‘Successful linguistic communication depends on participants’ capacity for rational, purposeful... - page 4
Keywords: Sociolinguistics; talk; language; politeness theory; face; communication
By sth202 on 25/09/2008
Level: Bachelor Honours Degree (BA, BEng, BSc etc)
Page Number: 4 of 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
will organise him/herself to protect and conserve both his or her face as well as that of the other individual. This is known as face work (Wardhaugh 1998). It may now be wondered what one’s face requires conservation and protection from. There are two kinds of face, positive face and negative face – also referred to by some as involvement and independence to avoid the connotation that ‘negative face’ is something negative when actually it is nothing but a term of phrase. It may seem contradictory, but both positive face and negative face must be on display by the speaker and the listener in any conversation. Positive face is the wish to “gain the approval of others” (Wardhaugh 1998: 272), the “positive consistent self-image that people have and want to be appreciated and approved of by other people” (Fasold 1990: 161), and a person’s “right and need to be considered a normal, contributing, or supporting member of society – shown through participating in communicative events (...)” (Scollon and Scollon 2001: 46-7). To put it more simply, positive face is the hope to be involved and the search for solidarity. Negative face, on the other hand, is “the desire to be unimpeded by others in one’s actions” (Wardhaugh 1998: 272) and the “rights to territories, freedom of action, [and] freedom from imposition” (Fasold 1990: 160). More concisely, it highlights the independence of each individual participant and is demonstrated in part by being formal. It also depends upon each interactant to perceive each other’s negative face and therefore to speak without offending (Wardhaugh 1998). It would be impossible to live life and interact normally without being obliged to threaten others’ face – quite regularly in fact (Foley 1997). “Many of the things people want or need to do in the course of interacting with one another are inherently Face Threatening Acts: they have the potential to cause damage to the positive or negative face of the speaker, the hearer, or both” (Cameron 2001: 79). Such threats could include:
• asking somebody to do something for you, i.e. you are imposing on them – threat to the hearer’s negative face
• criticising somebody or expressing disapproval – threat to the hearer’s positive face
• thanking or apologising to somebody – threat to the speaker’s face
(Cameron 2001: 79). As such actions are inescapable, people unconsciously search for ways of doing them and decreasing the threat to face at the same
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