On Cooperative Principle & Politeness Principle In Diplomatic Language Strategy

This paper entitled "On Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle in Diplomatic Language Strategy" discusses "diplomatic language" with reference to linguistic theories, especially theories of pragmatics involving the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle, yet the writer additionally introduces the concept of "face" by Brown and Levinson concerning "face threatening act", "negative face", "positive face", i.e. "Face Saving Theory", and illustrates through typical examples to analyze diplomatic language strategy in a new perspective: how a diplomatic spokesperson tries or manages to reduce face threatening symmetrically.The writer first makes a survey of documents available, briefing the present study on the diplomatic language field as well as introducing the main theories in pragmatic study, including pragmatic ambiguity, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, face and politeness strategy, as well as the shortcomings and limitations of these theories involving the Grice's Cooperative Principle, Leech's Politeness Principle, Brown and Levinson's Face Saving Theory. Then the writer implements the full analysis of the characteristics of the diplomatic language from such angles as the definitions of diplomacy, the register, the representation and the direction of the talk exchange in discourse, showing that indirectness is the important strategy for diplomatic language. Through the illustrations and analysis, the writer points out that negotiation and dialogue are playing such significant roles in present world that language matters a lot in diplomacy. The indirectness of diplomatic language brings about the intentional violation of the maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner under the Cooperative Principle, either in a separate way or in a joint way, giving rise to "Conversational Implicatures". However, no matter what kind of specific linguistic strategy is taken, the purpose is either to reduce the face threat to "other" or to reduce the face threat to "self or to both. In other words, the goal is either to maintain the face to "other" or to "self or to both or all sides involved.Moreover, the writer illustrates some other diplomatic language strategies including politeness to a third party, guarded understatements, politeness shift, etc. to further elaborate that the face threat reduction or face saving is not only mono-directional, i.e. other-oriented, but also bi-directional or even "self-oriented in some specific conditions, just because "self occupies a significant position in diplomatic situations. In addition, the third party is also a factor to be taken into consideration. Hence the politeness is neither so absolute nor so asymmetrical so far as the diplomatic language strategy is concerned. The writer concludes that the maxims under Politeness Principle are so asymmetrically other-oriented that it may not account for the features of diplomatic language. It can only solve part of the problems that are unsolved by the Cooperative Principle.Finally, the writer winds up the whole paper by advancing an Interest Principle that may matter in the diplomatic language strategy through adjustment to Tact Maxim (Minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other) under Leech's Politeness Principle for further discussion.Maxim of Interest:Minimize cost to others; maximize benefit to self.In the maxim, "others" indicates not only the "hearer", but the parties except for "self. The writer holds that it is a parallel and simultaneous process, or they are premises to each other based on specific condition to achieve a trade-off in the end.