Download (23MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

Fig. 1.3 Brown and Levinson's Model Person
MP
Z**ý'ýý
1) Rational 2) Face needs
Agent
Negative Positive
Autonomy firom Solidarity ; Ersfýý
ithý
I rr
othe
others,
Alongside possessing these basic qualities, Brown and Levinson posited
persons as being mutually aware of both the rational maxims of communicative
action and the fact that fellow interlocutrs possess such face needs. Verbal
communication is therefore conduceted with both sets of needs in mind. It is out
of the dialectic of the need to achieve conversational goals in the most rational
way and the recognition of face conerns that speakers are able to encode
politeness as a form of facework in the realisation of potentially face-threatening
acts and hearers are able to hear this as such.
Having identified face as the central concept in their account of linguistic
poiteness, Brown and Levinson focused not so much on the maintenance of
equilibrium (Cf. Goffman 1967), but on the mitigation of particular linguistic acts
which may - due to their intrinsic nature - threaten one or the other aspect of
face. For example during talk, a wide range of utterances may potentially
threaten either aspect of an interlocutor's face; what they termed face
threatening acts (henceforth FTAs) (see table 1.1). Such FTAs normally require
some form of mitigation to both reduce the threat they pose, and demonstrate
the speaker's recognition of operative face needs, whilst at the same time,
allowing the illocutionary force of the utterance to stand and communicative
goals to be achieved. For example, criticisms - which may threaten
interlocutors positive face needs - may often be softened or realised indirectly,
26