In the scholarly literature, facework, face‐threatening act and other related terms are used to describe a wide range of interaction situations as if they were of the same type. In this paper, it will be argued that these situations are in fact of two different kinds. Compare examples (1) and (2).

 

(1) [A man is speaking to the woman sitting next to him at a classical music concert during the interval.]

 

 

‐ When’s it due?

‐ [pause] I’m not pregnant.

 

 

(Culpeper 2011:51)

 

 

(2)   While walking on a busy street, an individual stumbles.

 

 

(Goffman 1967:18)

 

 

In (1), the man’s utterance is said to constitute a ‘threat’ to the woman’s ‘face’ given that it may cause offence to her. In (2), the actor’s stumbling is also considered to ‘threaten’ his ‘face’, i.e. to affect the positive social value he claims for himself. However, the two situations differ in several respects.

 

First, the concept of ‘face’ in situations like (2), but not (1), entails the presence of at least one observer in the eyes of whom the individual’s image is negatively affected by the face‐threatening act. The man’s question in (1) does not affect the woman’s identity in anyone’s eyes.

 

Second, in situations like (1) the ‘threat’ is directed towards other. It does not seem possible to threaten one’s own face in the sense of ‘face’ intended here, which is thus an asymmetrical concept. In cases like (2), by contrast, the face‐threatening act may be directed towards the actor himself but also towards other, as when A tells B “Your breath stinks!” loudly in the presence of a third party, in which case B may lose face.

 

Third, behavior aimed at protecting or repairing the individual’s face will not be of the same nature in cases like (1) and (2).

 

Finally, the expression ‘lose face’ only applies to situations like (2), at least in its everyday‐speech meaning.

 

The situations examined in the paper will be drawn from the existing literature, including Brown and Levinson’s (1987) paper and subsequent work on politeness, as well as from the author’s own corpus of naturally‐occurring situations.

 

 

 

 

References

 

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge:

 

Cambridge University Press.

 

Culpeper, J. 2011. Impoliteness. Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction ritual. Essays on face‐to‐face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books.