This is a chapter in which Chinese politeness is compared with politeness in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. With their respective morphological systems of honorification, Japanese and Korean languages are structurally different from Chinese, an isolating language that has hardly any inflectional morphology. These linguistic differences, however, do not prevent the three linguacultures to demonstrate a remarkable degree of similarity in terms of politeness at a deeper level of analysis. The three linguacultures, for instance, seem to be similarly hierarchical in social structure, although they differ in the relative weight a particular factor on a hierarchy has in a given context. The architectural features of language, Chen argues, are not as determinant in politeness as scholars have believed. A culture value such as self-denigration, which often presents itself in terms of politeness, is expressed regardless of how the language is structured linguistically. Vietnamese, on the other hand, is typologically close to Chinese, its culture shares much with Chinese culture, but it was under the French rule for several decades (1985-1954). And yet, B&L-E is shown to be capable of capturing the similarities and differences between it and Chinese in terms of politeness.

This opening chapter first discusses the important position politeness research holds in pragmatics. Four areas of research are selected for the purpose: speech acts, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and interaction on the Internet, with the overarching aim to show that politeness offers insights for how meaning is made and transmitted in each of these areas. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the discussion on the important role Chinese politeness plays in politeness research in general. Since the notion of Chinese face is a pillar of Brown and Levinson’s notion of face, an in-depth understanding of Chinese face and, subsequently, Chinese politeness, stands to benefit the understanding of Brown and Levinson’s thinking in their theory. In addition, research on Chinese face has been drawing an increasing amount of attention from scholars of politeness in recent decades, accumulating a literature the size of which few other languages can parallel and offering insights to the understanding of politeness that are unique and significant, a thorough exploration of Chinese politeness can inform the field about politeness theorizing.

Chapter 3 presents comparative case studies of two structural socioeconomic rights rulings: Argentina’s Causa Mendoza – an environmental ruling – and Colombia’s T-760 – a ruling safeguarding the right to health. In both cases, a collaborative oversight arena was created as a result of the convergence of legally empowered advocacy organizations and court-promoted monitoring mechanisms. The collaborative oversight arenas created spaces in which different participants could exercise accountability for unfulfilled commitments from the government and private agents and, more specifically, for the implementation of different aspects of the rulings. Additionally, the creation of spaces for sustained interaction around offered the chance for the diffusion of policy ideas and a rights-based framework, while giving civil society actors access to the state. The case studies also identify unintended and negative consequences from the rulings, recognizing these as integral parts of impact.

The Secret of England’s Greatness, Thomas Jones Barker

Chapter 6 asks and answers the following question: Is there evidence that the presence of monitoring mechanisms and legally empowered organizations in civil society help us understand whether and to what extent other structural rulings (beyond those studied in previous chapters) can have significant impact? This chapter explores this question in a bounded manner, by conducting shadow case studies of rulings decided by the Indian Supreme Court. Here I use insights from the theoretical framework developed and illustrated in the Latin American context and apply them to the analysis of two rulings handed down by the Indian highest tribunal: the Right to Food case and the Delhi Vehicular Pollution case. Building on prior works and original research, the chapter shows that the creation of collaborative monitoring spaces in India also enhanced accountability and showed potential to shift the balance of power between a reluctant government and the litigants, allowing civil society actors, as well as others, access, and an unprecedented platform. At the same time, the cross-regional comparison highlights the dangers in lengthy time frames and excessive procedural flexibility.

