New ways to face and (im)politeness

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New ways to face

and (im)politeness

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NR 3415

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New ways to face and (im)politeness

Edited by

Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego • Katowice 2016

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Editor of the series: Językoznawstwo Neofilologiczne

Maria Wysocka

Referee

Piotr Mamet

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Notes on Contributors

Marzieh Bashirpour teaches at the Department of English, Ahwaz Jahad Uni- versity, Ahwaz, Iran She holds an MA degree from Mumbai University (2009) and a PhD from Aligarh Muslim University, India (2014) Her specialised fields of research are gender and language, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics

Paulina Biały has a PhD in linguistics at the Department of Contrastive Studies, Institute of English, University of Silesia; her interests include: pragmatics, sociolinguistics, translation studies, and contrastive studies

Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska is Associate Professor of Linguistics She is head of the Department of Pragmatics in the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland Her work spans linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication and the cognitive approach to metaphor Her main research interests are (im)politeness, self-presentation and the concept of face Her publications include Cross-cultural dimensions of politeness in the case of Polish and English (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 1999) and the monograph FACE. An interdisciplinary perspective (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2010)

Weronika Gąsior obtained a PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Limerick (2014) Her research interests include pragmatics and politeness, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication and multilingualism She has taught undergraduate courses on Language and Culture as well as Language and New Media She holds a BA degree in languages and cultural studies specialising in Spanish and TEFL, which add to her interests interlanguage pragmatics and pragmatic instruction in L2

Imtiaz Hasnain has a PhD and is a Professor of Sociolinguistics at the Depart- ment of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India He also holds

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8 Notes on Contributors

MA and PhD degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University His main research interests encompass critical discourse analysis, issues concerning minority languages and language endangerment He is currently working on two research projects: “Social and Cultural Practices of Internally Displaced Populations in Multilingual Spaces” and “Documentation of Endangered Languages – Birhor and Chinali ”

Gudrun Held is Associate Professor at the Department of Romance Languages, University of Salzburg Apart from teaching Italian and French linguistics and history of Romance languages, her research interests focus on pragmatics, communication and interaction theory, media textology and advertising language More particularly, she published a series of articles and a monograph on lin- guistic politeness in French and Italian (Verbale Höflichkeit, Tübingen 1995) Marcin Kuczok is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English, University of Silesia, Poland, where he graduated with an MA in English Philology (2005) and a PhD in English Linguistics (2012) He also received an MA degree in theology from the University of Opole (2003) His academic interests revolve around cognitive semantics, especially the theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy and the theory of conceptual blending, as well as their applications to studying religious language, describing the axiological parameter of language, and analysing English and Polish word-formation processes

Maria Sifianou is Professor at the Faculty of English Studies, University of Athens Her publications include Politeness phenomena in England and Greece:

A cross-cultural perspective (Oxford University Press, 1992/1999/2002), Dis- course analysis (Hillside Press, 2006) and a number of articles in edited books and journals She co-edited, among other, such books as Themes in Greek lin- guistics (John Benjamins, 1994) and Linguistic politeness across boundaries:

The case of Greek and Turkish (John Benjamins, 2001) She is on the editorial board of a number of journals and a co-editor of the international Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict (John Benjamins) Her main research inter- ests include politeness phenomena and discourse analysis in an intercultural perspective

Maria Spiechowicz is Lecturer in the Japanese language at the Institute of English, University of Silesia Her research interests include methodology of Japanese language teaching, Japanese keywords and sociolinguistics

Magdalena Varga is Lecturer in the Hindi language at the Department of Languages and Cultures of India and South Asia, Institute of Oriental Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland Her main academic interests focus

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Notes on Contributors

on spoken and colloquial Hindi (including slang), Hindi etymology, sociolinguistics of South Asia and the use of irony in the modern Hindi literature At present, she prepares her doctoral thesis entitled Abusive vocabulary of the Hindi language – Formal and semantic analysis Apart from lecturing and working on her doctoral thesis, she also translates Hindi literature and films into Polish

Jiayi Wang is Lecturer in Chinese Language, Cultural Studies and Interpret- ing and Translation Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, UK She received her PhD in applied linguistics from the University of Warwick, with a focus on professional (official/business) intercultural communication Her main research interests are pragmatics, intercultural interaction and the in- terface between intercultural communication and translation and interpreting studies Prior to her PhD, she was an international project manager and official interpreter and translator in a Chinese government ministry as well as worked as an interpreter and a translator for a wide range of organisations such as Deutsche Bank and Fortune magazine She has published research articles on comparative law and intercultural pragmatics, as well as edited a ministerial journal on international exchange

Yasuhisa Watanabe is Lecturer in the Japanese language at the University of Melbourne His current research interests include face and politeness in intercultural business communication, politics and online discussions His current research project consists in analysing the influence of face in multi-party interactions by applying Japanese emic face

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Introduction

As a scholarly concept, face has existed for about 60 years It was first intro- duced to academic discourse by Erving Goffman In his seminal work Interac- tion ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior, he 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” or “an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes” (1967, p 5) Goffman’s understanding of face is visibly influenced by the Chinese conceptualisation presented by Hsien Chin Hu (1944) and by some sociological theories (e g , Émile Durkheim, 1915) Goffman’s ideas about face and facework became an inspiration for many scholars and researchers in different academic disciplines

