“Let’s … together”: Rapport management in Chinese directive public signs

Xiaochun Sun and Xinren Chen
Abstract

This study, drawing on a modified version of Spencer-Oatey’s Rapport Management Model (2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar), attempts to probe into the underexplored phenomenon of apparent rapport management in Chinese directive public signs in terms of face, sociality rights and obligations, interests, and interactional goals. Based on the analysis of data collected from four cities in China, this study demonstrates how some Chinese producers of directive public signs make varying and various discursive efforts to enhance rapport with the general public. It is argued that this “personalization” characteristic of Chinese directive public signs suggests their producers’ attempt at doing rapport with the public. This research, while extending the scope of discussion on rapport management from the interpersonal to the public sphere, might serve to explain why some Chinese directive public signs (directives in particular) are not terse.

Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents

1.Introduction

Public signs ( 公示语 , gongshiyu, in Chinese) refer to words or sentences posted on walls, windows, doors, poles, etc. Public signs offer notices, instructions, cautions, warnings, etc. to the public. Being widely used in cities and towns, they seem to have attracted far less attention from pragmaticians than other genres of language use such as advertisements and news discourse worldwide (Ansari and Babaii 2005Ansari, Hasan, and Esmat Babaii 2005 “The Generic Integrity of Newspaper Editorials.” RELC Journal 3: 271–295. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Fowler 1991Fowler, Roger 1991Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: MacmillanGoogle Scholar; van Dijk 1988avan Dijk, Teun 1988aNews as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar, 1988b 1988bNews Analysis: Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Hillsdale and NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar).

Previous scholars working on Chinese public signs (e.g., Bei and Shan 2002Bei, Zhu, and Aimin Shan 2002 “A Study on the Linguistic Features of English Public Signs and Chinese-English Translation.” Journal of Beijing International Studies University 5: 76–79.Google Scholar; Liu and Wang 2012Liu, Yingchun, and Haiyan Wang 2012 “A Study on Translation of Public Signs from the Perspective of Text Typology.” Chinese Translators Journal 6: 89–92.Google Scholar; Lu 2004Lu, Hefa 2004 “A Study on C-E Translation of Pubic Signs.” Chinese Science & Technology Translators Journal 1: 38–40+64.Google Scholar; Sun 2020Sun, Xiaochun 2020 “Translating Chinese Public Signs Pragmatically.” Shanghai Journal of Translators 3: 40–44+95.Google Scholar; Sun and He 2019Sun, Xiaochun, and Ziran He 2019. “A Study of the Appropriateness of Language Use in Public Sphere.” Applied Linguistics 2: 70–75.; Wang and Chen 2004Wang, Yinquan, and Xinren Chen 2004 “A Study of Errors in English Translation of City Public Signs and Case Analysis.” Chinese Translators Journal 2: 81–82.Google Scholar) have reached a consensus that public signs are essentially terse, forceful, and often coupled with some symbols. However, in the course of working recently on a project about Chinese public signs, we have found quite a number of Chinese public signs that are clearly not so terse (e.g., being direct and short, giving no explanation) as usual ones. Compare (1) and (2).

(1)

为了您和家人的健康,请勿吸烟(南京某餐厅内)

Wèile nín hé jiārén de jiànkāng, qǐng wù xīyān

For your and your families’ health, please do not smoke! (collected from a restaurant in Nanjing)

(2)

禁止吸烟 (上海火车站)

Jìnzhǐ
No
xīyān
Smoking.

(collected from Shanghai Railway Station)

Directive public signs often make explicit statements of purposes, that is, to order or direct people to do or not to do something, such as refraining from smoking or keeping off the grass. The above pair of examples demonstrate that a directive can be conveyed by different expressions in public signs. Where (2) is concise, providing a direct command, (1) is milder and gentler, involving the use of justification for why smoking is prohibited.

The above pair of examples indicates that some Chinese directive public signs not only give directives, but also convey interpersonal messages. As a matter of fact, it has been noted that language use in some public signs can be seen as potentially face-threatening (Yuan and Chen 2010Yuan, Zhoumin, and Xinren Chen 2010 “A Pragmatic Study of Public Signs on Environmental Protection.” Foreign Language Research 1: 76–80.Google Scholar) and are thus in need of mitigation. To date, however, the related literature has not conducted any in-depth investigation into this phenomenon, despite the understanding that public signs can be defined as localized communicative events (Kallen 2009Kallen, Jeffrey 2009 “Tourism and Representation in the Irish Linguistic Landscape.” In Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, ed. by Elana Shohamy, and Durk Gorter, 270–284. New York and London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar). In view of this knowledge gap, this study aims to explore the phenomenon and provide an explanation for it from the perspective of rapport management (Chen 2018 2018 “A New Version of Rapport Management Model for Interpersonal Communication”. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 5–12.Google Scholar; Spencer-Oatey 2000Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar). It is hoped that some further understanding and interpretations of politeness can be achieved.

This article is structured as follows. Section 2 offers an overview of relevant literature on Chinese public signs. Section 3 introduces the rapport management framework that is used in the analysis and discussion of the data. Section 4 states the methodology and Section 5 presents the analysis of the data. A discussion is presented in Section 6. Section 7 concludes the study.

2.Research background

Public signs are part of the linguistic landscape of a given place (Ben-Rafael 2009Ben-Rafael, Eliezer 2009 “A Sociological Approach to the Study of Linguistic Landscape.” In Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, ed. by Elana Shohamy, and Durk Gorter, 40–54. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar; Blommaert 2013Blommaert, J. 2013Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Dai and Lu 2005Dai, Zongxian, and Hefa Lu 2005 “On C-E Translation of Public Signs.” Chinese Translators Journal 6: 38–42.Google Scholar; Jones 2017Jones, Rodney H. 2017 “Surveillant Landscapes.” Linguistic Landscape 2: 149–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Kallen 2009Kallen, Jeffrey 2009 “Tourism and Representation in the Irish Linguistic Landscape.” In Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, ed. by Elana Shohamy, and Durk Gorter, 270–284. New York and London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar; Scollon and Scollon 2003Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon 2003Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar; Shohamy and Gorter 2009Shohamy, Elana, and Durk Gorter eds. 2009Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar). Overall, previous literature on linguistic landscapes is sociolinguistic in nature, focusing mainly on issues such as multilingualism and governance. Few efforts have concentrated on the social interaction underneath public signs. Among a few exceptions, Jones (2017)Jones, Rodney H. 2017 “Surveillant Landscapes.” Linguistic Landscape 2: 149–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar reveals the surveillant nature of linguistic landscapes, arguing that public signs have both performative and controlling functions.

