Emphasis of global goals over local goals in Asian communication leads them to be less

assertive and less expressive. First, asians, compared to westerners, are very low in self
assertiveness. Barnliind (1975) reported that japanese is more regulated than white English, which,
in turn, is more regulated than black English (Kochman, 1981). Particularly between ingroups, Asians
tend to suppress confrontations or expression of negative verbal messages. “Courtesy often takes
precedence over truthfulness" (Gudykunst K Kim, 1984, p. 142), which leads Asians to give an
agreeable and pleasant answer to a question when a literal, factual answer might be unpleasant or
embarrassing (Hall 86 Whyte, 1960). The Japanese culture is called a “culture of consideration"
(Suzuki, 1986) in which people always try not to cause trouble for others and not to hurt their
feelings, which leads Japanese to be circumspect and reserved (Lebra, 1976). A similar tendency was
reported of Thai culture. In Thailand, doubts are rarely verbalized, especially when one is
communicating with elders and persons of higher status (Smutkupt 8: Barna, 1976).

Second, Asians often suppress expression of their emotions. Being emotional in Asian culture
iis believed to reflect a lack of self-control, which is a sign of a frivolous nature; Asians will say good
instead of fantastic and not very good instead of terrible. “Even when expressing strong personal
affection, a style of hesitancy and indirectness is commonly preferred. Asians can even be suspicious
of the genuineness of direct verbal expressions of love and respect. Excessive verbal praise or
compliments sometimes are received with feelings of embarrassment" (cudykunst ‘sf Klmi 1934p.
142).

On the contrary, Arabic cultures, although high-context in communication, tend to be

overly expressive. The Arabic language abounds with grammatical features of assertion and
exaggeration: Some common-ending words are designed to emphasize the meaning, the doubling of
the sounds of some consonant creates stronger effects, and the repetition of pronouns and words
increases assertiveness (Gudykunst St Kim, 1984; Suleiman, 19' ). ln addition, Arabs use stylistic and
rhetorical devices, such as metaphors, Similes, and long arrays of adjectives, to accomplish even
stronger exaggerations (Suleiman, 1973). Seemingly, it is a paradox that the over-assertiveness and
over-expressiveness of Arabic commucation create as ambiguous a message as the under-
assertiveness and under-expressiveness of Asian communication. However, overassertiveness and
over-expressiveness reflect the tendency of the Arabic culture to emphasize affect over accuracy,
image over meaning, and form over function (Zaharna, 1995). Asians realize the same preferences in
opposite ways.

ltalian culture, Slavic cultures, Jewish culture, and American black culture are also very
expressive. These cultures value “uninhibited emotional expression" whether the feelings are good
or bad (WiCIZblCk3, 1991).

Low assertiveness and expressiveness of Asians inevitably lead to high ambiguity of their
messages. Even without these tendencies, some Asian languages have grammatical structures that
cultivate ambiguity. In the Japanese and the Korean languages, verbs come at the end of sentences,
which means that the illocutionary act of a sentence cannot be determined until the whole sentence
has been uttered. These languages often omit the subject of a sentence and are not specific in the
numerals. Ellipses and lncomplete sentence are abundant. The genuine ambiguity, however, comes
from Asians‘ attitudes toward verbalation. Japanese can talk for hours with out clearly expressing
their opinion to another (lVl°r5ba¢hi 1975). Even in ordinary conversation a japanese person may
say hai (yes) without necessarily implying agreement. Frequently, hai is intended by the speaker, and
is expected by the listener, to mean “I understand what you are saying."

Ambiguity of messages prompted cultures emphasizing high-context communication to

develop strategies to decode the message accurately. Even in Western societies where meanings are
relatively well elaborated, more can be meant than what is actually said (Grice, 1975). Particularly
when the speaker attempts to trigger not a “standard” but a “generated implicature” by “exploiting
the maxims of conversation” (Grice, 1975), interpretation depends a lot on the contextual
knowledge. The implicature of even this nature in the West can be understood universally if
propercontext information is provided.

The ways in which Asians generate implicatures fall outside the scope of Grice’s theory. As
Yoshikawa (1978) observes, what is verbally expressed and what is actually intended are two
different things. To understand the real intention, what one needs to employ are not the knowledge
of conversational maxims and contextual information but pure intuition obtained through a lengthy
history of contact with the speaker (i.e., kan).

Koreans have to develop noon-chi to figure out the intention, desire, mood, and attitude
of the speaker from the ambiguous message (Lim 86 Choi, 1996). Noon-chi, which is literally
translated as “eye-measure,” is an integral part of communicative competence of Koreans. The
ability to use noon-chi is different from person to person, and usually persons of more experiences
use noon-chi better. Persons who do not have the proper abilities to use noon-chi often threaten the
other’s face by forcing the other to say explicitly something that may damage the other’s
respectability (Lim 8c Choi, 1996).

One of the major differences between the operation of noon-chi or kan and the process
of generating implicature or reading between the lines is that, to those who have to use noon-chi to
figure out the other’s intended meaning, the mutual assumption that saying or doing A in the given
context means B (Grice, 1975) is not available. Koreans who decide not to express their meanings
explicitly do not necessarily want the other to figure out their meanings, or do not necessarily
assume that the other will be able to figure out their intentions (Lim 8c Choi, 1996). In addition,
the parties who have to use noon-chi to figure out the intention of the other do not necessarily have
concrete clues about the intention. They have to go through the noon-chi operation, which makes
use of all sorts of world knowledge, the knowledge of the other, the knowledge of the context, the
history of their interactions, and verbal and nonverbal messages, if any. The process of operating
noon-chi, in other words, is not routine but highly arbitrary. Thus, the interpretations generated by
noon-chi mostly represent the perspective of--theoperator of noon-chi, that is, the hearer or
observer (Lim 81; Choi, 1996).The interpretations sometimes are very differ-
ent from what the other really intended.