The papers presented in this volume constitute a contribution to a discussion on face, facework and (im)politeness The volume consists of four parts, each of which discusses face and face-related issues from different perspec- tives, and in different cultures and languages Part 1, Face and (im)polite- ness – theoretical issues, introduces the reader to the nature of the concept of face and face-constituting factors The first chapter drawing on data from the Greek culture and language is an attempt to redefine face and its association with politeness (Maria Sifianou), while the second one investigates the role of context as a subjective face-constituting factor, drawing on Polish data (Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska)

Part 2, Face and politeness in cross-cultural and intercultural perspec- tives, consists of four chapters presenting: a revision of the socio-pragmatic modelling of face against the Italian concept of figura (Gudrun Held); a study of compliments and their effects on face in exchanges between PhD students of different nationalities and their Indian supervisors (Marzieh Bashirpour and Imtiaz Hasnain); an analysis of face-related behaviour in Sino-American official interaction (Jiayi Wang); and a study of expressing opinions in Polish-Irish interactions (Weronika Gąsior)

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12 Introduction

Part 3, Face, politeness and social norms, overviews aspects of polite be- haviour and facework in different languages and cultures Paulina Biały analy- ses the use of diminutives in Polish; Magdalena Varga writes about the Indian way of politeness, which often seems shocking to members of other cultures;

while Maria Spiechowicz describes harmonious communication and the impor- tance of the concept of omoiyari (consideration, sympathy) in Japanese culture In Part 4, Face in different discourses, each chapter is devoted to the study of face in different types of discourse: Marcin Kuczok conducts a cognitive analysis of the metaphors of GOD’S FACE in the Old Testament Yasuhisa Watanabe investigates the nature of Japanese emic face on the basis of political analytic articles The last chapter deals with the interpreter’s professional face and the ethics of interpreting (Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska)

In spite of the great variety of perspectives taken by the authors, the con- tributions presented in this volume form a consistent whole due to the common denominator of the concept of face

References

Durkheim, É (2001) The elementary forms of religious life (C Cosman, Trans ) Oxford: Oxford University Press (Original work published 1912) Goffman, E (1967) Interaction ritual: Essays in face-to-face behavior Chicago:

Aldine Publishing Company

Hu, H Ch (1944) The Chinese concepts of face American Anthropologist, 46(1, part 1), 45–64

Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska The Editor

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P a r t 1

Face and (im)politeness –

theoretical issues

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C h a p t e r 1

On culture, face and politeness. Again

Maria Sifianou

Abstract

Research on face is undergoing a move away from face being viewed as an individual construct to a more interactional one under the influence of discursive approaches to politeness In this framework, it has been argued that like politeness, face is an interactional phenomenon and should be explored as such (see, e g , Arundale, 2010; Haugh, 2010; O’Driscoll, 2011a)

However, face and politeness are different kinds of concepts, the understanding of which probably necessitates different frameworks Untangling face from (im)politeness in research is, to my mind, a necessary first step because if face and politeness are researched independently, we may be able to understand their meanings better and see their possible connections with fresh eyes (see, e g , Haugh & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2010; O’Driscoll, 2011b; Haugh, 2013)

Drawing on data from Greek, I will try to substantiate my contentions that:

• face is a relational phenomenon but not necessarily an interactional one;

• it makes sense to talk about face as an individual possession (with group repercussions), and as a pre-existing (though not static) entity with enduring aspects;

• the association between face and politeness may not be as strong as has been assumed

1. Introduction

For years, the concept of face has played a central role in explaining polite- ness and impoliteness phenomena Among other consequences, this confluence has led to attempts at analysing face in terms of frameworks that have been developed for politeness However, recently there has been a growing consen- sus towards disentangling face from politeness research since face involves issues broader than politeness (see, e g , Haugh & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2010;

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O’Driscoll, 2011a, b; Haugh, 2013; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Arundale, 2013a)

The quest for exploring face on its own right has followed from the discursive turn within politeness research Among its various effects, this turn has triggered a distinction between politeness1 (lay conceptualisations) and politeness2 (theoretical constructs) (see, e g , Eelen, 2001; Watts, 2003) and by extension Face1 and Face2 (see, e g , O’Driscoll, 1996; Terkourafi, 2010) Within this framework, most researchers agree that both (im)politeness and face are interactive phenomena and thus lay conceptualisations of politeness and by extension of face necessitate special attention Interestingly, while politeness was relegated to being a culturally-specific concept, face retained a strong universal position (see, e g O’Driscoll, 2011a, p 18; André, 2013, p 78) However, face and politeness are different kinds of concepts, the understanding of which probably necessitates different frameworks Untangling face from (im)politeness in research is, to my mind, a necessary first step because if face and politeness are researched independently, we may be able to understand their meanings better and see their possible connections with fresh eyes

Drawing on data from Greek, I will try to substantiate my contentions that:

• face is a relational phenomenon but not necessarily an interactional one;