The past two decades have witnessed a growing interest in research concerning Chinese public signs. Of these studies, the overwhelming majority focus on the analysis of the stylistic and linguistic features of public signs as well as strategies for their translation into English. There has been a recent shift, however, to the investigation of their pragmatic features, such as adaptation and politeness (Chen 2001Chen, Xinren 2001 “A Pragmatic Study of Chinese Public Signs.” TCSOL Studies 4: 58–65.Google Scholar; Gu and Zhang 2010Gu, Hong, and Qunxing Zhang 2010 “Politeness Strategy of English Public Signs.” Business China 3: 129–130.Google Scholar; Yuan and Chen 2010Yuan, Zhoumin, and Xinren Chen 2010 “A Pragmatic Study of Public Signs on Environmental Protection.” Foreign Language Research 1: 76–80.Google Scholar). Considering the relevance of these studies to this paper, the literature review here mainly focuses on previous pragmatic research about Chinese public signs.

Researchers have noticed that the use of Chinese public signs is adaptive to context and sometimes rhetorical. For example, Chen (2001)Chen, Xinren 2001 “A Pragmatic Study of Chinese Public Signs.” TCSOL Studies 4: 58–65.Google Scholar, after investigating 456 public signs in a teaching complex of a university in China, discovered that the producers of the public signs made strenuous efforts to adapt public signs to different contexts by choosing appropriate locutionary acts, strengthening illocutionary force, and providing extra explanatory information and using words of courtesy. He also noticed that although public signs as a whole were terse and forceful in language style, some were long and complex since they included additional people-oriented content. Niu (2008)Niu, Xinsheng 2008 “A Study of the Text Type and Translation of Public Signs.” Foreign Language Education 3: 89–92.Google Scholar maintained that Chinese public signs are purpose-driven texts aimed at prompting the public to act in accordance with the intention of the texts. Along a different line, Pan and Zhou (2002)Pan, Jin’an, and Yi Zhou 2002 “A Socio-linguistic Thinking on the Design of Traffic Slogans.” Journal of Shanghai Police College 2: 29–30+42.Google Scholar argued that the design of traffic signs and logos in China, apart from serving to raise public awareness of safety, puts emphasis on the beauty of language via the application of figures of speech so as to cater to the public’s aesthetic interest.

Scholars have looked into the (im)politeness of Chinese public signs. For example, Cui (1992)Cui, Dasong 1992 “Warning Public Signs and Social Civilization.” Chinese Language Learning 1: 47–47.Google Scholar discovered that some warning signs might generate unpleasant feelings. Yuan and Chen (2010)Yuan, Zhoumin, and Xinren Chen 2010 “A Pragmatic Study of Public Signs on Environmental Protection.” Foreign Language Research 1: 76–80.Google Scholar proposed that warning signs, being potentially face-threatening, should assign importance to social civility, in order to avoid incongruity between our willingness to maintain social civility and the unintentional communication of impoliteness and incivility, as reflected in some Chinese public signs. Gu and Zhang (2010)Gu, Hong, and Qunxing Zhang 2010 “Politeness Strategy of English Public Signs.” Business China 3: 129–130.Google Scholar analyzed the use of politeness strategies used in Chinese public signs, including positive politeness strategies, negative politeness strategies, and indirect politeness strategies. They argued that all these strategies might have been designed to meet Chinese people’s need to maintain face in order to better achieve the communicative purpose underneath the public signs. Researchers examining the translation of public signs also pay heed to the issue of politeness, which reflects the integration of translation-oriented and pragmatics-oriented research tendencies in the research concerning public signs. For example, Wen (2009)Wen, Lanfang 2009 “Pragmatic Study of Public Signs Chinese-English Translation.” Journal of Guangdong Ocean University 5: 64–68.Google Scholar suggested that the translation of public signs ought to comply with the Politeness Principle (Leech 1983Leech, Geoffrey 1983Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar), especially the Tact Maxim and Sympathy Maxim, because people with different cultural backgrounds usually differ greatly in their ways of expressing politeness. Li (2010)Li, Yonghong 2010 “Face in the English Translation of Chinese Public Signs.” Academic Journal of Zhongzhou 1: 249–251Google Scholar detected some pragmatic failures such as that of incurring face threat in the translated version of public signs due to the neglecting of the target readers’ psychological expectations and face.

This review of the existing literature on Chinese public signs, while far from being exhaustive, suffices to show that although previous studies concerning the issue of politeness in Chinese public signs are insightful, their discussion is largely based on the analysis of sporadic data. Moreover, in terms of theoretical framework, the existing studies, which are mostly guided by Face Theory and the Politeness Principle, tend to consider the additional discursive effort as face work or a politeness strategy for supporting the performance of speech acts, directives in particular, rather than as an indication of an effort to maintain rapport. Nor has any of the studies captured other interpersonal or social considerations in public signs that go beyond what Brown and Levinson (1987)Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson 1987Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar and Leech (1983)Leech, Geoffrey 1983Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar have addressed. Last but not least, the previous studies have not recognized the fact that the text of Chinese public signs constitutes a form of communication which involves interaction and relationship management between producers and the public. In view of this, the present study aims to probe into the phenomenon of rapport management by analyzing public signs collected in four Chinese cities and drawing on the Rapport Management Model (Chen 2018 2018 “A New Version of Rapport Management Model for Interpersonal Communication”. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 5–12.Google Scholar; Spencer-Oatey 2000Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar).

