The first steps towards the first-order politeness research in Udmurt

Speaker 4: 6, 19, 699,6387,77149

Speaker 5: 9, 44, 396, 9996, 82333

As one of the informants opted-out from this task I only examined the answers of nine informants. I included only those answers in this research where the informant identified at least three sentences belonging to the same speaker. The reason behind this is that two answers could be matched by accident as well.

First take a look on the results from the speakers' point of view. There were no such cases, where all five answers were connected to a speaker. There were four cases in which four were matched correctly: Speaker 1: 3-93-5320-82169; Speaker 2: 4-55-234-34643; Speaker 3: 90-277-8649-89765; Speaker 5: 9-3969996-82333. There were seven cases in which 3 were matched correctly: Speaker 1: 3-93-634; Speaker 2: 55-234-2389, 4-55-2389, 4-55-234; Speaker 4: 699-6387-77149 (this combination appeared two times), 619-699. Those speakers, who had their answers matched correctly in both categories are Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and Speaker 4. As it is visible Speaker 2 got recognized the most (four times), then Speaker 4 (three times), Speaker 1 (twice) and finally Speaker 3 and Speaker 5 (once each).

Looking at the results from the informants' point of view it turns out that not only the number of good answers were low, but the number of those who gave correct answers as well. From the nine informants only five could make correct matchups, and even their number of correct answers are disproportionate. There were two informants that gave four correct answers (two times guessing a group of four, and two times guessing a group of three each), three informants giving one correct answer (all three of them guessing a group of three) and there were four informants who could not guess any (and also there was the tenth informant who opted-out). To put it in another way two people guessed eight of the eleven answers taken into consideration, the remaining three were given by three different person (one each) and the others could not make any correct groups.

At first glance it could seem that this is due to the fact that all the answers were given by girls, from the same age and all of them were the speakers of either the speakers of the Northern or the Central dialect. However, it would be a rushed decision because there are some facts that can put the results in a different light:

The main informant grouped only three of his/her own answers correctly.

The close relative of the main informant could not match at least three of his/hers.

Only one person said that this task is not possible, and none of them made less than five groups which means that the other nine should have found some kind of logic to make their decisions.

If the results are due to the similarity, then in task 3 the gender and/or the age and/or the dialect should get a really high percentage showing, that those answers are way too similar to each other to distinguish them from each other.

Task 3

As I would like to protect the main informant, the relative and the one who opted-out I do not uncover which answer was given by which informant (main, relative, teachers, students, the ones living abroad)

Table 1. The results for Speaker 1

Speaker 1 is a female, who was 18 when I acquired her data, and speaks the Northern dialect of Udmurt as she is from Igra region. So, based on the results only the 66.6 % of the people I asked guessed her gender correctly, the average age guessed was 21.17 which is 3.17 years off, only 33.3 % guessed the dialect correctly and only 11.1 % guessed the region correctly In case of the regions I labeled the guess correct if the person said the exact region, or a neighbouring region..

Table 2. The results for Speaker 2

Speaker two is a female, who was 18 when I acquired her data, and speaks the Central dialect of Udmurt as she is from Deri region. So, based on the results only the 22.2 % of the people I asked guessed her gender correctly, the average age guessed was 26-27 which is 8.27 years off, only 33.3 % guessed the dialect correctly and 33.3 % guessed the region correctly.

Table 3. The results for Speaker 3

Speaker 3 is a female, who was 19 when I acquired her data, and speaks the Northern dialect of Udmurt as she is from Balezino region. So, based on the results 88.9 % of the people I asked guessed her gender correctly, the average age guessed was 28.88 which is 9.88 years off, 61 % guessed the dialect correctly and 44.4 % guessed the region correctly.

