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practices. Over the past 30 or more years, scholars have attempted to
draw on Goffman's (1967), and more recently Brown and Levinson's
(1987) conceptual i sati o ns of face and frameworks for interpreting
facework practices (see see Cupach and Metts 1994; Earley 1997; Metts
1997; Spiers 1998; Tracey 1990; and Ting-Toomey 1994). However,
although the number of studies addressing face and facework in discourse
has increased dramatically in recent years, the endeavour to identify face
concerns and analyse discourse for its facework content and functions has
become - largely as a result of increasing discussions around the issue -
increasingly problematised. In short, discourse as it is practised in
everyday settings, contexts, and situations has proved to be increasingly
recalcitrant to a systematic analysis for facework practices therein.
In terms of cross-cultural applications of the concept of face and
frameworks for addressing facework, the problem seems further
compounded. Forged in an essentially Anglo-American milieu, increasing
studies have undermined to varying degree predominant frameworks for
addressing facework in discourse, no more so than those identifying
fundamental weaknesses and limitations with the facework as politeness
approach advanced by Brown and Levinson (1987), one which forms the
conceptual and analytical basis for the majority of extant studies.
In respect of the observations made about English - German
differences in communicative style, and the need for a systematic
comparative study of facework in each culture, current debates
surrounding face and facework studies per se, as well as those touching
on fundamental problems with, for instance, the universal applicability of
the concepts of face and reading of facework, would seem to preclude
somewhat such an endeavour. In short, not only does a universally
acknowledged framework for the analysis of facework not exist at present,
but comments made by a range of scholars suggest such a framework
might not be possible, at least with the concepts of face and facework as
they exist at present.
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