Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

hearer - face threatened. Face is conceptualised, not as proffered images or
claims to positive social value which can be variously recognised and ratified by
co-participants in and given encounter over the flow of interactional events (see
Goffman 1967), but rather as fundamental human needs which require
appropriate uses of politeness when specific aspects are threatened, largely in
and through the realisation of specific speech acts. Politeness is the encoding
of a recognition of these basic human face needs.
As with Goffman, Brown and Levinson posit their reading of face and
general positive - negative framework for interpreting facework as universally
applicable, that is, face needs are an intrinsic property of selfhood. However,
they do recognise that there may cultural variation in the way that members of a
given society orient to face needs - what they term variations in cultural ethos:
Every observer in a foreign land knows that societies ... differ in terms of
what might be called 'ethos', the affective quality of interaction
characteristic of members of a society... In some societies interactional
ethos is generally warm, easy-going, friendly ... in others it is characterised
by displays of self-importance, bragging, and showing off (Brown and
Levinson 1987,243)
Although conducted from a linguistic perspective, Brown and Levinson's
work clearly addresses the interpersonal bases for certain aspects of face to
face interaction. Indeed, the authors pay frequent reference to the fundamental
import of both Goffman and Durkheim in their ability to conceptually develop
face, and build around this an interpretive framework for politeness in the
realisation of face-threatening acts. Importantly, as with Goffman's equilibric
framework outlined above, Brown and Levinson point to important aspects of
everyday interaction as being a collaborative phenomenon, other-oriented,
involving the omni-present concept of face and the need for recognition of face
needs, normatively geared towards an avoidance of face-threat, and subject to
cultural variation in the way it may be played out.
So far then I have reviewed the two seminal conceptual isions of face and
readings facework. The equilibric approach essentially conceived of facework
28