3.The framework

Politeness research has undergone several stages of development (Kádár and Haugh 2013Kádár, Dániel Z., and Michael Haugh 2013Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In the first wave of politeness studies,11.The second wave of politeness studies refers to the research approach initiated by Eelen (2001) and some other scholars, which advocates studying and analyzing politeness based on the authentic communicators rather than the researchers themselves, and based on extended conversations rather than separate utterances. This second-wave approach holds that politeness is not a pre-given invariable rule but a common communicative construct. Lakoff (1973)Lakoff, Robin T. 1973 “The Logic of Politeness, or Minding Your P’s and Q’s.” Chicago Linguistic Society 9: 292–305.Google Scholar put forward the politeness principles of ‘Be Clear’ and ‘Be Polite’. The latter consists of three rules: ‘Don’t impose’, ‘Give options’, and ‘Be friendly’. Brown and Levinson (1987)Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson 1987Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar argued that the Model Person in society has the right to preserve and promote public self-image, and that face, including positive face and negative face, is the key motivating force of politeness. Positive face refers to the consistent positive self-image claimed by any person, or his/her want to be appreciated and approved of by others, whereas negative face is defined as the need and freedom of self-decision, or the want of any person that his/her actions not be controlled, imposed upon or impeded by others. Leech maintained that Speech Act Theory cannot explain all the phenomena of language use and hence drew on Grice’s Cooperative Principle to develop the Politeness Principle (consisting of six maxims: tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy). The core idea is that the speaker should try to minimize the expressions that imply benefit or praise for him/herself and give the other party as much convenience as possible, so that he or she would feel respected in the interaction.

For both Brown and Levinson’s model and Leech’s theory, politeness is a linguistic or discursive means to an illocutionary end. For example, according to Face Theory, the performance of some speech acts (Face Threatening Acts, FTA) may damage or threaten the addressee’s face, and in order to reduce or avoid the negative impact of the acts, the communicator can resort to different politeness strategies to save face. Similarly, Leech also argued that the observance of the politeness maxims can help to achieve a balance between one’s social and illocutionary goals. Thus, politeness is a kind of interpersonal rhetoric in service of getting things done.

Leech’s Politeness Principle and Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory have been questioned by many scholars. Among others, Spencer-Oatey (2000)Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar maintained that people are not polite for politeness’ sake or for face’s sake. Rather, people behave politely in order to maintain long-term good relations. Unlike Brown and Levinson, Spencer-Oatey (2000)Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar defined face as the positive social value a person effectively claims for him/herself by the line others assume he or she has taken during a particular contact (emphasis added). Face is the public self-image that everyone cares about and tries to protect, for we all have a fundamental desire for other people to evaluate us positively in terms of our positive qualities. Naturally, saving face becomes a common phenomenon. Though the matter of face varies from individual to individual, from context to context, certain face sensitivities are common to individuals or the group they belong to.

However, face management is only one aspect of rapport management. In Spencer-Oatey’s (2000Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar) view, rapport management also concerns how people use language to construct, maintain or threaten social relations by way of coordinating sociality rights and achieving communicative purposes. Sociality rights and obligations, including social expectancies, refer to fundamental personal/social entitlements that a person effectively claims for him/herself with others. People tend to believe that they have a number of rights and obligations in social interactions, and the failure to perform them may damage or even destroy the rapport with others. When the two parties have divided opinions concerning the rights and obligations they need to perform, communicative conflicts may occur, and this is particularly true when it comes to cross-cultural communication. People also tend to hold certain expectations for what should happen in a particular context and how others ought to behave or react accordingly. It can be said that our equity right is threatened if we are unduly imposed upon by others to do something that we deem to be wrong. (Note that Spencer-Oatey disapproves of the notion of negative face and thus treats face work oriented to negative face as managing equity right.) Likewise, if anyone speaks to us in an over-intimate way, we would feel that our association right is threatened. Generally speaking, whereas face is concerned with people’s sense of worth, dignity, honour, reputation, competence, and so on, sociality rights and obligations are concerned with the appropriateness of social behaviours (Spencer-Oatey 2000Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). In addition, Spencer-Oatey (2008) 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar proposes four orientations of rapport management (namely enhancement, maintenance, neglect, and challenge), and five interrelated ‘domains’ (illocutionary domain, discourse domain, participation domain, stylistic domain, and non-verbal domain) that play important roles in the management of rapport.

The Rapport Management Model has undergone adjustment and improvement since it was put forward in 2000. Spencer-Oatey (2008) 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar added a third dimension, namely interactional goals, to the model, in addition to face sensitivities and sociality rights and obligations. Interactional goals refer to the specific tasks and/or relevant goals people intend to accomplish when communicating with each other. The harmonious relations or rapport may end up being damaged if these goals are not met/are unfulfilled. Later, Chen (2018) 2018 “A New Version of Rapport Management Model for Interpersonal Communication”. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 5–12.Google Scholar added another two dimensions into the model, namely interests and emotion, arguing that attending to others’ interests or emotion positively or negatively also impacts rapport. The present study mainly uses this enriched model to analyze Chinese public signs.

It is to be noted that previous rapport studies mainly concerned interpersonal communication that unfolded face-to-face (Aoki 2010Aoki, Ataya 2010 “Rapport Management in Thai and Japanese Social Talk during Group Discussions.” Pragmatics 3: 289–313.Google Scholar; Spencer-Oatey 2002 2002 “Managing Rapport in Talk: Using Rapport Sensitive Incidents to Explore the Motivational Concerns Underlying the Management of Relations.” Journal of Pragmatics 5: 529–545. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). One study has focused on rapport management in cyberspace (Sampietro 2019Sampietro, Agnese 2019 “Emoji and Rapport Management in Spanish WhatsApp Chats.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 109–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar). This present study, however, attempts to examine the issue of rapport management in the public sphere of communication as seen in Chinese directive public signs, and aims to provide new evidence for the emerging feature of ‘personalization’ (Chen 2013 2013 “The Trend of Personalization in Advertising Discourse: A Diachronic Study.” Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 26–32+81+95.Google Scholar, 2020 2020Critical Pragmatic Studies on Chinese Public Discourse. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar) of the public discourse in China and probably elsewhere. Our choice of the present theory is motivated by the consideration that public discourse is essentially ‘dialogic’ as well, with (part of) the general public as the target audience. By means of this application, we wish to extend the scope of discussions on rapport management and help to explain why some Chinese public signs (directives in particular) are not terse.

