ages and appear to be present in contemporary Chinese-speaking societies outside mainland China: Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In this book, Rong Chen provides a thorough discussion of Chinese politeness and argues for universality in politeness theorizing. Based on in-depth analyses, the author dichotomizes Chinese face into Face1 and Face2 – the former referring to the person and the latter to the persona of the speaker – and proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP), with the notion of harmony at the center. Chinese politeness thusly conceived – the author argues – should be seen as a cultural-specification of a universal theory of politeness dubbed Brown and Levinson Extended (B&L-E), a model that anchors with Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation of the notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The author then applies MCP and B&L-E to the analyses of Chinese politeness, both diachronically and synchronically, and to comparisons of politeness between Chinese and other languages. The results demonstrate that B&L-E is capable of accounting for variation as well as consistency across time and space, differences as well as similarity between linguacultures, and fluidity as well as stability in meaning making in authentic interaction. The monograph hence presents a rare challenge to politeness research and pragmatics, which have emphasized particularism at the expense of universalism.