CURSO ACADÉMICO 2012 – 2013

Face, face-threatening acts and facework

Having presented the European Parliament as the setting of my research and its interpreters as the producers of the material to be analysed, I also need to devote some attention to the pragmatic background underlying my scholarly endeavours. Two interrelated concepts, that is, face-threatening acts and facework, stand out as particularly important and will reappear constantly throughout the rest of this book. However, it is impossible to discuss either of them without focusing on face as a more basic pragmatic concept in the first place. The development of all three concepts over time will be outlined, including a brief survey of empirical contributions. Finally, the chapter will zoom in on facework in parliamentary discourse.

3.1 Beginnings: Goffman’s observations on the nature of human interactions

Along with a number of others,¹ the concept of face, as it prominently features in modern pragmatics, originates from the seminal works of the American sociologist Erving Goffman, who first used it in the 1950s in some of his articles later published together in the book

1 Such as participation framework and a set of its related concepts; see, for example, Domke and Holly (2011) or Bogdanowska-Jakubowska (2010: 196ff) for an outline of Goffman’s influential oeuvre, of which only the part concerning face will be reported here. In interpreting studies, Goffman’s participation framework has been successfully employed to investigate dialogue interpreting (e.g., by Wadensjö 1998;

2008).

Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (1967). Goffman admits, nevertheless, that the concept as such is not entirely his own invention, but partly bases on the commonsense, folk notion of face (see Bogdanowska-Jakubowska 2010: 141–194 for a detailed discussion) as reflected, in many languages, by idiomatic phrases such as to save one’s face or to lose face (Goffman 1967: 9). Especially the Chinese concept of face exerted considerable influence on Goffman’s thought (Bogdanowska-Jakubowska 2010: 195). Across diverse cultures, face has for many centuries been associated with values such as “pride, honour, dignity, tact, respect and esteem” (p. 142).

Goffman (1967: 5) defines face as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact,” where line is “a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation and through this his evaluation of the participants, especially himself.” He adds that “[f]ace is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes” (p. 5). In other words, it could be described as our self-image as reflected in the eyes of people with whom we interact.

Goffmanian face does not belong to an individual, but is rather

“something that is diffusely located in the flow of events in the encounter” (p. 7).

Maintaining face (or “being in face,” to use Goffman’s preferred phrase) is a necessary condition for self-confidence and feeling comfortable in interpersonal contacts, and this is only possible when the line taken by an individual is internally consistent and finds support from other participants of the interaction as well as from the situational context. On the other hand, a person will feel embarrassed, ashamed or confused when s/he is either “in wrong face” or “out of face.” The former means that someone’s line is inconsistent with the information about his/her social worth that emerges during the interaction, and the latter – that someone does not have any line that would be acceptable to other participants in a given situation. In both cases, the encounter is frustrating to the participant concerned as it has failed to “support an image of self to which he has become emotionally attached and which he now feels threatened” (p. 8). The participant may then resort to

“poise,” which is the capacity to suppress and conceal his/her negative emotions associated with losing face.

Face is described as “a sacred thing” (p. 19) requiring a ritual expressive order to sustain it. While being very precious to an individual, at the same time his/her face is vulnerable, precarious, always in a state of flux. It is not to be treated as a permanent possession, but rather as an item “on loan […] from society” (p. 10) that, at any time, may

3.1 Beginnings: Goffman’s observations on the nature of human interactions 83 be withdrawn from someone whose conduct is perceived as unworthy of the self-image s/he would like to project. Therefore, face becomes a social constraint, constantly forcing individuals to engage in certain actions and avoid others, even at a considerable cost. To maintain their face, people have “the responsibility to stand guard over the flow of events” (p. 9), so that nothing that is expressed by them should be perceived as inconsistent with their face.