• it makes sense to talk about face as an individual possession (with group repercussions), and as a pre-existing (though not static) entity with enduring aspects;

• the association between face and politeness may not be as strong as has been assumed

I will start with a brief exposition of the concept of face and proceed with its conceptualisation in Greek, realising that emic conceptualisations of face should inform but not constrain the theorisation of the concept (see, e g , Watts, 2003, p 9; Haugh, 2012, pp 118, 125; Haugh, 2013)

2. The concept of face

As is well known, Brown and Levinson (1978/1987) have posited the notion of face as fundamental to our understanding of the expression of politeness, drawing on Goffman’s (1955/1972) notion of “face,” along with its English folk perceptions which link face with “notions of being embarrassed or hu- miliated, or ‘losing face’ ” However, these folk notions seem to be absent from their exposition, as they have proceeded to develop instead a theory of face- threatening acts affecting primarily the addressee’s face Brown and Levinson’s (1987, p 66) frequently quoted definition is that face is “the public self-image

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Chapter 1 On culture, face and politeness Again 17 that every member wants to claim for himself,” consisting of two interrelated albeit somewhat conflicting aspects: “positive face” refers to the desire to be appreciated and approved of by at least some others and “negative face” refers to the desire to be free from impositions

However, in most languages, face is a polysemous word based on various metaphorical and metonymic meaning extensions As the face is one of the most significant parts of the human body, its meaning has extended from the physical object it signifies to the whole human being, including physical and non-physical aspects Moreover, the physical face provides access to one’s psychological states, feelings and emotions, and to one’s character and behaviour (Yu, 2001; Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2010; Marmaridou, 2011) It is thus not surprising, that at a very early stage, Brown and Levinson’s dichotomous conceptualisation of face was criticised as too narrow, ethnocentric and indi- vidualistic (see, e g , Watts, Ide, & Ehlich, 1992; Werkhofer, 1992; Matsumoto, 1988; Mao, 1994; Eelen, 2001; Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003; Watts, 2003; Mills, 2003), and thus inapplicable in many societies

It is fair to add at this point that face for Brown and Levinson (1987, p 13) is not just an individual’s claimed self-image but rather an image “attributed by interactants to one another” and “subject of much cultural elaboration ” However, despite such commitments, which entail the social attribution of face in actual interactions, Brown and Levinson have focused on other-face concerns through the mitigation of face-threatening acts One problem with such a conceptualisation of face is that it ignores self-face concerns Moreover, face is present throughout interactions and not only when face-threatening acts are likely to emerge (see, e g , O’Driscoll, 2007), as it is “diffusely located in the flow of events in the encounter” (Goffman, 1955; 1972, p 320) ¹

In addition to being present throughout an interaction, face may also involve issues beyond any specific encounter This was initially acknowledged by Werkhofer (1992, p 176), who argued that face is not only connected to the narrow “here and now” but also “to processes that may go on over longer stretches of time ” More recent research on folk or emic conceptualisations of face reveals that “face is often seen as enduring across interactions unless otherwise challenged” (see Haugh & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2010, p 2073) A lucid illustration of this durable nature of face is provided by Haugh (2010, p 13), who discusses an example of a footballer, who said in an interview: “The loss awoke us We had to save face after such a defeat,” arguing that in this specific instance, and in sporting contexts more generally, face refers to the reputation of the team and its collective honour, bringing also historicity into play since

1 Brown and Levinson (1987, p 233) note but do not elaborate on this diffuseness by sug- gesting the notion of “face-threatening intention” (instead of face-threatening act), which covers conversational sequences made up of a number of turns

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this reputation has been established over a number of seasons Interestingly, this enduring aspect of face has been noted by Goffman (1955; 1972, p 320), who says that in order for someone to maintain face in the current situation, he/she must have abstained from certain acts in the past that would be difficult to face up to later (cf O’Driscoll, 1996, p 6) This understanding does not necessarily contradict the discursive co-construction of face but highlights the argument that what is co-constructed on the spot also draws from prior encounters and sociocultural resources available to interlocutors (see, e g , Mills, 2003, p 83;

Arundale, 2006; Haugh, 2007) In order to act at any moment, interlocutors employ the socio-historical knowledge they possess, and evaluate which aspects of their multifaceted face are relevant to the current situation

Recent research on politeness has witnessed a shift towards a discursive, evaluative approach involving the contested distinction between first- and second-order politeness (as already mentioned) – a distinction that has been extended to face (O’Driscoll, 1996; Terkourafi, 2010) This bifurcation has led some scholars to search for a universal construct, associated with psychological processes of identity construction (André, 2013, p 78) and others to argue that face is not given but negotiated between interlocutors as they interact in specific contexts, and should thus be analysed from the participants’ perspective rather than from the analyst’s (Arundale, 2010, p 8) ² Eelen (2001, p 132) further distinguishes between two sides to first-order notions of politeness: an action- related side (expressive and classificatory politeness1), and a conceptual side (metapragmatic politeness1) The former relates to the way politeness manifests itself in interactions, and the latter to lay assessments – how people talk about politeness Since such views have been extended to face, it is important to note here that there are differences between face and politeness Verbal and non- verbal actions may be evaluated by their performer or by others as polite or impolite in situ or at a later point The presence of related tokens (e g , rude, (im)polite) in an interaction may point to evaluation through metalinguistic comments (Watts, 2003, p 2) On the other hand, the many different meta- phorical and metonymic extensions of face are used in daily interactions for self- and other-evaluation, or in self-reflection, but they are not normally part of metalinguistic comments (cf Haugh, 2010) Thus the discursive struggle over the value of terms like politeness does not apply to face in any straightforward way Unlike politeness, facework is not behaviour that is typically talked about and thus not amenable to discursive struggle This observation has important consequences for the object of our investigation Moreover, although the entries in good dictionaries can provide information on the precise meanings and use of

