Self-politeness: A proposal

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Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 87-106 www.elsevier.nl/locate/pragma

Self-politeness: A proposal Rong Chen* English Department, California State University, SB. 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA 92407-2397~ USA Received 23 November 1998; revised version 3 August 1999

Abstract Research in linguistic politeness in the past two decades has been fruitful but incomplete: it has focused exclusively on other-oriented politeness while no attention has been paid to the fact that speakers' need to save their own face also has a bearing on their linguistic behavior. In this paper, I build a model of self-politeness within the framework of Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory. This model includes a set of superstrategies, each of which has its output strategies. I will also discuss factors that influence speakers' choices of strategies and illustrate these strategies with examples. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Politeness; Self-politeness; Pragmatics; Cross-cultural; Face-threat; Self-face threat

1. Introduction Since Goffman's (1967) work, politeness has become one of the most active areas of research in language use. The literature on the subject is mammoth-like: the bibliography compiled by DuFon et al. (1994) contains 51 pages and, to appreciate the amount of work done since then, one only needs to glance at the tables of contents o f j o u r n a l s like the Journal of Pragmatics and Pragmatics and Cognition.

This study was supported by a faculty development grant from California State University, San Bernardino. I owe much to my colleague Peter Schroeder, a self-proclaimed layman in linguistics, for his ruthlessness in pointing out the creativity of my spelling, inconsistencies in my argument, and inaccuracies in my interpretation of data. I am also deeply indebted to my colleagues Sunny Hyon and Jennifer Anderson and two anonymous referees of the Journal of Pragmatics for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this paper. * Phone: +1-(909)-880-5887; Email: [email protected] 0378-2166/01/$ - see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PlI: S 0 3 7 8 - 2 1 6 6 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 1 2 4 - 1

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The research on politeness falls into three categories: (1) work that constructs theories of politeness, such as Lakoff (1973, 1977), Brown and Levinson (1987), Leech (1983), Fraser (1990), and Escandell-Vidal (1996); (2) work that investigates cultural-specific concepts and strategies of politeness, such as Hill et al. (1986), Gu (1992), Lindenfeld (1990), and Sherzer (1983); (3) work that applies existing theories to data from various cultures, such as Scollon and Scollon (1983), Chen (1993b, 1996), Garcfa (1989), Rhodes (1989), and Holmes (1990). Although these researchers differ in important ways, they share a common focus on politeness to other (than the speaker herself). Politeness to self (the speaker) has been largely ignored. In this paper, I argue that self-politeness should be taken into account in the study of politeness and propose a model of self-politeness. Self-politeness refers to cases in communication where the need to protect and enhance one's own face influences what one says and the way she says it. The term 'self', it should be noted, does not only refer to the speaker herself, but also those aligned with the speaker: her family, friends, colleagues, clients, and even her profession. The spokesperson of the White House will say things that maintain the image of the US government, hence the self in this case is the corporate entity of the White House. When I debate with a colleague from the field of psychology regarding, say, whether language acquisition is more of a territory of linguistics or psychology, my self will be the field of linguistics as much as my opponent's self is the field of psychology. Similarly, 'other' refers to not only the hearer, but also those aligned with the hearer as well as a third party that may or may not be present. In what follows, I first establish a need for self-politeness (Section 2), followed by a demonstration of the lack of attention to self-politeness in the literature (Section 3). In Section 4, I offer a defense of Brown and Levinson, arguing that their theory is fundamentally correct and is still the best tool we have in the investigation of politeness. The model of self-politeness is laid out in Section 5, which discusses superstrategies and the factors that influence speakers' choices of them, and Section 6, in which I propose some output strategies and illustrate them with examples. Lastly, in Section 7, I explore the relationship between self-politeness on the one hand and other-politeness, impoliteness, and culture on the other.

2. The need for self-politeness As will become clear, what is being discussed in this paper is a sort of selfdefense mechanisms, and one may wonder whether these mechanisms are indeed self-politeness strategies or something else. The folk concept of politeness (as defined in dictionaries) example for, would seem to involve an exclusive focus on others. However, linguistic politeness goes beyond folk politeness, although it has evolved from it, particularly Goffman's notion of face (B&L, 1987: 61). B&L, for instance, define politeness in terms of speakers' need to say things which help them to mitigate the imposition inherent in speech acts, and the face that those speech acts threaten includes the face of the speaker as well as the face of others (1987: 65-68, but see below for a more detailed discussion). It is therefore obvious that their notion

