Reflection: Face and cultural variation

In the introduction, we noted cross-cultural variation in the linguistic formulae by which politeness is achieved. But what if the concepts with which we are analyzing politeness are themselves culturally biased? In the last decade or so, discussion has focused on the precise definition of “face” (see, in particular, Bargiela-Chiappini 2003). Much of this has been a reaction to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) idea that face can be described in terms of universal individualistic psychological “wants”. Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) claim that their notion of face is “derived from that of Goffman and from the English folk term”. Compare the definitions above. That of Brown and Levinson is a very reductive version of Goffman’s. With Goffman, it is not just the positive values that you yourself want, but what you can claim about yourself from what others assume about you – much more complicated! The point is that how you feel about yourself is dependent on how others feel about you. Hence, when you lose face you feel bad about how you are seen in other people’s eyes. This social interdependence has been stripped out of Brown and Levinson’s definition. Recent approaches to politeness (e.g. Arundale 2006) have tended to shift back towards a reflexive notion of face (i.e. involving what you think others think of yourself), as originally advocated by Goffman.

Furthermore, some researchers have criticized the individualism reflected in Brown and Levinson’s definitions, particularly in negative face. Positive face is about what you as an individual find positive; negative face is about not imposing upon you as an individual. But this seems to ignore cases where the positive attributes apply to a group of people (e.g. a winning team), or where an imposition on yourself is not the main concern, but rather it is how you stand in relation to a group (e.g. whether you are afforded the respect associated with your position in the team). From a cultural perspective, some researchers have argued that Brown and Levinson’s emphasis on individualism is a reflection of Anglo-Saxon culture, and not a universal feature, despite the fact that their politeness theory is pitched as a universal framework (cf. the title of their book: “Politeness: Some universals of language usage”). Matsumoto (1988) and Gu (1990), for example, point out that Japanese and Chinese cultures stress the group more than the individual. These are cultures that lean more towards collectivism. However, we should briefly note that not everybody thinks that Brown and Levinson got it wrong. Chen (2010), for example, argues that differences of this kind are differences in surface phenomena, while the underlying motivations have a more general application. Furthermore, one should remember that Brown and Levinson’s description is based on the analysis of three very different languages, only one of which is English.