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In this study, we investigate how personal experiences about shameful events are described in face‐to‐face social interaction, and how these stories differ between participants who have either high or low levels of narcissistic personality traits. The dataset consists of 22 dyadic conversations where the participants describe events where they felt ashamed of themselves. We found the narratives to vary in terms of five dimensions. With narcissistic individuals, the default narrative tended to exhibit a cluster of characteristics that gather at one end of these dimensions: (1) weak expressions of shame; (2) located in the story‐world; (3) low level of reflexivity as well as; (4) responsibility of the described event; and (5) a general level of description. We discuss the findings in relation to sociological and psychological theories of shame and suggest that individuals with narcissistic personality traits are more inclined to use suppressive conversational practices in their treatment of shame, thus providing a "window" to these interactional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As inherently confrontational contexts, North American presidential debates compel politicians to engage in image restoration efforts when targeted by a face-threatening act. Since the first televised debates in 1960, presidential campaigns have become increasingly mediatized and the need to defend against face-damage has increased, for there is still a need to uphold a favorable presidential image despite the prominence of impoliteness in these events. Although a longstanding tradition, there is still no framework for the combined analysis of threatening and defensive face-work in presidential debates. This paper presents a corpus-based three-fold analysis blending qualitative, quantitative and statistical methodologies to observe the evolution of facework in this context, focusing on impoliteness and image restoration manifestations. The selected corpus comprises the presidential debates of seven North American elections --one per decade--, providing an overview of the evolution of both phenomena. This methodology also allows insight into the frequency of specific strategies. The analysis adopts a multi-theoretical approach to demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating Impoliteness theory (Culpeper, 1996) and Image restoration theory (Benoit and Wells, 1996) to create a comprehensive new approach to the study of face-work in presidential debates. Supported by results from Pearson's Chi-square test, the combination of these theories was shown to be possible. The recurrence of attack-defense pairings integrating strategies from both theories also pointed to their necessary combination. While the recent incorporation of a female presidential candidate hinted at the potential gender variation of face-work in the debates, further data is needed to obtain conclusive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politeness shapes interpersonal dynamics and mastering its norms is crucial for engaging in effective and meaningful interactions within a linguistic community. Hence, integrating politeness strategies into language teaching involves navigating cultural differences and contextual subtleties, in a process aimed at reframing linguistic behaviour. Teaching politeness is documented to enhance language proficiency and cultural competence, suggesting the importance of immersive language experiences and authentic communicative exchanges. This study investigates how Romanian language learners at different proficiency levels politeness in their communication, by employing discourse completion tasks, and analyses the results according to Brown and Levinson’s theoretical framework. The results indicate that higher proficiency students exhibit a more nuanced comprehension of politeness and tend to employ negative politeness more often in formal situations and positive politeness in informal ones. Additionally, the study sheds light on two opposing tendencies of non-native speakers of Romanian: the inclination to overuse politeness markers or to skip them entirely, both pointing to the need to enhance pragmalinguistic skills.

Existing research on conspiracy theories rarely examines their impact on interaction or how these theories are perceived by non‐believers. We conducted in‐depth interviews with twenty non‐believers whose family members believed in the QAnon conspiracy theory. Using face‐work as the main framework, findings reveal the role of face in the structure of encounters between believers and non‐believers. Non‐believing participants experienced identity violations and responded to face‐threats through protective or defensive maneuvers; corrective processes, or aggressive uses of face. The study places conspiracy belief in social context, showing how epistemic identity is asserted in interactions, and demonstrating its relevance to our post‐truth era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses face-work and politeness theories (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967), which have acquired canonical status in face-to-face communication studies (Carbaugh, 1989), to investigate online interactions in Chinese virtual communities. Using data from two Chinese virtual communities' text-based communication, it offers an investigation into face-work, politeness strategies, and act sequence in face-work in online interactions. I argue, first, face-work and politeness strategies are prevalent in these two Chinese virtual communities; Second, face-work and politeness theories offer new frameworks to conceptualize and reveal the interactions regarding the emergence of frictions (face-threatening actions), corrective processes, and the potential moves that may lead to violent retaliation in a virtual community. Third, like in face-to-face communication, face-work and politeness function to reduce potential threats to communication that may lead to violent (verbal) retaliation, flaming, and hostile and insulting language in a virtual community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sosiologia is the property of Westermarck Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A substantial body of international research argues that the teacher-student relationship is crucial for students' academic and social-emotional learning. However, microanalytic studies of