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of politeness does not exclude politeness to self. Similarly, Leech (1983, also see below) holds that politeness is needed in the theory of linguistic pragmatics to explain why speakers violate Grice's maxims. Since speakers deviate from Grice's maxim for the sake of their own face as well as for that of others, politeness to self becomes an integral part of the politeness theory to Leech as well. The reason for including self-politeness in the theory of linguistic politeness is that the face of the speaker (hereafter self-face) is as vulnerable as the face of the hearer (hereafter other-face). This vulnerability is seen in two ways. First, just as there are speech acts that threaten other-face, there are speech acts that threaten self-face (B&L, 1987: 67-68, but see below). Second, the face of the speaker can be attacked by the hearer, just as the face of the hearer can be attacked by the speaker. Example (1) shows how a speech act can threaten self-face and what a speaker can do to minimize the threat. Speaker A is purchasing a house and finds one that interests him. Before making an offer, he goes to investigate the neighborhood. He meets a woman (Speaker B) in her front yard and the following is part of their conversation. (1) A: Is this a relatively safe area? ! mean break-ins and all that. B: Well ... as safe as it can be nowadays. There have been some activities here and there, but people watch for each other's homes and things aren'! that bad. Instead of answering A's question directly, B offers too much information and uses a euphemism 'activities' to refer to happenings that would disqualify the neighborhood as safe. The reason for B's evasiveness is obvious to an American: to admit that one's own neighborhood is not safe damages one's own public image, since, for Americans, where one lives is an important indication of one's social status. In other words, Speaker B's way of responding to A is motivated by her need to minimize the threat to her self-face that seems inherent in the speech act she has to perform. Example (2) shows that self-face can be attacked by other, and, when this happens, the speaker will do things to protect it from attack. On March 8, 1998, '60 Minutes', a CBS TV magazine show, featured an interview with Latrell Sprewell, a basketball player of the Golden State Warriors, Oakland, USA, who had been punished for choking his head coach. Example (2) is part of the interview (A: interviewer; B: Sprewell): (2) A: Are you someone who's easy to get out of control? B: Well, you ask any coach I've played for except P.J. to see if this kind of thing has ever happened. B flouts Grice's Maxim of Relation to protect his face, which is openly attacked by A. Utterances like this that are meant to protect self-face when it is attacked by an other are common in finger-pointing situations as well. They are also prevalent in the American legal system, where a cross examiner often attacks the witness'

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character, forcing the witness' counsel to elicit testimonies to maintain or restore the witness' face. When having to do speech acts that threaten self-face or when self-face is attacked by other, speakers will make efforts to maintain, protect, or enhance selfface, resulting in utterances for the sake of self-politeness. This calls for a serious investigation of self-politeness, which has been largely neglected as a viable topic of study in the literature, as will be seen in the next section.

3. The neglect of self-politeness 3.1. Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1987)

Both Leech and B&L maintain that the purpose of politeness is to save face. However, they have concentrated on speakers' efforts to save the face of other, without systematic attention to speakers' efforts to save the face of self. To Leech, politeness functions in two ways: to 'rescue' Grice's (1975) Cooperative Principle (CP) by explaining why speakers choose to violate the maxims, and to minimize the impoliteness of impolite illocutions, with its mirror image of maximizing the politeness of politeness illocutions (Leech, 1983: 81, 83). Leech's Politeness Principle (1983: 132) has the following maxims: (3) (I)

(II)

(III)

(IV)

(V)

(VI)

Tact maxim (a) Minimize cost to other [(b) Maximize benefit to other] Generosity Maxim (a) Minimize benefit to self [(b) Maximize benefit of other] Approbation Maxim (a) Minimize dispraise of other [(b) Maximize praise of other] Modesty Maxim (a) Minimize praise of self [(b) Maximize dispraise of self] Agreement Maxim (a) Minimize disagreement between self and other [(b) Maximize agreement between self and other] Sympathy Maxim (a) Minimize antipathy between self and other [(b) Maximize sympathy between self and other]

Of these six maxims, (I-III) are clearly other-oriented. Maxim V, the Agreement Maxim, is in essence other-oriented as well, for agreeing with others enhances the latter's positive face. In the same vein, Maxim V1, the Sympathy Maxim, requires speakers to say things such as 'I'm terribly sorry to hear that your cat has died' rather than 'I'm terribly pleased to hear that your cat has died' (Leech, 1983: 138).

