A Cross-cultural Study Of The Self-denigration Strategy

The present study was undertaken to investigate the similarities and differences in the performance of the self-denigration strategy between Chinese and American people and explore the underlying cultural factors responsible for such similarities and differences. The research questions to be addressed in the study are as follows:1) Are there any similarities and differences in the performance of the self-denigration strategy between Chinese and Americans? If there are any, what are the similarities and differences?2) What are the underlying cultural factors responsible for such similarities and differences in the choice of the self-denigration strategy by Chinese and Americans?The study was conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative design includes a survey on Likert Scale. The quantitative study involved 135 Chinese students, and 70 American students. Both groups of the respondents are first year students majoring in subjects other than linguistics. And the qualitative study includes an interview, involving 7 interviewees out of the Chinese group and 5 out of the American group respectively. Stratified random sampling was used to select twelve students for the interview to find out the cultural factors responsible for the similarities and differences in the use of the self-denigration strategy. The major findings of the present study are summarized as follows: Firstly, there are no striking similarities between the Chinese and Americans in terms of their use of the self-denigration strategy. This strategy does not enjoy high popularity not only in American culture but also in Chinese culture. Due to cultural globalization, Chinese people no longer perform the strategy as rigidly as they did before.Secondly, there are obvious differences in the use of the strategy between American culture and Chinese culture. First, Chinese people utilize the strategy more often than American people. Second, in Chinese culture the social status of the speaker as compared with the hearer is generally in negative proportion to the frequency of the speaker's use of the strategy. In other words, the higher the social status of the speaker as compared with the hearer, the lower the frequency, or the other way round. By contrast, that is not the case with people in American culture.Thirdly, different interpretation of modesty or politeness in different cultures may lead to the use of different strategy. The strategy in Chinese culture does not have much to do with Brown & Levinson's distinction between positive and negative face want. For Chinese people, this strategy is used for the purpose of not only showing deference for people of higher social status but also seeking solidarity and interpersonal harmony without distinction of social status.Fourthly, the present study discovers supportive evidence for Leech's hypothesis that the Modesty Maxim exerts the least powerful constraint on conversational behavior and that some eastern cultures value the Modesty Maxim more than the western; however, the study also finds non-supportive evidence for Leech's argument that the submaxim (b) of the Modesty Maxim is less important than the submaxim (a). The results of the present study, on the contrary, confirms Gu's assumption that self-denigration, to a certain extent, remains to be at the core of Chinese politeness.Finally, there are different cultural value orientations underlying the choice of the strategy by Chinese and American students. First, Chinese students value collectivism while American students favor individualism. Second, Chinese family education emphasizes, among other things, the necessity of being reserved and being modest, while American family education usually encourages children to be independent and competitive. Besides, cultural globalization and different interpretation of modesty also have an effect on the two groups'different choice of, or different attitudes toward the self-denigration strategy.Findings from this study have the following pedagogical implications. In the first place, to increase language learners'cultural awareness, the teacher of foreign languages should provide cultural information as well as lexical, syntactical and grammatical knowledge. In the second place, interlocutors need to be aware of cross-cultural differences when communicating with those of other cultures. Otherwise, pragmatic failures would occur.The study is limited in the following ways. The subjects may not represent the whole population. Besides, many more factors, for example, gender, should be taken into consideration in the future study.