2 Even Brown and Levinson (1987, p 14) themselves see a need for “more in the way of ethnographic descriptions of the way in which people articulate face notions ”

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Chapter 1 On culture, face and politeness Again 19 collocations including face, related entries will be inadequate for understanding what politeness is all about

3. The concept of face in Greek

The concept of face in Greek exhibits a great variety of metonymic and meta- phorical extensions (Marmaridou, 2011) My own understanding is based on dictionary entries and a collection of examples drawn from daily interactions, television, newspapers, popular magazines, the internet and corpora (Sketch Engine/GkWaC – http://www sketchengine co uk) The dataset includes 236 instances of collocations of related terms (see also Sifianou, 2011) It should be noted that such examples are not very common and occur mostly in informal interactions

Greek has more than one term for face In addition to πρόσωπο (prósopo), the Greek word for face, there is the more colloquial μούτρα (mútra), a bor- rowing from the Italian mutria Very briefly, πρόσωπο (prósopo) has a wider range of meanings because, in addition to its literal meaning as the front part of the head, it can also be used figuratively for the front part of buildings or even abstract concepts (e g , “poverty has face”) It can also be used to refer to the person as a whole, including a specific personality, character or behaviour and to the identity of an individual (e g , “He showed his true face,” “The face of the authors of many old texts remains unknown,” “Very little is known about the face of the victim”) Besides, it encompasses a sense of the social image of an individual or the group they belong to It is in this last sense that πρόσωπο (prósopo) can be used interchangeably with μούτρα (mútra) in certain expressions, such as Δεν έχω πρόσωπο/μούτρα να δω άνθρωπο “I don’t have face to see anybody” or Με τι πρόσωπο/μούτρα θα του μιλήσεις μετά απ’ όσα έγιναν; “With what face will you speak to him after what has happened?” On the other hand, μούτρα (mútra) has a wider collocational range of expressions denoting emotions, and thus it is more relevant to interpersonal interaction It is one’s μούτρα which may either fall down (τα μούτρα του/της πέφτουν), implying embarrassment or shame, or be dropped intentionally (ρίχνει τα μούτρα του/της), implying self-inflicted humiliation

In addition to these two lexical items, μέτωπο (métopo) and its informal variant κούτελο (kútelo) “forehead,” at the top of the human body and the site of the mind, are also used in related expressions For instance, one can say Θέλω/Έχω το μέτωπό/κούτελό μου καθαρό/ψηλά “I want/have my forehead clean/high” to express desire for or possession of integrity and honour (see also Hirschon, 2001; Koutsantoni, 2007, p 103) Here again the informal variant is

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the predominant lexeme ³ These lexical items can be used to refer to the physical part of the body but are also used metaphorically and reflect emotions and significant values for the construal of the social person (cf Ruhi & Işık-Güler, 2007 on yüz in Turkish, and Haugh, 2007 on kao in Japanese)

As noted previously, in Greek one’s face may either “fall down” or be intentionally “dropped ” One’s face may fall down because of a prior act against their values that leads to negative emotions which may be then verbalised On the other hand, one may decide to drop one’s face and perform an act they con- sider humiliating if other concerns are seen as more significant than face ones Dropping one’s face may require courage and self-confidence, derived mostly from assumed personal integrity It is this collocation which best exemplifies the fact that face is relational but not necessarily interactional However, it is relational in the very specific sense of approaching the other in order to protect an existing relationship On the other hand, it is hard to see any interactional aspect of face in such collocations since they are typically used in recount- ings of prior actions or in anticipation of future actions For instance, in a TV magazine agony column, the writer describes his problems with his ex-wife, saying that whenever they had a dispute and she would not speak to him for long periods, he was always the one to “drop his face” and approach her in order to find a way out More specifically, one drops one’s face consciously after calculating the pros and cons of a prospective action, whereas one’s face falls down typically by accident One’s face may fall down for various reasons, such as a violation of social conventions or an admission of a mistake or wrongdoing by the speaker, or a related other, which results in some kind of discomfort

Τhe result of assumed broader infractions is assessed with idiomatic expres- sions like δεν έχω μούτρα/πρόσωπο να τον δω/να του μιλήσω, literally “I don’t have face to see/speak to him,” or δεν έχω μούτρα/πρόσωπο να βγω στην κοινωνία “I don’t have face to appear in society ” In other words, if somebody feels that they or related others have behaved in an inappropriate way, they may then feel they have no face and can no longer “face other people” (cf Yu, 2001) These are also evaluative judgements made by individuals, mostly in relation to themselves or in reference to third parties Producers of such ut- terances express their embarrassment and/or shame for inappropriate behaviour in the past which renders future contact or interaction difficult Such examples illustrate my contention that one is normally understood to enter an interaction already possessing some kind of face, which may either fall down accidentally or may be dropped intentionally under certain conditions Interestingly, such expressions may also be used in cases in which the speaker is not responsible for the regrettable situation External factors beyond one’s control may require