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The only maxim that may involve self-politeness is Maxim IV, the Modesty Maxim. This maxim explains why utterances such as ' H o w clever of m e ' "commit the social transgression of boasting" (Leech, 1983: 136). However, one cannot judge, from Leech's brief discussion of this maxim (Leech, 1983: 136-138), if this social transgression is due to impoliteness to other or to self. The neglect of self-politeness by B&L is even more obvious. B&L hold that members of a society have face, defined as wants and needs to maintain their public image approved of by other members of the society. The notion of face is further divided into negative and positive. Negative face refers to "the want of every 'competent adult m e m b e r ' that his actions be unimpeded by others"; positive face refers to "the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others" (1987: 62). On the other hand, however, speakers have to perform various speech acts in communication. These acts very often threaten the face of the speaker or the hearer or both, hence B&L call them Face Threatening Acts (FTA's). Therefore, speakers use politeness strategies to mitigate the damaging effects of FTA's. B&L (1987: 65-68) provide a list of FTA's, which are categorized according to two parameters: whether the acts threaten negative or positive face and whether they threaten the hearer's or the speaker's face. Here we see that the authors have both other and self in mind. But this is as far as their attention to self goes: in the rest (and the bulk) of the book (pp. 91-279), politeness to self disappears completely. However, B & L ' s neglect of self-politeness is more clearly seen in their discussion of superstrategies and the factors influencing speakers' choices of them. The follow-. ing is a list of the five superstrategies they propose (B&L, 1987: 60):

(4) 1. Without redressive action, baldly 2. 3. 4. 5.

Positive politeness Negative politeness Off record Withhold the FTA

The choice of a particular strategy is determined by the weightiness of an FTA: the weightier the FFA, the higher the number of strategy a speaker will choose. An F T A ' s weightiness is computed using the following formula: (5) W x =D(S,H)+P(H,S)+R~ in which, the authors explain: "Wx is the numerical value that measures the weightiness of the FFA x, D(S,H) is the value that measures the social distance between S and H, P(H,S) is a measure of the power that H has over S, and Rx is a value that measures the degree to which the FTA x is rated an imposition in that culture." (B&L, 1987: 76) Since a higher numerical value of any of the three factors will result in a higher value for the weightiness of the FTA, which will in turn lead to a higher-numbered strategy, the formula in (5) predicts that the more distance there is between the

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speaker and hearer, the more power the hearer has over the speaker, and the more imposing the FTA, the more effort she will make to mitigate the face threatening force of the intended speech act. Looking more closely, we find that this formula is intended for other-politeness only. It does not explain or predict what a speaker will do when faced with an FTA that threatens self-face, although B&L (1987: 76) apparently think that it does. Take apology, an act B&L classify as damaging to self-face. Suppose that, when hurrying out of an elevator, I step on someone's toes. This formula predicts that I would choose a higher-numbered strategy if the person whose toes I step on is more distant from me and has more power over me. If the person is Bill Clinton, I would, according to this formula, perhaps choose Strategy 5, 'Withhold the FTA' and walk away without a word - a situation that seems difficult to conceive of. 3.2. Other studies

Self-politeness is not dealt with in other models of politeness either (Hill et al., 1986; Fraser, 1990; Escandell-Vidal, 1996). This omission, it should be pointed out, is a natural result of these authors' theoretical orientation rather than a neglect: as will be seen in Section 4.2, they either define politeness as a sort of norm (Hill et al., 1986; Fraser, 1990) or within a cognitive framework (Escandell-Vidal, 1996), which renders the distinction between other-politeness and self-politeness irrelevant. There have been a few studies that touch on the issue of self-politeness, however. Gu certainly has self in mind when he proposes his Politeness Principle (of modem Chinese): "a sanctioned belief that an individual's social behaviour ought to live up to the expectations of respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement" (1990: 245). He also alludes to the distinction between self and other at various places (e.g., 1990: 146). Discussing Chinese speakers' compliment responding behavior (Chen, 1993b) and their food-offering conversations (Chen, 1996), Chen believes that much of his data can be explained by the subjects' motivation to say things that enhance their own public image, much in line with Gu's Politeness Principle. Similar arguments can be found in Holmes' (1990) study of compliment responding by New Zealand English speakers. Besides, Chen (1993a) discusses three motivations for the breaching of Grice's maxims. One of them, the Self-Interest Principle, makes vague reference to self-politeness. These researchers' attending to self-face, however, has not provided a systematic framework for us to use in our study of language use.

4. A defense of B & L

Since B&L's theory has been criticized on many fronts, it is necessary to discuss reasons why the model of self-politeness proposed here is constructed within B&L's framework. To this end, I argue that B&L's theory is fundamentally sound despite its criticisms and demonstrate that other models of politeness seem flawed in their approaches to politeness.