4.Methodology

4.1Research questions

Based on the aforementioned background, this research focuses on the rapport management phenomenon in directive public signs in China and aims to explore the following questions:

  1. What orientations of rapport management characterize Chinese directive public signs?

  2. What aspects of rapport do the producers of Chinese directive public signs manage?

  3. Why do they manage rapport the way they do?

4.2Data collection

Public signs fall into different categories. For example, Bei and Shan (2002)Bei, Zhu, and Aimin Shan 2002 “A Study on the Linguistic Features of English Public Signs and Chinese-English Translation.” Journal of Beijing International Studies University 5: 76–79.Google Scholar classified public signs into four types: informative public signs, indicative public signs, restrictive public signs, and mandatory public signs. Unlike Bei and Shan, Lu (2004)Lu, Hefa 2004 “A Study on C-E Translation of Pubic Signs.” Chinese Science & Technology Translators Journal 1: 38–40+64.Google Scholar classified public signs into two categories, static and dynamic. Static public signs mainly use nouns, and their main function is to name the function of facilities or inform people, such as ‘EXIT’ and ‘ENTRY’. Dynamic public signs contain a large number of verbs, highlighting the need for action. To follow the taxonomy of speech acts, this study uses directive public signs as another term for dynamic signs.

Directive public signs are those that request, direct, remind, advice or order the public to do or not to do something, such as ‘keeping off the grass’ and ‘refraining from smoking’. The directive public signs involved in this study were collected from real life contexts by one co-author in public places in four large and medium-sized cities in China. The four cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hong Kong. Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing have all publicized regulations for English translations of provincial or municipal public place signs respectively. Hong Kong is a city with a bilingual environment. These four cities are located in different parts of China, and are thus geographically varied.

A total of 436 signs were collected, of which 312 signs contain directives. In order to ensure that the chosen data were representative in types as well as their distribution, the authors strived to collect public signs from different fields. The distribution of the data is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.The distribution of Chinese public signs collected
Fields Public signs Directive signs
Transportation 105  72
Tourism  86  67
Culture and Entertainment  51  28
Education  40  25
Medical Care  24  13
Catering and Accommodation  77  66
Commercial Finance  53  41
Total 436 312

The fields in Table 1 are classified according to the National Guidelines for the Use of English in Public Service Areas (GB/T30240–2013 2013GB/T30240–2013 2013 “Guidelines for the Use of English in Public Service Areas.” https://​www​.chinesestandard​.net​/PDF​/English​.aspx​/GBT30240​.1​-2013Google Scholar). Among these fields, the traffic field in this study includes two parts: traffic signs on highways and traffic signs on urban roads. Traffic signs in which the transportation department provides service information that is open to the public, which mainly involves air passenger transportation (airports), railway passenger transportation (train stations), rail passenger transportation (subway and urban light rail), and public car and taxi passenger transportation. The tourism field in this study mainly includes various national scenic spots such as China’s national 5A and 4A scenic spots, tourist resorts, theme parks, and zoos, but does not include museums (institutes) or exhibition halls. The field of culture and entertainment in this study mainly covers museums, art galleries, exhibition halls, and other related cultural units. The field of education in this study mainly involves public signs on university campuses. The medical and health field is comprised mainly of the public logos in the top three local hospitals. The area of catering and accommodation mainly includes public signs in restaurants and hotels. The field of commercial finance mainly involves public signs in shopping malls and banks.

All the signs used for illustration or discussion in the paper are originally bilingual (Chinese and English). The Chinese pinyin under the Chinese text is added by the authors.

4.3Data analysis

To answer the first two research questions, we approached the data presented above from the perspective of rapport management (Chen 2018 2018 “A New Version of Rapport Management Model for Interpersonal Communication”. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 5–12.Google Scholar; Spencer-Oatey 2000Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar).

First, we analyzed the data to find out what orientations of rapport management were present in the data and how they were distributed. According to Spencer-Oatey, four orientations are identifiable in rapport management, namely: enhancement, maintenance, neglect, and challenge. We coded a sign as an instance of rapport enhancement if it involved elevation of the addressees’ status, image, rights, and the like, or attendance to their interests (benefit, safety, health, etc.), as in Sign (1) earlier and (3) below (the use of is honorific). We coded a sign as an instance of rapport maintenance if it involved mitigation of threat to face, autonomy, and the like, as in (4), where the use of is a mitigating politeness marker, and (5) (apart from the use of ,the employment of a justification for the request also has a mitigating effect). we coded a sign as an instance of rapport neglect if it is purely informative and does not involve any elevation or mitigation, as in (2) earlier. We coded a sign as an instance of rapport challenge if it involved rapport challenge such as the use of vulgar or violent language, as in (6), which involves the use of a curse (‘Hit to death’). Note that a sign may involve more than one attempt at rapport management. For example, Example (5) employs both a politeness marker (‘please’) and a justification. However, we counted such signs once only because our calculation was centered on signs; that is, we intended to answer the question of how many signs involved each orientation, instead of how many attempts the producers made at each orientation in all the signs. In other words, we did not give consideration to the variation issue regarding the quantity of rapport management in the signs, although this might have proven interesting as well.

(3)

小草微微笑,请您旁边绕 (南京某大学校园)

Xiǎo cǎo wéi wéi xiào, qǐng nín pang biān rào

The Grass is Smiling, Please Make a Detour (collected from a university in Nanjing)

(4)

请勿践踏草坪(北京公园内)

Qǐng wù jiàn tà cǎo píng

Please Keep Off the Grass! (collected from a park in Beijing)

(5)

水是生命的源泉,请节约用水 (北京公共洗手间内)

Shuǐ shì shēngmìng de yuánquán, qǐng jiéyuē yòngshuǐ

Water is the source of life, please save water. (collected from a restroom in Beijing)

(6)

还横穿马路!被撞就死翘翘。请走地下通道

Hái héng chuān mǎlù! Bèi zhuàng jiù sǐ qiào qiào. Qǐng zǒu dìxià tōngdào.

