Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

including the application of the facework as alignment approach in
contexts other than sociable ones, possible extensions to and
developments on the facework as alignment approach, and implications
for cross-cultural research, particularly between those cultures where - as
I noted in Chapter 1- extant frameworks and conceptual isations have
proved inadequate.
In the first instance, this thesis stands as a single document. Each
successive chapter serves to lead the reader through the various stages of
the study by providing the necessary conceptual and theoretical
background, considering the empirical data, before concluding the study
and suggesting areas for further research. However, it is possible to read
each chapter independently of the others, depending on the reader's
particular interest or familiarity with one or the other part of the thesis. With
a wide and varied audience in mind, I have attempted to write the thesis in
a way that makes it as accessible to as wide an audience as possible,
whilst not compromising the academic rigour required of such a study.
A Plea for an Instructed Reading
As I outlined above, the study as it appears in its final form comes
as a result of much musing over conceptual, analytical, and
methodological contingencies associated with the analysis of face as a
concept and its realisation in discourse as facework. Consequently, in an
attempt to resolve some of these issues, a wide and rather eclectic body
of literature, and concepts and propositions therein have been employed.
These varied elements have then been drawn together in the hope of
arriving at-a workable 'way' of dealing with the specific research problem.
The thesis as a whole will hopefully stand as at least as equal to the sum
of these parts.
As this thesis is as much exploratory as empirical, the reader is
asked to consider in quite general terms the usefulness of the central
concepts and propositions developed over the course of the chapters, as
11