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indirectness and lack of explicitness requires more inferential work to determine what a speaker meant. Wierzbicka (1985) has also identified salient differences in terms of directness across a range of speech acts and discourse strategies between English and Polish speakers. These extend not only to particular speech acts, but to speaker disposition vis-6-vis their own and their interlocutors stances in talk, with Polish speakers valuing a holding to personal beliefs and a reluctance to concede these to interlocutors' stances, something that in English generally attracts disapproval. Although not specifically highlighting conceptual problems with and pointing to development s in the concept of face, this body of work has demonstrated the fact that some cultures routinely engage in what to an Anglo- American, and perhaps more so to Asian culture, would be perceived as highly face-threatening behaviour. However, just as facework and politeness in these latter sets of cultures leads to a maintenance of interpersonal equilibrium, so it does in cultures normatively orienting to a more direct and potentially conflictual communicative style. This work highlights the problems associated with an ethnocentric view of what constitutes facework and facework and'... all cultures value agreement more than disagreement, discourage self-praise, encourage praise of others, and view imposition as the main sin in interaction' (Wierzbicka 1991,69). It appears that some cultures are able to engage in essentially conflictual interaction, whereby selves are essentially mobilised as the foci of expressive stances and symbolically 'pitted' against each other, whilst at the same time maintaining an equilibric state of interaction in which face needs are mutually catered for. Rather than an overriding centrifugal force sending members of such cultures spinning into atomistic incommensurability, persons are held together in a state of equilibrium. 40
1.3 Culture, Facework, Equilibrium What the preceding discussion has demonstrated is that face and facework, when considered in a cultural context, are subject to considerable variation in the way face is perceived and facework carried out. One common denominator to the sets of practices enjoyed in the various cultures is that, scholars have posited them as being examples of culturally variable manifestations of essentially equilibric behaviour, that is, behaviour which indexes face concerns. Thus, universally, within the boundaries of equilibrium lie a range of cultural preferences for doing face to face talk. These range from an avoidance of conflict at the expense of the person based self, where communal concerns subsume the idea of the individualistic self, to an active pursuit of conflict in which the self is mobilised as an expressive and autonomous entity. However, rather than being mutually exclusive, these two sets of dynamics - albeit conceptualised using various terminology - seem to be two sides of the same interactional coin, and index the orientation to face concerns in interaction. What I shall term the universal poles of equilibric facework are represented in figure 1.8. Fig. 1.8 The Universal Poles of Equilibric Facework Indirectness of Expression Avoidance of Conflict Focus on Other Joint Harmony Amplification of Individuation Directness of Expression Pursuit of Conflict Focus on Self Joint Agonism Diminution of Individuation I will develop this rather crude conceptualisation of facework across cultures below (see Chapter 3). 41
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indirectness and lack <strong>of</strong> explicitness requires more inferential work to determine<br />
what a speaker meant. Wierzbicka (1985) has also identified salient differences<br />
in terms <strong>of</strong> directness across a range <strong>of</strong> speech acts and discourse strategies<br />
between English and Polish speakers. These extend not only to particular<br />
speech acts, but to speaker disposition vis-6-vis their own and their interlocutors<br />
stances in talk, with Polish speakers valuing a holding to personal beliefs and a<br />
reluctance to concede these to interlocutors' stances, something that in English<br />
generally attracts disapproval.<br />
Although not specifically highlighting conceptual problems with and<br />
pointing to development s in the concept <strong>of</strong> face, this body <strong>of</strong> work has<br />
demonstrated the fact that some cultures routinely engage in what to an Anglo-<br />
American, and perhaps more so to Asian culture, would be perceived as highly<br />
face-threatening behaviour. However, just as facework and politeness in these<br />
latter sets <strong>of</strong> cultures leads to a maintenance <strong>of</strong> interpersonal equilibrium, so it<br />
does in cultures normatively orienting to a more direct and potentially conflictual<br />
communicative style.<br />
This work highlights the problems associated with an ethnocentric view<br />
<strong>of</strong> what constitutes facework and facework and'... all cultures value agreement<br />
more than disagreement, discourage self-praise, encourage praise <strong>of</strong> others,<br />
and view imposition as the main sin in interaction' (Wierzbicka 1991,69). It<br />
appears that some cultures are able to engage in essentially conflictual<br />
interaction, whereby selves are essentially mobilised as the foci <strong>of</strong> expressive<br />
stances and symbolically 'pitted' against each other, whilst at the same time<br />
maintaining an equilibric state <strong>of</strong> interaction in which face needs are mutually<br />
catered for. Rather than an overriding centrifugal force sending members <strong>of</strong><br />
such cultures spinning into atomistic incommensurability, persons are held<br />
together in a state <strong>of</strong> equilibrium.<br />
40