Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-19T04:45:51.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Face, Facework and Face-Threatening Acts

from Part II - Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

By
Maria Sifianou  and
Angeliki Tzanne
Edited by
Michael Haugh ,
Dániel Z. Kádár  and
Marina Terkourafi
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Dániel Z. Kádár
Affiliation:
Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages
Marina Terkourafi
Affiliation:
Leiden University
Get access

Summary

The concept of ‘face’ has received considerable attention in im/politeness research given the powerful influence of Goffman and Brown and Levinson, in particular. In recent years, mostly due to the discursive turn, researchers have questioned the tight yoking between face and im/politeness and have sought different ways to better understand these concepts. This chapter offers a brief critical exploration of the concept of ‘face’ and its derivative concepts of ‘face-threatening acts’ and ‘facework’. Furthermore, it discusses some of the developments in the area such as the needs for finer distinctions and alternative ways of conceptualizing ‘face’, the appeal to return to the broader Goffmanian concept and the needs for distinguishing between lay and scientific constructs of face and disentangling face from im/politeness. ‘Face’ is a term which is located in sociology, as it relates to the person, to the self and to identity, whereas the derivative ‘face-threatening act’ draws heavily on pragmatics and, more specifically, on speech act theory. The related term ‘facework’ may provide a kind of link between the two. This chapter offers an overview of these interconnections and suggests possible directions in the study of ‘face’.