Still crossing the road! Hit to death. Please take the underground passage.

Then, we analyzed the data with respect to the aspects of rapport management. According to the modified version of Rapport Management Model (following Chen), there are five dimensions to rapport, namely: face, sociality rights and obligations, interests, emotion, and interactional goals (for definitions of each, refer to Spencer-Oatey 2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar and Chen 2018 2018 “A New Version of Rapport Management Model for Interpersonal Communication”. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 5–12.Google Scholar). We coded each sign in accordance with the dimension it concerned. Then, we calculated all the dimensions to find out their distribution. Note that several signs in our data involved more than one dimension of rapport. For example, Sign (6) contained both rapport change (through the use of a curse to frighten the pedestrians) and rapport maintenance (through the use of the politeness marker ‘please’).

The two authors separately identified, coded, and counted cases of directive public signs that involved rapport management with respect to the orientations and dimensions stated above, and finally agreed on all the cases.

5.Rapport management in Chinese directive public signs

The purpose of setting up directive public signs is to direct the public to follow instructions as effectively as possible. However, public signs concerning requests or commands are more likely to affect interpersonal rapport due to their potential threat to people’s face, and rights and obligations. Then, to what extent and how do the producers of directive public signs manage rapport while succeeding in prompting the public to follow instructions?

5.1Orientations of rapport management

This section shows the rapport orientations of the Chinese directive public signs and their respective distributions.

As Figure 1 shows, more than half of the public signs involve rapport neglect (191, account for 61.2%), seventy-eight directive public signs (25%) are oriented at maintaining rapport, and thirty-nine signs (12.5%) at enhancing rapport. There are also four directive signs (1.3%) that involve rapport challenge.

It can thus be said that the producers of Chinese directive signs do maintain or enhance rapport management to a large extent (117 out of 312, accounting for 37.5%). (As we do not have a reference sample from another language/cultural background, we cannot claim that this extent is high or low.) We then move on to show how the producers of directive public signs in the context of China enhance rapport.

Figure 1.Distribution of rapport orientations
Figure 1.

5.2Aspects of rapport maintenance or enhancement

Data analysis shows that of the 117 Chinese public signs that maintain or enhance rapport, the producers attended to four of the five dimensions mentioned in Chen (2018) 2018 “A New Version of Rapport Management Model for Interpersonal Communication”. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 5–12.Google Scholar. (We did not find instances of emotion management.) Figure 2 shows that among the four dimensions of rapport management, social rights and obligations ranks first (fourty-two in total, accounting for 35.8%), followed by face (thirty-eight in total, accounting for 32.5%), and interests (twenty-five in total, accounting for 21.3%). The management of interactional goals comes last (twelve in total), only taking up 10.3%. We will give a tentative explanation for the distributions in Section 6.

Figure 2.Distribution of the various aspects of rapport management
Figure 2.

Now, let us illustrate how the producers of the directive public signs manage each of the various aspects of rapport by making choices in different domains (Spencer-Oatey 2008 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar).

5.2.1Face management

According to Spencer-Oatey (2008) 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar, face, which primarily concerns people’s sense of worth, dignity, honour, reputation, competence, and so on, has two interrelated aspects, namely: quality face and social identity face. The former is concerned with personal qualities, abilities, and competence, while the latter with the roles a person plays in the group or society. Human beings have the desire for others to think of themselves as a close friend, a reliable leader or an important client. This is something closely related to one’s face or self-image. The desire is manifested in the following examples of Chinese public signs.

(7)

做文明人,请勿随地乱扔垃圾(上海某公园)

Zuò wénmíng rén, qǐng wù suídì luàn rēng laji

Be a civilized man: No Littering! (collected from a park in Shanghai)

(8)

做一名文明的乘客,今天你先下后上了么?(南京地铁)

Zuò yī míng wénmíng de chéngkè, jīntiān nǐ xiān xià hòu shàngle me?

To be a civilized passenger, have you let others off first before getting on today? (collected from the metro stations in Nanjing)

Sign (7) asks the public not to litter, whereas Sign (8) asks passengers to let others get off the metro car first before getting on. In the two signs, through performing the speech act of reminding in the illocutionary domain – 做文明人 (literally translated as ‘be a civilized person’) in (7) and 做一名文明的乘客 (literally translated as ‘be a civilized passenger’) in (8) – the producers of the signs enhance rapport by projecting the public as polite, well-mannered people. (It needs to be mentioned that the reminding act has also to do with sociality rights and obligations, as discussed below.) When people see such signs, they may become conscious enough to follow these instructions so as to impress others as civilized. What seems quite interesting, however, is that such language use concerning face management finds few counterparts in the English context. 文明 (literally ‘civilized’) is a word of two characters often seen in Chinese public signs. Such words or expressions as civilization or a civilized person are seldom used in English public signs. This notable difference might be an obstacle to the translation of Chinese public signs.

The Chinese producers of directive public signs may enhance rapport by avoiding imposition in way or another, as shown by the realization of a directive in the form of making an evaluative statement in the illocutionary domain. For instance:

(9)

乱扔纸屑不优雅,随地吐痰不潇洒(上海某公园)

Luàn rēng zhǐ xiè bù yōuyǎ, suídì tǔ tán bù xiāosǎ

Littering is not elegant; Spitting is not cool.

(collected from a park in Shanghai)

People desire to create a positive image of themselves/a positive self-image and to make a good impression on others. In Sign (9), the producer enhances rapport by indirectly projecting the public as 优雅 (literally ‘elegant’) and 潇洒 (literally ‘cool’). It might be expected that whoever catches sight of this sign would pay particular attention to his/her self-image and try not to do damage to his/her quality face by littering or spitting.

Furthermore, the following two signs are concerned with the management of social identity face.

(10)

请您照看好自己的物品。 (南京某商场)

Qǐng nín zhàokàn hǎo zìjǐ de wùpǐn.

