Discourse and Pragmatics
Politeness and Face
Politeness and Face
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Popular Meanings
Face: mian zi, min ji, mentsu, chae myon
Concept of honour
Politeness: Being ‘nice’, following certain
‘rules’ of social conduct (‘li’_
• Popular ideas of politeness and face are
usually governed by expectations about
scripts and frames
Face
• The public self-image one wishes to
claim
• Linked to fundamental cultural
assumptions about the ‘social persona’
• Can be lost, maintained, or enhanced
• Mutual cooperative concern with face is
integral to social interaction
Face (Goffman)
• ‘the positive social value a person
effectively claims for him(her)self by the
line others assume he (she) has taken
during a particular contact’
• Face is
• located in the flow of events
• ‘on loan’ from society
Face needs
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Need to be liked
Need to be accepted
Need to avoid embarrassment
Need to uphold our ‘line’
‘Facework’
• The communication strategies used to
protect,maintain, and enhance face, to satisfy
face needs and to
mitigate face threats
• The ‘traffic rules’ of social interaction
• defensive orientation (towards saving own
face)
• protective orientation (towards saving H’s
face)
‘Facework’
• Different people,
groups and
‘cultures’ have their
own characteristic
repertoire of face
saving practice
Face: The Linguistic Meaning
• Linguistic meaning
• Face
• the negotiated public image mutually granted each
other by participants in communication
• Politeness
• How we signal our relationship with and feelings
towards those we are communicating with in our
language use
Politeness
Is this polite?
• ‘Ms. Cheung, I wonder if you
could please get back to me
on this matter at your earliest
convenience…’
Is this polite?
Is this polite?
• A: Hello.
• B: Hi Rodney. Can you guess who this
is?
Is this ‘polite’
• ‘Wow, you look awful today! Is there
anything wrong?
• To you best friend?
• To your boss?
My Mother in England
The Paradox of
Face
The Problem
• We want people to like us
• We want people to respect us
• Respect and intimacy are expressed in
different ways
Two kinds of face
• Negative face (desire for autonomy,
personal space,freedom from
imposition, freedom of action)
• Positive face (desire for self-image to
be acknowledged and approved of)
• Each are addressed with specific forms
of face work
Politeness
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how we express
SOCIAL DISTANCE/CLOSENESS
and POWER RELATIONSHIPS
in our language
There is no ‘faceless’
communication
• All communication is a ‘risk’ to face
• You have to make inferences about and
protect the other person’s need to be
liked or respected
• You have to protect your own need to
be liked or respected
Two Kinds of Face Strategies
• Positive Face Strategies
• ‘Solidarity’
• Showing ‘closeness’ or solidarity
• using first name, expressing interest, claiming
common point of view, using informal language
• Called ‘Involvement’ Face Strategies
Positive Face Strategies
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Use first name or nicknames
Use informal language
Use a ‘common language’
Act interested, sympathetic
Be direct
Agree
Claim common experiences, interests, group
membership
• Talk about ‘us’
Two Kinds of Face Strategy
• Negative Face Strategies
• Showing ‘respect’
• using titles, not making assumptions,
apologizing, using formal language
• Called ‘Negative’ Face Strategies
Negative Face Strategies
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Use titles
Use formal language
Don’t make assumptions
Apologize
Be indirect
Try to minimize imposition
Hedge
Talk about things not having to do with us
Independence and
Involvement
• In any interaction we usually use both
independence and involvement
strategies
• The problem is deciding how and when
to use these strategies
• Based on
• who we are talking to
• why we are talking to them
• Why is politeness
dangerous?
Paradox of Face
• We all want to be liked and respected
at the same time
• We have to manage
positive and negative face strategies at once
• You always run the risk of being too hot or too cold
• Different groups might favor different strategies
Role Plays
Face Systems
• Face systems are based on three different
aspects of the situation
• Power (+P power difference, -P no power
difference)
• Distance (+D distant, -D close)
• Weight of Imposition (how important topic is
for speakers, +W important, -W not very
important)
• Values exist on a scale (not absolute)
Deference Face System
• -P, +D
• symmetrical (equal)
• participants see themselves as at same
social level
• distant
• both would use mostly independence
strategies
Solidarity Face System
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-P, -D
symmetrical
close
both participants likely to use more
involvement strategies
Hierarchical Face System
• +P, +/-D
• asymmetrical (unequal)
• asymmetrical face strategies
• higher uses more involvement
• lower uses more independence
Deference
Speaker<-----------------Independence--------------->Speaker
Solidarity
Speaker<--Involvement-->Speaker
Hierarchical
Speaker
(involvement)
Speaker
(independence)
But it’s really not that simple...
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There is another factor
W
Weight of imposition
W+/ W-
To make it even more
complicated
• We usually use a COMBINATION of
strategies
• We negotiate system/strategies with the
people we are talking to
Video
• Watch the video
• Note how the characters use politeness
strategies
• Are they successful?