teachers' relational competence are rare. This article aims to contribute such a study by exploring teachers' relational competence, drawing on Erving Goffman's concept of face-work and focussing on how a particular teacher-student relationship is constructed in an ongoing processes of interaction. The paper presents in-depth analyses of teacher-student interaction using a video-recording of a classroom episode. In the episode, the student loses face as a result of a complex series of events. The teacher, through rapid action, helps the student repair face and manages to (re-)establish a respectful interaction ritual. Overall, the teacher's relational competence is manifested by advanced and complex face-work. Our analyses indicate that relational competence is essentially a micro-social artistry – a lightning-quick ability to interact with students in the 'here and now'. The article also discusses the pedagogical implications of these findings, for example, that it is crucial to include face-work in teacher education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalation of the opioid epidemic in the United States has sparked sweeping legislation meant to regulate physicians' opioid prescribing practices. The demands of such policies force physicians to initiate discussions that could jeopardize the collaborative doctor–patient relationships necessary for curbing inappropriate opioid prescriptions. Drawing on sociopragmatics, this discourse analysis study of primary care interactions examines the face-saving linguistic features employed by physicians in negotiating the line between policy demands and maintaining collaborative relationships. The findings reveal several face-saving acts—pseudo requests, downtoners, broadening, redirection, tag questions, impersonalization, listing, and (negative) imagery—used by physicians when enacting the three most prominent policies: (1) monitoring opioid use, (2) prescribing anti-overdose medication, and (3) transitioning patients from opioids to alternative treatment. Informed by Goffman's concept of "face-work," this study provides evidence of the communicative burden placed on physicians implementing disagreeable opioid policies, as well as opening up discussions on how policymakers and medical institutions can support physicians in implementing opioid policies. • Discourse analysis of medical consultations surrounding opioids and chronic pain. • Physicians comply with policies patients may disagree with. • Physicians use face-saving strategies to mitigate contentious discourse from enacting policies. • Guidance on language could help ease physicians' communicative burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding the research investigating compliments in CMC genres, this study explores reciprocal compliments from consumers and service-providers on Airbnb, a major tourism platform. Specifically, the study examines distribution of compliments in both guest reviews of Online Experiences (a virtual tourism service) and hosts' responses to those reviews, focusing on compliment topics, their syntactic realizations, and their associated intensification strategies. Despite some similarities with prior research on CMC compliments with respect to the overall frequency and general expression of compliments, we also identified several differences related to compliment reciprocity as well as a greater tendency toward more formal language use in this professional digital context. These differences are likely related to the different relationships among participants, as well as different user goals when communicating on commercially-oriented sites versus social networking sites, demonstrating the need to expand the scope of CMC compliment research to include a broader range of platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Buber's dialogic philosophy, ideas from the ethics of dialogue and politeness theory, we analyze letters written by members of an Israeli organization named Besod Siach – who come from both the left and right wings, are both religious and secular, who decided to broaden and deepen the dialogue between different groups in Israeli society against the backdrop of the polarization, alienation and violence threatening the state's integrity and democratic foundations. Our analysis has three focal points: the language of the letters themselves, meta-linguistic utterances that appear in the letters and explicitly refer to the language the writers choose to use or refrain from using, and meta-textual utterances that relate more generally to the dialogic approach guiding the members of the group. Harmony is evinced among these three perspectives, thus exemplifying the conditions needed in order to hold an argumentative discourse that promotes dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploratory sociological analysis of poetic confluence, a spontaneous telepathic phenomenon that occurs in everyday social interaction. In poetic confluence, one person’s talk exhibits an enigmatic relationship to another’s unstated thoughts or imagery at that moment. The analyses draw from an empirical approach called Conversation Analysis, a formal qualitative method for the analysis of naturally occurring interaction in everyday life. In Conversation Analysis, talk-in-interaction is analyzed as coordinated and sequentially organized action. The focus on the action orientation of talk informs this analysis, treating poetic confluence as a form of social action. The data are (unavoidably) anecdotal accounts of experiences. Although the techniques of Conversation Analysis cannot be applied to anecdotal reports, its methodological principles and substantive focus can inform a systematic analysis of anecdotal data. A case is made for the robustness of poetic confluence via analysis of recurrent properties found in examples from three corpora of candidate cases. The analysis identifies three interpersonal functions of poetic confluence: its role in restoring mutual attention; its affiliative, affective function; and its role as a mechanism for managing threats to social propriety, or keeping “face.” In the discussion, alternative skeptical explanations are assessed; the empirical approach is framed in terms of Cardeña’s (2019) observations on the metaphoric quality of some psi phenomena and Carpenter’s (2012) first sight theory, and some suggestions are offered for further research on social interaction and psi phenomena.