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4,1. Criticisms of B&L The criticisms of B&L's theory have been summarized in various works (Kasper, 1990; Thomas, 1995; Escandell-Vidal, 1996; Watts et al., 1992a; Meier, 1995). This section addresses two criticisms that appear to be the most important. The first criticism of B&L is that their model of politeness is ethnocentric, deriving "directly from the high value based on individualism in Western culture" (Kasper, 1990: 252-253). As a result, its claim of universality is cast in doubt. This criticism seems to have originated in Wierzbicka (1985), later to be followed by many others: Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1994), Liao (1994), Janney and Arndt (1993), Chen (1993b), Kasper (1990), Kasper and Blum-Kulka (1993), Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), Wierzbicka (1991), Watts et al. (1992a,b), to name a few. Typically drawing data from non-English speaking cultures, these studies find that many speech acts are perceived differently on the dimension of politeness in different cultures. For example, an explicit performative is a typical way to give advice in Polish, while a bare imperative is "one of the softer options in issuing directives" (Wierzbicka, 1985: 154). Similarly, the Chinese view as 'polite" those imperatives which are used to make offers (Chen, 1996) and to invite the hearer to dinners (Mao, 1992). Since B&L categorize imperatives as a Bald on record strategy, one that is the most imposing, hence most 'impolite', B&L's claim of universality fails. While it is true that imperatives are considered by B&L the most imposing way o1" doing an FTA, B&L, however, are fully aware that they can be polite even in English speaking cultures. In their discussion of Bald on record (1987: 94--101), they list a number of factors in a speaker's choice of imperatives, among which is "interest to H", a use that is "actually oriented to face" (1987: 99), such as offers, invitations, and sympathetic advice or warnings. Besides, the fact that a particular speech act is viewed as having different degrees of politeness in different cultures is taken care of by B&L's formula of calculating a strategy, discussed above, which includes 'R', the force of imposition of a FTA perceived in a given culture. In other words, B&L would say that since the Polish and Chinese view acts like giving advice and making offers as less imposing than English speakers, they would assign a lesser value to W, resulting in a lower-numbered strategy, such as Bald on record, than their English speaking counterparts. The second criticism of B&L is that their distinction between negative politeness and positive politeness is dubious (Meier, 1995: 384). This problem, according to Meier (1995: 385), has arisen from the fact that B&L categorize many FTA's as threatening both negative and positive face. The corresponding strategies to redress

It should be noted here that Watts et al. (1992a: 9) see a problem with B & L ' s D, P, and R: "In order for the model person to be able to assess the value for R, s/he has to be able to calculate values for D and P first. No indication is given as to how this might be done". To B&L, however, the three factors are independent variables. The value for one is assessed "with other two held constant" (B&L 1983: 80-81). This is possible at least interculturally, if not intraculturally: one can easily demonstrate how a particular speech act is viewed as having different degrees of face threat in comparable situations in different cultures.

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these FTA's, as a result, can be seen as both negative and positive politeness strategies. This fact, Meier (1995: 384-385) believes, has led to conflicting findings in subsequent studies: the same culture has been labeled differently by different researchers. Americans, for instance, have been believed to be positively oriented by some (Scollon and Scollon, 1983), but negatively oriented by others (Tannen, 1981). Cross-listing certain FTA's as threatening both negative and positive face, however, is not necessarily a problem for B&L. On the contrary, it suggests the complexity of social interaction and reflects the multifacetedness of utterances: since one utterance can perform more than one act, 2 it is only natural that a particular speech act can damage more than one kind of face, and hence a particular strategy can be oriented toward different face wants. As to labeling cultures according to the negative/positive dichotomy, conflicts in research findings may be avoided if the researcher confines herself to statements warranted by the data. If I were to study offers in Chinese, I could conclude that Chinese are positively oriented only as far as offers are concerned, rather than that they are positively oriented in general. For it is very possible that they may be negatively oriented when it comes to other speech events such as requests. 4.2. Alternatives to B&L

Since B&L (1987), there have been a number of alternative theories of politeness. I will discuss two major approaches here to demonstrate that they do not seem able to replace B&L. The first approach is 'the norm approach'. Its best representative is Hill et al.'s (1986) model of Discernment. Discernment means that "the speaker can be considered to submit passively to the requirements of the system. That is, once certain factors of addressee and situation are noted, the selection of an appropriate linguistic form and/or appropriate behavior is essentially automatic" (Hill et al., 1986: 348; see also Ide, 1989). Also belonging to this approach is Fraser's (1990) model of Conversational Contract, which Fraser himself believes to be different from the "social norm v i e w " ) To Fraser, conversational participants adhere to a "conversational contract", which is determined by mutually accepted social values. "Being polite constitutes operating within the then-current terms and conditions of the CC" (1990: 233). What these two models essentially claim is that to be polite is to do what is expected by a particular norm, although the norm is defined in general terms by Hill et al. and in specific terms by Fraser. This approach is attractive in at least one sense: it seems able to take into account cross-cultural differences. If explicit imperatives are rarely used English but are a commonplace in Polish, then the norm approach would say that both are socially acceptable because the two peoples have different expectations. -~ For example, the reply 'In the kitchen' to the question 'Do you know where mom is?' is doing two things - answering the question and asserting the whereabouts of the mother - at the same time. See Fraser (1990) for a different classification of approaches to politeness.