• What’s the problem?
Conflicting Strategies/Mixed up
systems
• Two businessmen meeting for the first time
• Mr R: (reading Mr. Wong’s business card which says
Wong Hon Fai) Hi, Hon Fai. I’m Bill Richardson. My
friends call me Bill.
• Mr W: How do you do Mr. Richardson.
• Mr. Wong thinks: That guy is acting too familiar, who
does he think he is?
• expects deference system, hears hierarchical system
• Mr. R. thinks: This guy doesn’t want to be my friend.
He’s not very nice.
• expects solidarity system, hears deference system
Task
• Look at the situations and rate them
according to P, D, and W
• Discuss how you might act in these
situations
VIRTUALLY ALL SOCIAL
ACTS…
ARE POTENTIALLY FACE
THREATENING ACTS
Acts threatening H’s positive
face
• Disapproval, criticism, ridicule,
complaints, reprimands, accusations,
insults
• Contradictions, disagreements
• Violent expressions of emotion, taboo
topics, bad news, non-cooperation, use
of ‘inappropriate’ address forms or
conversational style
Acts threatening H’s negative
face
• Orders, requests, suggestions, advice,
reminders, warnings, threats
• Offers, promises
• Compliments
• Expressions of strong emotion (anger,
hate, lust)
Acts threatening S’s positive
face
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Apologies
Accepting compliments
Loss of bodily control (bodily leakage)
Loss of emotional control (emotional
leakage)
• ‘Acting stupid’
• Confessions and admission of guilt
Act threatening S’s negative
face
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Expressing or accepting thanks
Accepting an apology
Making excuses
Accepting offers
Making unwilling promises or offers
Politeness Strategies
• Don’t do the FTA
• Do the FTA
• off record (indirectly)
• on record (directly
• without politeness (baldly)
• with politeness
• positive politeness
• negative politeness
Politeness Strategies
Estimation of lesser face loss
Estimation of greater face loss
Politeness Strategies
• Positive Politeness
• ‘Involvement’
• approach based
• showing S wants what H wants, treating H as member of group
friend, someone you know and like
• Negative Politeness
• ‘Independence’
• avoidance based
• formality, restraint, distancing
Positive Politeness Strategies
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Notice and attend to H’s wants and needs
Exaggerate interest, approval, sympathy
Use in-group identity markers
Seek agreement/avoid disagreement
Assert common ground
Joke
Be optimistic
Give offers, promises, reasons, sympathy,
understanding, cooperation
Negative Politeness
Strategies
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Be indirect
Hedge
Be pessimistic
Minimize imposition
Give deference
Apologize
Depersonalize (avoid ‘you’, ‘I’)
Task
Case Studies
Chart two: Complete System
How do we decide which
strategy to use?
• Power (P)
• Distance (D)
• Weight of Imposition (W)
Power
• What’s the difference between how you do
FTAs towards your parents and your younger
sister? Your teacher and your classmate?
• -P
• positive politeness (involvement)
• +P
• lower person: negative politeness (respect)
• higher person: positive politeness
Distance
• What’s the difference between the way
you do FTA’s towards your friend and
towards a stranger?
• -D
• positive politeness (involvement)
• +D
• negative politeness (independence)
Weight of imposition
• What’s the difference between how you
do big FTAs and small FTAs?
• -W
• positive politeness
• +W
• negative politeness
Combinations
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+P, -D, +W
-P, +D, -W
-P, -D, +W
Values are never absolute
We always use a combination of
strategies
Face and ‘Culture’
• Different cultures have different ways to
judge P, D, and W
• Different cultures have different ways of
expressing negative politeness and
positive politeness
• Effect of power, status, age and gender
Chinese conceptions of face
• Face not seen to belong to self alone,
but also to group (family)
• Politeness strategies characterized by
self-denigration and respect (negative
politeness (li)
• Heavily encoded in the language
Two kinds of Chinese Face
• Mianzi (prestige, reputation, either
earned or ascribed)
• Lian (respect for a person’s underlying
moral character)
• Morality defined as subordinating one’s
own face wants to those of the group
Mianzi vs. Lian
• Losing mianzi
• loss of one’s reputation because of failure or misfortune
• Losing lian
• loss of one’s moral standing in the community
• Lian more important than mianzi
• Mianzi can have negative connotations (being overly
concerned with self-image)
Mianzi vs. Lian
• Possible to lose Mianzi but gain lian
• Example: J.J. Chan
• to gain mianzi at the expense of lian in
the end will cost one both (Mao 1994)
Task
• Go to a shop and pretend you want to
buy something. Notice how the shop
attendant manages politeness
strategies and FTA’s (also notice how
you do it!)
Conclusion
• Politeness is the way we communicate
our relationship in interaction
• There is no ‘faceless’ communication
• the ‘paradox of face’