3 There is also μούρη (moúri from the Venetian muro) and φάτσα (fátsa, from the Italian faccia) among others

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Chapter 1 On culture, face and politeness Again 21 someone to behave in a way which goes against their values For instance, a man explaining his dire financial situation wonders “with what face can I look at my family members?” since his salary was below the poverty line and could not provide them with the essentials, something he perceived as his duty

It is of note that the collocation “I have face” is rare in Greek, which may indicate that having face is taken for granted, and when it is used it refers to having integrity typically related to financial solvency Expressions involving

“having face” mostly refer to its absence, in negative or interrogative construc- tions Both the negative δεν έχω μούτρα να τον δω “I don’t have face to see him” and the interrogative με τι μούτρα να τον δω; “with what face to see him?”

point to the absence of face, both being negative self-evaluations

It transpires from the above discussion that most Greek collocations involving face (in the sense considered here) relate to the idea of lacking rather than having face In other words, one’s verbal involvement with one’s own or somebody else’s face tends to be negative (cf Ruhi, 2010; André, 2013) This is also evidenced by the fact that there are no collocations referring to maintain- ing, giving, enhancing or saving face Face is maintained or saved probably by implication, that is, by following the social conventions people have internalised from the resources available in their society Such actions are not lexicalised, which may indicate that they are not as salient as losing face

4. Data analysis

When using collocations including face, Greeks mostly talk about themselves and their emotions These include feelings of embarrassment, shame or guilt, which are negative emotions that may or may not be voiced The presence of an audience and the possibility of negative comments may exacerbate such emotions (Ho, Fu, & Ng, 2004) In other words, face is on display when in the presence of others (Holtgraves, 2002, p 38), and if one loses face, one may feel bad about how one may be seen by others (Culpeper, 2011, p 25) The present data lend further support to what I have argued elsewhere (Sifianou, 2011), namely that in Greek face is mostly understood as a personal possession⁴ constructed on the basis of “approved social attributes” (Watts, 2005, p xxix) or of norms and values that individuals assume to exist in society (Mills, 2003,

4 Further evidence that face is conceptualised as an individual’s possession is provided by expressions like πήρε τα μούτρα του και έφυγε “he took/picked up his face and left,” which means that one leaves an interaction or a place feeling embarrassed or shamefaced

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p 63), and should be followed I will now proceed with the discussion of some examples from my data

In one instance, a blogger wrote that she had sent an icon of the Virgin Mary as a wedding present When she saw the wedding pictures two weeks later and realised that it was a civil wedding and that both the bride and the groom were Muslims, she said “my face fell down” to have sent such a present Another blogger was seeking advice on an unhealthy plant and said “my face fell down when I saw what I had bought but I had done so late one evening and I was sort of hypnotised ” Such examples signify that individuals conceptualise face as a possession which is affected by their own acts Whatever the resulting feelings are, they are experienced in private, in interaction only with oneself and in possible anticipation of what others might think of one if they found out In other words, these are self-evaluative judgements which may emerge even in the absence of criticism by others who may have witnessed the event (cf Ho et al , 2004, p 70) Such self-assessments may never be voiced; or they may be recounted in reporting an event But recounts are a different type of event with different self-presentational aims and a different audience (cf Ruhi, 2010, p 166) These examples illustrate Spencer-Oatey’s (2011, p 3575) suggestion that any discomfort resulting from an act may be the outcome of self- reflection and not necessarily the outcome of negotiation between participants in an interaction Spencer-Oatey (2011, p 3575) also suggests that the ensuing discomfort may be the result of empathy with someone else, a point which is also supported by my data For instance, a lady described how depressed she felt after her third unsuccessful attempt at in vitro fertilisation, and added that her “face fell down” when she heard stories of other people having very seri- ous health problems

In addition to being constructed as an individual’s possession, face may also be interactional, that is, it may emerge in interaction For instance, in one case, a mother explains that her “face fell down” when the nursery school teacher asked her if she had brought extra clothes for her three-year-old son in case they needed to change him Since she had not, the question probably made her feel inadequate in the eyes of the teacher In such instances, face may be co- constructed in specific interactions, but on the basis of specific resources that an individual has developed through socio-situational experience We can easily imagine that some other mother would have been unaffected by such a query, an issue which makes the analyst’s task very difficult “The potential for face damage is related to the degree of sensitivity of the face component at issue”

(Culpeper, 2011, p 202)

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Chapter 1 On culture, face and politeness Again 23 As I hope has become clear, face is relational, and has individual, interactional and collective aspects,⁵ reflecting Spencer-Oatey’s (2007, p 644) suggestion that, in cognitive terms, face relates to the notion of “self-image,”

which includes individual, relational and collective construals of self, and is perceived as a more global and long-term construal (see Lim, 2010) akin to identity (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013) So, in Greek, face is not understood as simply an image co-constructed in specific encounters but as something that extends beyond any of them