Please take care of your belongings. (collected from a shopping mall of Nanjing)

In Sign (10), the honorific Chinese word (deferential ‘you’) in the stylistic domain is chosen instead of (non-deferential ‘you’), as frequently seen in such expressions as 请您 (literally ‘would you please’) or 谢谢您的合作 (literally ‘thank you for your cooperation’) in Chinese directive public signs. By using such a deferential pronoun, which is consistent with Gu’s (1990)Gu, Yueguo 1990 “Politeness Phenomena in Modern Chinese”. Journal of Pragmatics 2: 237–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar Self-Denigration Maxim, the producer of the sign might intend to enhance rapport by promoting their social identity face through raising the target audience’s status.

5.2.2Sociality rights and obligations

The second basic element of Spencer-Oatey’s Rapport Management Model is sociality rights and obligations. They are mainly concerned with personal/social entitlements and expectations and reflect people’s concern over fairness, consideration, social inclusion or exclusion, and so on. People are entitled to respect from other social members and should be treated fairly, expecting that they will not be forced to follow unfair instructions or be manipulated by others in social interactions, and that they will receive the benefits to which they are entitled. Sociality rights consist of equity rights and association rights. The former refers to a person’s entitlement to consideration and fair treatment from others – that he/she will not be unduly imposed upon or unfairly ordered about, and that he/she will not be taken advantage of or exploited; in contrast, the latter refers to a person’s entitlement to association with others that is in keeping with the type of relationship that he/she has with them. Consider the following examples of Chinese directive public signs that seem to involve the management of sociality rights and obligations.

(11)

让我们一起携手共建和谐家园。(上海某小区)

Ràng wǒmen yīqǐ xiéshǒu gòng jiàn héxié jiāyuán

Let us join hands to build a harmonious home. (collected from a residential area in Shanghai)

The producers’ choice of 让我们一起 (literally ‘let’s together’) in Sign (11) and 一起 (literally ‘(let’s) together’) in Sign (6) earlier take place in the stylistic domain. By employing the solidarity markers (inclusive pronoun 我们 , ‘we’, and inclusive adverb 一起 , ‘together’), they intend to enhance rapport with the public by attending to their association rights through highlighting joint effort and enhancing solidarity. Spencer-Oatey (2000)Spencer-Oatey, Helen ed. 2000Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar holds that people have a fundamental belief that they are entitled to association with others, which is in keeping with the type of relationship that we have with them. Here the producer of the sign either relates the public to the common goal of building a harmonious home as in Sign (11), or associates them with the act of protecting the environment of the Railway Station as in Sign (6), which ensures the public’s entitlement to association rights and also enhances their awareness of this issue. As can be seen from the following examples, the producers of public signs often set out to achieve the purpose of persuading or asking the public to follow certain instructions through managing their sociality rights and obligation.

(12)

脚步轻轻,勿扰他人。(上海某大学图书馆)

Jiǎobù qīng qīng, wù rǎo tārén

Please walk with a light footstep. Do not disturb others. (collected from the library of a university in Shanghai)

Unlike Sign (11), which lays emphasis on managing the public’s association rights, Sign (12) concerns equity rights. The producer may maintain rapport by reminding instead of commanding the public (choice-making in the illocutionary domain again) to walk with a light footstep. It is a generally accepted rule, in both the East and the West, that people should walk quietly or remain quiet so as to avoid disturbing others in public places such as school buildings or libraries.

There are many other ways of showing respect for the public’s equity rights in Chinese public signs, such as the use of polite request marker (literally ‘please’) in the stylistic domain, the justification for a request, a suggestion or an order, etc. Consider Sign (13).

(13)

响应环保,节约用纸,请只取所需用量。(香港机场洗手间)

Xiǎngyìng huánbǎo, jiéyuē yòng zhǐ, qǐng zhǐ qǔ suǒ xū yòngliàng

To help conserve our natural resource, please get only the sheet you need. (collected from the restroom at Hong Kong International Airport)

In Sign (13), the producer tries to maintain rapport by reducing the impression of imposition through stressing the need of 响应环保 (literally ‘to answer the call for environmental protection’). In so doing, the public will understand that the request of 节约用纸 (literally ‘save on the use of the tissue’) and 只取所需用量 (literally ‘only take as much as you need) are not issued as a groundless requirement but rather a request out of practical need.

5.2.3Management of interests

By ‘management of interests’ here we refer to taking care of the addressee’s safety, benefit, health, etc. Consider Sign (14).

(14)

为了阁下安全,请紧握扶手。(香港公共巴士)

Wèile géxià ānquán, qǐng jǐn wò fúshǒu

For your own safety, please hold the handrail. (collected from a bus in Hong Kong)

In Sign (14), apart from the use of 阁下 (literally ‘Your Excellency’, another form of the deferential ‘you’) to elevate the target audience, the producer also enhances rapport by attending to their safety. This practice is similar to that in Sign (1), where consideration is given to the addressee’s interests (i.e., health). Interestingly, 阁下 in Sign (14) is not literally rendered as ‘Your Excellency’ but rather translated into ‘your own’, which is believed to be related to the cultural differences in terms of politeness in the Chinese and English contexts.

5.2.4Management of interactional goals

Spencer-Oatey (2008) 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar considered interactional goals as the third basic element of interpersonal rapport. When people interact with each other, they usually have some specific goals in mind. Some goals are rational, while some others are interactional. These goals may affect people’s awareness of rapport, which, if unfulfilled, can result in frustration or irritation. That is to say, others’ behaviours which potentially threaten the accomplishment of our goals, to some degree, also constrain and impede our desires to achieve these goals. Spencer-Oatey (2008) 2008 “Face, (Im)politeness and Rapport.” In Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–47. London: Continuum International Publishing Company.Google Scholar argued that as commands and requests are more likely to threaten interpersonal rapport, most of them should be properly phrased so as to make people feel that their entitlement to fair treatment is fully respected. Consider the following directive signs.