Indirectness in the West is built on grammatical features such as longer grammatical

structures and the subjunctive and conditional moods. That in the East, however, relies on‘ the
speaker’s approach to communication such as avoiding verbalization and obscuring. Japanese do not
say what they want and avoid precision and specification (Mizutani 8:Mizutani 1987). Similarly, the
Javanese culture manifests high degrees of “indirection”and “dissimulation” (Geertz, 1976).
Javanese norms favor beating about the bush, not saying what is on one’s mind, unwillingness to
face issues in their naked truth, never saying what one really thinks, avoiding gratuitous truths, and
never showing one’s real feelings directly (Wierzbicka, 1991).

When Asians are placed in a situation where they have to verbalize their meanings, they do
not have the luxury of grammatical indirectness devices. Their resort in this situation is the well—
cleveloped hoiiorific system. Honorifics, by carrying certain degrees of respect for the otiier.
compensate for the possible face-threat. when they are in a situation where the use of honorifics is
inadequate (e.g.,when they are speaking to a friend, when they are arguing, or when they speak in a
westernlanguage), they can be very direct.

Directness varies in Western societies. Wierzbicka (1991) reported that English ciiltural
norms (as compared with Polish norms) favor “indirectness” in acts aimed at bringing about an
action from the addressee. But as compared with some other languages such as Australian
Aboriginal norms or African American norms, Anglo-Saxon cultural norms encourage “directness” in
seeking information from the addressee (Abrahams, 1976;Eades, 1982; Sansom, 1980). Tannen
(1981) and Blum-Kulka (1982) reported Greek social norms require a much higher level of
indirectness in social interaction than American ones. On the contrary, the Israeli culture, as
compared with the cultures of English-speaking societies,was reported to be generally more direct
(Blum-Kulka, Danet, 86 Gherson, 1985). Israelis are less concerned with social distance, and
therefore, their interaction style is oriented toward solidarity politeness. House and Kasper (1981)
reported that German speakers were more direct than English speakers both in complaints and
requests. Polish and many other European languages such as Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish
are also very direct. Therefore, it may not be European languages but British English and North
American English that emphasize the rights and the atitonptity of individuals (Wierzbicka, 1991)

Validity of Cross-Cultural Theorizingi

Despite differences in language cultures, constant efforts have been made to identify universal
features. Most notable of these are a universal natural logic (Gordon & Lakolf, 1975), a universal
logic of conversation (Grice, 1975), universal rules of indirectness (Searle, 19975), and a universal of
logic politeness strategy selection (Brown & Levinson , 1987). Altough the generalizations proposed
in these works provide userful insight into mechanism of language use, they should not be seen
absolute. For example, Searle claimed that ordinary conversational requirements of politiness
normally make it awkward to issue flat imperative sentence and explicit performatives and that
politeness is the chief motivation for indirectiiess. Wierzbicka (1991), based on comparisons
between a variety of languages including English, ltalian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, japanese,
Chinese, Korean, Walniatiari (an Australian Aboriginal language), criticized these claims, saying they
are an illusion and simple manifestations of English conversational strategies and Anglo-Saxon
cultural values. The principle of cooperation, the four maxims of conversation, and the implicature-
generating mechanisms are also specific to the North American culture ( 1991) or at the very most to
low-context communication. Asians do not presuppose any principles or maxims to trigger
implicatures, as evidenced by Japanese krm and Korean noon-chi.
Although Brown and Levinson (1987) claimed that their universal theory of politeness was based on
a dozen languages from all quarters of the world, the theory reveals a strong anglocentric bias. Lim
(1994) reported that the wants" to be autonomous, respected, competent, accepted ( which roughly
corespond two Browns and Levinson’s negative and positive face-wants) represent only one off the
five dimensions of koreans face-wants, namely. the self-sufficiency face. Including the image of being
appropriate and well groomed; the integrity face, comprising the image of being trustworthy,
discreet, and reasonable the nobility face, including the image of being charitable, elegant, and
prosperous; and the capability face, including the image of being socially successful. The two
core principles of politeness, “avoidance of imposition” arid “approval of the other,” and numerous
other specific tactics reflect clearly the authors’ culture specific perspective (Vierzbicka, 1991).

Anglocentrism, the dominant paradigm of today’s cross-cultural pragmatics, allows English-speaking

authors to make cross-cultural generalizations of their ethnographic knowedge with examinations of
some hand-selected, isolated examples from other languages. To reach a valid generalization on a
particular pragmatic feature, one has to compare the whole system of the pragmatic feature of one
language with those of other languages. Researchers who attempted such a rigorous type of cross—
cultural validation have always been greeted by culture-specific differences (Blum-Kulka, I-louse" tic
Kas, per, 1989;Emanatian, 1995; Fitch 8: Sanders, 1994;Suszczynska, 1999).

This does not mean that there are no universals.in language use. Comparative studies always yield
certain similarities among cultures. These similarities, however, seem to exist at atomic, semantic, or
general levels, not at molecular, episodic, or specific levels as Gumperz and Levinson (1996) argued.
Thus,the search for universals should focus more on the basic semantic elements or semantic
primitives, and the study on specific uses of language or pragmatics should be more sensitive to
cultural diversity.