When 'You' becomes not 'You'

Professor Peter Groves, my supervisor at Monash, asked me a favor on the first day we met. It was to call him by his first name. I was stunned. It took several weeks for me to get used to bend my tongue to call that grand old Cambridge scholar by his first name.

Politeness, as a universal phenomenon in society, is a reflection of specific cultural values, which can be observed in all languages and cultures. Owing to different beliefs and values, and different cultural backgrounds, these cultural differ

ences of politeness are of great importance in cross-cultural communication.

Cultural awareness

It is vital to raise the awareness on the cultural environment when a person comes to live there for the first time. On the other hand when teaching a foreign language, cultural components such as politeness must be essentially included. Therefore, in language class, such differences, especially those concerning the basic aspects of daily life, should be introduced to students, and this can be done in different activities effectively and efficiently. There has been great neglect about the teaching of using the foreign language appropriately. As a result, students are engaged in specific lexical and grammatical items, far from being equipped with sufficient knowledge, or rather, competence to communicate.

For example, many Sri Lankans seek foreign employments in countries in South Korea and Middle East but they never know how vast the cultural differences between us and them. Cultural differences are one of the main causes that give rise to pragmatic failures.

Authorities might give them training in handling physical situations but I wonder how much they have been prepared for a culture shock.As a universal

phenomenon in all societies, politeness is what people of different cultural backgrounds all try to observe for the purpose of increasing communicative competence.

Being an important element in intercultural communication, politeness helps establish, maintain or consolidate harmonious interpersonal relationships, and reduces conflicts and misunderstandings.

Therefore, principles of politeness in different cultures should be realized by relevant parties.

Habitual differences

Cultural differences in everyday conversation refer to the differences in habits and rules in communication between different cultures.

Customs are influenced and shaped by the beliefs and values of people in a certain community.

People are brought up in community and they are so accustomed to their ways of doing things that they cannot accept different actions for achieving the same goal.

Therefore, differences of politeness such as addressing, greeting, complimenting between two cultures should be closely studied and perceived.

If we take our own greeting 'Ayubovan' it contains a greeting as well as a wish to the addressee to be long lived.

When westerners meet an acquaintance, they often greet each other with "Hello", "Hi", or "How are you?" But a Chinese will say "chi le ma?" (Have you eaten?), "qu na li?" (Where are you going?).

When a native English speaker hears these sentences, he or she may interpret it as an invitation to dinner or interference in his or her personal affairs.

When religion comes to the context, situations get more complicated. As we are all aware, as Buddhist we have a set of special terms to address clergy and related activities. Once I remember how I got embarrassed when American girl who came to study Sinhalese in Kelaniya University tried to address a monk using word 'oyaa'.

Although we Sinhalese have more than a dozen of different pronouns meaning 'you', poor English speakers only have one.

Learning a language means opening a door to a new world. To make that world a better place, you need to know how that language functions in the right way.