Politeness of Front Counter Staff of Malaysian Private Hospitals

Kuang Ching Hei, Maya Khemlani David, Lau Su Kia

Abstract


Politeness is an important social element in the Malaysian society and it is gauged by the way people behave towards each other during interactions. In this context, politeness is taken to mean good manners such as greeting, acknowledging and thanking others. Taking the cue from the Malaysian government which emphasizes on showing good manners, this paper examines the public transactions of front counter staff and patients in nine Malaysian private hospitals. Focus was given to the use of openings and closings in 158 transactions which were extracted over a period of three months via close observations which were allowed by the gatekeepers manning the front counters. Data were then orthographically transcribed. Brown and Levinson’s (1987) notion of politeness and the Malaysian concept of good manners such as greeting and thanking were applied as a framework. Our analysis indicates that front counter staff in private hospitals employed more impolite openings but at the end of the transactions, they used more polite closings. A closer analysis of the data indicates that these polite closings were often given in response to patients’ initiations. Although our findings are small in comparison, we believe they will benefit researchers of communication, curriculum designers and practitioners as these findings clearly indicate that there is a need for professional communication skills to be taught and implemented in service industries.

Keywords


politeness; opening; closing; front counter; private hospital

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adams, S. (2011). Babies can tell sad voices at 3 months. Retrieved February 20, 2012 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8608523/Babies-can-tell-sad-voices-at-3-months.html

Asma Abdullah & Pedersen, P. (2003). Understanding multicultural Malaysia: Delights, puzzles and irritations. Petaling Jaya: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Asmah Haji Omar. (1995). Indirectness as a rule of speaking among the Malays. In Zainab Abdul Majid & Baskaran, L. M. (Eds.). Verbal interaction at play: Rules of speaking (pp. 47-60). Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications.

Asrul Zamani. (2002). The Malay ideals. Kuala Lumpur: Golden Books Centre.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

David, M. K. (2002). You look good: Responses of Malaysians to compliments. In Rosli Talif, Rafik-Galea, S., & Chan, S. H. (Eds.). Diverse voices 2: Selected readings in language (pp. 111-119). Serdang: Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia.

David, M. K., & Kuang, C. H. (2005). Requests and cultural norms. Journal of Communication Practices. Vol 2(1), 95-110.

DeVito, J. A. (2008). The interpersonal communication book. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Duthler, K. W. (2006). The politeness of requests made via email and voicemail: Support for the hyperpersonal model. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vol 11(2), 500-521.

Fox, J. (2005). Ritual languages, special registers and speech decorum in Austronesian languages. In Adelaar, A., & Himmelmann, N. P. (Eds.). The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (pp. 87-109). Oxford & New York: Routledge.

Fraser, B. (1975). Hedged performatives. In Cole, P., & Morgan, J. (Eds.). Syntax and semantics (pp. 187-210). New York: Academic Press.

Fraser, B., & Nolen, W. (1981). The association of deference with linguistic form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Vol 27, 93-111.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Hofstede, G. (1997). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ide, S., Hill, B., Carnes, Y., Ogino, T., & Kawasaki, A. (1992). The concept of politeness: An empirical study of American English and Japanese. In Watts, R. J., Ide, S. & Ehlich, K. (Eds.). Politeness in language (pp. 281-297). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Jamaliah Mohd Ali. (2000). Verbal communication: A study of Malaysian speakers. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press.

Kuang, C. H., David, M. K., Lau, S. K., & Ang, P. S. (2011). Openings and closings in front counter transactions of Malaysian government hospitals. The Journal of the South East Asia Research centre for Communications and Humanities. Vol 3(1), 13-30.

Kuang, C. H., Jawakhir Mior Jaafar & Dhanapal, S. (2012). A typology of address forms used in Malaysian government agencies. International Journal of English and Education. Vol 1(1), 61-78.

Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness; or, minding your P’s and Q’s. Chicago Linguistic Society. Vol 9, 292-305.

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.

Lustig, M. W., & Koester, J. (2006). Intercultural competence: Interpersonal communication across cultures. Boston, New York, San Francisco: Pearson Education Inc.

Mehrabian, A. (1971). Silent messages. Wadsworth, California: Belmont.

Mehrabian, A., & Wiener, M. (1967). Decoding of inconsistent communications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 6(1), 109-114.

Nixon, R. (2010). By 7 months, baby knows your moods. Retrieved February 20, 2012 from http://www.livescience.com/8150-7-months-baby-moods.html

Radiah Yusoff. (2007). Translating kinship terms to Malay. Language and Communication. Translation Journal, 11(3). Retrieved February 24, 2012 from http://translationjournal.net/journal/41malay.htm

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language. Vol 50(4), 696-735.

Shanmuganathan, T. (2003). The influence of culture on compliments responses. In Shanmuganathan, T. (Ed.). Issues in language and cognition: Selected papers from the International Conference on Language and Cognition (pp. 127-142). Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press.

Tracy, K. (1990). The many faces of facework. In Giles, H., & Robinson, W. P. (Eds.), Handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 209-226). Chichester: John Wiley.

Trosborg, A. (1994). Interlanguage pragmatics. Requests, complaints and apologies. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watts, R. J., Ide, S., & Ehlich, K. (2005). Politeness in

language: Studies in its history, theory, and practice. Berlin: Moutun de Gruyter.

Zena Moayad Najeeb, Marlyna Maros & Nor Fariza Mohd Nor. (2012). Politeness in e-mails of Arab students in Malaysia. GEMA Online™ Journal of Language Studies. Vol 12(1), 125-145.

Zhong, C. Y. (2010). Jiyu limao yuanze de binguan jiudian fuwu yongyu fenxi. Journal of Hotan Teachers College. Vol 29(2), 163.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2131

ISSN : 1675-8021