Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

etween self and other). Conversation was thus seen to normatively proceed
under a general 'minimise impoliteness - maximise politeness' ethos. Again, as
with Grice and Lakoff, Leech attempted to formally account for the
contingencies of talk with a specific set of maxims, ones which in effect
accorded primacy to politeness over directness in talk.
Both Lakoff and Leech base their approaches to of politeness on an
essentially other-oriented stance then. By engaging in activity such as 'being
friendly', displaying camaraderie, showing interest, or displaying tact, one is
able to go about ones conversational work'politely', and take the feelings and
interpersonal needs of others into account.
Rather than relying on the rather fuzzy notion of others' feelings, Brown
and Levinson (1987) sought to more formally conceptualise interlocutor
interpersonal needs. To do this, as had Goffman earlier, Brown and Levinson
employed the concept of face to allow for a reading of politenes as facework.
In order to formally account for the face needs of persons, Brown and
Levinson employed the construct of what they term the'model person'
(henceforth NIP') to refer to any competent member of a given society. This
universal construct was presented as possessing certain fundamental and
irreducible qualities. First, he / she must be conceived of as a rational agent,
that is, interested in achieving conversational goals in the most rational and
effective way; and second he / she must be conceived of as possessing certain
fundamental and irreducible 'face wants'. Drawing on Durkheim's earlier work
on negative and positive rites in tribal societies, these wants or needs were
subsumed under two general conceptual headings, namely, negative face
(essentially the want or need to be unimpeded in one's actions and have one's
autonomy of action preserved and respected, and be treated as an autonomous
agent) and positive face (essentially the want to be approved of, valued, and
included on the basis of similarity to one's interlocutors) (see fig 1.3).
25