Aim: Work is an important part of most people's everyday lives and well-being. Substance use by employees is associated with several negative consequences, such as absence from work and poor work performance. The study examines the strategies through which people who have problems with substance use produce a "normal" self and avoid becoming stigmatised in the workplace. Methods: The study uses data from in-depth unstructured life story interviews, which were conducted over phone with 13 people. The participants had developed various problematic heavy substance use habits. The interviews were analysed by applying interactional analysis and by using Goffman's concepts of "normality", "embarrassment", "face-work", "stigma" and "performance". Results: The analysis identified multiple strategies the participants used to produce normality and to avoid embarrassment and stigmatisation at work. These include skilful use of drugs in order not to show withdrawal symptoms, various ways of hiding their heavy substance use, frequent change of jobs, the maintenance of a clean and professional look, and attributing the absence from work to mental or physical illness. Moreover, the participants strategically avoided social contacts in which embarrassing situations could arise. When this was not possible, they manipulated their corporeal looks by hiding such kinds of bodily marks that would connote abnormality. Conclusion: The analysis points out that maintaining normality at work does not only refer to the efforts of trying to hide the effects of the drugs on behaviours and the body. It also reveals that the participants used substances to be able to perform energetically their work tasks, and in this way present themselves as normal workers. This ambivalence in performing normality makes the work life of people who use substances challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media are rapidly changing and so are their face-work practices. At the same time, the interaction is increasingly multilingual and/or transcultural in nature, reflecting 'glocal' practices and multiple conceptualizations of face. This article collection offers a much-needed overview of face-work in online discourse, in a series of detailed and original studies of the pragmatics of face and face-work in various modes of online contexts. The collection approaches face-work in the wide sense of identity construction, impression management, relational work, and (im)politeness. The six studies included showcase (re)negotiations of interactional norms through analyses of verbal and multimodal indices of face-work across platforms and languages, raising metapragmatic issues and explicitly scrutinizing face as a fundamental notion in pragmatics. Individual studies focus on the bidirectional relation of online and offline practices, consider social and power relations, as well as social norms and problems. Several articles approach face-work in relation to users' interpretations of (im)politeness and their sense of audiences. Methodological and research ethical issues are given due attention throughout the collection. The studies highlight the importance of understanding the workings of face in online discourse for insight into social media as a locus of phatic communion as well as of verbal aggression. • Norms of face-work in online interaction shape and are shaped by offline practices. • Face-work online interacts with social and power relations, as well as social norms and problems. • Face-work online is scrutinized explicitly and implicitly at the micro-, macro-, and meta-pragmatic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to investigate how the indefinite pronouns and the pronouns nós, você and a gente, when used with generic or indeterminate reference, can be configured as resources for face-work in oral interactions. The corpus of analysis consists of a portion of data from the surveys generated by the Project Language beliefs and attitudes: a study on the relationship between Portuguese and contact languages (AGUILERA, 2009), in Capanema, Paraná. The theoretical basis is composed of research on generic subject pronouns and subject indeterminacy (BORGES, 2004; OROZCO, 2019), indefinite pronouns (CASTILHO, 2010; NEVES, 2018) and studies on face-work (BROWN; LEVINSON, 1987; KERBRAT-ORECCHIONI, 2006; GOFFMAN, 2011). The results showed that the indeterminacy resulting from the use of indefinite pronouns and generic or indeterminate subject pronouns can be an efficient strategy to guarantee the positive face-work, mitigate negative content, avoid responsibility for what is said and avoid criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context where Twitter has come under criticism for enabling and encouraging hostile communication, this article explores how users adopt a 'Twitter face' when navigating interactions on the platform. Extending Goffman's observation that face-work is applicable to both immediate and mediated interaction, this article provides a novel application of face-work on Twitter. Reporting on data from an online questionnaire completed by general Twitter users, we explore how uncivil interaction is experienced on the platform and the interaction strategies users employ to protect their face. We examine how interactions on the platform can lead to a ritual break-down that generate forms of alienation arising from aggressive uses of face-work. We contend that attempts to enhance Twitter as a medium by limiting and restricting particular interactions are ultimately attempts at shaping Twitter's affordances. In analysing user experience, our discussion considers how incivility is responded to and how the platform encourages users to engage in the avoidance components of face-work, while simultaneously inhibiting the easy adoption of its restorative dimensions. While both dimensions of face-work are vital, the