Chapter 4 presents case studies of the impact of four landmark socioeconomic rights rulings. Each pair of case studies seeks to uncover the influence that one of two elements can have on judicial impact: court-promoted monitoring mechanisms and the presence of legal constituencies. The first pair of cases explores the aftermath of rulings that have dense legal constituencies but no court-promoted oversight mechanisms: First, Causa Verbitsky in Argentina, a decision in which the court safeguarded the rights of inmates in the Buenos Aires Province. Second, C-383 1999 in Colombia, a decision in which the court safeguarded the right to housing of Colombian mortgage debtors. The second paired comparison looks at two structural rulings in which monitoring mechanisms were put in place but where there were low density legal constituencies. The first case in this pair is Causa Badaro in Argentina, a decision in which the court protected the right to pension of Argentine seniors earning above 1,000 Argentine pesos. The second case is T-547 2010 in Colombia, a decision in which the court protected the right to prior consultation of the Indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada in Santa Marta.

In this transitional chapter, Chen proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP): “Politeness is the judgement of a behavior – both linguistic and otherwise – that it is appropriate in context for the purpose of harmony.” Appropriateness, further, is defined in terms of the position of the speaker and hearer; the maintaining of face, and the avoidance of friction between all parties involved. Chen then moves to the proposal of a general politeness theory based on Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation into it notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The theory – Brown and Levinson extended (B&L-E) – is a set of causality relations: waht a speaker does (either benefitting or hurting) to face (either self-face or other-face) leads to a particular type of politeness or impoliteness. The benefitting of other-face, for instance, often leads to the evaluation of politeness. The benefitting of self-face, on the other hand, may (or may not) result in a judgement of impoliteness to other. Of the two models, Chen argues, MCP is a cultural specification of B&L-E. His view is therefore that there should be a universal theory of politeness such as B&L-E, which is capable of subsuming under it culture-specific models such as MCP.

After having discussed the tactics of epic writing in the 1790s and early 1800s, I return to 1789 in my sixth chapter in order to examine the subversive implications of Olaudah Equiano’s anticipation of the Romantic epic revival. Although his Interesting Narrative (1789) is not an epic, it borrows several aspects of the epic form in order to associate Equiano at once with both colonizers and the colonized. Mixing epic with autobiography, conversion narrative, and travel writing, the formal liminality of Equiano’s account amplifies his presentation of himself as a hybrid figure in terms of race and religion, allowing him to promote to his readers not merely Christianity, but a broader conception of identity that challenges the conceptual basis of slavery and imperialism. Drawing on the literary resources of his colonizers’ culture, Equiano ultimately uses his position as ‘other’ to promote in his Narrative a cosmopolitan Christian identity that transcends the categories of nation and race while revealing the flaws in the discourse of both evangelism and empire.

The third chapter explores how female characters narrate history within the plays themselves, particularly when they appear to transgress the boundaries of historical possibility through curses, prophecy, or describing events they have not seen – extra-historical powers enabled by their marginalisation from political power. It proposes the concept at the heart of Shakespeare’s historical dramaturgy: that marginalisation from political power gives way to other types of insight enabled by the medium of the theatre, a specifically feminine relationship to historical narrative that I call Shakespeare’s feminine historiography. Beginning with an analysis of the connection between mourning and cursing, the chapter explores the ‘genealogies of loss’ that permit female characters to articulate their own versions of dynastic history. I then turn to other ways that female characters are marginalised from the centres of historical power, and the clarity of historical vision that their outsider position grants them, rendering them simultaneously suppressed and empowered by their exclusion. Finally, this chapter considers how genre itself operates as a force for this exclusion, exploring scenes which seem to defy the tonal and generic boundaries of their plays, suggesting Shakespeare’s awareness of the limitations of the history play genre for containing certain types of female stories.

Chapter 5 presents the last two case studies of the book; this paired comparison completes the four sets. This pair of rulings has in common a lack of court-promoted monitoring mechanisms as well as the absence of legally empowered advocacy organizations. The first case study delves into the aftermath of the Chaco v. Defensor del Pueblo ruling in Argentina, where the Argentine Supreme Court sought to safeguard the rights of the Qom Indigenous group in the Chaco Province. The second case study is of T-231 1993, a ruling handed down by the Colombian Constitutional Court seeking to protect the right to a healthy environment for the inhabitants around the Bogotá Canal, in Cúcuta.