Fortunately, in most interactions the participants do not only care about their own face, but they also feel uncomfortable when others lose face. As Goffman claims, every individual has empathy with others, and so s/he is “expected to sustain a standard of considerateness; […] to go to certain lengths to save the feelings and the face of others present”

(p. 10). The two rules of self-respect and considerateness that normally govern interactions mean that people tend to behave in such a way as to maintain both their own face and the face of others with whom they interact. At the same time, people are guided by defensiveness required to save their own face and protectiveness necessary to save the face of others. Consequently, the participants in any encounter generally accept their mutual lines and cooperate to maintain each other’s face.

While the desire to maintain one’s own face seems obvious, considerateness towards the face of others may require some further elaboration. According to Goffman (p. 12), there are numerous possible reasons for it, which may apply in different situations. A participant may be emotionally attached to his/her interactant and consequently also to their face. S/he may feel morally obliged to protect someone else’s face, or treat this kind of protection as an action ultimately geared at maintaining his/her own image as a kind, compassionate person.

Sometimes a participant may fear potential repercussions if others lose face and blame this on him/her. Finally, the face to be protected may be perceived as a shared one if both the participants involved belong to the same group (such as a family or a profession, for instance).

Goffman uses the phrase “threats to face” without providing a clear definition or specific examples of what verbal behaviour they might entail;² however, what permeates his essay is the sense that a threat to face constitutes, at the same time, a threat to the existing “ritual order” and is acutely felt as such by the parties involved. Threats to face are divided into three types, depending on the level of responsibility of the person who creates them (p. 14). Firstly, a threat to face can

2 A few examples of non-verbal threats that may be gleaned from the essay in question include a rumbling stomach, colliding with somebody accidentally while walking in the street, and taking leave from the company earlier than might be expected.

be introduced unwittingly, without the intention to do so – this type represents what we often call faux pas. Secondly, the offender may act out of malice and threaten others’ face fully on purpose. Apart from such clear-cut cases, a threat to face can emerge as a side-effect, not planned but certainly taken into consideration as a possible outcome of one’s actions. Importantly, it is not so much the offender’s genuine intention that assigns a threat to face to a particular type, but its perception by the other participants, so in pragmatic terms we would talk about perlocution rather than illocution here (on the difference between the two, see, e.g., Cap 2011: 62). When it comes to the subject and the object of such a threat, it is possible to threaten someone else’s face as well as one’s own (Goffman 1967: 15).

As already mentioned, when a threat to face arises, people are inclined to take steps to oppose it, which involves “face-work,” or, in other words, “face-saving practices,” largely conventional in nature.

Face-work “serves to counteract ‘incidents’ – that is, events whose effective symbolic implications threaten face” and is defined as “the actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent with face” (p. 12). Depending on the circumstances, face-work may be performed “by the person whose face is threatened, or by the offender, or by a mere witness” (p. 27). What counts the most is not whose face was threatened or who rushed to save it, but the final effect of performing successful face-work to everybody’s satisfaction and maintaining the existing equilibrium. Terms such as diplomacy, tact or savoir-faire may be used to describe skillful face-work.

Avoidance is the first type of face-work Goffman discusses, and the one that is supposed to carry the least risk (pp. 15ff). At its simplest, it may consist in avoiding contacts which are likely to pose threats to face.

If some kind of interaction with a potentially face-threatening opponent is absolutely necessary, it may be carried out through an intermediary rather than directly. In case a personal encounter as such is unavoidable, avoidance may be effectively implemented by keeping off certain topics or changing the topic immediately when the conversation is heading in an undesirable direction. Hedging claims about self (for instance by means of joking or excessive modesty in expressing any of them) may be seen as an avoidance process directed at preventing loss of face through being discredited. A jocular manner and ambiguity are also employed when making potentially disparaging remarks about others. Extending an advance apology before introducing what might be interpreted as a threat to face is another method of neutralising it.

Last but not least, even if a threat to face occurs, the participants may choose to ignore it and pretend that nothing has happened.