downplaying of restorative aspects of face-work arguably undermines Twitter's efforts to encourage inclusive interactions across the platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how Trump uses metadiscourse as a strategy for denying accusations of racism. We conduct a discourse analysis of press event interactions where Trump denies journalists' accusations of racism or where Trump himself voices others' accusations of racism and then denies these accusations. Analysis of 8 excerpts illustrates how Trump a) uses metadiscourse to reframe his own talk as "accurate" instead of "racist," b) uses "fake news" as humor to delegitimize media and display amicable relationships with his African American supporters and c) labels questions from journalists who ask about his racist actions as "racist" or "nasty." These metadiscursive strategies reproduce racist ideologies that position Trump as well intentioned, not racist, and thus not blame-worthy for racist actions and those who question Trump as unreasonable and sometimes, racist themselves. Thus, Trump uses his authority to control definitions of what counts as racism and is able to perpetuate racism while attempting to maintain a "not-racist" identity. Overall, we highlight how close analysis of forms of metadiscourse as used in particular interactional and relational contexts is consequential for understanding ways that racism is justified and maintained more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article continues the conceptual work of developing a process-oriented perspective on belonging by taking up the active engagement of affiliation (and disaffiliation) as an undertheorised yet necessary aspect of accomplishing belonging. In developing the concept we draw on Marx's notion of work as material activity in forms of life and the sociological concepts of face-work and emotion work. We conceptualise belonging work as relational work concerned with shaping situational interactions; webs of relationships; social boundaries; and materials and rhythms as dimensions of belonging. This work is conditioned by social categorisations and patterns of inclusion and exclusion through which it takes place in relation to specific forms of life. The concept of belonging work offers a theoretically integrative and sensitising concept that highlights the relational dynamics of belonging, providing insight and inspiration to social researchers inquiring into the work of belonging and its associated social consequences throughout the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study contributes to discursive and interactional housing and home studies by analysing home visit conversations with clients who need support with their housing and living in the community. It focuses on the ways in which professionals comment on clients' home environments. The data, which consist of 20 audio-recorded home visits in Mobile Support directed at mental health and substance abuse rehabilitees, are analysed by applying the Foucauldian concepts of practices, normalization and inspecting gaze, Goffman's idea on face-work and the ethnomethodologically oriented research on the meanings of spaces in interactions. Five ways of using inspecting gaze are identified: pointing out, criticizing, giving advice, displaying concern and complimenting. The study provides a critical reflective basis for assessing the "soft" use of interactional power in clients' homes at a time when the provision of services in private home spaces is on the increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-referential third-person predications functioning as stand-alone virtual performatives, such as ∗shrugs∗, abound across modes of computer-mediated communication and interactive multimodal platforms. Their continued use, commonly involving manual addition of typographic elements, testifies to non-trivial communicative needs not satisfied by easy access to graphical icons, like the shrug emoji. This study investigates their contributions to the construction of face in mass messaging. Focusing on face-work practices on Twitter, the aim is to account for ways in which users employ virtual performatives in that noisy, opaque, and socially complex environment. Virtual performatives are examined in a sample of publicly visible tweets which are not retweets or replies to other users and do not contain names of people. Manifesting minimal addressivity, the constructions are shown to rely on self-reference for face-work, inviting imagined audiences of the like-minded to treat the action or emotion thus enacted virtually by an externalized self as something they can relate to. Virtual performatives are inherently playful, and the humour conveyed in the tweets including them is predominantly benevolent and tolerant. A central finding is the conspicuous presence of benign self-deprecating humour: as users seek social acceptance at their own expense, they seem not to take themselves too seriously. • Virtual performatives contribute to face-work practices on Twitter. • Users post self-referential microplays for others to relate to. • Virtual performatives convey playfulness and humour. • What is conspicuously present is benevolent self-deprecating humour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some situations in sexual contexts facilitate interaction, others can make overtures difficult to negotiate. Furthermore, social media creates new challenges as individuals navigate sexualized spaces in an increasingly digital world. Drawing on fieldwork in Philadelphia gay bars and supplemental interviews with young gay club-goers, I find that men experience unexpected challenges that inhibit their ability to socialize with gay others and enact positive gay identities. I show how the social organization of particular bars, as well as the popularity of mobile dating applications, undermines the interactional