Interactional Sociolinguistics
Reading
Week 3
Required Reading
So far we have been talking a lot about how life is like a performance. We have also talked about about how we depend on other people to help us 'pull off' our performances successfully. Usually people don't challenge our line, and usually we don't challenge theirs (even when we think that it's a load of rubbish). In other words, people cooperate to help maintain one another's 'masks', to help one another 'save face'.
Face is a concept that is very important in Asian cultures (where it means something close to 'honor' or 'reputation'). It is not limited, however, to Eastern cultures. The notion of face is universal. Face refers to fundamental cultural ideas about the "nature of the social persona, honor and virtue, shame and redemption" (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 13) and how these are expressed, protected, and threatened in social interaction. Goffman defines face as: n‘the positive social value a person effectively claims for him(her)self by the line others assume he (she) has taken during a particular contact.’
The problem we have with maintaining out 'face' and helping others to maintain theirs is that we all actually have two faces: The first is called 'positive face'; it is our desire to be liked, for people to pay attention to us and care about us. The second is called 'negative face'; it is our desire to be 'respected', to be 'given space', not to be interfered with. So, taking care of your face and the faces of those around you requires that you juggle these two contradictory face needs. It isn't always easy. Maybe you know from experience with a boyfriend or girlfriend that sometimes it is hard to tell whether they want you to show them concern or give them 'space', and many relationships have broken up due to misunderstanding about face strategies.
The ways we try to maintain our face and the face of those we interact with are called 'politeness strategies.' Since we all have two different kinds of face, there are also broadly two different kinds of politeness strategies. Involvement (or positive) politeness strategies include things like showing concern for the person you are talking to, asking personal questions, making personal comments, sharing common beliefs, showing membership in a common group, using more informal forms of address and interrupting more with 'backchannel' or other cooperative conversational devices. Independence (negative) politeness strategies include using more formal language and terms of address, trying to minimize the imposition, being indirect and trying to depersonalize the conversation.
The way we determine which strategies to use in any given situation depends on three factors: Power (P) (whether or not the relationship is equal or unequal), Distance (D) (how close we are to the person we are talking to) and Weight of Imposition (W) (how much trouble we are bringing to the person we are talking to). In situations where both parties have the same amount of power but they don't know each other very well (deference system), they are both more likely to use independence (negative) strategies. In cases where they are friends (solidarity system), they are both more likely to use involvement strategies. In cases where one has more power than the other, the one with power is more likely to use involvement strategies and the one with less power is more likely to use independence strategies. In terms of 'Weight of Imposition', in W+ situations we are more likely to use independence strategies, and in W- situations we are likely to use involvement strategies. These, however, are just general rules. In fact, we always use a combination of strategies, and they cannot be determined completely by a simple equation (D+ and P- = independence) . They are subject to all sorts of other factors like the personal history you have with the person, your own personality and theirs, and the culture that you are operating in at the time.
Any act that has the potential to threaten somebody's face (whether it be their negative face or their positive face) is called a 'face threatening act' (FTA). Actually, nearly every social action is potentially face threatening. If you insult somebody (or ignore them) you can threaten their positive face (their desire to be liked), and if you smile at someone, show them concern or invite them to the cinema, you can threaten their negative face (their desire to be left alone). So, every time we encounter someone we are faced with a number of decisions about how to manage our respective 'face threatening acts.'
One choice we have is to not do the face threatening act at all (to avoid asking the girl to the party, to pretend that you didn't hear when your friend asks you how you like her new hairdo). If we choose to perform some face threatening act, we are faced with another choice. Either we can do it 'directly' (baldly) (for example, 'your new hairdo is horrible!' or, in the case of a threat to negative face, 'kiss me!'), or we can do it 'off-record' (pretend that we are not doing it), or we can use the kinds of politeness strategies like those outlined above.
It should be clear from the above that politeness is not just about 'being nice'. It is about managing the power relationships you have with others, the degree of closeness you enjoy with them, and the way you exchange goods and services with each other. It should also be clear that within these systems and strategies which we have to figure out and choose from constantly in the ongoing flow of interaction that there is a lot potential for error and misunderstanding.
Supplementary Readings
Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinsion, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 58-84) (e-group)
Deborah Tannen, 'Power and Solidarity', (from That's Not What I Meant, Ballentine Books, pp. 93-109).(e-group)
Optional Readings
Judith Ann Spiers, 'The Use of Facework and Politeness Theory' (from Qualitative Health Research, Jan98, Vol. 8 Issue 1, p25-48) (excerpt) (e-group)