Table 4. The results for Speaker 4

Speaker 4 is a female, who was 19 when I acquired her data, and speaks the Northern dialect of Udmurt as she is from Debes region. So, based on the results the 55.6 % of the people I asked guessed her gender correctly, the average age guessed was 25.6 which is 6.56 years off, only 27.8 % guessed the dialect correctly and 11.1 % guessed the region correctly.

Table 5. The results for Speaker 5

Speaker 5 is a female, who was 21 when I acquired her data, and speaks the Central dialect of Udmurt as she is from Sharkan region. So, based on the results only the 33.3 % of the people I asked guessed her gender correctly, the average age guessed was 32.2 which is 11.2 years off, only 16,7 % guessed the dialect correctly and 0 % guessed the region correctly.

The following decisions can be drawn: although there were some answers that were quite close, on average the gender was guessed correctly in 53,32 % of the cases, the age was usually 7.816 years off with really extreme values sometimes, the dialect (that was considered as the easiest to guess) was guessed correctly in 31.1 % of the cases and the location where the person is from have been guessed in the 19,98 % of the cases if the neighboring region is counted as correct as well.

In my opinion this shows that in case of apologies neither of those parameters have an effect on the language use. In the case of the gender and the dialect there are only a few percent differences between the average result and the possibility of blind guessing: 3.32 % in the case of the gender, and 2.2 % in the case of the region. Following the same logic the 19,98 % percent in the case of the place of origin could be considered high, as there are twenty-five regions, so there is a 4 % chance if we guess blindly, but actually in one case no one guessed the region correctly, in two cases only one person, and there were two regions that got high results. This fact, supported by that that the region was recognized mainly by dialectic words or grammatical forms and nothing related to politeness. At last, the guesses of the age of the speakers was off by 7.816 years. This is the hardest to define whether it is low or high but if we take it into consideration that the average age of the people whose answers were analyzed was 19.5 this is a high difference. The reason behind this is that if we take into consideration that in their culture a 19.5 years old woman usually has no children, no husband, and if she attended university she is in the beginning of her studies not much after high school, and a 27.3 years old woman usually have a children, has a husband, and if attended university already have a BA diploma, but could have a second BA or an MA level diploma next to it, it seems obvious, that there is a huge difference in their social status.

These results combined with the results of task 2 (stating that the small number of correct answers in task 2 is due to the similarity of the speakers) would have definitely been a rushed decision. In task 3 the overall result shows that the informants had a low success rate identifying the gender, the age, and the dialect of the speakers. Furthermore, Speaker 2, whose answers were grouped correctly the most in task two, was one of the least identified people in task 3: only 22 % of the speakers guessed the gender correctly, her average guessed age was 8.27 years off and only 33 % guessed the dialect correctly. Those few cases when they had close ideas about the identity of a speaker can be the results of the fact that those speakers matched the stereotypes more than the others. To find this out in the next chapter I discuss the most common reasoning in task 3 given by my informants to support their answers.

The reasoning of the speakers

Reasoning with no stereotypical background

Although all the speakers were the representatives of the Central or the Northern dialect the word жингыртыны `to ring, to call someone' was considered as an indicator of someone being the speaker of the Southern dialect, because according to my informants the speakers of the Central and the Northern dialects

tend to use the Russian звонить 'to ring, to call someone' in an „Udmurtised” form: звонитътыны, звонить карыны.

The use of the word ойдолэ 'let's' was mentioned as a word mainly used by the users of the Southern dialect.

Many informants mentioned that one of the indicators of the dialects is whether the speaker uses тиледлы `to you (plural or formal)' or тилед `to you (plural or formal)'. The latter is the one used by the speakers of the Northern dialect and the former by the ones speaking the Southern dialect.

One of my informants considered the word гуртэ 'to home' an indicator that the speaker is a representative of the Northern dialect, because in the South they prefer to use доре 'to home'.

According to my informants the word аскы 'tomorrow' shows that a speaker is the representative of the northern dialect because it is a dialextic variant there for чуказе 'tomorrow'.