Keywords

faceface-threatening acts (FTA)facework(im)politeness
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 249 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arundale, R. B. (1999). An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory. Pragmatics, 9(1), 119–53.Google Scholar
Arundale, R. B. (2005). Pragmatics, conversational implicature, and conversation. In Fitch, K. L. and Sanders, R. E., eds., Handbook of Language and Social Interaction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 41–63.Google Scholar
Arundale, R. B. (2009). Face as emergent in interpersonal communication: An alternative to Goffman. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M., eds., Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, pp. 33–54.Google Scholar
Arundale, R. B. (2010). Constituting face in conversation: Face, facework, and interactional achievement. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2078–105.Google Scholar
Arundale, R. B. (2013). Face as a research focus in interpersonal pragmatics: Relational and emic perspectives. Journal of Pragmatics, 58, 108–20.Google Scholar
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2003). Face and politeness: New (insights) for old (concepts). Journal of Pragmatics, 35(10–11), 1453–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2009). Facing the future: Some reflections. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M., eds., Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, pp. 307–26.Google Scholar
Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, E. (2010). Face: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.Google Scholar
Bravo, D. (2008). (Im)politeness in Spanish-speaking socio-cultural contexts: Introduction. Pragmatics, 18(4), 563–76.Google Scholar
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Originally published as Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena, in E. Goody, ed. (1978), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56–289.Google Scholar
Chang, W. M. and Haugh, M. (2011). Strategic embarrassment and face threatening in business interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(12), 2948–63.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, J. and Haugh, M. (2014). Pragmatics and the English Language. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J. and Terkourafi, M. (2017). Pragmatic approaches (im)politeness. In Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11–39.Google Scholar
Eelen, G. (2001). A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K. and Guo, J. (1995). Shifting face from Asia to Europe. In Shibatani, M. and Thompson, S., eds., Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics: In Honor of Charles J. Fillmore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 43–71.Google Scholar
Fukushima, S. (2000). Requests and Culture: Politeness in British English and Japanese. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Fukushima, S. (2015). In search of another understanding of politeness: From the perspective of attentiveness. Journal of Politeness Research, 11(2), 261–87.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2009). Impoliteness and identity in the American news media: The “Culture Wars”. Journal of Politeness Research, 5(2), 273–304.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2013). Face, identity, and im/politeness: Looking backwards, moving forward – From Goffman to Practice Theory. Journal of Politeness Research, 9(1), 1–33.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. and Bou-Franch, P. (2019). Emic conceptualizations of face (imagen) in Peninsular Spanish. In Ogiermann, E. and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P., eds., From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 301–27.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. and Sifianou, M. (2017). Im/politeness and identity. In Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 227–56.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. ([1955] 1972). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. In Laver, J. and Hutcheson, S., eds., Communication in Face-to-Face Interaction. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, pp. 319–46.Google Scholar
Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness phenomena in Modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 237–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, K. and Bucholtz, M. (2013). Epilogue: Facing identity. Journal of Politeness Research, 9, 123–32.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. (2009). Face and interaction. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M., eds., Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, pp. 1–30.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. (2010). When is an email really offensive? Argumentativity and variability in evaluations of impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research, 6(1), 7–31.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. (2012). Epilogue: The first-second order distinction in face and politeness research. Journal of Politeness Research, 8(1), 111–34.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. (2013). Disentangling face, facework and im/politeness. Sociocultural Pragmatics, 1(1), 46–73.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. and Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2010). Editorial: Face in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2073–7.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. and Watanabe, Y. (2009). Analysing Japanese ‘face-in-interaction’: Insights from intercultural business meetings. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M., eds., Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, pp. 78–95.Google Scholar
Hernández-Flores, N. (2008). Politeness and other types of facework: Communicative and social meaning in a television panel discussion. Pragmatics, 18(4), 681–706.Google Scholar
Hinze, C. G. (2012). Chinese politeness is not about ‘face’: Evidence from the business world. Journal of Politeness Research, 8(2), 11–27.Google Scholar
Hirschon, R. (2001). Freedom, solidarity and obligation: The socio-cultural context of Greek politeness. In Bayraktaroğlu, A. and Sifianou, M., eds., Linguistic Politeness across Boundaries: The Case of Greek and Turkish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 17–42.Google Scholar
Ho, D. Y. F., Fu, W. and Ng, S. M. (2004). Guilt, shame and embarrassment: Revelations of face and self. Culture and Psychology, 10, 64–84.Google Scholar
Holtgraves, T. (1992). The linguistic realization of face management: Implications of language production and comprehension, person perception, and cross-cultural communication. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55, 141–59.Google Scholar
Holtgraves, T. (2002). Language as Social Action. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ide, S. (1989). Formal forms and discernment: Neglected aspects of linguistic politeness. Multilingua, 8(2), 223–48.Google Scholar
Intachakra, S. (2012). Politeness motivated by the ‘heart’ and ‘binary rationality’ in Thai culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(5), 619–35.Google Scholar
Jones, S. M. and Bodie, G. D. (2014). Supportive communication. In Berger, C. R., ed., Handbooks of Communication Science: Vol. 6. Interpersonal Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 371–94.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. and Haugh, M. (2013). Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kasper, G. (1997). Linguistic etiquette. In Coulmas, F., ed., The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 374–85.Google Scholar
Kinnison, L. Q. (2017). Power, integrity, and mask: An attempt to disentangle the Chinese face concept. Journal of Pragmatics, 114, 32–48.Google Scholar
Koutlaki, S. A. (2002). Offers and expressions of thanks as face enhancing acts: tæ’arof in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(12), 1733–56.Google Scholar
