Management of Interpersonal Relationship by Polyphony:

A Case of Conversation in Malay Language

Abstract

  Polyphony, or multi-voicedness in speeches, has been widely discussed in social science, including anthropology. This article extracts some polyphonic speeches from conversation data in Malay language, and analyzes them relying on the positioning theory. The data consists of a scene of conversation participated by three Malay Malaysians and one Chinese Malaysian. When polyphonic speeches are followed by shared laughter, ways in which participants positioned each other in their talk have some influence on their interpersonal relations. On the other hand, when speeches are not followed by shared laughter, participants do not position each other in any special way as above; rather those speeches are understood just as citation that convey some referential information. Because polyphony followed by laughter is used as important resources of conversation especially by managing social distance, the way in which such a management of social distance is achieved by polyphony followed by laughter is examined from the perspective of the Face. What polyphony does on participant’s relations varies according to whether the speech concerns to addressee’s territory or not. In cases of speeches that don’t concern to addressee’s territory directly, those speeches positioned participants as members of a group having shared knowledge and values for understanding those speeches. For example, those speeches emphasized their shared knowledge about a movie star, trouble forgetting people's names, and having no interest to a particular foreign city. And in cases of speeches that concern to addressee’s territory, those speeches position each other so that social distance between the speakers and addressees are changed. One speech using representation recognized as Face Threatening Act decrease distance between speaker and addressee, and other speech using the representation which take Face into consideration, increase distance between them. Such management of social distance is achieved by polyphony followed by laughter.