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Politeness: Some
Universals in Language Use
([1978], reprinted 1987), is arguably the most influential
model of linguistic politeness to date given that it has dominated this field since it was
first published. Indeed, Eelen (2001: 3) comments that „the names Brown and Levinson
have become almost synonymous with the word „politeness‟ itself.‟ Brown and
Levinson‟s work began as a response to the work of the philosopher Paul Grice. Grice
(1975: 45) claimed that conversations are „characteristically, to some degree at least,
cooperative efforts; and each participant recognises in them, to some extent, a common
purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction.‟ Based on these
assumptions, Grice posited his Co-operative Principle (CP): that all people are
essentially cooperative in order to achieve the purpose of being „maximally efficient‟ in
interaction with others (Grice, 1989: 28). In order to elaborate on the CP, Grice
formulated four maxims:
Quantity
,
Quality
,
Relation
and
Manner
.
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1.
Quantity, requires speakers to be as informative as required for listener
comprehension, by ensuring that they are both succinct and explicit. In other
words, when talking, we are required to give neither too much nor too little
information.
2.
Quality, states that speakers should be truthful and not say anything which they
cannot provide adequate evidence for or do not believe to be true.
3.
Relation, where „speakers are assumed to be saying something that is relevant to
what has been said before‟ (Cutting, 2008: 35).
4.
Manner, which requires speakers to be clear and orderly in order to avoid
ambiguity and obscurity.
Grice did not expect rigid adherence to these maxims; indeed he was particularly
interested in how the maxims were „flouted‟, thus requiring the listener to infer the
underlying meaning from clues available in the conversational context, which Grice
termed conversational implicature. Brown and Levinson (1987) wished to account for
what they saw as a consistent flouting of, rather than adherence to, these maxims. They
maintained that this non-adherence happened for a reason. They start from the notion of
a Model Person whom, they claim, „is a wilful, fluent speaker of a natural language,
further endowed with two special properties – rationality and face‟ (p. 58). These
„rational agents‟ (Locher, 2004: 66) are strategic beings who enact language choices
based on a specific set of their own and their addressee‟s needs. Brown and Levinson
claim that speakers are often indirect and uncooperative because of a need to go about
their business unimpeded and a need to be approved of. These needs they termed „face
wants‟. Blum-Kulka (1997b: 50) succinctly summarises Brown and Levinson‟s theory
thus; „for Brown and Levinson politeness is the intentional, strategic behaviour of an
individual meant to satisfy self and other face wants in case of threat, enacted via
positive and negative styles of redress.‟
Brown and Levinson‟s notion of face was derived from the work of the sociologist
Erving Goffman (1956; 1959; 1967). Drawing on the work of Durkheim (1915),
Goffman echoes the Gricean notion that conversation is essentially co-operative in
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nature. Goffman developed a concept of face inextricably bound to English idiomatic
expressions such as „to lose face‟, that is to be embarrassed or humiliated, and „to save
face‟, that is to prevent damage to one‟s reputation or the loss of people‟s respect for the
speaker. Goffman (1967: 5) defined face as „the positive social value a person
effectively claims for [him/herself].‟ He suggested that in order to maintain this positive
self-image, a person invests emotional energy in the face that they present to others
which requires a degree of effort on their part, a process he refers to as face-work.
Following Goffman, Brown and Levinson (1987: 61) maintain that face is „the public
self-image that every member [of society] wants to claim for himself.‟ For Brown and
Levinson, face consists of two related aspects; positive face and negative face. For both
of these aspects of face, our essential needs are the same – we want people to like us –
and this impact on our linguistic behaviour. From the point of view of positive face, we
want to receive acknowledgement from others that we are liked, accepted as part of a
group and that our wants are understood by them. In the case of negative face, we want
to be independent and not have our actions imposed on by others.
Brown and Levinson (1987) assume that, in their everyday interaction, people behave as
if these face needs will be respected by others, however, despite this assumption, people
sometimes engage in actions that threaten these two face needs, which Brown and
Levinson refer to as „face threatening acts‟ (FTAs). This refers to a communicative act
performed by the speaker that does not respect either the hearer‟s need for space
(negative face) or their desire for their self-image to be upheld (positive face) or both.
Brown and Levinson essentially view politeness as a complex system for softening
FTAs. This has lead to some criticism of their model because assuming that
conversation involves potential threat to face „rules out the case of neutral or pro-social
intent (Werkhofer, 1992: 169). Locher (2004: 70) maintains that „it is true that Brown
and Levinson neglect the pro-social side of politeness in their discussion of data.‟
In Brown and Levinson‟s model, if an FTA has to be performed, then the speaker has
five communicative choices in order to accomplish this (shaded in Figure 2.2):
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