Politeness, face work, and relational work in current linguistic research

As a result of the publication of Brown and Levinson’s theory, much linguistic research has emerged that revolves around aspects of their theory. For instance, as Watts points out, many empirical studies of the time focused on the question of “how different speech acts and

speech events with face-threatening potential are realised“; and many set out to “test the claims for universality by carrying out cross-cultural and contrastive studies“ (Watts 2010:

45). To an exceeding degree, the approach to politeness by Brown and Levinson has become the subject of criticism. One focal point for criticism is their claim to universality on the one hand and their anglocentric bias on the other (cf. Gu 1990; Ide 1989; Blum-Kulka 1992).

Another important line of criticism is concerned with their essentialist, individualistic, and cognitive reinterpretation of Goffman’s concept of face (cf. Watts, Ide and Ehlich 1992;

Eelen 2001; Bargiela-Chiappini 2003): As established in Section 5.1 above, Goffman is interested in communicative interchanges, and he conceives of face as a ’social value’ which is tied to the evaluations of other interactants (Goffman 1976: 5). Brown and Levinson’s concept of face, on the other hand, emphasises the cognitive reasoning and the

psychological wants of the individual; it represents a static and essentialist concept with a clear “speaker bias“ (Culpeper 2005: 39). Also, their proximity to the presuppositions of Speech Act Theory leads Brown and Levinson to analyse speech acts as isolated instances, regardless of context. A related issue that is often criticised is their reliance on elicited data (cf. Sifianou 2010).

There are many other areas of debate concerning Brown and Levinson’s theory, such as, for instance, their “paranoid view“ of social interaction with its strong emphasis on conflict avoidance (cf. Schmidt 1980; cf. Kasper 1990); the false dichotomy of positive and negative politeness strategies; the disregard of impolite and competitive communication; and the questionable equation of face work with politeness, mitigation, and indirectness (cf. Locher and Watts 2005). For comprehensive overviews of the discussion, see Eelen (2001); Watts (2003); Sifianou (2010); Watts (2010); Kádár and Haugh (2013).

All of these local areas of debate regarding politeness and face work evolved

discursively in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, and they have produced a substantial amount of theories that are designed to revise or replace Brown and Levinson’s approach in different ways (for a synopsis, see, for instance, Eelen 2001). By the turn of the millennium, this discursive turn gradually shifted the paradigm in which the individual discussions take place (cf. Coupland 2007; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2013). As argued above, this turn toward discursive approaches occurred within a large-scale paradigm shift in the social sciences:

The more general shift from rationalist approaches, which rely on the assumption of objectively given phenomena in the world beyond us, to the cognitive, constructionist belief that we produce our own internal worlds through our interaction with others in the physical world has begun to affect our approach to politeness.

(Watts 2010: 59)

Arguably, the discursive, postmodern view of politeness and face work (cf. Terkourafi 2005)

has its roots in earlier work (most importantly, Watts 1992), but it is particularly triggered by Eelen’s (2001) monography A Critique of Politeness Theories. Other publications that

elaborate the perspective are, for example, Mills (2003), Watts (2003), Locher (2004), Locher and Watts (2005), and Locher (2006b).

In general, the discursive view is characterised by the following aspects: First, it concentrates on “stretches of real oral discourse“ as the locus of analysis (Watts 2010: 52).

Second, it holds that politeness is a term of evaluation which is contested and negotiated in a processual way by situated interactants in particular discourses with specific contexts (Eelen 2001: 249). Thus, politeness is described as a vague and dynamic notion that is up for debate, rather than as a set of precisely defined communicative rules, principles, or linguistic forms. Third, the subject of this interactive negotiation process by interactants is referred to as ‘politeness1’, as ‘first-order politeness’, or as the ‘emic’, laypeople’s view. In contrast, academic theorising about the concept of politeness is referred to as ‘politeness2’, ‘second-order politeness’, or the ‘etic’ approach (cf. Locher 2006b). From this perspective, almost all traditional theories of politeness follow a second-order approach. Yet, the discursive view claims that politeness research should be mainly concerned with politeness1:

We consider it important to take native speaker assessments of politeness seriously and to make them the basis of a discursive, data-driven, bottom-up approach to politeness. The discursive dispute over such terms in instances of social practice should represent the locus of attention for politeness research.

(Locher and Watts 2005: 17)

The fourth important argument brought forward by the discursive view is that politeness and face work should be treated as different phenomena. Locher and Watts (2005) argue that politeness is but one aspect of the interpersonal level of communication. According to Locher (2004: 51), ’face work’ and ’relational work’ are two interchangeable terms that refer to “the process of defining relationships”. In Locher and Watts (2005: 11), relational work is described as “the ‘work’ individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others”. In

principle, this view of face work is at least partly in accordance with the contributions of other scholars, notably Spencer-Oatey (2005: 96), who introduces the term ‘rapport management’, i.e. “the management (or mismanagement) of relations between people”.

