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This paper examines the Italian folk concept of bella figura in the framework of politeness-theories and the various binary conceptions it provides for explaining the nature of human communication. BF is a culture-specific understanding of self-projection in everyday discourse: It is both, a cognitive concept concerning the "beautiful" embodiment of self, and a performative concept concerning the active "figuring out" of a bella figura in order to avoid its contrary, the brutta figura. Thus, the figura-concept represents a pragmatic principle for acting in line with socially accepted norms setting out a reference frame for judging social endeavours according to a culture-inherent value system. Accordingly, affinities can be assumed between the figura-concept and the sociopragmatic core notions 'face' and 'politeness'. A comparison of the figura-concept with the respective first- and second-order conceptions of the two, reflects a cultural version of 'impression management' conceiving an image of self which coincides with Goffman's, but not at all with Brown and Levinson's face-concept. This makes it difficult to identify figura in relation to politeness. Connections and disconnections are discussed alongside the paradigmatic binary scales and the positive/negative value-attributes. Finally, the findings are verified by comparing the use of the respective expressions as evaluation tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the public communication act of petitions made in the Middle Ages by subjects to their governors in situations of high personal need. Analysing an edited corpus of correspondence in Anglo-Norman and Italian chancelleries of the early thirteenth to the late fifteenth century, I attempt to identify verbal means that are related to what is today defined as “face” and “facework”, and to discuss this evidence in the tension modern pragmatics establishes between common “politic” and marked “polite” behaviour. Parting from the three-fold conception where all speech events have to be considered in their whole as social, discursive and textual practices, I briefly retrace the social and legal conditions of petitions and describe their particular discursive character on the threshold of two transitions: from orality to literacy and from Latin to vernacular. The data analysis is concerned with the textual cues bound to structural, syntactic and semantic constraints. Pointing out the most striking features of these three aspects and listing the most frequent forms that are cross-culturally congruent, I identify medieval facework as a ritual, but consciously iconic shaping of a power ideal at the intersection of political, juristic and religious implications. As formality is a shared value based on social position and role, no sign of reflexive politeness behaviour can be verified in this early period. Variations are simply attributed to the habits of the different chancelleries and their scribes. Though identified as unmarked politic behaviour, the common procedures in the medieval petition letters can nevertheless be seen as general face-saving strategies in response to the threatening character of requests. Thus the historical data shed light on the conception of linguistic politeness in the first-order and the second-order senses of the term and are useful to advance new hypotheses in the pragmatic discussion since Brown and Levinson’s classical study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]