5. Discussion and concluding remarks

In this paper, I have attempted to explore the concept of face through the use of a number of related expressions in Greek To this end, I looked at metaphors used in face-to-face and internet interactions which include the term face, and I also consulted dictionary entries Even though there are numerous collocational possibilities, I concentrated on those which relate to the human being as a whole who experiences negative emotions such as shame and embarrassment, and either verbalises or self-reflects on them This account is by no means ex- haustive because that would require a lengthy project and an extensive corpus, which is unavailable

From the above discussion, three issues emerge: First, face in Greek seems to be conceptualised as a taken-for-granted, personal property which one should uphold in life and thus in interactions, but which one may decide to drop in specific instances Being conceptualised as an individual’s possession, face seems to exist outside actual interactions as well as within them The discomfort resulting from one’s face “falling down” may be an outcome not only of participating in an interaction but also of self-reflection, or as a consequence of empathy (Spencer-Oatey, 2011) Obviously, self-reflection and empathy presup- pose an awareness of the co-existence of social beings Thus, face is understood as relational but not exclusively interactional The terms “relational” and

“interactional” have been variously and sometimes interchangeably used, but what I mean here by “relational” is something very broad in comparison to “in-

5 In Greek, face can be associated both with individuals and with groups an individual belongs to, such as their close and extended family, their workgroup, even their perceived nationality group Due to space limitations, I cannot expand on this (but see Sifianou, 2011) The relative priority of group face obviously depends on the degree to which the individual identifies with a specific group, but the very existence of group face indicates that face cannot merely be a construct of any current interaction

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teractional,” namely that as social beings we live in relation to others, and that our acts, thoughts and conduct make sense in this context (cf Terkourafi, 2010)

Face is interactional, but given that face is not seen as an exclusive “property of the emergent relationship between interactants,” but concurrently as

“a property specific to the individuals involved” (Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2011, p 239), in established relationships interlocutors start each interaction taking for granted the kind of face that has been constructed over prior social contacts This then means that just as a model which centres on the individual is inadequate, one that ignores the individual is equally inadequate Acquainted interlocutors do not begin negotiating their relationship each time they interact and even unacquainted interlocutors may make assumptions before they can start an interaction (Scollon & Scollon, 1995, p 35) This is the unmarked case where face is addressed but may not become salient; what Arundale (2010) calls “face stasis” and sees as a major component of facework In Goffman’s (1955; 1972, p 319) words, “if the encounter sustains an image of him that he has long taken for granted, he probably will have few feelings about the mat- ter ” In fact, it has been argued (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013, p 6) that the focus on interactions between unacquainted others may have backgrounded the enduring aspects of face

Thus, individuals enter interactions already possessing some kind of face, which means that they do not construct it completely anew in every interaction A person may present themselves or be evaluated as honest or polite in a specific interaction, but attribution of more permanent qualities, like “honesty”

or “integrity,” normally develops over more than a single event In fact, this enduring core construct may be a constitutive force of interaction As Haugh (2010, p 12; 2013, p 12) suggests, face is not only co-constituted in interactions but is also constitutive of them Lim (2010, p 264) describes this idea very vividly when he says that face in Korean is not an emotional rollercoaster which people experience in a single contact but a lofty tower they build over a lifetime In my understanding, this is what Goffman (1955; 1972, p 322) calls

“social face,” which “can be his [the person’s] most personal possession and the center of his security and pleasure ”

Second, the concept of face in Greek seems to be broader than that in English, and to share features with cultures such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean (Ervin-Tripp, Nakmuro, & Guo, 1995; Mao, 1994; Haugh, 2007) Like these languages, Greek has more than one term for ‘face’ with overlapping functions, and a range of expressions involving the term “face ” Much as in East Asian languages, the verbs used in related collocations are those also used for possessions (e g , have, fall down, drop) As in East Asian languages, face is also conceptualised as a collective possession, since one can lose face for wrongdoings of others, such as family members (Ervin-Tripp et al , 1995) Face expressions in Greek are used in informal interactions and mainly in the

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Chapter 1 On culture, face and politeness Again 25 sense of “lacking face” or “losing face” but not of “saving face ”⁶ In relation to English there is disagreement, since for Ervin-Tripp et al (1995, p 45) such expressions are restricted to educated use, whereas they have also been found to be in use among ordinary speakers mainly in the sense of “losing face” or

“saving face” (Haugh & Hinze, 2003, p 1597)

Hirschon (2001, p 20) sees “face” and “honour” in Greek as conceptual equivalents Drawing on extant research, she claims that honour in one interpretation “is seen as referring to a person’s social reputation, prestige and esteem” and is thus externally bestowed In another interpretation, “it refers to a person’s intrinsic worth and to moral integrity” and is thus “a moral attribute, inherent in a person’s notion of self ” This is not very different from the two aspects of face in Chinese: one which relates to “honour” and “reputation,”

attributed to one by others and the other which relates to “self-respect” or

“dignity,” which is more an inner feeling (André, 2013, p 70) Obviously, these are tentative contentions and require further exploration, especially since very little is known about English emic conceptualisations of face (but see Yu, 2001)