The last thing I would like to mention here is on the edge of being stereotypical. Many informants considered a Speaker Northern if they used Russian words in their sentences. This statement has linguistic background, as it is known that the Northern dialect is heavily influenced by the Russian language and the Southern dialect is heavily influenced by the Tatar language [3, p. 4]. However, the effect of these languages is not exclusive for these dialects, and it is also known, that the Udmurts often use суро пожо кыл `mixed language' [22, p. 108, p. 111]. In her dissertation about attitudes towards Russian and Udmurt, Shirobokova [24, p. 89] who is a native speaker of the language states that according her own experiences this kind of language use is quite common in her target group. Although that target group consists only the speakers of one village, but in 2010 from the 349 inhabitants of the village 335 were Udmurts [24, p. 79], so 96 % of them. Also, the village is located in the Udmurt dominant Sharkan region (speakers of the Central dialect), where the 83,1 % of the inhabitants were Udmurts in 2010 [24, p. 75]. If it is common to use суро пожо кыл in such an Udmurt dominant territory, then it is safe to assume that it is common in the less Udmurt dominant regions as well. Taking all this into consideration it is clear that in those cases, where a Speaker was labeled as Northern for using Russian expressions tends to be stereotypical, although it is supported by linguistics as well.

Reasonings based on stereotypes

One of the most common stereotypes seemed to be connected to the length of the answers. In many cases my informants considered someone a woman if the answer was long and considered someone a man if the answer was short. Their explanation was that women usually speak a lot more than man: they explain the situation much more in details, or they are more polite, and being polite elongates the speech. On the other hand, men usually don't speak more than necessary. However, some of the explanations contradicted each other: they agreed on that part that the speaker is male, as he gave short responses, but some of them said that this is typical to young man, as they don't really like to speak, while others said that short answers are typical for old men for multiple reasons: they don't have to explain themselves, they do not have time to be polite as they have too much work to do, or because of their age they are tired, and do not want to spend too much energy on explaining themselves.

What seemed to be another often used stereotype was that if a person is less polite that they would have expected in that situation or not polite at all then they are young and/or male. They usually used the Russian word дерзкий (or the „Udmurtised” дерзкой) to explain this kind of behavior. According to the Russian Explanatory Dictionary [1] the meaning of this word can be `disrespectful', 'rude', 'defiant', 'recklessly brave', `desperate' or `risky'. So, in this situation it means something like `someone who dares to breach the norm'. The informants seemed to agree that the less polite someone is, the younger they are, but it seemed to be random when it was considered a male property. There weren't specific answers that would have triggered this decision.

Another common stereotype used by the informants: if someone uses forms mainly used in the standard variant of the Udmurt language, then that person is from either from the capital city of the Udmurt Republic, Izhevsk or from Deri region (the region that surrounds Izhevsk). As Kozmacs [13, p. 67] mentions the institutes associated with standardization were the newspapers, the printing houses, the TV and radio programs and the Udmurt theatre. Also, the Udmurt State University (where the Institute of Udmurt Philology, Finno-Ugristics and Journalism is located) and the Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature, which is the Udmurt Research Centre of the Uralic Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences can be found in this city. So Izhevsk is a cultural and scientific center of Udmurtia. This makes it understandable, why they associate the standard language with this city. However, this doesn't mean that they would use the standard variant of the language only here.

The last two stereotypes are both connected to the female speakers. The first is emotionality. Some of my informants said, that they guessed some of the speakers to be a woman, because they gave emotional answers. The other stereotype was triggered by one verb: дасяськисько 'I am getting ready'. Two of my informants decided the gender of the speaker by the fact that she explains being late by the fact that she was getting ready.