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Leech, G. (2014). The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lim, T.-S. and Bowers, J. W. (1991). Facework: Solidarity, approbation, and tact. Human Communication Research, 17, 415–50.Google Scholar
Locher, M. A. (2004). Power and Politeness in Action: Disagreements in Oral Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Locher, M. A. (2006). Polite behaviour within relational work: The discursive approach to politeness. Multilingua, 25(3), 249–67.Google Scholar
Locher, M. A. (2011). Situated impoliteness: The interface between relational work and identity construction. In Davies, B. L., Haugh, M. and Merrison, A. J., eds., Situated Politeness. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 187–208.Google Scholar
Locher, M. A. and Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 9–34.Google Scholar
Locher, M. A. and Watts, R. J. (2008). Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms of linguistic behaviour. In Bousfield, D. and Locher, M. A., eds., Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 77–99.Google Scholar
Linguistic Politeness Research Group (ed.). (2011). Discursive Approaches to Politeness. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Mao, L. M. (1994). Beyond politeness theory: ‘Face’ revisited and renewed. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 451–86.Google Scholar
Marmaridou, S. A. S. (2011). The relevance of embodiment to lexical and collocational meaning: The case of prosopo ‘face’ in Modern Greek. In Maalej, Z. A. and Yu, N., eds., Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. (1988). Re-examination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 12(4), 403–26.Google Scholar
Mey, J. L. (1993). Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mills, S. (2003). Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nwoye, O. G. (1992). Linguistic politeness and sociocultural variations of the notion of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(4), 309–28.Google Scholar
O’Driscoll, J. (2007). Brown and Levinson’s face: How it can – and can’t – help us to understand interaction across cultures. Intercultural Pragmatics, 4, 463–92.Google Scholar
O’Driscoll, J. (2011a). Some issues with the concept of face: When, what, how and how much? In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Kádár, D. Z., eds., Politeness across Cultures. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17–41.Google Scholar
O’Driscoll, J. (2011b). Review of F. Bargiela-Chiappini and M. Haugh (eds.). 2009. Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox. Journal of Politeness Research, 7, 153–7.Google Scholar
O’Driscoll, J. (2017). Face and (im)politeness. In Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D. Z., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 89–118.Google Scholar
Pizziconi, B. (2003). Re-examining politeness, face and the Japanese language. Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 1471–1506.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1978). Compliment responses: Notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints. In Schenkein, J., ed., Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction. New York: Academic Press, pp. 79–112.Google Scholar
Ruhi, Ş. (2010). Face as an indexical category in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2131–46.Google Scholar
Ruhi, Ş. and Işık-Güler, H. (2007). Conceptualizing face and relational work in (im)politeness: Revelations from politeness lexemes and idioms in Turkish. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 681–711.Google Scholar
Ruhi, Ş. and Kádár, D. Z. (2011). ‘Face’ across historical cultures: A comparative study of Turkish and Chinese. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 12(1/2), 25–48.Google Scholar
Sifianou, M. (1997). Silence and politeness. In Jaworski, A., ed., Silence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 63–84.Google Scholar
Sifianou, M. (2011). On the concept of face and politeness. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Kádár, D. Z., eds., Politeness across Cultures. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 42–58.Google Scholar
Sifianou, M. (2012). Disagreements, politeness and face. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1554–64.Google Scholar
Sifianou, M. (2016). On culture, face and politeness. Again. In Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, E., ed., New Ways to Face and (Im)Politeness. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, pp. 15–30.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Rapport management: A framework for analysis. In Spencer-Oatey, H., ed., Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. London: Continuum, pp. 11–46.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2002). Managing rapport in talk: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the motivational concerns underlying the management of relations. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(5), 529–45.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2005). (Im)politeness, face and perceptions of rapport: Unpackaging their bases and interrelationships. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 95–119.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2007). Theories of identity and the analysis of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 639−56.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2008). Face, (im)politeness and rapport. In Spencer-Oatey, H., ed., Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, 2nd ed. London: Continuum, pp. 11–47.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2009). Face, identity and interactional goals. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M., eds., Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, pp. 137–54.Google Scholar
St. André, J. (2013). How the Chinese lost ‘face’. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 68–85.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, M. (2007). Toward a universal notion of face for a universal notion of cooperation. In Kecskés, I. and Horn, L., eds., Explorations in Pragmatics: Linguistic, Cognitive and Intercultural Aspects. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 307–38.Google Scholar
Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 91–112.Google Scholar
Ting-Toomey, S. (2005). The matrix of face: An updated face-negotiation theory. In Gudykunst, W. B., ed., Theorizing about Intercultural Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 71–91.Google Scholar
Ting-Toomey, S. (2009). Facework collision in intercultural communication. In Bargiela-Chiappini, F. and Haugh, M., eds., Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox, pp. 227–49.Google Scholar
Ting-Toomey, S. and Kurogi, A. (1998). Facework competence in intercultural conflict: An updated face-negotiation theory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 22(2), 187–225.Google Scholar
Ukosakul, M. (2005). The significance of ‘face’ and politeness in social interaction as revealed through Thai ‘face’ idioms. In Lakoff, R. and Ide, S., eds., Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 117–25.Google Scholar
Van der Bom, I. and Mills, S. (2015). A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data. Journal of Politeness Research, 11(2), 179–206.Google Scholar
Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Hodder Arnold.Google Scholar
Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Watts, R. J. (2005). Linguistic politeness research. Quo vadis? In Watts, R. J., Ide, S. and Ehlich, K., eds., Politeness in Language: Studies in Its Hstory, Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. xi–xivii.Google Scholar
Watts, R. J., Ide, S. and Ehlich, K. (1992). Introduction. In Watts, R. J., Ide, S. and Ehlich, K., eds., Politeness in Language: Studies in Its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
Yu, N. (2001). What does our face mean to us? Pragmatics and Cognition, 9(1), 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×