Third, my data indicates that politeness concerns, even though relevant in some instances, do not appear to be central in the conceptualisation of face

“[E]mic understandings of face₁ generally do not underpin emic understandings of politeness₁ in many languages” (Haugh, 2013, p 16) If we reconsider the above examples, it appears that few of such states of discomfort would be associated with impoliteness The concern for face did not prompt behaviour that could be labelled polite, and did not result from acts that could be labelled impolite Dropping one’s face may even serve politeness concerns, as in the case of a blogger who wrote that he had dropped his face and apologised to some friends, in order to avoid the escalation of a conflict and the possible break-down of the relationship In fact, concern for face may even engender acts of impoliteness (cf Hinze, 2012)

The above observations raise a number of issues It appears that face and politeness are not related to the extent to which it has been previously assumed;

in fact, they are different kinds of concept Eelen (2001, p 33 drawing on Vyt- goski) says that politeness is a “spontaneous” concept whose conceptualisation depends on personal experiences in concrete situations, and on the guiding role of parents This is not the case with face, which is learnt like other lexical items mostly through hearing it being used; because of this, it may be more linguistically and culturally specific than politeness Asking people to describe acts which lead to face being lost, gained, supported or threatened or, even more difficult, asking them to define face, may not be fruitful because, unlike politeness, face is not a concept that is easily defined or one that usually leads

6 In fact, André (2013, p 71) notes that the expression “to save face” is a neologism formed in English as the opposite of “lose face ”

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to meta-comments Other terms like “honour” or “integrity” may be used, but then their link to face may not be very clear (cf Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2010) This does not mean that there are no invocations of face in interactions However, these are not typically metalinguistic comments but rather collocations chosen instead of other expressions Thus, face differs as a concept from that of politeness; facework is a constructed, scientific term, not an item of popular parlance; and both are less salient to interactants than politeness (O’Driscoll, 2011a, p 22) If these observations are valid, it means that it will be harder to construct a universal theory of face than one of politeness, even though current research seems to be heading in the opposite direction: it is more or less agreed that a universal theory of politeness is not feasible but there are various interesting attempts at constructing universal (F2) theories of face (cf O’Driscoll, 2011a; André, 2013)

I do not wish to suggest that emic conceptualisations should form the basis of any theory However, the collocations frequently used in different communi- ties may offer a window to a broader understanding of how face is conceptualised and its relationship to other related terms such as “honour” and also politeness Yu (2001) argues that since face expressions are metaphorical and metonymic extensions of a significant body part (i e face) and since humans of any race have similar bodies, such collocations will be widespread and possibly universal However, the metaphors a linguistic community develops in an effort to understand a phenomenon may both afford and constrain its conceptualisation (cf Arundale, 2013a, p 10; 2013b) This then may indicate that we should start with emic understandings, through an analysis of interactions which include related collocations (see, e g , Hinze, 2012), before trying to analyse actual interactions in terms of the facework strategies used For instance, we could assume that paying a compliment or offering a gift gives face or even enhances somebody’s face, but it may be risky to attribute such functions to such acts, because a compliment may be perceived as flattery and gift-giving as an imposition in some contexts Subsequent turns may not necessarily reveal how such acts were received Reactions to assumed face- threatening acts may range from ignoring the issue to mild challenges and even confrontations The choice of a particular reaction will involve individual preferences, the relational history of the dyad, and the nature of the situation Understanding how individuals conceptualise face is, to my mind, a first step before we can embark on attempts to construct a theory, especially one that aims to be applicable across languages and cultures (Haugh, 2012) We have to ensure that understanding of concepts is shared between interlocutors and analysts Otherwise the analyst may be subconsciously imposing their own understandings on the data analysed

Some of us have developed an interest in the concept of face for the most part through Brown and Levinson’s (1978; 1987) work, which was based on

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Chapter 1 On culture, face and politeness Again 27 a modified version of Goffman’s (1955; 1972) views inspired by information from Chinese sources Their influence is so strong that it may have delimited our understanding of the concept (cf Hinze, 2012) which may even be in conflict with our emic conceptualisations Thus, as Bargiela-Chiappini (2010, p 315) suggests, we should perhaps concentrate more on what emic concepts of face have in common, and on their common underlying values and norms

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of the paper that was presented at the CC2013FACE International Symposium, University of Silesia, Poland (26–27 April 2013) I would like to express my gratitude to Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska for her kind invitation I should also record my special thanks to Eleni Antonopoulou, Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, Jean Hannah, Jim O’Driscoll and Peter Trudgill for their constructive comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper Needless to say that the usual disclaimers hold

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C h a p t e r 2

Multiple contexts of face

Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska

Abstract

Face is a sociocultural construct which is based on the person’s sense of identity and expectations as to how his/her self-image should be created, and constitutes a property of relationship between interactants (cf Arundale, 2006; Bousfield, 2008; Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009) As such it appears to be strongly context dependent Context is understood here as “aspects of the social environment” which become “observable” by their consequences on discourse, or by the influence of discourse on social situations (van Dijk, 2006, p 164) Contexts of social interactions in which face is constituted are “subjective participant interpretations” of the relevant aspects of the social environment

