Politeness as a Linguistic Concept in the Croatian and English Languages – a Comparative Analysis

Despite Brown and Levinson’s original claims that politeness is a universal concept perceived identically in all cultures, it has long been established that different societies perceive this concept differently. A lack of understanding regarding these differences may lead to intercultural conflict and thus research is required, especially in cultures in which such research is scarce, such as that of Croatia. This article focuses on the comparative corpus analysis of both the word politeness in English and its Croatian “counterpart,” the word pristojnost, in dictionaries and their use in corpora. Furthermore, it aims to establish how Croatian speakers perceive pristojnost and the quality of pristojnost (or the lack of it) in people. For this purpose, a qualitative and quantitative comparative corpus analysis based on the definitions of the words in question in certain English and Croatian dictionaries, their usage in their respective corpora and their translations in each of the two languages, as well as a small-scale quantitative and qualitative analysis of a questionnaire, completed by Croatian participants, were conducted. On the basis of such a four-step analysis, it has been concluded that both English politeness and Croatian pristojnost have two meanings, one connected to culture/etiquette, and one oriented towards interpersonal relationships; however, pristojnost has another meaning, that of satisfactoriness. It has also been deduced that pristojnost slightly differs from politeness, as it focuses more on interpersonal behaviour and interaction, rather than social norms and etiquette, which the concept of politeness seems primarily to focus on. Understanding these differences is crucial for high quality communication, especially in intercultural and multicultural contexts, e.g. in academic settings. For this reason, research on a larger scale should be carried out to establish how politeness and its equivalents are perceived in various cultural contexts; this article thus serves as a call for research expansion.

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