To Wrap or Not to Wrap: Politeness and Penetration in Ethnographic Inquiry

Abstract

The general problems for anthropologists of penetrating politeness and other forms of indirection are discussed from two angles: forms of discourse and the anthropologist's place within them. The case of Japan is examined in detail to demonstrate the variablity of the relationship between the said and the unsaid, lllustrating that forms ofhlnguistic politeness may here be interpreted as one example ofa 'wrapping' principle, paradigmatic in the case of gifts, but also evident in various other arenas, spatial and temporal. In ali cases, the amount, type and manner of 'wrapping' has various levels of social sigmficance: it must be an important part of ethnographlc inquiry to be aware of thls 'wrapping' and to be able to interpret and use it. A perennial problem in the pursuit of ethnographic inquiry is to know how far one's understanding of a situation, as ethnographer, corresponds to the understanding of other, usually native, participants. It is, of course, quite possible that different native participants have different understandings of any particular situation and that those who are most active in creating or contributing to the situation may have intentions which they wish to communicate at different levels with different categories ofpeople. An ethnographer doing a thorough job should ideally be able to interpret all these levels and, indeed, communicate them, but the ethnographer is usually also a participant and this factor can hardly fail to influence the communication involved. An article which appeared in this journal by Howe and Sherzer (1986) illustrated this issue very clearly in describing how the people of San Blas Kuna of Panama indulged in forms of deception to one of the anthropologists about the other-in fact, reporting the death of the second to the first-as a form of humour. The article analysed various social reasons for this strange (to the anthropologists) form of communication which, in fact, would appear to be a commornmode of discourse amongst these people, but it was also interpreted as a device used by the local people to keep the anthropologists in order! Evidently the anthropologists had their place in the social world of San Blas Kuna and the form of discourse used in their presence reflected this order of things. There are two related issues here. The first is the role an ethnographer adopts or is assigned in a particular society and the way that role affects the behaviour of those around. The second is concerned with the mode (or modes) of discourse of the society within which the ethnographer is bound up. In order to investigate the second, the ethnographer must operate within the first and the success of the investigation must

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