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Following from this, the cross-cultural study of politeness would b e c o m e a study of social norms, a study of how cultures differ in their respective expectations of what one should say in a given situation. It is here that one sees a problem of the approach: norm seems too large a concept to be of much use. Linguistic norms alone can be on any dimension: on the dimension of register, dimension o f clarity, dimension of style. To lump all these norms together seems to make the issue more confusing, but to separate politeness from other norms is not an issue that these theories seem to be concerned about. B&L, in fact, considered and then abandoned the norm approach, although for different reasons from what I have put forward. The following is worth quoting: ~One such alternative might in fact be phrased in terms of norms or rules ... Even intraculturally there are problems, for the kinds of norms envisaged by such workers are extremely specific, in some cases being strict applications of (possibly recursive) rules specifying ritual formulae ... But this will not produce the flexible and indefinitely productive strategic usage we here describe .... this possibility has no attraction in a cross-cultural perspective. For norms, being specific to particular social populations, have a severely limited explanatory role in comparative (cross-cultural) research. Moreover, as has been persuasively argued by Lewis (1969), conventions therefore norms - may have rational origins. This suggests that the notion "norm' may not have the utility as a sociological primitive that it has usually been accorded." (B&L, 1987: 85-86) The second alternative to B & L is the cognitive approach advocated by EscandellVidal (1996). Escandell-Vidal proposes that the bearer's processing of polite utterances is no different from her processing of any other kind of utterances, i.e., that the hearer only needs a set of cultural assumptions, defined as ~frames', to interpret the intention of the speaker. Like others discussed previously, Escandell-Vidal's major argument against B & L is what she believes to be the Anglocentricity of B & L ' s theory and hence its failure to explain cross-cultural differences. But she seems to have solved the problem by avoiding it. The chief reason why politeness has become a viable issue in the study of language use is that it offers one explanation for speakers' linguistic behavior: that is, politeness is a factor that determines what a speaker says and how she says it, which explains why all theories of politeness have focused on the speaker. By shifting the focus from the speaker to the hearer, Escandell-Vidal dodges the problem rather than confront it.

5. A model of self-politeness The model of self-politeness proposed here makes similar claims to those of B & L : speakers of a language have face needs. However, they also need to perform various speech acts in social life, some of which, if done without redress, will threaten their own face, hereafter called S(elf)-F(ace) T(hreatening) A(ct)'s. As a result, speakers will adopt various strategies to mitigate the force of threat of these SFTA's. There are four superstrategies available for a speaker to choose in self-politeness, which are similar to those of B & L ' s other-politeness, as in (6), below:

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(6) 1. 2. 3. 4.

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Baldly With redress Off record Withhold the SFTA

However, there is an important difference between B&L's superstrategies and those in the present framework. B&L's distinction between negative and positive politeness is absent in (6). There are two reasons for this. First, in self-politeness, the difference between negative and positive politeness is a difference in kind, not of degree. In other words, a speaker does not have a choice between the two. In a situation where I had to make an unwilling promise to the Department chair (e.g., to attend a commencement), which, according to B&L (68), is an act that threatens my negative face, I can do a number of things, but there do not seem to be any positive strategies available to me under the circumstances. Therefore, listing positive and negative politeness at the level of superstrategies would create the false impression that the difference between them reflects a difference in the speaker's assessment of self-face loss (see below). Second, the distinction between negative and positive politeness is not only relevant in Strategy 2, as in B&L, but also in other strategies. In other words, each of the superstrategies can be oriented toward both positive and negative self-face, depending on the communicative event the speaker is engaged in. This will become clearer in the discussion of output strategies below. Further, there are two factors, both of which have sub-components, that influence the choice of the superstrategies, as seen in (7). (7) 1 : The degree to which self-face is threatened by other, which depends on A: The confrontationality of the communicative event B: The gravity of threat of the FTA by other, which is the sum of a: The severity of the FTA b: The directness of the FTA; 2. The degree to which self-face is threatened by the SFFA, which depends on A: The severity of the SFTA B: The consequence of the SFTA 'Self-face is threatened by other', in Factor 1, refers to situations where other has done an act in the prior turn of a communicative event that threatens the face of self. A 'communicative event' can be any communicative transaction in any medium or mode. For example, if my spouse has said 'You left your shoes in the living room again', she has threatened my face with an FFA. In Factor 2, the SFTA refers to an act that a speaker finds herself having to perform. In the shoes example, the SFFA that faces me would be apology. Notice that these two factors are different from the three factors - D, P, and R proposed by B&L. Their D, the social distance between the speaker and hearer, does not appear to have a bearing on the speaker's choice of self-politeness strategies. It is not clear that, after having stepped on someone's toes, 1 would apologize

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differently according to how well I know the person. Neither does their P, the relative power of self and other, seem to determine which strategy to choose: whether the person whose toes I have stepped on is a student of mine or Bill Clinton does not seem to influence the way I apologize (or my decision on whether to apologize at all) .4 Factor 1, the degree of threat to self-face, is relevant when the communicalive event is confrontational or self-face is threatened by other. Its first component, confrontationality, is viewed as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. On the one end of this continuum is extreme confrontationality, which includes the American courtroom, where the prosecution and defense attack each other and defend themselves, and the kind of debates on American national TV where proponents of two sides of an issue face each other, such as the pro-life and pro-choice debate. It also includes everyday speech in which the conversation is argumentative. On the other end of the scale will be events with little or no confrontation where participants cooperate to maintain each other's face - 'I'm extremely sorry I mispronounced your name ~. 'Don't worry. It's a difficult name and even I can't do it right myself'. Somewhere in the middle of the scale may be cases where, for example, one speaker points out an obvious mistake by another and/or mildly blames the latter for it. It seems that the more confrontational the event, the more likely a speaker will defend her face, resulting in the selection of a higher-numbered strategy. The second component of Factor 1, the gravity of the threat of the FTA by other, includes both the severity of the act itself (Factor l.B.a) and the way the act is issued (1.B.b). The severity of the act refers to what Searle (1965: 224-225) calls the "propositional content" of the act. If I am blamed by my spouse for having left the front door open last night, 'having left the front door open last night' will be the propositional content of her act of blaming. In the sense that there is an infinite range of things I can be blamed for, the act of blaming will have an infinite number of' propositional contents. Accordingly, acts of blaming with different propositional content will inflict different degrees of damage to my face. Blaming me for not having published any books up till now, for instance, is more severe in its threat to my face than blaming me for not showing up to a voluntary social gathering. The way the act is issued is related to the directness/indirectness scale of the act. The more direct the act by other, the more threatening it is to the face of self. 'You must've been raised among rude people!' is more face threatening than 'I'm not sure that's a nice way to put it'. In the sense that the more seriously one's face is attacked, the more likely one will defend oneself (cf. the mutual vulnerability of face by B&L), a greater degree of either of these sub-factors will give rise to a greater sum of 1.B, which will eventually lead to the selection of a higher-numbered strategy in (6). Factor 2 is an evaluation of the face threat of the SFTA that the speaker has to do in a given situation. Factor 2.A, the severity of the SFTA, refers to the propositional 4 One can think of situations where D and P seem relevant: I may find it more likely, for instance, to disclose m y troubled family finances to a close friend than to, say, the president of m y university. But it is not clear these two factors are always present in determining speakers' choices.

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content of the SFTA, similarly to Factor 1.B.a discussed in the last paragraph. It predicts that the more severe the SFTA, the higher-numbered strategy the speaker will choose to do the SFFA: since apologizing for being short threatens my face more severely than apologizing for the color coordination of my outfit, I would choose a superstrategy with a higher number when doing the former (if there is ever an occasion on which I have to do it) than the superstrategy I will choose to do the latter. Factor 2.B predicts that the more undesirable the consequence of the SFTA, the greater the estimate of self-face loss, which will lead to the selection of a highernumbered strategy: since admitting fault in an automobile accident to my spouse will have less grave consequences than doing it to the police officer, it would be more likely for me to do the former than the latter, or, if I decided to do both, I would do the latter more off-recordly or with more redress. To summarize: when having to do a SFTA, a speaker will estimate the self-face loss to be greater if: (8) 1 : The degree to which self-face is threatened by other is greater, which means A: The event is more confrontational B: The threat of the FTA is graver, which means a: The threat of the FTA is more severe b: The FTA is done more directly; 2: The degree to which self-face is threatened by the SFTA is greater, which means A: The threat of the SFTA is more severe B: The consequence of doing the SFTA is more undesirable. The result of this estimate will then be used to choose a superstrategy to complete the SFTA: the greater the self-face loss, the higher the number of superstrategy one would choose (and vice versa). This can be seen in (9): (9)

Lesser I 1. 2. 3. 4. Greater

Baldly With redress Off record Withhold the SFTA

6. Output strategies and examples 6.1. Baldly

This strategy is chosen when the estimate of self-face loss is the lowest. For example, when an American speaker of English accidentally makes body contact with someone else in an aisle of a supermarket, she would often automatically say: 'Oh, I'm sorry', an apology, which threatens the speaker's positive face, done in its

