1. Politeness beyond Brown &Levinson
Dr Jim O’Driscoll
A-level teachers’ symposium, June 2015

2. Brown & Levinson: summary
Everybody has 2 kinds of face: positive & negative

3. Brown & Levinson: summary
Everybody has 2 kinds of face: positive & negative
Many speech acts are intrinsically face-threatening (FTAs)

4. Brown & Levinson: summary
Everybody has 2 kinds of face: positive & negative
Many speech acts are intrinsically face-threatening (FTAs)
People mostly wish to maintain face (both S and H)

5. Brown & Levinson: summary
Everybody has 2 kinds of face: positive & negative
Many speech acts are intrinsically face-threatening (FTAs)
People mostly wish to maintain face (both S and H)
So people perform speech acts so as to redress the FTA

6. Brown & Levinson: summary
Everybody has 2 kinds of face: positive & negative
Many speech acts are intrinsically face-threatening (FTAs)
People mostly wish to maintain face (both S and H)
So people perform speech acts so as to redress the FTA
The bigger the perceived threat, the more the redressive action: None: bald-on-record
>>> small: positive politeness
>>> bigger: negative politeness
>>> even bigger: off-record
>>> terribly big: don’t do the act

7. Brown & Levinson: summary
Everybody has 2 kinds of face: positive & negative
Many speech acts are intrinsically face-threatening (FTAs)
People mostly wish to maintain face (both S and H)
So people perform speech acts so as to redress the FTA
The bigger the perceived threat, the more the redressive action: None: bald-on-record
>>> small: positive politeness
>>> bigger: negative politeness
>>> even bigger: off-record
>>> terribly big: don’t do the act
To compute the size of an FTAx: P(H,S) + D + Rx

8. Brown & Levinson’s achievement
detailed model with many specific claims amenable to empirical testing a/o discursive refutation
claim of universality
dissemination of notion of face,
>>>> boosted the study of the interpersonal in interaction

9. Critical reactions to B&L: methodology
Explanation with reference to internal states. But we can’t see or hear these (Arundale 2006:199)
The hierarchy of strategies often does not work (O’Driscoll 1996, Byon 2004, Terkourafi 2004, Economidou-Kogetsidis 2005)
- negative politeness doesn’t always signal bigger FTA than positive
- off-record strategy sometimes attends to positive face
The computation of weightiness does not work (Terkourafi 2004; Arundale 2006: 207–208; O’Driscoll 2007a)

10. Critical reactions to B&L: face
limited to western cultures
- Face-as-wants is western individualist (see O’Driscoll 2007b: 468 for references)
Negative face is western only (see O’Driscoll 2007b: 470 for references)
too restrictive: omits the situational dependency in Goffman’s original concept (Bargiela-Chiappini 2003, O’Driscoll 2007b)

11. Critical reactions to B&L: affective
emphasis on face threat is too gloomy (‘paranoid’)
>>> politeness just upholds social harmony (e.g. Matsumoto 1988; Ide 1989; Gu 1990; Nwoye 1992)
some acts are face-beneficial effects
>>> - face-boosting acts (Bayraktarogˇlu 1991)
- face-enhancing acts (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1997, Sifianou 2002)

12. Critical reactions to B&L: affective
emphasis on face threat is too gloomy (‘paranoid’)
>>> politeness just upholds social harmony (e.g. Matsumoto 1988; Ide 1989; Gu 1990; Nwoye 1992)
some acts are face-beneficial effects
>>> - face-boosting acts (Bayraktarogˇlu 1991)
- face-enhancing acts (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1997, Sifianou 2002)
OR emphasis on mutual face-maintenance is too sunny
>>> impoliteness (Culpeper 1996, subsequently Culpeper et al 2003, Bousfield 2007, 2008, Bousfield & Locher 2008, Culpeper 2011)

13. Critical reactions to B&L: affective
emphasis on face threat is too gloomy (‘paranoid’)
>>> politeness just upholds social harmony (e.g. Matsumoto 1988; Ide 1989; Gu 1990; Nwoye 1992)
some acts are face-beneficial effects
>>> - face-boosting acts (Bayraktarogˇlu 1991)
- face-enhancing acts (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1997, Sifianou 2002)
OR emphasis on mutual face-maintenance is too sunny
>>> impoliteness (Culpeper 1996, subsequently Culpeper et al 2003, Bousfield 2007, 2008, Bousfield & Locher 2008, Culpeper 2011)
FINALLY it’s just not what people call ‘politeness’

