It has been mentioned previously that every culture has different norms including
different politeness principle. In verbal cross cultural communication people have to
learn politeness principle in the languages of the other cultures in order to avoid
misunderstanding since, as it is stated by Holmes (2001: 279), “the appropriate ways of
speaking in different communities are clearly quite distinctive in a range of areas. Being
such as status, solidarity, and formality are expressed.” This subtitle presents the
“Hello”, “How are you?”, “Have you eaten yet?”, “Where are you going?” These
friendly to someone. In many languages a question is used as a greeting, but it is not a
Parafrase Vol. 10 No. 01 Februari 2010
4
real question. The expected answer for the question is ritualistic. For example, when
someone asks about a person’s health: “How are you?”, he or she does not expect the
person to tell about his or her health when he or she rep lies. People reply to this
question with a fix expression such as “I’m fine thanks.” In most languages greeting is
usually followed by ‘a small talk’ that is the little things to talk about at the start of
conversation. In English speaking countries people often make small talk about the
weather.
The way people greet each other and the things they talk about may be different
from one language to another. A sort of greeting which is acceptable in some countries
may be not acceptable to other countries. The following illustration will describe it.
A Chinese met his Germanic colleague at their campus. Then he asked,
“Where are you going?” He got an unfriendly response that surprised him,
“Of course, I’m going to the class. Why do you ask?” For the Chinese,
“Where are you going?” is an idiomatic expression to contextualize such
informal greeting. For the Germany, however, the expression contextualizes
an excessive curiosity (Mulyana, 2004: 132).
In China or Indonesia, the expression “Where are you going?” is a n acceptable
and friendly greeting. It is a greeting expressed by the Chinese or Indonesian when they
meet someone they know. However, this kind of greeting may be unacceptable for some
European or western countries. They consider such greeting as an excessive curiosity.
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