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most straightforward manner. This is because, according to the model proposed here, the event is non-confrontational, in which case, the speaker faces no FTA from the hearer (Factor 1), and the severity of the SFTA, apology, is minimal: accidentally touching someone is not viewed as a serious social transgression, particularly in a crowded supermarket aisle (Factor 2A), and the act will unlikely bring undesirable consequences (Factor 2B). The speaker will also adopt this strategy for a SFTA that threatens her negative face when the estimate of self-face loss is minimal. Frequently, we hear conversations like (10), where B's promise is an act that threatens her negative face: (10) A: Can you come tomorrow? B: I sure can. 6.2. With redress

A speaker will mitigate self-face loss to some degree by redressive actions when she feels that her self-face is somewhat threatened by other and/or that the SFTA is too damaging to be done baldly. This superstrategy includes, but is not limited to. the following output strategies. (11)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Justify Contradict Hedge Impersonalize Use humor Be confident Be modest Hesitate Attach conditions

Strategies 1-5, which are positive strategies, are most readily seen in situations in which a speaker has committed a social transgression, has made a mistake, or has done something foolish. To simplify, I will use admission of mistakes as an example of a SFTA where these five strategies can be used. Strategy 1, Justify, can be carried out in the form of excuse, explanation, and any other act that serves to indicate that 'Yes, I did X, but there is a reason for it'. Such reasons vary. It can be unavoidability: 'I'm extremely sorry, ma'm, but it's my .job'; it can be unexpected events: 'Sorry for being late for the meeting, but 1 ran into an old friend and had to talk to him a bit'; it can be unintentionality: 'My apologies! I didn't mean to intrude'; it can be an appeal to an uncharacteristic reaction: 'I'm not a hot-tempered guy. But he really pissed me off'; and it can indicate to other that 'You did your share in my mistake': 'Sorry for the late payment, but I didn't get your bill until today'. Strategy 2, Contradict, is used when a speaker admits a mistake and denies it at the same time. Example (12), below, is between a father and a son about a minor automobile accident that the latter has just had:

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(12) Father: So you were a bit reckless. Son: Yes and no. It's not entirely my fault. He didn't have the headlights on. In a sense, this is similar to Strategy 1 in that it is another way of justifying. Strategy 3, Hedge, mitigates the force of SFTA's by indicating that the SFTA is partial or true only in certain aspects (cf. B&L, 1987: 145). Examples of hedging are utterances like 'I was kinda silly, wasn't I?' 'I guess I squandered', 'I suppose I should say "sorry" ', and 'Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention'. Strategy 4, Impersonalize, is a way for the speaker to distance herself from the wrong-doing she is admitting. By avoiding the use of the first person pronouns, the speaker creates the (false) impression that she is not the agent of the mistake or that the mistake is out of her control, thus helping her to minimalize the SFTA. This explains why we quite often hear things like 'That was stupid', 'It wasn't the right thing to do under the circumstances', and 'It's unfortunate that it happened', all referring to a folly the speaker has committed. Strategy 5, Use humor, helps the speaker to dodge a criticism if there is one and, if there is not any, to 'brush off', as it were, the mistake by provoking laughter. 'I told you I was an excellent speller' (said by a teacher after a student had pointed out a misspelled word on board) and 'Only intelligent people like me can do that' are good examples of .this strategy. Different from Strategies 1-5, Strategies 6 and 7 are used when the speaker wants to project herself as a person possessing certain qualities which are either approved of by society in general or called for by the specific communicative event she is engaged in. Strategy 6, Be confident, helps the speaker to portray herself as capable or strong, particularly when faced with a challenge. Utterances like 'Don't worry, I'll do it' and 'I'11 be fine' are realizations of this strategy. Strategy 7, Be modest, which is the opposite of 6, is used when the speaker decides that, in the given situation, modesty is the best alternative to enhance her face. 'I know a little bit about Shakespeare' said by a Shakespeare specialist illustrates this. Strategies 8 and 9 are primarily negative strategies. Take promise for example. When my department chair asks me to go to the upcoming commencement, and I feel that I have done more than my share in the past few years, I can express my hesitation (Strategy 8): 'I've already made plans for that day. I'll see if 1 can reschedule'; I can also sound as if I have been coerced into it by attaching a condition (Strategy 9): 'I'11 do it if you insist'. In both these cases, I indicate to the chair that her request is an imposition, which threatens my negative face, that I am unwilling to accept such an imposition in its entirety, and that the conditional promise I have made expresses my wish to protect my freedom of choice of action. 6.3. Off-record