(15)

此处禁止吸烟,如需吸烟,请至二楼吸烟室。 (南京某购物中心)

Cǐ chù jìnzhǐ xīyān, rú xū xīyān, qǐng zhì èr lóu xīyān shì.

Smoking is prohibited here. If you need to smoke, please go to the smoking room on the second floor. (collected from a shopping mall in Nanjing)

(16)

马桶容易堵塞,请勿将厕纸仍在马桶内。请将厕纸扔在马桶边的垃圾桶。(上海某公园)

Mǎtǒng róngyì dǔsè, qǐng wù jiāng cè zhǐ réng zài mǎtǒng nèi. Qǐng jiāng cè zhǐ rēng zài mǎtǒng biān de lèsè tǒng.

The toilet may easily get clogged. Please do not leave the toilet paper in the toilet. Please throw toilet paper in the trash can next to the toilet. (collected from a park in Shanghai)

(17)

此垃圾桶为普通垃圾桶,请将口罩扔至左侧口罩专用垃圾桶。(南京一银行内)

Cǐ lèsè tǒng wèi pǔtōng lèsè tǒng, qǐng jiāng kǒuzhào rēng zhì zuǒ cè kǒuzhào zhuānyòng lèsè tǒng.

This trash can is for ordinary trash. Please throw masks in the trash can for masks on the left. (collected from a bank in Nanjing)

Sign (15) is a directive public sign that prohibits smoking. In addition to asking the public not to smoke, the sign enhances rapport by providing help for people who need to smoke at the moment, by directing them regarding where to smoke (i.e., choice-making in the illocutionary domain). Similarly, in Sign (16), the sign asks toilet users not to throw toilet paper in the toilet, which imposes behavioural restrictions on the public. However, it does not ignore the public’s specific demand for the disposing of toilet paper. The sign informs the public on where they can throw toilet paper, that is, in the trash can next to the toilet (again, choice-making in the illocutionary domain). In Sign (17), the producer takes into consideration the public’s need to throw out masks, and specifically directs people to throw discarded masks in a specialized trash can. The three examples above all show that the producers of some Chinese directive public signs enhance rapport by taking into account the public’s goal at hand.

It is noteworthy that rapport management may vary from one locality to another. We found that different producers may post different public signs for the same directive act out of different considerations. Consider the following set of public signs that are used against smoking.

(18)
  1. 为了您和家人的健康,请勿吸烟(南京某餐厅内)

    Wèile nín hé jiārén de jiànkāng, qǐng wù xīyān

    For your and your families’ health, please do not smoke! (collected from a restaurant in Nanjing)

  2. 禁止吸烟 (上海火车站)

    Jìnzhǐ xīyān

    No smoking.

  3. 吸烟引发警报,导致紧急停车,危及行车安全,违者依法处理(京沪高铁内)

    Xīyān yǐnfā jǐngbào, dǎozhì jǐnjí tíngchē, wéijí xíngchē ānquán, wéi zhě yīfǎ chǔlǐ

    Smoking may trigger the alarm and lead to an emergency stop, thus jeopardizing traffic safety. Offenders of the rule shall get punished according to the law (collected from the cabin of Shanghai-Beijing bullet train)

This set of public signs, which are all posted against smoking, are different from each other. Among them, (18c) contains a warning of punishment, along with an explanation that smoking will cause an emergency stop. Essentially, its producer neglects rapport. Similarly, (18b) also neglects rapport, while giving no warning. The difference lies in the fact that the former needs to be more imperative and forbidding since smoking would be most consequential. In contrast, the language of (18a) is milder, involving both maintenance and enhancement of rapport. The adverbial phrase 为了您和家人的健康 (‘for your and your families’ health’) attends to the interests (i.e., health) of the diners in the restaurant. The producer (probably the restaurant owner) is mild and friendly because no terrible consequence would result should some diner smoke. Instead, they may find it much more important to build good rapport with their customers than administrators of railway stations or high-speed trains do with the passengers. When possible, they may even opt to comply with the interactional goal of their addressee, as supported in Sign (15). Moreover, it is worthy of mention that compared to the administrators, the restaurant owner does not possess the authority to issue severe orders like (18c).

6.Discussion

In this section we move to the last question: Why do the Chinese producers of the directive public signs manage rapport the way they do?

To begin with, the primary function of directive public signs explains why the majority of our data neglected rapport. The function is to give instructions to the public regarding what to do, how to do it, and what not to do. For this purpose, efficiency is of primary importance. Both economy of words and exclusion of information irrelevant to the targeted behaviour are most valued (Chen 2020 2020Critical Pragmatic Studies on Chinese Public Discourse. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar). Yet, the secondary function of public functions justifies why some producers of public signs in our data maintained or even enhanced rapport. According to Gu (1992) 1992 “Politeness Pragmatics and Culture.” Foreign Language Teaching and Research 4: 10–17+80.Google Scholar, the social function of modern politeness lies in how to maintain rapport between people. Apparently, the sign producers are invisible. People can see the public signs but not their producers. However, apart from accurately conveying directive messages in public spaces, the producers are also expected to pay attention to the feelings of the public, because directions in public signs can be potentially face-threatening (Yuan and Chen 2010Yuan, Zhoumin, and Xinren Chen 2010 “A Pragmatic Study of Public Signs on Environmental Protection.” Foreign Language Research 1: 76–80.Google Scholar). Thus, quite reasonably, the producers of Chinese directive public signs in our data sometimes opted to use rapport-maintaining or rapport-enhancing language, which represents their adaptive effort to show care and concern for the public. Indeed, as part of their linguistic landscape, the public signs in our data are closely related to the language environment of the Chinese society (Chen 2001Chen, Xinren 2001 “A Pragmatic Study of Chinese Public Signs.” TCSOL Studies 4: 58–65.Google Scholar). Those public signs involving the maintenance and enhancement of rapport with the public may contribute to promoting the public image of the producers on the one hand and the public relation between the producers and their addressees.