14. Politeness research: the ‘first wave’
Lakoff maxims
Brown & Levinson 1978/1987 face-maintenance
Leech maxims
All speaker-centred

15. (Im)politeness for real people
what is (not) polite?
what is (not) a valid, universally applicable concept?
It depends: are we talking about things which:
mean something to everyday interactants (what they judge polite or otherwise)? OR
2) are scholarly, technical concepts (e.g. ‘politeness’ in B&L’s model)?

16. Politeness research: the ‘second wave’
distinguishes between:
first-order politeness (common-sense notion; how people talk about politeness and evaluate behaviour)
- politic behaviour (everyday, unmarked, conventional)
- politeness (anything over and above)
- impoliteness / rudeness (anything under and below)
‘second-order’ politeness (technical notion; scholarly conceptualisation within a theory of interaction)
Watts et al (1992) >>> Eelen (2001) >>> Watts (2003) (others) Kádár & Haugh (2013)

17. The second wave and beyond the discursive approach
Foci:
mainly on politeness1
longer stretches of interaction
effects (rather than intentions)
so more H-centred (rather than S-centred)
also: multi-modality

18. OK, so Where does all this leave ...........
face?
universality? .

19. Some issues with the concept of face Face across cultures?
A second order concept (‘face2’)
→→→ culture-neutral

20. Some issues with the concept of face When (& how much) is face relevant?
It exists in interaction. Only? What about dislocated a/o asynchronous communication (e.g. phone, )?
How much it matters depends on aspects of situation
It also varies cross-culturally, with respect both to types of occasion and also to particular speech acts

21. Some issues with the concept of face What are faces made from?
suggested ingredients:
Personal wants
Personal reputation
Interpersonal history
Ascribed characteristics
Culture
Situation
in different amounts in different cases

22. Some issues with the concept of face What are faces made of?
Are positive & negative for real a/o useful? 1) No, not really (e.g. Bargiela-Chiappini 2003, Watts 2003) 2) Yes, but they’re not enough (e.g. Lim & Bowers 1991, O’Driscoll 2007b; 2011) 3) Not exactly. They have to be recast as abstract, second-order concepts (Arundale 2006; 2009, Terkourafi 2007) with very different manifestations in different cultures (2) & (3) involve reconceptualising B&L’s positive face

23. Some issues with the concept of face What are faces made of?
= How do we describe a person’s face?
How many elements does it have?
Just two basic ones:
positive negative (Brown & Levinson 1987)
connection separation (Arundale 2006, 2009)
approach withdrawal (Terkourafi )
Ideal social identity ideal individual autonomy (Mao 1994)
But that’s not all:
positive negative (e.g. O’Driscoll 2007, 2011)

24. To whom – or what – does face pertain?
Perhaps not to individual interactants? >>> group face (e.g. Nwoye 1992, De Kadt 1998) >>> face-constituting theory (Arundale 2006, 2009; Haugh 2009)

25. References & bibliography
Arundale, Robert B Face as relational and interactional: A communication framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research 2 (2): 193–216.
Arundale, Robert B. (2009) Face as emergent in interpersonal communication: an alternative to Goffman. In Bargiela Chiappini & Haugh, pp. 33–54.
Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca (2003). Face and politeness: New (insights) for old (concepts). Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1011):
Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca& Michael Haugh (eds) (2009) Face, Communication and Social Interaction. London: Equinox.
Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca & Daniel Kádár (eds.), (2011). Politeness Across Cultures. Palgrave MacMillan
Bayraktaroglu, Arın Politeness and interactional imbalance. In Florian Coulmas (ed.), New Perspectives on Linguistic Etiquette. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 92: 5–34.
Bousfield, Derek, Impoliteness, preference organisation and conducivity. Multilingua 26.1: 1–33.
Bousfield, Derek, Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamin
Bousfield, Derek & Miriam Locher (eds.) Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

