Discourse and Pragmatics

Politeness and Face

Politeness and Face• 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

• 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 formsof face work

Politeness

• 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

• 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

• 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

• -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

HierarchicalSpeaker(involvement)

Speaker (independence)

But it’s really not that simple...

• 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

• 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

• 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 greater face loss

Estimation of lesser 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

• 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

• 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

• +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’