3.1 Beginnings: Goffman’s observations on the nature of human interactions 85 The other type of face-work involves corrective processes, which must be preceded by an acknowledgement of a threat to face resulting in “an established state of ritual disequilibrium or disgrace” and calling for an attempt “to reestablish a satisfactory ritual state” (p. 19). Such an attempt, usually consisting of several steps, is called an interchange.

It is crucial to point out that for Goffman all these steps function as moves, because face-work is ultimately seen as “the ritual game”

(p. 23) whose rules need to be internalised by every human during his socialisation as a child.

An interchange begins with a challenge, that is, calling attention to the threat. What follows is an offering, normally on the part of the person who introduced the threat, to correct his/her misbehaviour.

There is a number of conventional ways of making such an offering.

The offender may, for example, claim that what has been perceived as a threat to face was not said or done intentionally, or that it was meant as a joke. S/he may also suggest that the offending remark was made on someone else’s behalf. Otherwise, unless it was his/her own face that was threatened, the offender can shoulder the responsibility and try to “provide compensation to the injured” and/or “punishment, penance, and expiation” (p. 19) for oneself. Goffman does not expressly talk of an apology here, but it seems that this is what he has in mind.

The third step consists in the offering being accepted by the other participants as a satisfactory means of reestablishing the ritual order and maintaining the faces of everybody involved, and the last – in the offender thanking the others for their forgiveness.

What has just been described is a model interchange, which may often be departed from. For instance, the other participants may hold on their challenge and wait for the offender to realise s/he has introduced a threat to face and make an offering of his/her own accord. Or, in some other cases, it may be a different person than the offender who makes an offering by tactfully providing a justification for the misbehaviour. In a less courteous interaction, the offender may continue with the threat to face in spite of the challenge, which can possibly force the other participants to retaliate with likewise behaviour or to withdraw from the encounter altogether, showing that they have taken offence.

Generally people co-operate in face-work, both facilitating it for their interactants and expecting to get the same kind of treatment from them. Goffman refers to it as “tacit cooperation in face-saving”

(p. 29). Therefore, the ritual game tends to be a friendly one, with the contestants playing into each other’s hands. If someone, for example, possesses an attribute that might easily be judged in a negative manner

(and is not readily visible), s/he might mention this unobtrusively at the beginning of the conversation when talking to strangers, so that they do not introduce a threat to face later by criticising this very attribute.

Subtle and highly sophisticated face-work of this kind often relies on hints, innuendoes and ambiguities.

Exceptions to such cooperation do exist and are described as

“aggressive use of face-work,” where the encounter is comparable to

“an arena in which a contest or match is held” (p. 24). Participants may intentionally introduce threats to face, expecting others to do the necessary face-work and hoping to make some gains for their own face, possibly while others lose theirs. For example, someone may offend others assuming that they will pretend not to notice this in accordance with the strategy of avoidance, or talk very disparagingly about oneself in order to force others to praise him/her. The main purpose is to show one’s own superiority, preferably not only to one’s opponent, but also an audience: “the winner not only succeeds in introducing information favorable to himself and unfavorable to others, but also demonstrates that as interactant he can handle himself better than his adversaries”

(p. 25).

It is definitely a fitting tribute to Goffman and his work that more than half a century after his considerations on face appeared in print, and after so much has been written on the topic by various other authors, contemporary scholars within the field of pragmatics still refer to him copiously, and many (e.g., Watts 2003; Bargiela-Chiappini 2003) even call for a “return to Goffman.” As pointed out by Haugh (2013:

51), “much of the past decade in pragmatics has arguably involved catching up with what Goffman originally observed more than fifty years ago, namely, that face is a rich, nuanced analytical metaphor.”