26. References (cont.)
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson 1987 [1978]. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Main body of which first published in Esther Goody (ed.), Questions and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
Byon, Andrew Sangpil Sociopragmatic analysis of Korean requests: pedagogical settings. Journal of Pragmatics 36.9: 1673–1704
Culpeper, Jonathan Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349–367.
Culpeper, Jonathan Impoliteness: using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield & Anne Wichmann Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (10–11): 1545–1579
Culpeper, Jonathan & Kádár, Daniel Historical (Im)politeness. Bern: Peter Lang.
De Kadt, Elizabeth The concept of face and its applicability to the Zulu language. Journal of Pragmatics 29: 173–191.
Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria ‘‘Yes, tell me please, what time is the midday flight from Athens arriving?’’: Telephone service encounter and politeness. Intercultural Pragmatics 2.3: 253–273
Eelen, Gino A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St Jerome.

27. References (cont.)
Goffman, Erving 1967 [1955]. On Face-Work. In Erving Goffman (collection), Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, 5–45. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Originally in Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18 (3): 213–231).
Goffman, Erving Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. London: Allen lane
Grice, H. Paul 1975 [1967]. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. Ill: Speech Acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. (This being chapter 3 of unpublished MS of the William James Lectures 1967).
Gu, Yueguo Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2):237–258.
Haugh, Michael (2009), Face and Interaction. In In Bargiela Chiappini & Haugh, pp
Haugh, Michael & Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini (eds.) Face in Interaction.
Journal of Pragmatics 42 (special issue)
Ide, Sachiko Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness. Multilingua 2.3: 223–248.
Kádár, Daniel & Michael Haugh (2013). Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine A multilevel approach in the study of talk in interaction. Pragmatics 7 (1): 1–20.

28. References (cont.)
Lakoff, R “The logic of politeness; or, minding your p’s and q’s.” In Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Chicago Linguistics Society: 292 – 305.
Leech, Geoffrey N., Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman
Lim, Tae-Seop and John Waite Bowers Facework: solidarity, approbation, and tact. Human Communication Research 17.3: 415–450.
Locher, Miriam A. & Richard J. Watts Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research 1.1: 9–33
Mao, L.R Beyond politeness theory: ‘face’ revisited and renewed. Journal of Pragmatics 21:
Matsumoto, Yushiko Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 12: 403–426.
Nwoye, Onuigbo G Linguistic politeness and sociocultural variation of the notion of face. Journal of Pragmatics 18 (4): 309–328.
O’Driscoll, Jim About face: a defence and elaboration of universal dualism. Journal of Pragmatics 25: 1-32
O’Driscoll, Jim 2007a. What’s in an FTA? Reflections on a chance meeting with Claudine. Journal of Politeness Research 3.2: 243–268.
O’Driscoll, Jim. 2007b. Brown & Levinson’s face: how it can – and can’t – help us to understand interaction across cultures. Intercultural Pragmatics 4.4:
O’Driscoll,,Jim Some issues with the concept of face: when, what, how and how much? In Bargiela-Chiappini & Kadar , pp 17-41

29. References (cont.)
Ruiz de Zarobe Leyre & Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe Speech Acts and Politeness across Languages and Cultures.
Sifianou, Maria (2002). Don’t do the FTA to be extremely polite? Unpublished paper given at the Colloquium ‘First-order and second-order politeness: The dispute over modeling politeness’, Sociolinguistics Symposium14,University of Gent,April 2002.
Sifianou, Maria (2011). On the Concept of Face and Politeness. In Bargiela-Chiappini & Kadar , pp
Terkourafi, Marina Testing Brown & Levinson’s theory in a corpus of conversational data from Cypriot Greek. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 168:119–134.
Terkourafi, Marina ‘Toward a universal notion of face for a universal notion of co-operation.’ In: Istvan Kecskes and Laurence Horn (eds.), Explorations in pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive and intercultural aspects. 307–338. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter..
Watts, Richard J Linguistic politeness and politic verbal behaviour: Reconsidering claims for universality. In Watts et al 43–69.
Watts, Richard J Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Watts, Richard J, Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich Introduction to Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.