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Russian cultural values and workplace communication patterns

Mira Bergelson Higher School of Economics, Moscow

mbergelson@hse.ru

Abstract

Russian basic cultural values are looked at from the point of view of interactional

patterns which determine specific features of cross-cultural communication in today’s

Russia. Such basic values as emotionality not-having-control, irrationality, and

judgemental attitudes towards world and other people may but often have significant

influence on the success or failure of intercultural workplace communication,

effectiveness of management style, and the outcome of business negotiations.

This paper looks at the cases when Russian basic cultural values show up through

linguistic choices shaping language production in the organizational contexts, which are

consequently misattributed by Western partners. No matter what the language of

intercultural communication is - Russian, or English, or German - the meaning of many

language expressions may be reconstructed wrongly by the representative of another

culture. One of the main reasons for these pragmatic errors is The Politeness Principle

applied differently as compared to one’s native culture. Yet another - subdivisions within

the Russian culture into three main co-cultures: T(traditional), S (soviet), and

W(westernized).

1. Cultural sensitivity and cultural knowledge.

Cross-cultural communication issues tend to become crucial in the process of ongoing

globalization of the world because they may create obstacles to effective, successful

organizational and professional communication. Effective communication in

organizations is one of the important instruments for creating sustainable competitive

advantage of the organization within a dynamic environment of modern corporate world.

Organizational communication is hard enough without being intercultural. And on top of

it people have to deal with cultural differences (Persikova 2002). So, what would people

and organizations need to become effective and successful in intercultural

communication, i.e. communication across the discourse communities borders.

One of the most effective ways to deal with cross-cultural misunderstanding is training

for cross-cultural sensitivity. Besides training in general intercultural sensitivity that

expatriate top managers from big corporations may be exposed at the organization’s

headquarters, there is a lot of culture-specific knowledge they have to acquire before they

are ready for the overseas assignments. This information is hard to teach for a number of

reasons. The main reason is a huge amount and diversity of cultural knowledge. It is

hard to say what and to what extent has to be acquired so that a person may function

constructively in a given culture. Learning certain specific traditions may seem useless,

or better to say - of ethnographic, not practical, value. On the other hand, - one never

knows - it might prove to be very useful to understand such a specific cultural trait as, for

instance, why characters in Russian films always seem to be quarrelling (while, in fact,

they are not). Just observing this as a display of behaviors will only produce some

unpleasant feelings – one reason why usually the Soviet (and now Russian) films never

enjoyed commercial success in the US. But spending some effort on analyzing what this

behavioral feature may denote and how it is related to other facts of Russian culture may

help to avoid negative reaction and even, at some point may prove very helpful for

understanding problems of the group dynamics in an office or a project team.

In this paper I suggest to treat most of the seemingly unrelated and isolated pieces of

cultural information in a more systematic way as surface representations of certain basic

cultural values, so that it will enable us to draw correct cultural inferences out of these

knowledge. In the example above we have a surface (behavioral) representation - loud

and intense pronunciation. It is defined as such (‘too loud, too emotional’) on the basis of

the impressions of an outsider, and is evaluated (in many cases - negatively) as a result of

unconscious comparison to the similar (or presumably similar) communicative situations

in the outsider’s own culture (‘people speak loudly and emotionally when they quarrel’).

But there are some basic and invisible cultural values under the visible behavioral display

(in the example above – showing attitudes and directness of communication), and this is

the knowledge to be learned. It can be structured and organized in a compact way using

linguacultural schemas or scenarios.

In a case of culturally mindful communication, cultural inferences (for the example above

- the problems that may arise for the group dynamics) would be those traits of

communicative behavior that an enlightened outsider first consciously observed as

surface representations, then attributed to a known basic value, so that this link between

the two may help to manage cultural differences effectively, without emotional

evaluation. Within such an approach the most important information to look for by an

outsider is basic cultural values, and the most important skills to obtain are intercultural

sensitivity and ability for logical reasoning. Therefore, culturally mindful communication

will consist in making cultural inferences only after surface representations have been

already attributed to basic cultural values and on the basis of this match.

1.1. Russian cultural values reflecting basic world view attitudes.

Linguists researching cross-cultural communication and related issues from cultural

anthropology generally agree about the relevance of basic cultural values that reflect a

culture’s world view and are themselves reflected in certain ‘key words’ and ‘key

concepts’ of a given culture (Shmeljov 2002). In Anna Wierzbicka’s highly influential

book on cross-cultural pragmatics (Wierzbicka 1992) the following generalizations about

the basic values/features of Russian culture are made. This research is based on huge

amount of linguistic and cultural facts, reported in everyday speech and behavior, as well

as in the Russian philosophical and literary tradition.

• Emotionality: expressing the way you feel (both - good and bad feelings) and attention

to what other people say about their feelings is considered good in a much greater

variety of contexts. From this follows:

- relations are more important than reality

- interpersonal reality stands for external in many contexts.

One can observe this cultural feature in such language strategies as heavy use of

‘culturally loaded words’ like dusha - 'soul', which signals about the importance

of inner world; abundance and great variety of active emotional verbs (as if

emotions emerge on their own and are not just experienced) - volnovat'sja,

pechalit'sja, udivljat'sja, radovat'sja - as compared to names for emotional states

be glad, be sad, be angry, be happy. In the realm of proper names, Russian is

famous for having lots of nicknames (=expressive derivation) - not only towards

children as in English Teddie, Tommy, but towards adults without distinction of

age or gender and in variety of contexts (Lenochka, Voloden'ka) to express the

extremely important role of closeness and intimacy and to be able to communicate

the minute aspects of feelings between individuals and the tiniest shades of their

relations. In other words, to express solidarity politeness by minimizing social

distance.

• Inclination towards judgmental attitudes: tendency towards and importance of ethical

evaluation.

One may expect to be morally judged and to consider it appropriate towards other

people. One is eager to pronounce one's opinions. People expect and sometimes

require from others moral evaluation of mutual loyalty, respect, sincerity.

Language reflects this by the abundance (as compared with, say, English) of nouns

- both positive and negative - expressing absolute moral judgment. This is

different from using adjectives instead, which allows to describe just a feature of a

person, while nouns attribute a person to a certain type.

• No-control-over-the-world attitude: the realm of uncontrollable and, thus,

unconceivable, is broader than expected by an observer from a Western culture, and it

makes direct opposition to American pragmatism in assessing difficulties facing

people when they have to deal with various issues.

• Irrationality of the world: one thinks and acts as if not able always rely on objective

methods of analysis and logic. This is opposed to American positivism.

Building on 1.1. the following behavioral attitudes based on Russian cultural values

provide potential catches for Westerners dealing with Russians in organizational contexts.

- Relations are more important than results.

- Interpersonal reality stands for external in more than expected contexts.

- The realm of uncontrollable and, thus, unconceivable is broader.

- Things may go worse or wrong at any moment1.

- One cannot rely on objective methods of analysis and causality.

- There is a tendency towards and importance of ethical evaluation

1.2. Main Cultural Obstacles: Heritage of Traditional and Soviet cultures

Some other problems for cross-cultural communication and management are related to

the fact that modern Russia is a huge conglomerate of significantly contradictory cultural

patterns. What makes it different from, say, the multiculturalism of the USA is lack of

legacy: neither historically, nor de juro was multiculturalism acclaimed in this context2.

Still, recently there are some positive trends in public opinion about the real values of

multiculturalism. It is strongly advocated by the Russian top authorities and is proclaimed

one of the pillars of the Russian state. But from the civilizational point of view, Russia in

all its ethnic, regional, and confessional varieties is one nation with one rather diverse

culture. And the main divisions in this culture are along slightly different lines: between

traditional (T), inherited from the Soviet system (S) and westernized (W) cultural

models. One of the main problems of cross­cultural communication for an outsider is

deciding which cultural pattern (W, S, or T) one is dealing with at any given moment

with a given individual.

These contradictory (from the western point of view) patterns of behavior are felt

by Russians as the central line, the counterpoint, of their history. It often makes them feel

sensitive, vulnerable and angry towards what they consider to be ‘western cultural

imperialism’.

Some easily detectable cultural patterns of Traditional and Soviet co-cultures include:

Deep mistrust between the authorities and the people

General pessimism

Lack of critical thinking, and negotiation skills

No, or little, respect for laws and rules

A deep-rooted practice of deceiving higher authorities, to color the truth, to use

roundabout ways

Mistrust of commercial activities – cf. (Jacobs 1992)

The Soviet period left the country with deep interethnic problems (including unsettled

borders) that have become even direr as a result of the immensity and radical character

of cultural transformations.

1.3. New Russia: The Context of recent history

1 Note here a remark made a few years ago by then President Putin in the course of his on­line conference

with Russian people. He was asked whether constitutional monarchy might still be a choice for Russia.

Putin smiled and said that surely in Russia anything might happen. After that remark he gave a serious

answer demonstrating that was not a viable prospect. 2 In the Soviet times assimilation was official policy; now the main official concern is for preserving

traditional Russian culture and, to a smaller extent, of traditional cultures of other ethnic groups from the

negative influence of the global mass culture. Unfortunately, in the real life it has led to isolationist and

xenophobic behavioral displays.

What in North America is viewed as ‘The End of Cold War’, is described by international

specialists and local population as ‘Transformations, which no country had ever

embarked on before’(Holden et al. 1998). These transformations embraced all main

tracks of public and private life. We are talking about transformations of a political

system, transition from command to market economy, new federal relations, new foreign

policy.

None of these processes went entirely well, and many of the problems have deeply

cultural reasons. Most Russians believe that everything must have been done differently

and will not agree on what exactly went wrong. But they all concur that the world never

paid enough tribute to the enormity of what has been done and suffered by former Soviet

people who lived through the times of change.

The very idea of changes can be a problem in Russian organizations where

western managers try to introduce this new management concept of constant change as a

way to adapt to the organization’s environment. Changes are generally viewed in

Russian culture, especially in its more traditional layers, as a threat, and people want to

avoid them. This is a clear example of a conflict between national and organizational

cultures in modern Russian organizations.

2. Culture-related communication patterns.

Of all possible types of culture-specific behavioral patterns I am going to

concentrate on communication patterns. They may be described in terms of Hymes

model of SPEAKING (Hymes 1974) or interpretive assessments negotiated through

linguistic signaling processes (Gumperz 2001,p. 218). The latter means that certain

linguistic structures serve as clues to interpretation of meaning and inferences based on

cultural assumptions of the participants.

I will focus on a few instances of Russian communication patterns that lead to

communication failures - even if the latter is only manifested in a worsened mutual image

that communication partners go with after the discourse event took place. In most cases

the relation of these communicative behavior displays (Schmitz 2009) to the basic

cultural values introduced in 1.1. is evident. These patterns cluster and make up two

types: one is related to the informational, and the other – to interactional aspect of

communication. The seemingly main purpose of communication (“maximally efficient

information exchange” - (Grice 1975)) is very often in contradiction with no less

important ‘social function’ of communication - to support our ties with other individuals.

The latter is usually described through the notion of face (Goffman 1967) - an

individual’s publicly manifest self-esteem and since the influential book of Brown And

Levinson (1987) has been widely discussed and described in a variety of languages as so

called ‘politeness phenomena’. They involve presentation of self, distribution of talk, and

Face Threatening Acts with numerous politeness strategies to mitigate them.

A typology of human information-processing strategies is yet to be developed. Main

assumptions of the Politeness theory are discussed below based on (Kasper 1996).

2.1. The Politeness theory: broadening the concept

Social politeness refers to observing the rules of the social communicative game, while

the function of tact is to regulate interpersonal relationships by providing support,

empathy, and avoiding offence. Both social politeness and tact are universals of human

behavior; yet communities differ in the ways they organize their social interaction, what

counts as tactful, and how tact is strategically and linguistically implemented (Kasper

1996 p. 8).

Politeness investment varies according to contextual factors. Being linguistically

polite always means additional effort, so the participants will only do this effort to certain

extent in order to cover the losses associated with the face-threat. The bigger the threat -

the more polite we are expected to be. There is a linear relationship between the

following contextual factors of face-threat and politeness investment:

social distance between the communicators;

relative social power;

the degree of imposition associated with a face-threatening act (Brown and

Levinson 1987).

Speech acts have been classified according to their inherent face-threat (threat to

speaker/hearer’s positive/negative face) and interpersonal impact (competitive, convivial,

collaborative, conflictive - (Leech 1983).

There is a positive correlation (according to the theory) between politeness and

indirectness of the linguistic expression. E.g. in American culture requests are normally

considered most polite when expressed as conventionally indirect (as opposed to direct -

on one side, and hints - on the other side.

Some types of linguistic action are carried out more frequently in some cultures

than in others, and this seems to reflect their politeness value as perceived in the

community. The following speech acts, being universal, may differ greatly in terms of

the politeness strategies used to mitigate their face-threatening force. Those are:

requests, apologies, complaints, compliments, refusals, rejections, disagreement,

corrections, chastisement, giving embarrassing information, thanking, suggestions, offers,

and a few others.

The imposition of certain speech acts may be constructed as a composite of a few

factors:

requesting - urgency, legitimacy, likelihood of hearer’s compliance,

speaker’s psychological difficulty in carrying out the request;

apologizing - perceived severity of the offence, subsuming obligation to

apologize, likelihood of apology acceptance;

thanking - indebtedness, comprising the degree of received benefit and

trouble;

complaining - magnitude of social obligation violated by the offender;

Social distance has been demonstrated to impact politeness in a more complex way than

theoretically predicted. Rather than correlating in a linear fashion, social distance and

politeness are related in a reverse bell-shaped curve (‘Bulge’): most politeness appear to

be expended in negotiable relationships with familiars but non-intimates, such as co-

workers and friends. In the more fixed relationships at the opposite ends of the social

distance continuum, like intimates on one side and strangers on the other, politeness is

found to decrease.

2.2. Pragmatic Control principle. It has been demonstrated that not a single instance of

communication can happen without incorporating certain politeness strategies, that

individuals are extremely vulnerable to even slight violations of the usage of the

politeness strategies appropriate in a given context, and that communities differ

immensely according to the exact rules of ‘polite’ behavior. (Kasper 1996). A special

point of interest in cross-cultural studies is presence in certain cultures of Face Satisfying

Acts (Yu-hwei 1994). At the same time a question remains what mechanism lies beyond

the choice of a certain politeness strategy. It is the speakers who make this choice, but in

some situations sociocultural norms make them look to the language to wrap their

communicative intentions while in other situations they can choose NOT to do it.

I believe that there is an underlying principle of Pragmatic Control that is

responsible for various aspects of interaction between participants in discourse; for both

linguistic politeness and its conscious and accepted absence. Pragmatic Control (PC) is a

degree of the Speaker’s assessment of her/his right to certain communicative behavior

towards the Addressee. This right motivates the Speaker’s decision to use politeness

strategies and to choose among them. Politeness is but an instance of Pragmatic Control

principle. In fact, the politeness strategies hierarchy is based on speakers’ assessment of

the degree of pragmatic control they possess in a current discourse event with a given

addressee. In certain cases even highly face-threatening acts are performed without any

mitigation. No doubt that Pragmatic Control regulations and strategies are culturally

sensitive.

Pragmatic Control does not coincide with the social distance. The latter means

hierarchical relations between participants in the discourse, while PC comprises all kinds

of contextual relations of a given discourse event together with stable conventional

hierarchies of the given linguaculture (age, gender, position in the official hierarchy,

physical ability, skin and hair color, etc) and specific relations of the given participants

beyond the scope of this discourse. Discourse and sociocultural foundations of PC are

well observable in the instances of controlled communication i.e. discourse genres with a

non-flexible scenario like structured interviews (PC takes form of the right to introduce

local topics), communication in the institutional contexts that allow only certain types of

discourse (court and investigation procedures), when one of the participants has less than

full communicative competence (speaking foreign language in organizational contexts).

Still, high degree of PC doesn’t necessarily mean lack of linguistic politeness, as the

participant with high PC always has a choice.

Pragmatic Control principle brings together various factors that have impact on

resulting linguistic form. It regulates interaction with the Addressee, but also expressing

attitudes by the Speaker (including all types of assessments and evaluative expressions).

It can also explain the existence of certain ‘semantically wrong’ directives like I order

you to sneeze.

3. Politeness strategies and other communication patterns across the boundaries of

Western (Anglo-American) and Russian cultures.

“In interaction with familiars, but not intimates, direct strategies (imperatives, statement

of hearer’s future action) seem more acceptable in the Slavic languages, Hebrew and

German than in any of the standard varieties of English examined so far. It has been

suggested that directness to speakers of these languages connotes sincerity,

straightforwardness and cordiality … rather than imposition on their freedom of action.”

(Kasper 1996, p.10)

It is clear that these differences may lead to pragmatic failures in cross-cultural

organizational context - be it communication in the workplace, at the negotiation table, or

choosing management strategies. And what aggravates the situation is the fact that

language capacity, even more - fluency, does not necessarily help to avoid these failures.