accomplishment of positive outcomes such as identity affirmation and "having fun": (1) men's embodied work to evade effeminacy constrains their facial expressions, comportment, and speech; (2) gay bars' multiple functions as sexual fields and community outposts render both social and sexual interaction difficult to initiate; (3) patrons struggle over whether and how to interact with other mobile dating app users, a novel social tie I conceptualize as acquainted strangers , in the bars. I discuss how these mechanisms—managing stigma corporeally, negotiating discrepant frames, and navigating ambiguous social ties—may thwart interactional achievements while reproducing inequalities in contexts beyond the gay bar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on our own research (Kersten and Lotze 2018, 2020; Lotze and Kersten in press, under review) as well as other work in this area (Bechar-Israeli 1995; Stommel 2007; Lindholm 2013; Aleksiejuk 2016a, 2016b), this article will discuss the pragmatics of (self-)naming practices online and how they contribute to identity construction and face-work (Bedijs, Held and Maaß 2014; Seargeant and Tagg 2014). Drawing on the data collected, both existing and analysed as part of a wider study of usernames across 14 languages (Schlobinski and Siever 2018a), the use and function of anthroponyms and other names in online contexts are explored. Furthermore, we endeavour to situate both onomastic and sociolinguistic research in the field of digitally-mediated interaction (DMI) and in the field of pragmatics in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyses the progressive implementation of interactional approaches in modern linguistics. Starting from the methodological assumptions of the stricto sensu conversational analysis, it is being demonstrated that the approaches initially centred on the reconstruction of the sequential model of the discourse have been opened to the perspectives, which includes not only the interactional modelling of the discursive form, but also the interpersonal construction of meaning. The article also points out the most recent fields of study of interactional linguistics, among them, the analyses dedicated to the so-called conversational negotiations, the theories of verbal politeness or the contrastive and transcultural approaches.

By examining a set of Twitter interactions following a 2018 media event, this article contributes to a growing body of research addressing the fluid and shifting nature of relational work in digital contexts. The Twitter interactions were posted in response to a tweet by documentarian Hari Kondabolu, in which he thanked actor Hank Azaria for Azaria's apology about voicing the controversial character of "Apu" on the long-running animated television program, The Simpsons. Kondabolu's tweet prompted responses from over 500 Twitter users, some of whom contributed to larger discussions about racism and structural inequality on one hand, to extreme political correctness on the other. As they participated in acts of online stancetaking to express their often-opposing positions, Twitter users simultaneously engaged in face-work to manage the interpersonal dimensions of their communication. Providing a micro-analysis of two case study examples, I highlight some of the relationally-oriented discourse-pragmatic strategies employed by Twitter users in interaction with others. One instance shows how a dismissal of the other user's perspectives leads to increased aggression, while the other instance offers insights into how users might signal their willingness to engage in a civil exchange, despite opposing stances. • Twitter interactions where participants take opposing stances may include face-attacks and insults. • Antagonistic discourse on Twitter often includes second-person pronouns and challenging questions. • An unusual example shows users with opposing viewpoints shifting an adversarial interaction to a more civil mode of discourse. • First-person pronouns, metapragmatic signaling of intent and impersonalization strategies are associated with shift to civil discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a rich body of research on face-work, how it is performed in online edu-social groups remains under-explored. Drawing on posts and comments of Facebook groups created for courses at a university in Hong Kong, together with interviews with students, tutors, and the lecturer, this article examines how code-switching is deployed as a powerful discursive resource in the performance of face-work. Notwithstanding English being the medium of instruction of the courses, code-switching is noticeable. Focusing on these participants' practices, our analysis discovers that code-switching serves primarily to signal the breakdown of the expectedly formal academic participation frame and the switch to an informal frame. Multiple layers of action frames are collaboratively and constantly designed and redesigned in these 'social network-educational spaces' (Chau and Lee, 2017), where the formal-informal, public-private, and academic-social boundaries become indistinct. Closer analysis within and across the spaces further reveals that norms of appropriateness of code-switching to achieve informality and solidarity may vary depending on a combination of individual, contextual, and temporal factors. In addition to contributing to existing literature on code-switching and face-work on Facebook, the article offers practical implications for understanding the increasingly informalized discourses in institutional contexts. • Code-switching is a face-work strategy to achieve informality and express solidarity in social network-educational spaces. • Norms of appropriateness of code-switching vary depending on individual, contextual, and temporal factors. • This paper contributes to the strand of literature on face-work with a focus