Of course, these stereotypes are not Udmurt language specific ones. Some of them are listed by Mills [19], who researched the connections between gender and politeness, as well. She mentions that women are usually considered more polite then man, as two of the main stereotypes about the women's behavior is trying to avoid conflict and being cooperative [19, p. 203]. She also mentions Holmes' [12] theory, that for women the way they express themselves is also very important, while for men the most important thing is the exchange of information. Mills also mentions [19, p. 221] that there is a stereotype that women tend to use excessive amount of politeness forms, and expressions related to politeness.

The time needed for getting ready is also a stereotype commonly associated with women. It is an often-used element of movies, jokes, or memes, so we cannot say, that it would be a specific Udmurt stereotype. However, in Russia it is a bit more intensive. A commonly used characterization about women from Russia is that they seem to go even to the shops with full makeup and in their finest dresses. Usually it is explained by the idea that in the Second World War the country lost a lot of men on the battlefields, so the girls always have to show their topnotch form so they will have a chance to find a husband.

It is also common that the capital city of a country (or in the case of the Udmurt, the capital of a republic within the federation) is associated with the standard language. Smakman [25, p. 42] mentions the case of Tokyo. He writes that in Japan mistakenly the Tokyo variant is considered by many as the standard variant of Japanese. The reason behind this is that Tokyo is the largest city, a cultural and industrial hub of Japan, and the most prominent university is found there. This perfectly falls in line with the situation of the Udmurt language.

Summary

Although there were always one or two people among my informants who perceived the answers completely differently than the others, it is safe to say that the speakers usually agreed on what is polite and what is impolite. The biggest disagreement was in the case of the interpretation of the use of the second past form. According to the theory, the use of it would indicate politeness, as the speaker tries to minimize the threat on his/her own face by emphasizing that the he/she did not have any control over the action. Some of the speakers considered these forms more polite than the first past form, correlating with the theory, but another group of the speakers felt that the emphasizing the lack of control makes the apology impolite, as they try to sneak out of the responsibility. This is definitely a topic that should be looked deeper into in a future research. In my opinion one of the best ways to examine this could be a research from a dialectic point of view, because it is quite probable, that this difference can be in connection with how widespread the use of the second past form is in the given dialect (the speakers of the southern dialect tend to use it more than the speakers of the northern dialect). It could be also compared to the interpretation of the use of this verb form in the Tatar language, which has affected and still does affect the Udmurt language, and has the same linguistic phenomenon. The informants usually did not really feel any problems with the Russian codeswitching; they said that it is quite common that Udmurts speak like this, especially the representatives of the younger generation. In the case of the answer that was included because of its impolite manner has been described by some informants as Russian effect. In my opinion in this case it is not exactly Russian what should be interpreted, but rather foreign, not Udmurt. They did not say it is Russian, because it would definitely be a Russian characteristic phenomenon to be rude, just not typical for Udmurt, therefore unfamiliar. As Russian is a language which has a huge influence on the Udmurt language it could have been the reason behind the assumption, that being rude is a Russian influence as well.

In the second part of my research I was interested in whether the speakers can identify any social group of the speakers based on their language use. Based on my results I can say that they could not really identify the speakers. The close relative could not identify the main informant's characteristics correctly, although he/she meets him/her on a daily basis. On the other hand the main informant correctly identified the characteristics of “himself/herself', and his/her reasoning was Мон но озьы верасал 'I would say the same way' I would give the same answers. but did not realise how close he/she was to the truth, as those were his/her answers. The informants' answers in average were as close as if they would have blindly guessed the answers. However, except for one speaker no one said that it is not possible to identify the speakers age, gender, dialect, and place of origin, and they also grouped the answers based on which one of them could belong to the same person. As it was visible, in case of the age and the gender they almost always relied on stereotypes. Some of these stereotypes were quite specific, but some of them were more opaque and the same reasoning could be used for different groups. Based on this research with ten informants I would not draw far-reaching conclusions, maybe a bigger study with more informants would bring a different results, but as for now it implies that actually there is no specific social group of speakers that would have such a specific way of language use that differentiates them from the others easily.

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