The reason is that while ‘pure’ language mistakes (grammar, wrong lexical choices,

pronunciation, etc) are easily understood as such, clumsy handling of politeness

strategies or speech acts usage are taken as personality traits (Kniffka 1995). Thus, a

person acting out his culture’s politeness and other discourse strategies may seem to a

representative of another culture as rude and imposing, or insecure and indirect, as

unreliable partner, or pushy employee (Thomas 1984). In (Thomas 1995) two types of

pragmatic failures are introduced depending on where in communicative event there was

a break in the mutual communicative competence. The sociopragmatic failures mean a

wrong type of communication pattern chosen - a wrong politeness strategy (solidarity

instead of deference (Scollon & Scollon 2001), or vice versa), or a wrong type of a speech

act (criticizing instead of complaining), or misunderstanding the real meaning of a speech

act (declining invitation in attempt to be polite which is understood as unwillingness to

come). Of course, ‘wrong’ in this context can only mean ‘different from what the

addressee for the given communicative act expects on the basis of his own culturally

conditioned communicative competence. The linguapragmatic failures mean choosing

some linguistic devices appropriate for carrying out a given strategy in one

language/culture and inappropriate in another (in Russian the most polite form of request

will include negation, while in English it will not, and at the same time requests

containing negation will be possible in English, but not very polite, and using them will

stress distance between the speaker and the addressee).

3.1. Politeness related problems. It has been demonstrated in abundant research (to

mention just a few - (Ratmayr 1998), (Wierzbicka 1992) that cross-culturally the

following oppositions are generally valid for interpersonal communication between

Americans (As) and Russians (Rs):

Rs value solidarity politeness more than deferential politeness;

As pay more attention to negative politeness;

Rs express more emotive data than As

As are more conventionally indirect in requests than Rs

Rs invest more effort into supporting their requests by justifications than

As;

As preface corrections with positive remarks more than Rs;

for Rs directness with familiars is associated with sincerity;

for As directness with familiars is associated with imposition on their

freedom;

there is a huge amount of linguistic means in Russian, specifically used to

show warmth and inoffensive closeness with familiars and intimates, thus

amplifying positive politeness;

being translated into English, they will render into expressing patronizing

attitude, thus becoming extremely offensive to the negative face;

friends normally are considered ‘intimates’ to Rs, but ‘familiars’ to As;

As express more politeness to ‘strangers’ than Rs do;

for As apologizing means taking responsibility for the offence;

for Rs apologizing is more of expressing compassion.

Summing it up, Russians are more insistent on expressing solidarity politeness and on

expecting it. It normally means a smaller distance between equals. From the western

point of view, their communication style also lacks expression of deferential politeness,

which often creates problems for teamwork. See also an extensive coverage of cross-

cultural communication between Russians and Americans in (Leontovich 2002.)

3.2. Information-processing related problems.

Communication style is not targeted at reaching consensus - or at least that’s how it

may be judged by Western participants at a business meeting with Russian partners.

Taking conversational turns Russians will often start with no! ‘njet!’ - even when

agreeing with the previous speaker’s point.

Wrong or no answers to your questions, or ‘knowing better what you need’. This

means that judgments, or ‘good advice’, are a common response to information-

seeking behavior; thus, asking a Russian colleague, say, for a name of a potential

partner X for an activity Y in a town Z may lead to an answer ‘person M in the town

N will better suit your activity Y’, which does not mean rudeness or unwillingness to

cooperate, but just the opposite - friendliness, desire to cooperate and help, which

leads to making this judgment regarding the proposed activity. It is especially

common between equals in an informal context - ‘why do you use this chair it is bad

for your back’.

Addressee’s responsibility for information. It means that in Russia a person who is

interested in getting information has to ask for it, and those who possess of

information - especially institutions - don’t feel necessary to provide it without

additional urging (‘you need this train schedule - you find a way to get it’). And even

being provided, information may be very inexplicit and inexhaustive. This

communicative trait is in a drastic opposition to the demands of the modern

communications age, so it has been changing very fast - at least for the ‘new

economy’ spheres like internet commerce. The US communication style is an extreme

difference to the Russian one: providing full, explicit, exhaustive information is the

first duty of an organization to its public. In Germany one finds something in

between. The following conversation is quite a typical pattern for service and social

communication: ‘Why didn't you tell me this six months before’ - ‘You did not ask’

(as in the case when you have asked for a phone number and got a prompt answer, but

when trying later to make a phone call you find out that you lack a code that operates

this given phone).