on online discourse in a multilingual setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the performance of agency within the context of unequal power resources and structural constraint. Based on 23 video‐recorded placement meetings in three homeless shelters, we find that participants' agency is the outcome of both collaboration and resistance. To avoid interaction that fails to empower, social actors engage in "repair work" and face‐saving practices. When clients display "wrong face"—that is, bring problems to the table that are not considered "reasonable"—then the service providers engage in "repair work." Participants turn conflict into collaborative agency because interactions that fail to deliver mutually empowering forms of agency have costs for both: clients' problems are not solved, and service providers fail to reach organizational goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exponential growth of consumer reviews has given rise to a new online genre: responses from businesses. While previous research predominantly focused on responses to negative reviews and mainly adopted a monolingual standpoint, in this contribution we analyze business responses to positive reviews, adopting a cross-linguistic perspective. We first explore the move structure of these responses, then delve into their different linguistic realizations, paying particular attention to potential face-work strategies. Replying to positive evaluations raises specific challenges for face-work, since it creates a tension between the choice of 'self-enhancement' and 'self-effacement' (modesty). Our findings show that the professional orientation of these interactions plays a determining role in the communicative choices adopted by the response writers. Indeed, responses to positive reviews display divergent face-work practices from patterns observed in other "positive" interactional contexts such as face-to-face or Facebook compliment responses. Specifically, we observed the pervasiveness of accepting strategies and the absence of evading or rejecting strategies. From a cross-linguistic perspective, responses written in Dutch and English tend more often toward values of modesty, whereas replies written in Italian display self-enhancement of their business, adding positive descriptions of their accommodations and promotional strategies. Furthermore, responses written in English and Dutch, display a more neutral style, while responses written in Italian opt for a more involved style (e.g., including positive small talk and returning compliments to their guests). • Positive responses on TripAdvisor display divergent face-work strategies compared to Facebook. • On TripAdvisor accepting strategies are pervasive, while evading or rejecting strategies are absent. • Positive responses written in Dutch and English tend more often toward values of modesty and display a more neutral communicative style. • Positive responses written in Italian display self-enhancement strategies (promotional strategies). • Positive responses written in Italian opt for a more involved style (small talk/returning compliments). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expressions of politeness such as please are prominent elements of interactional conduct that are explicitly targeted in early socialization and are subject to cultural expectations around socially desirable behavior. Yet their specific interactional functions remain poorly understood. Using conversation analysis supplemented with systematic coding, this study investigates when and where interactants use please in everyday requests. We find that please is rare, occurring in only 7 percent of request attempts. Interactants use please to manage face-threats when a request is ill fitted to its immediate interactional context. Within this, we identify two environments in which please prototypically occurs. First, please is used when the requestee has demonstrated unwillingness to comply. Second, please is used when the request is intrusive due to its incompatibility with the requestee’s engagement in a competing action trajectory. Our findings advance research on politeness and extend Goffman’s theory of face-work, with particular salience for scholarship on request behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of social media has resulted in brand–consumer interaction and more frequent conversations between consumers and brand representatives. To better understand how this 'brand conversation' occurs, our research employs face-work theory and explores ambivalent consumer perceptions towards brand linguistic practices. Specifically, our results show how 'threatening' messages (according to face-work theory) can be accepted by consumers, while 'flattering' messages can be rejected. These paradoxical situations can be explained by brand relationships and the commercial and symbolic brand status. By identifying the specific features of brand–consumer interactions in the light of face-work, we propose a decision-making tool for brand management and community management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El humor verbal frente a los procedimientos de face-work El objetivo del estudio es analizar algunas peculiaridades del humor verbal desde la perspectiva del llamado face-work (Brown y Levinson, 1978, 1987). El concepto de posicionamiento interaccional remite a determinados cuestionamientos acerca de la relación que se establece entre las prácticas humorísticas y la (re)configuración del territorio interpersonal. Por consiguiente, trataremos de averiguar en qué medida las manifestaciones del humor verbal como bromas o insultos rituales pueden resultar «amenazantes» o «valorizantes» para las imágenes de los interlocutores. Reflexionaremos, de igual modo, sobre los parámetros situacionales y contextuales que pueden poner en peligro el desarrollo de la interacción.