The aims of the study are to analyse the mechanisms responsible for face creation during social interaction and to investigate the role of context as a subjective face-constituting factor Face has a structure which can be compared to lettuce; it gets softer towards its centre Some aspects of face, the central (internal) ones, are most sensitive and vulnerable to attack or damage;

others – the more distant from the centre (external) are less vulnerable to face-threats It may be assumed that in the majority of cultures people display affective sensitivity to the same aspects of face, the only difference is in the degree of their importance and in their location relative to the centre of face Irrespective of the degree of sensitivity specific to a particular aspect of face, we can observe different contexts in which particular aspects of face are foregrounded

1. Introduction

The aims of the study are to analyse the mechanisms responsible for face creation during social interaction and to investigate the role of context as a subjective face-constituting factor In my study I will try to substantiate the following assumptions:

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32 Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska

• Face is an expression of feelings about the self and self-related elements (people, objects and places)

• As an image mutually created by participants during social interaction, face involves much more than the self

• The meaning of face depends on the context of interaction, perceived sub- jectively by the individual

To do so I will follow the broad multidisciplinary approach to discourse advo- cated by Teun van Dijk, which integrates a detailed and explicit study of text and talk with an analysis of their social and cognitive contexts The data used in the analysis come from the Polish language and culture

2. Universal human needs and emotions in social context The realization of our everyday needs is always associated with emotions, those evoked by difficulties we often face, and those resulting from the satisfaction of the needs This has a strong impact on the way we function in our social environment The key to understanding human behaviour, as Abraham H Maslow (1970) claims, is in the basic needs people strive to satisfy during their lifetime Among them, once the physiological and safety needs have been gratified, there emerge the belongingness and love needs and the esteem needs. People want to have a place in their group or family, they want to be loved and cherished, or at least accepted by the important others But apart from relationships, they crave for achievement, for mastery and competence, and for independence and freedom They have “what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), status, fame and glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity, or appreciation” (Maslow, 1970, p 45) The satisfaction of the needs leads to the feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength and the feeling of being useful and needed by others

Jonathan H Turner (2007) writes about transactional needs, a group of universal human needs which are activated when people participate in social interaction The satisfaction of these needs results from the character of face- to-face encounters and is necessary for successful communication Among them, there are “needs for self-verification,” the participants’ desires for their self-image (face) to be accepted by others; “needs for profitable exchange pay- offs”; “needs for group inclusion”; “needs for trust”; and “needs for facticity,”

by which Turner means the needs for sharing a common factual world with other participants Once the needs are satisfied, participants experience positive emotions which make their interaction go smoothly

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Chapter 2 Multiple contexts of face

Interpersonal ties and solidarity between interaction participants depend on the emotions they mutually arouse in each other To strengthen ties and build solidarity, participants have to attune themselves to others, reading their facial expressions and body language (Turner, 2007) Another important factor which has an impact on the relationship between participants is ritualization of interaction Ritual behaviour contributes to shared emotion and is a sign of sociability As Randall Collins (2004, p 50) claims, it builds up “mutual focus and emotional entrainment ” The emotions shared by interactants may be positive, such as happiness, friendliness or satisfaction, as well as negative ones, such as sorrow or unhappiness Performing interaction rituals participants “go on to heighten their sense of mutual participation by becoming strongly aware of each other’s consciousness” (Collins, 2004, p 49) The transient emotions initiating the ritual produce long-term emotions – feelings of solidarity, confidence or self-satisfaction, which constitute the outcome of the ritual activity (Collins, 2004)

Other solidarity-building factors are exchange of valued resources and conformity to expectations and moral code (Turner, 2007, pp 32–33) People attach value to objects, gestures and other features of the world; some of them engender positive emotions, others – negative emotions The attachment of emotional valences is the necessary condition of interaction between individuals (Turner, 2007; Collins, 1993) Conformity to other people’s expectations arouses positive emotions, while failure to do so arouses negative emotions Satisfaction of all these social needs and experiencing positive emotions resulting from it make social interaction possible

3. Face and emotions

Face is a multifaceted construct based on the person’s sense of identity and expectations as to how his/her self-image should be constituted during social interaction People perceive themselves as having certain attributes; they want to be characterized by attributes which are socially desirable, and reject those which they disapprove of or which are not accepted by others Thus, face “is associated with these affectively sensitive attributes; however, exactly which attributes are face sensitive can vary from person to person and from context to context” (Spencer-Oatey, 2009, p 14; Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009) The individual’s expectations concerning his/her self-image depend on his/her feeling of self-worth and his/her interpretation of past social experience, that is “the context of previous, similar encounters (with whom one is meeting, the situation the interactants are in, and so on)” (Bousfield, 2008, p 39) Face un-

New ways to face and (im)politeness

New ways to face

and (im)politeness

New ways to face and (im)politeness

Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska

Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

P a r t 1

Face and (im)politeness –

theoretical issues

On culture, face and politeness. Again

Maria Sifianou

Multiple contexts of face

Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska