Balancing power and solidarity through indirectness: A case study of Russian and Kazakh meeting chairs

Abstract The study combines Brown and Levinson’s (1987) work on politeness techniques and Tannen’s (1981, 1993) work on indirectness and power-solidarity dynamics to extend research on workplace discourse. I examine how two female Russian-speaking chairs (one of Russian and another of Kazakh origin) differently perform face-threatening acts (FTAs) of criticisms and directives during teacher meetings at a community college in Kazakhstan. Specifically, the Russian chair employs fewer politeness techniques (e. g., hedging with “please”), issuing criticisms and orders with no mitigation, thereby foregrounding the power asymmetry within the group. The lack of mitigation surfaces through explicit usage of pronouns (“I” vs. “you”); action verbs inflected for the 2nd person plural and imperative mood; words with a negative and moral connotation; and phonological modifications for emphasis. Differently, the Kazakh chair utilizes a larger number of politeness techniques, including hedging (e. g., “please”, “unfortunately”), impersonalizing negative actions (through indefinite pronouns and agentless verbs), and manipulating of tense and space. Thus, she performs indirect FTAs that highlight the solidarity aspect of group relations. I relate these findings to studies of management leadership in post-Soviet states that have revealed the tendency of Kazakh managers to use a nurturing leadership style.