L'essor des médias sociaux a favorisé les échanges entre les internautes et les représentants des marques. Pour mieux comprendre comment cette « conversation de marque » se déroule, notre recherche mobilise la théorie du face-work et explore les perceptions ambivalentes des consommateurs vis-à-vis des pratiques linguistiques des marques. En particulier, nos résultats montrent comment des messages « menaçants » (selon la théorie du face-work) peuvent être acceptés par les consommateurs, tandis que des messages « valorisants » peuvent être rejetés. Ces situations paradoxales peuvent être expliquées par la nature de la relation à la marque, la dimension symbolique de la marque et le contexte commercial des échanges. En identifiant les spécificités des interactions marques-consommateurs à la lumière du face-work, nous proposons un outil d'aide à la décision dans les domaines de la gestion de la marque et du community management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the study is to analyze some peculiarities of verbal humour from the perspective of the so-called face-work (Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987). The concept of interactional positioning refers to certain questions about the relationship between humorous practices and the (re)configuration of interpersonal territory. Hence, the extent to which manifestations of verbal humour as jokes or ritual insults can be 'threatening' or 'valorizing' to the faces of the interlocutors is explored. The situational and contextual parameters that may jeopardize the development of interaction are also reflected on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Because of economically induced changes in record label contracts, recording artists are now required to cowrite their songs. Despite this obligation, many recording artists are unskilled as writers. For their professional songwriter teammates, using face-work to save the recording artist from the embarrassment of being an unskilled songwriter can be at odds with status maintenance in the larger social community if the collaboration results in a bad song. Interviews with 39 country songwriters revealed two key strategies for orienting the songwriting process toward writing a song that will allow for status maintenance among peers while still attending to group cohesion. Of the two strategies for achieving this goal, most common was a process of commercially oriented "bespoke facilitation" to match songs' lyrical content to artists' personal branding goals. In a second strategy, referred to as a "manipulation dance," songwriters prewrite songs or portions of songs to guide the creative process toward content that will contribute to their status among industry peers. Both strategies rely on songwriters using face-work to be perceived as a "good hang" to keep the recording artist happy while still ensuring that the song is well crafted and will help to build and maintain their status. This study contributes to understanding how an individual working in a collaborative group might orient efforts toward maintaining status in a wider community while attending to group cohesion when the group has mismatched goals, skills, or tastes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In literature, God is a being endowed with a “face”: Erving Goffman’s concept (1967), reshaped by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987), further developed by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2001, 2005), can account for the “line of conduct” of the divine character, seen or apprehended as a person. The French and English romances belonging to the cycle of the Quest of the Holy Grail invite to the contemplation of this veiled, yet feared, face. In two hypostases : God’s “negative face”, corresponding to his territory and to his freedom from imposition, and the “positive” one, equivalent to his self-image, as delineated by relevant others (saints, angels, “celestial” knights). In its vibrant openness to humanity, the holy Grail is a literary representation of God’s “bifrons” face. It controls people’s access and departure, as well as their ontological dynamics. To illustrate this epiphany in a relevant, and explicitly religious medieval work, triggered by Chrétien’s Grail romance and going beyond the suggestions of this enigmatic paradigm, our corpus encompasses, on the one hand, the French Queste del Saint Graal of the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and, on the other hand, Le Morte Darthur, an English novel of the fifteenth century by Thomas Malory. Both texts retell, in a hermeneutic key, the accomplishment of the Quest of the Holy Grail and the assumption of Galaad. While the French text shows the hero undergo the destiny of all flesh (he falls onto his teeth), only to highlight the elevation of his soul, the English rewriting disrupts this dynamics : in this new context, Galaad’s body has no narrative existence of its own – it is only the soul that reveals itself, in meaningful ascension to heaven. All these differences play an important part in the sacred “face-work” projected by profane literature. The comparison of the French and English versions shows that the God of the Grail romances possesses specific ways of cutting a fine figure, that imply, for man, specific ways of keeping face, in a subtle interplay of cultural expectations. The theory of face-work can nurture a pragmatics of spirituality – highly relevant to the medieval corpus of the Grail Quest, in which spirits only exist to serve or apprehend the miracle of Incarnation, in a narrative knot of lights and haloes that remodel God’s self-presentation in literary life.

Politeness Theory, just like Grice’s Cooperative Principle, points out that pragmatic analysis of language behaviour has to be grounded in extra-linguistic facts of social (or even biological) nature. Additionally, despite the slightly misleading label, Politeness Theory provides a sound methodology to explain some persuasive as well as politeness phenomena. In the same vein, the so called Relational Model Theory provides another theoretical framework for the explanation of persuasive phenomena and persuasive language. Both Relational Model Theory and Politeness Theory show that persuasion is also to be understood as a rational response to not-so-rational social and biological needs. In the article an attempt is made to compare the two theories focusing on their explanatory power in reference to language choices aiming at enhancing the persuasive potential of a language message.