In the specific approach advocated by Locher and Watts, relational work is further categorised in light of norms of appropriateness in particular settings. According to this view, interactants often display appropriate behaviour with respect to social norms. This kind of behaviour is also referred to as ‘politic’ (Locher and Watts 2005: 12). Polite behaviour, in turn, represents a special case of politic behaviour, for it is positively marked with respect to norms of appropriateness. Unmarked politic behaviour, on the other hand, is called ‘non-polite’. Moreover, there are two types of negatively marked behaviour, i.e. ‘impolite’ and

‘overpolite’ communication. As established above, Locher and Watts emphasise the fact that norms of appropriateness are specific to different interactional frames, or ‘Communities of Practice’ (Locher 2006b: 28; cf. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003). Thus, the linguistic analysis of politeness only makes sense in relation to context-specific norms. Another result of this categorisation is an increased interest in ‘impoliteness’ as a phenomenon in its own right (see, for instance, Culpeper 2005; Bousfield and Locher 2008).

Having described the relevant areas of research, the approach of this thesis can now be methodologically positioned in relation to them. The discussion of different aspects and connotations of the concept of face and face work (within as well as outside of the discursive approach) is in fact very extensive, and to unfold its historical course would be far beyond the scope of this. I refer to Bargiela-Chiappini (2003), Spencer-Oatey (2005), Haugh (2009), Arundale (2010), and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2013) for deeper insights into the debate. In this chapter, I will merely outline the most important elements of my definition of face, face work, and relational work.

In principle, I will draw mostly on the claims proposed by the discursive view. First and foremost, I support the idea that a contemporary theory of politeness, face work, and/or relational work must be based on social constructionist premises – this is both in line with the psychological view of the self and identity, as described in Section 5.2, and with current views of identity, positioning, and self-presentation (cf. Section 5.3.4). Furthermore, I agree with the description of politeness as a norm negotiated in situated interactions. Also, I concur with the argument that relational work and face work must be considered as entirely different, more comprehensive phenomena than politeness. To this end, in this thesis I will disregard questions of politeness altogether, whereas the analysis of face work will be of major importance (cf. Chapter 13).

I do not align with Arundale’s (2010) claim that ‘identity’ is a long-term concept, whereas ‘face’ is constructed in situ. In my opinion, both phenomena are socially constructed concepts that emerge in talk, although they are co-constructed with help from cognitive knowledge structures on the part of all interactants (cf. Langlotz 2010; de Fina 2006).

Moreover, in my view there is no reason to discard the concept of face based on the argument that Goffman’s horizon of thinking cannot be classified as genuinely social constructionist, as Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (2013) demands. In Section 5.1 it was

established that Goffman’s concept of the self is ahead of its time, but that he does retain some essentialist notions; however, there does not seem to be any clear reason not to transfer his concepts into a more constructionist frame of thinking. In the same way, I will employ Brown and Levinson’s concept of the face-threatening act, regardless of its initially very ‘un-constructionist’ context (cf. Sections 5.8; 14.1; 14.3): the term ‘face-threatening act’

is a very powerful metaphorical expression that captures the potentially upsetting experience

of receiving communicative messages that contain negative social evaluations.

With respect to the equation of face work with relational work in Locher (2004: 51), I will take a different stance: I share her view of ‘relational work’ as an umbrella term for the work interactants do on the relational, or interpersonal, level of communication. In this

respect, relational work is closely intertwined with interactive identity construction. However, I will employ the label ‘face work’ in a slightly different way. I conceptualise it as a metaphor that highlights a certain aspect of identity work, i.e. the relational work resulting from the sensitivity of human interactants toward the social evaluation of their identities in interaction.

In Section 5.2, I established the link between the three self-motives and face work: The human need for self-enhancement corresponds with Goffman’s idea of the requirement to confirm and protect ‘sacred’ faces in interactions (even though it is a well-established point that in many contexts interactants gladly ‘desecrate’ their fellow interactants for various reasons, cf. Bousfield, 2008). The self-assessment motif, on the other hand, may set the desire to be evaluated favourably by others in competition with the need to be assessed accurately. Moreover, the self-verification motif may lead interactants with partly negative concepts to strive for negative evaluations, thus causing clashes with their

self-enhancement motives and ultimately producing ambiguous patterns of self-presentation (cf.

Section 5.7; Chapter 12).

The terms ‘face’ and ‘face work’ are theoretical second-order terms, and metaphorical terms in particular. As such, they do not necessarily fit into a framework for the analysis of identity like a missing piece of a puzzle – rather, they are part of a metaphor that adds

another perspective to the overall picture. As argued above, according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 10), metaphors inevitably highlight some aspects and hide others; and Goffman’s own conceptual extensions of his metaphorical approaches are often overcharged with aspects that are not highlighted very well (cf. Section 5.1). However, to my knowledge, there is as yet no analytical concept that captures the issues discussed above as neatly as the face

metaphor, especially in combination with Holly’s (1979) improvements. For this reason, I have chosen to juxtapose different approaches to the analysis of relational work in my study, despite the fact that they often overlap in some ways. To further support this point, in the following section, I will turn to linguistic identity theory as well as to positioning theory.