Potential mistrust of ‘objective truths’. This can be traced down to a few basic

cultural features, but is especially striking to the US partners when dealing with

‘novelty’ issues. Imagine introducing new software to your colleagues and getting

surprised looks and an annoyed objection: ‘Why should we change anything? The old

one works pretty well.’ In conversation this communicative trait may look like

irrationality, or argumentativeness (you would think what’s the need to discuss things

that are self-evident).

Parallel processing of information can be easily traced down to what Hall (Hall 1959)

called polychronous - as opposed to monochronous culture, or multi- as opposed to

single-focus time orientation. Not only can a person in an institutional setting

respond to more than one person/task at a time, but it is also reflected in what seems

as bad listening habits at the meetings and in the student audiences.

3.3 Culture & Business: Specific business setting communication patterns

Russian culture has long tradition of being considered enigmatic mystery (see - “a riddle,

wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” – as coined by W. Churchill). The main

problems facing Russian business in the times of globalization have been exacerbated by

dramatic changes having taken place in the former Soviet Union less than twenty years

ago. Basically we have to speak about emergence of a new culture, a new national

identity, and of course an absolutely new business culture. The enormity of dramatic

changes that have taken place in that part of the world plus basic values of the traditional

Russian culture have been shaping the business culture of modern Russia.

Both, research, anecdotal evidence and personal impressions confirm that in

organizational settings expectations gaps between Westerners and Russians

(managers/entrepreneurs, professionals, staff) serve as one of the main obstacles for

conducting business, creating successful partnerships and efficient work teams. Here are

some of the widely supported statements by ‘both parties’ that can be factors of strained

relationships between Russian and Western partners (Holden et al. 1998).

Western Attitude:

Russians don’t know how to work hard

Business problems are simple in Russia

Change is impossible

They lack experience and know how

They must follow the western consultant’s advice

They rely too much on intuitive approach

Russian attitude:

No appreciation of changes

They disappoint the expectations

They don’t know HOW to teach and how transfer skills to Russians

The West has failed to manage effective relationships with Russian partners

No interest in ‘Russian mentality’

Relationship management must be based on equivalence

Russian staff feels undervalued, underutilized, and discriminated

There are many other features of business culture in Russia that may be characteristic of

Russian businesspeople behavioral patterns. Several most visible would include:

Personal dimension of relationships

Love for a Big Picture and big projects

Sensitivity about status with western businessmen

Deep-felt anxieties about western ulterior motives in ‘helping’ Russia

The apparent Russian aversion to handling detail

Need for absolute advantage, as compromise in negotiations means weakness

3.4. Politeness, Pragmatic Control principle and electronic communication.

When researching modern communication patterns and their interdependence with

today’s sociocultural processes in Russia, it is impossible to avoid references to electronic

communication. Being a multifaceted universe in itself, it can also be approached from

perspectives of informational or interactional communicative goals. On the one hand, the

widespread use of the Internet has made online request for information a prevalent goal-

oriented behavior, and this led to working out new politeness strategies. In comparison

with traditional communication modes and genres the pragmatic efficiency is given a

higher priority in electronic discourse. On the other hand, another most popular internet

behavior is to a high degree targeted at interaction per se. Social networks, blogs, chat

rooms, etc are not so much about the contents of messages, but about sharing and

communicating experiences.

Analysis of Russian-language interaction oriented electronic discourse shows that

the Pragmatic Control principle underlies ‘new politeness rules’ as well. Scholarship and

publications on this topic are abundant, but only for the English-language electronic

discourse – see i.a. (Crystal 2001 ). For Russian, it is mainly advices on the recruiting

agency sites, though recently more and more studies have been published on purely

linguistic, specifically interaction-oriented aspects of electronic discourse.

I have argued earlier (Bergelson 2002) that one of the fundamental differences of

such electronic genres as chats, forums, and now – blogs, podcasts and others is

‘voidness’ of the Addressee. Inability for the author of an electronic message to build a

dynamic model of the Addressee consciousness, lack of any knowledge about the

Addressee (neither the nick, nor the avatar are reliable sources of information) together

with interactive, fast, often immediate communication mode make for the specifics of

these genres and are responsible for the peculiarities of politeness strategies. It is a safe

mode for the author of the message (Speaker) because of the anonymity of all the

participants. It gives Speakers a high degree of pragmatic control in their interactions. It

means that whatever sociocultural conventions the Speaker considers to be imposed and

unnecessary restrictions, he/she can get rid of without the risk of losing his/her social

face. Traditional politeness may be dispensed with, new rules are invented where

pragmatic efficiency will stand first. That is exactly what one can observe in various

segments of interactive electronic discourse. Openness leads to indefiniteness and

ultimate freedom of communicative behavior, which, in its turn, creates new problems

(interpretation costs, new conventions, etc).

3.4.1. An interesting instance of ‘new politeness’ on the background of some basic

characteristics of Russian culture can be traced in the President Medvedev’s blogs

(http://blog.kremlin.ru , http://community.livejournal.com/blog_medvedev ). These blogs

are moderated for obscenities and off-topic content only. The difference between them is

that the kremlin.ru blog initially only allowed to comment video addresses posted by

Dmitry Medvedev, and participants had to react to the topic of the President’s message.

The livejournal blog allows posts and free discussion (comments and new posts within a

thread, starting a new thread, etc). It seems that eventually (since the project started in

early 2009) these distinctions have been abandoned. One should yet see what the

political and social implications of this, so unusual for Russian politics, enterprise will be.

One may only hope that the desired outcomes of openness, transparency of decision-

making, so much expected shift to the e-government, will be visible and will give

tangible results. Along with this there are certain linguistic phenomena related to

politeness.

In Russia, with its highly hierarchical, high-distance-power culture, vertical

communication – especially when addressing high officials – is extremely deferential and

formal. On the other hand, electronic discourse in blogs is an example of the exactly

opposite interactive behavior. It is probably no surprise that the President Medvedev’s

blogs give evidence of something in-between. And not in a mixed way – like working

out rules for some ‘intermediate level’ of politeness – but in a split way. The examples of

different posts from the kremlin.ru blog illustrating these tendencies are below. Some

posts (approx. 30 % ) are quite deferential, with traditional greeting and leaving formulae

- (Глубоко)уважаемый Дмитрий Антольевич! , Спасибо за внимание, Жду ответа

- see ex. in (2) below, while others are following the rules of a typical electronic discourse

leaving out greetings and goodbyes, using conversational language and even slangish

expressions – see (1), (3). Of course when a comment author addresses not the President,

but some other participant on the blog, they mark it by putting the nick of the Addressee

at the beginning of their own comment, and the style may be considered even more

informal – see (4).

(1).

непейвода евгений, Красноярский край 1 декабря 2009 20:27

здрав дмит анат. в милиции беспредел. хотят сажают, хотят сами

стреляют. А прокуратура требует с них показателей. а суды? просто умора.

сделают по закону , так прокурор оспаривает и себе галочку. все повязаны.

адвокатов ни во что не ставят. в лесосибирске вообще полный беспредел. все

менты коммерсанты. даже начальник ГОВД лесом занимается , а служба безопас

его покрывает. осетриной торгуют. а простых под суд. в крае вообще творится

нечто. хлопонин бизнесмен всех под себя подмял. народ в нищете. они жируют.

малый бизнес закрывается. главное что молодежь уезжает, значит перспективы

нет.

(2).

Filinova, Московская область 1 декабря 2009 18:25

Глубокоуважаемый Дмитрий Анатольевич, только благодаря обращению

к Вам лично мне удалось получить ответ о гражданстве в РФ(многие

госучреждения отписываются, при том очень даже изобретательно). Теперь

новый вопрос опять к Вам, как юристу, по защите прав садоводческих

некоммерческих товариществ…..

(3).

Влад, Республика Саха (Якутия) 4 декабря 2009 11:48

Читаю комментарии и думаю:дурак начальник-горе для

подчинённых(русская народная пословица).А вывод такой:дурак

подчинённый,который,пытаясь избавиться от горя,идёт к начальнику.

(4).

Приятель, Санкт-Петербург 3 декабря 2009 00:32

Диме Рудакову (Калужская область, 02.12.2009, 13:32):

Дима, ну о каких налоговых льготах вы говорите! Не будут они этого

делать. Наоборот, как мне сказали налоговые инспектора (кстати, в суде по

поводу взыскания налогов), сейчас дана установка тянуть по полной не только с

бизнеса, но даже с обычных граждан. ... Если надо -они последнее с бизнеса и с нас

снимут, лишь бы потом эти бабки в рамках социалки частично раскидать, чтобы

народ на баррикады не пошел, а частично освоить. Надо понимать, у ребят в

Москве думалка работает по-советски: в одном месте взять, в другое место

отдать, а если в этом месте разворуют - ну и х... с ним. Главное - создать

видимость, что они нас поддерживают. Это чтобы мы не замечали, что всё

разваливается.

http://blog.kremlin.ru/post/50?page=2

Even these few examples demonstrate how split is Russian society both regarding

various public issues and patterns of linguistic behavior.

4. Applications.

In the field of cross-cultural communication role games proved to be a very effective

instrument. They provide essential cultural information in a memorable and instructive

way, which allows not only to acquire knowledge, but also to develop cross-cultural

sensitivity and to internalize necessary skills. One example of such a game was created

by the author under the name “Let’s get to know each other” using the idea of a game

“The Emperor’s Pot” by Donald Batchelder (Batchelder 1996). The game stresses such

important issues of Russian-Western professional communication as unpredictability of

the partner, multiple factors that may influence one’s partner behavior. It has varying

levels of complexity, and may be used in different formats depending on the types of

expertise both needed and available. In the following appendix I present one type of

information that the participants of the role game may use - see also (Batchelder 1996),

p.99). Cultural models are not explicated here in terms of the involved cognitive

schemas, but just labeled by the most prominent feature to differentiate them across the

co-cultures. Each of these labels (table cells) is a name for a culturally specific pattern of

behavior that may be described using the machinery of applied cultural linguistics (see –

Palmer 1996, Malcolm & Shariffian 2002) as a hierarchical set of slots in a frame that

determines a linguacultural schema.

5. Appendix:

Russian Cultural Models.

(structured where possible by W-, S- and TR- co-cultures3).

W-culture S-culture TR-culture

I/We Orientation

cultural model

Individual Group Group

Cultural model of

Human Relationship

Individual Ranked Mutual

Activity orientation

cultural model

Doing Pretending to be

doing

Being

Cultural model of

orientation in Time

Future Future/Past Present/Past

Cultural model of

relation to nature

Control Control/Abuse Yielding, conformity

Cultural model of

Form and Substance

Style is important Outward form is of

major importance

Inner substance is

important, outward

appearance is

deceiving; one needs

to look into one’s

soul

Cultural model of

Progress

Progress is good Technical progress is

good; social changes

are bad

Technical progress is

dangerous because it

leads to social

changes that are bad

Cultural model of

History

History is a linear

progression, a

development for good

Ideology shapes

history

History is a cyclical

and controversial

phenomenon

3 West-oriented co-culture, Soviet-style co-culture, Traditional co-culture

Cultural model of

Freedom/Discipline,

Authority

Rules/laws must be

obeyed even if you

don’t like it. The less

authority interfere

with people, the

better.

Caution and formal

obedience to official

authority.No

considerationb to

individual rights.

Vertically organized

hierarchy regarded as

most orderly and

effective.

Strong suspicion of

authority

Cultural model of

Age

age means higher

position in the official

ranks; youth can not

be trusted for they

have no experience

it is not fashionable

and convenient to be

old, for old people

still live in the Soviet

past

there is a big gap

between generations;

old people must be

supported for what

they have done for

each of us and

because they suffered

through all these

Soviet times

Cultural model of

Money

Bring you everything

you want; they are

easy to earn today,

but one needs a lot of

them to have decent

life style; spending

much is good; price is

regarded as index of

quality

People got spoiled by

easy money-making,

and those who

worked all their life

don't have enough to

support their families;

those who have

money are all

criminals

Too bad money are in

such dire need;

pursuit of money

usually spoils people.

Cultural model of Work

- a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Has no value in itself. In S-culture

is not even considered a means to an end.

Cultural model of Education

- enjoys respect as a source of discipline and a means to an end, especially to attain

skill, money status; affects family prestige; within TR-culture has even greater

spiritual value of one true activity.

Cultural model of Moral Superiority

- A moral smugness stemming from a conviction that Russian people possess a set of

cultural values and conditions that have made them unique.

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