The study analyses the progressive implementation of interactional approaches in modern linguistics. Starting from the methodological assumptions of the stricto sensu conversational analysis, it is being demonstrated that the approaches initially centred on the reconstruction of the sequential model of the discourse have been opened to the perspectives, which includes not only the interactional modelling of the discursive form, but also the interpersonal construction of meaning. The article also points out the most recent fields of study of interactional linguistics, among them, the analyses dedicated to the socalled conversational negotiations, the theories of verbal politeness or the contrastive and transcultural approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected from focus groups and nonparticipant observations, this article explores how and why cross‐talk by way of smartphone affects face‐to‐face encounters. The findings show there are three types of digital cross‐talk: exclusive, semi‐exclusive, and collaborative. Furthermore, it was found that digital cross‐talk can either facilitate or disrupt the expressive order of an encounter. Semi‐exclusive and collaborative digital cross‐talk were found to facilitate encounters. Exclusive digital cross‐talk was found to disrupt or have little influence on encounters, depending on whether or not interlocutors successfully engaged in a corrective process, an avoidance process, or aggressive face‐work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to analyze the avoidance strategy of face threat by English native speaker and non-native speaker who learnt other language e.g. English. This study used Irving Goffman’s face-work theory and its relation to avoidance face threat as a framework. 2 participants (one Australian and one Indonesian) took part in this study. Both participants were interviewed in English language in English speaking environment for about 30 minutes each. The participants were asked to tell about their hobbies with some open-ended questions. This study focused on spoken sentences produced by both interviewees that indicated avoidance of face threat. The findings revealed that the native speaker and non-native speaker reacted differently to avoid face threat. In addition, they also had their own strategy to avoid the face threat. This study concluded that different cultures significantly contributed to the strategy of avoidance of face threat. Permalink/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3087

According to Goffman, the human activity can be described as a "facework" (Goffman, 1974 [1967]: 15), respecting a particular set of societal rules as well as etiquette, and during this 'work' any (inter)actant strives to make a good impression. Should this be true, then it is worth analysing the romance, Le Roman de Tristan en prose, as illustrating this particular interaction which appears throughout the literary communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we depart from the hypothesis that face-work is an important dimension of the construction of discourse, regardless the register (oral or written). Drawing on the framework of Pragmatics, we argue that instances of nominalization can operate as politeness strategies, in the sense that they permit, on the one hand, the omission of the actor/agent of a given verbal event and, on the other hand, they contribute to establishing the boundaries of social distance and power relations, as a pervasive feature of formal texts. The empirical data analyzed in this study include academic papers taken from the Academic Corpus of Brazilian Portuguese (CAPB). In the academic papers analyzed, nominalizations operated, to a large degree, as a strategy to mitigate the potential attacks on the positive face of the author himself, acting, therefore, as a strategy of positive politeness.

In literature, God is a being endowed with a "face": Erving Goffman's concept (1967), reshaped by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987), further developed by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2001, 2005), can account for the "line of conduct" of the divine character, seen or apprehended as a person. The French and English romances belonging to the cycle of the Quest of the Holy Grail invite to the contemplation of this veiled, yet feared, face. In two hypostases : God's "negative face", corresponding to his territory and to his freedom from imposition, and the "positive" one, equivalent to his self-image, as delineated by relevant others (saints, angels, "celestial" knights). In its vibrant openness to humanity, the holy Grail is a literary representation of God's "bifrons" face. It controls people's access and departure, as well as their ontological dynamics. To illustrate this epiphany in a relevant, and explicitly religious medieval work, triggered by Chrétien's Grail romance and going beyond the suggestions of this enigmatic paradigm, our corpus encompasses, on the one hand, the French Queste del Saint Graal of the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and, on the other hand, Le Morte Darthur, an English novel of the fifteenth century by Thomas Malory. Both texts retell, in a hermeneutic key, the accomplishment of the Quest of the Holy Grail and the assumption of Galaad. While the French text shows the hero undergo the destiny of all flesh (he falls onto his teeth), only to highlight the elevation of his soul, the English rewriting disrupts this dynamics : in this new context, Galaad's body has no narrative existence of its own - it is only the soul that reveals itself, in meaningful ascension to heaven. All these differences play an important part in the sacred "face-work" projected by profane literature. The comparison of the French and English versions shows that the God of the Grail romances possesses specific ways of cutting a fine figure, that imply, for man, specific ways of keeping face, in a subtle interplay of cultural expectations. The theory of face-work can nurture a pragmatics of spirituality - highly relevant to the medieval corpus of the Grail Quest, in which spirits only exist to serve or apprehend the miracle of Incarnation, in a narrative knot of lights and haloes that remodel God's self-presentation in literary life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]