Face-saving Act

Jūratė Ruzaitė, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
jurate.ruzaite@vdu.lt

In communication, people are constantly involved in face-work, understood as the speakers’ attempts to have or maintain a certain image of themselves or other participants of the interaction. The aim of engaging in face-work is to address potential incidents or occurrences that pose a potential threat to one’s social image. To avoid harm for one’s face, face-saving acts are performed to mitigate the potential effect on one’s self-image or the hearer’s image. Different individuals, subcultures and societies have different means for face saving.

The repertoire of face-saving resources also depends on the type of face speakers aim to protect. To protect or appeal to someone’s positive face, speakers may resort to such strategies as exaggerating (interest, approval, sympathy with the hearer), being optimistic, intensifying interest to the hearer (exaggerating facts, telling stories in present tense), using in-group identity markers (e.g. in-group address forms), making offers and promises, complimenting the hearer, agreeing with the hearer’s point of view, or giving gifts.

Typical face-saving strategies used to protect one’s negative face include such negative politeness strategies as hedging and indirectness, using nominalisations, minimising or avoiding imposition on the hearer, apologising, and being pessimistic.

In intercultural communication, face-saving strategies vary significantly. In high-context cultures (e.g. Japan, Korea) indirectness, silence, deference, and avoidance can function as powerful face-saving mechanisms; whereas in low-context cultures (e.g. the U.S., Germany), verbal elaboration and a higher degree of directness are more typical. Additionally, digital communication introduces new modalities for face-saving, as users often rely on emojis, hedges, or humour to reduce face threat and maintain politeness in the absence of tone or body language.

Keywords: face-work, positive face, negative face

Related Entries: Face, Face-threatening Act, Impoliteness, Slurs

References:
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, J. (2011). Politeness and impoliteness. In K. Aijmer & G. Andersen (Eds.), Sociopragmatics (pp. 391-436), (Handbooks of Pragmatics 5). W. Bublitz, A. H. Jucker, & K. P. Schneider (Eds.). De Gruyter Mouton.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interactional ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Anchor Books.