3.2 Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness

Brown and Levinson’s influential book (1987), first published as a long contribution to a collective volume in 1978, features politeness in its title; nevertheless, politeness as described therein must be understood as largely equivalent to Goffmanian face-work (cf. Bogdanowska-Jakubowska 2010: 214). The great merit of the book lies in the fact that, for the first time, its authors created an elaborate model that can provide a theoretical framework for empirical research. As noted by Watts (2003: 63), Brown and Levinson presented their views

87 3.2 Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness

on politeness (or facework) phenomena “in sufficient detail to allow them to be tested through application to real-language data,” giving

“extensive examples of the kinds of linguistic structures that are put to use to realise politeness strategies.” Ample empirical research based on it (and some theoretical appraisals, too) actually appeared shortly after Brown and Levinson’s theory had been published in 1978, and the 1987 re-issue of their seminal work includes an extensive introduction discussing certain issues that emerged in the meantime. Although raising a lot of controversy and criticism until today, the politeness theory developed by the two authors must be seen as “the milestone in the politeness and face research” (Bogdanowska-Jakubowska 2010: 228).

Face is a central concept in Brown and Levinson’s theory, and, although they claim to have derived their notion of face from Goffman (1967), in fact they significantly depart from his understanding of it (Watts 2003: 103–107; Leech 2014: 81), especially by construing face as belonging to an individual and by postulating its dual nature.

Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) define face as “the public self-image that every member [of a society] wants to claim for himself,” and they immediately add that it consists of two interrelated aspects: negative face and positive face. The former is described as “the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction – i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from imposition,” and the latter as “the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality’ (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants”

(p. 61). The two aspects of face are further discussed in terms of “basic wants” shared by all humans: “the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions be unimpeded by others” (negative face) and

“the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others” (positive face) (p. 62). By analogy, the authors also distinguish between negative politeness and positive politeness, which cater for the wants of the negative and the positive face, respectively.

While the negative aspect of face and politeness seems clear and associated with what will most readily be recognised as polite behaviour in Western cultures (avoiding imposition on others), the positive aspect may require some elaboration. If we look for simpler explanations of the positive face than the definition quoted above, the authors also describe it as “the want to be approved of in certain respects” (p. 58) and clarify that “in general, persons want their goals, possessions and achievements to be thought desirable” (p. 63). Approval of some specific others will be particularly valued; for example, it means more if beautiful roses in someone’s garden are admired by another keen gardener or someone’s literary style is appreciated by other writers.

Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) strongly support Goffman’s (1967) view that interactants do not just aim to maintain their own face, but they tend to cooperate in saving and possibly enhancing the face of every person involved in the encounter: “normally everyone’s face depends on everyone else’s being maintained, and […] it is in general in every participant’s best interest to maintain each others’ faces.” They talk about a universal “social necessity to orient oneself to it [face] in interaction” (p. 62).

Basing on the Speech Acts theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969), Brown and Levinson (1987: 65) point out that certain acts “intrinsically threaten face,” as they “by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker.” They refer to such speech acts as face-threatening acts, or FTAs for short. Considering “the mutual vulnerability of face” (p. 68), rational behaviour manifests itself, in most circumstances, in either avoiding face-threatening acts altogether or in taking steps to minimise the threat as much as possible. FTAs can be divided in two ways: according to the kind of face threatened (negative or positive) and according to whose face is primarily threatened (the addressee’s or the speaker’s), although, as we will see, these distinctions are not always clear-cut.

Basing on the Speech Acts theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969), Brown and Levinson (1987: 65) point out that certain acts “intrinsically threaten face,” as they “by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker.” They refer to such speech acts as face-threatening acts, or FTAs for short. Considering “the mutual vulnerability of face” (p. 68), rational behaviour manifests itself, in most circumstances, in either avoiding face-threatening acts altogether or in taking steps to minimise the threat as much as possible. FTAs can be divided in two ways: according to the kind of face threatened (negative or positive) and according to whose face is primarily threatened (the addressee’s or the speaker’s), although, as we will see, these distinctions are not always clear-cut.