Secondly, regarding the distribution of the various dimensions of rapport managed, we found that Chinese directive public signs pay more attention to social rights and obligations than they do to face, interests, and interactional goals. This may have arisen from the fact that directive public signs are essentially more concerned with behaviours that relate to some rights and obligations on the part of the public. By activating their assumptions about them, the producers could effectively persuade them to act as expected. But, it is highly notable that many producers did enhance rapport by elevating the public’s face and attending to their interests and interactional goals. This suggested that instead of frequently mitigating threat to rapport incurred by the directive acts, persuading the public from the positive perspective can be a complementary alternative strategy in the Chinese context.

Thirdly, the fact that producers of the same direction, such as smoking in (18ac), vary with a highly discernible pattern in terms of rapport management, shows that they adapt to the type of directed acts and the relative social status of the producers. Specifically, signs that project acts illegal or forbidden and/or having direct (legal) negative repercussions in case of non-compliance are more likely to be terse and rapport-neglecting (even involving a warning or threat) than those that do not project severe consequences (e.g., saving of water or tissues, disposal of toilet paper or masks). Almost invariably, these signs are produced by some authorities (e.g., the train station or the street authorities). By contrast, signs that depend on the goodwill of the public to fulfill the projected acts (e.g., to save water) often involve rapport maintenance or even enhancement. In these cases, the producers (e.g., restaurant owners, librarians) are generally those who do not enjoy administrative power.

The present research broadens the research scope of rapport management by applying the theory for the study Chinese directive public signs as a genre of social discourse, and it also deepens the understanding of public signs as a special genre. Rapport management generally occurs among individuals. However, some producers of Chinese directive public signs seem to convert the communication with the public into a kind of interpersonal communication (Chen 2013 2013 “The Trend of Personalization in Advertising Discourse: A Diachronic Study.” Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 26–32+81+95.Google Scholar). In so doing, they help to promote the whole society’s language civilization by maintaining and upgrading their good relations with the public. This kind of management can be expected to fundamentally help the producers, often administrative bodies, build a close-to-the-people and public-friendly image, and thus contribute to the promotion of their relations with the public. Nevertheless, since we found a few exceptional cases where the producers challenge rapport, there is still room for improvement in China despite its widespread civilization education.

7.Conclusion

This study, based on the analysis of directive public signs collected from four cities in China and taking Rapport Management Model as its theoretical framework, conducted an exploratory analysis on the politeness phenomena in Chinese directive public signs. It showed that while the majority of public signs provide only directive messages to the public to follow certain instructions at the neglect of rapport, many Chinese producers of public signs sometimes also seek to maintain or even enhance rapport with the general public with respect to sociality rights and obligations, face, interests, and interactional goals. We argued that this ‘personalization’ practice (Chen 2013 2013 “The Trend of Personalization in Advertising Discourse: A Diachronic Study.” Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice 3: 26–32+81+95.Google Scholar), which varies in accordance with the type of directed acts and the relative social status of the signs’ producers, might be motivated by an intention to construct a favorable public image and promote good relations with the public by showing care and concern for them.

While public signs may vary across cultures and languages, this study only focuses on directive public signs used in the context of China. The research shed some light upon the cross-cultural understanding of Chinese public signs. Since interpretations of politeness “relate to culturally based expectations as to what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour in the context in which it occurs” (Spencer-Oatey and Kádár 2016Spencer-Oatey, Helen, and Dániel Kádár 2016The Bases of (Im)politeness Evaluations: Culture, the Moral Order and the East-West Debate. East Asian Pragmatics 1 (1): 73–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar, 74), the Rapport Management Model applied in public signs in different cultures might show a certain degree of variation. When providing bilingual public signs, translators should give full consideration to those differences and translate the signs appropriately. While this study addresses the Chinese data only, the proposed analyses may also contribute to international readers’ understanding of public discourse in contemporary China and serve as a reference for similar research worldwide. Indeed, Berney (2011)Berney, Rachel 2011 “Pedagogical Urbanism: Creating Citizen Space in Bogota, Colombia.” Planning Theory 1: 16–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar has found some similar signage in Bogota, Colombia. In other words, rapport maintenance and enhancement are not unique to Chinese public signs.

Given that there may still be some deficiencies in the collection of relevant materials and the application of the theoretical framework in this study, further research can be conducted to make a more in-depth probe into the politeness issue of public signs and Chinese-English translations. Thus, this paper simply offers guidance to something worth working towards. For example, further research may explore how the public actually perceive the rapport work enacted in relevant public signs.

Funding

This study is part of a key project titled “Research on the Construction of Urban Language Civilization in the New Era” supported by China’s State Language Commission’s “13th Five-Year Plan” (Year 2019) (ZDI 135-100).

Note

1.The second wave of politeness studies refers to the research approach initiated by Eelen (2001) and some other scholars, which advocates studying and analyzing politeness based on the authentic communicators rather than the researchers themselves, and based on extended conversations rather than separate utterances. This second-wave approach holds that politeness is not a pre-given invariable rule but a common communicative construct.

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Address for correspondence

Xinren Chen

Department of Applied Foreign Language Studies/School of Foreign Studies

Nanjing University/ China Research Center for Language Strategies

163 Xianlin Dadao

Nanjing, 210023

China

[email protected]

Biographical notes

Xiaochun Sun is lecturer at the Institute for International Students at Nanjing University, and researcher at the China Research Center for Language Strategies. Her major research interests include pragmatics and language policy. She is author of “Translating Chinese public signs from the pragmatic perspective” (2020) and “A study of the appropriateness of language use in public sphere” (2019).

Xinren Chen is professor of linguistics at the Department of Applied Foreign Language Studies/School of Foreign Studies, director of the Institute of Foreign Linguistics at Nanjing University and executive director of the China Research Center for Language Strategies. His major research interests include pragmatics, L2 pragmatic acquisition, and language policy and language planning. He is author of The Pragmatics of Interactional Overinformativeness (2004), Pragmatic Identity: How to Do Things with Words of Identity (2018), Critical Pragmatic Studies of Chinese Public Discourse (2020), and Exploring Identity Work in Chinese Communication (2022), and co-author of Politeness Theories and Foreign Language Learning (2013), Pragmatics and Foreign Language Teaching (2013), and Politeness Phenomena Across Chinese Genres (2017).