Output strategies of Off-Record, similar to those of B&L's (1987: 221-227), are essentially ways to invite implicatures by violating Grice's maxims. These strategies are probably most often seen in, but certainly not limited to, institutionalized communications where much is at stake. Evasiveness, for example, has almost become a

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norm at press conferences and interviews on national TV in North America. The advantage of this superstrategy is obvious: by doing the SFTA at the what-is-implied level rather than at the what-is-said level, the speaker would avoid damaging selfface - as indicated earlier, the face of herself and/or the institution she represents --and avoid possible consequences that are deemed undesirable for self if the SFTA is done baldy. Unlike B&L, who list 15 output strategies for Off-record in their model of other-politeness, I propose that the output strategies of Off-record in self-politeness be presented along the lines of Grice's (1975) maxims: (13) 1. 2. 3. 4.

Violate Violate Violate Violate

the the the the

Maxim Maxim Maxim Maxim

of of of of

Quantity Quality Relation Manner

Strategy 1 breaches the Maxim of Quantity in two ways: saying either too much or too little. Example (14), from a sworn deposition by Bill Clinton to the Grand Jury regarding an allegation of obstruction of justice, is a case of saying too much, since the second utterance of the answer is not solicited by the question: (14) Q: Where were you when you had this conversation with Vernon Jordan? A: I don't have any idea. I talk to Vernon a lot. By saying 'I don't have any idea', Clinton admits that he does not remember the location of his conversation with his lawyer. However, since such an admission could be construed as an attempt to avoid answering the question, or simply as a lie, which would damage his face, Clinton provides the second utterance as a justification for his not being able to answer the question. Saying too little, on the other hand, includes tautologies ('I'm human') and other failures to provide enough information required, such as the following, between a Los Angeles Lakers broadcaster (A) and a center for the Lakers (B): (15) A: This is your first year with the Lakers. How are you doing so far? B: I'm OK. A is trying to solicit information for his TV audience, but B refuses to provide what is asked so that he will not appear a braggart (since he had been doing impressively up to that point). B's violation of Quantity achieves self-politeness by avoidance: not providing enough information required by A helps B to avoid possible damages to self-face. Strategy 2 includes the use of metaphors and ironies, white lies, and exaggerations, all instances of saying things that are literally untrue. 'I was upset because I'd told her not to do it a million times' is an example of exaggeration, 'That was quite clever of me (referring to a folly)' an example of irony, and (16), between a couple, an example of white lie:

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(16) Husband: It seems that the steak is burnt again. Wife: This is the way I wanted it. (Later the wife told the husband that she was too embarrassed to admit her frequent lack of attention to steaks being cooked on the stove. 'That was a silly white lie', she said). Strategy 3, Violation of Relation, refers to cases where the speaker dodges the question at hand so as to avoid self-face loss. In (17), which is a continuation of the interview presented in (15), B violates Relation repeatedly: (17) A: B: A: B:

How far do you think the Lakers will go this season? We'll be OK. Do you think the Lakers will reach the Conference Finals? We'll be OK.

Here, B refuses to predict the future of his team so as to avoid a potential future selfface loss if his prediction is not borne out at the end of the season. Examples of how speakers violate Relation to protect their negative face also abound. In March, 1998, a California state board voted to raise the salaries of the state's top elected officials. After expressing his 'surprise', an assemblyman was asked if he would take the raise. He replied: 'That's a long time from now. I've got an election to run'. This seemingly irrelevant utterance helps the speaker to avoid making an unwilling promise, one that would damage his negative face. Strategy 4 includes ambiguity, vagueness, and any other form of intentional obscurity. At a press conference on his alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton said: 'I did not have any sexual relations with that woman'. A commentator then warned his audience: 'Notice that the word used is "relations", not "relationships". What does it mean remains to be seen in the future'. Lutz (1994) provides an abundance of examples of what he calls 'doublespeak', a way to violate the Maxim of Manner for the sake of self-face. Here is one of them (Lutz 1994: 61). In 1974, Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, was testifying before a Senate committee and was in the difficult position of trying to explain why President Nixon's economic policies were not effective in fighting inflation. He said: 'It is a tricky problem to find the particular calibration in timing that would be appropriate to stem the acceleration in risk premiums created by falling incomes without prematurely aborting the decline in the inflation-generated risk premiums'. But this strategy is not only used by public speakers. It is common in everyday life as well. The use of euphemisms, for instance, is a typical way of being vague about things which society has decided not to name explicitly. Since explicit naming of these things will damage the face of the speaker, euphemisms have become a useful tool to avoid such self-face loss.

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6.4. Withhold the SFTA

B&L offer no discussion on their superstrategy, 'Withhold the F T A ' . Its counterpart in self-politeness, however, deserves some attention. It is interesting to note that 'Withhold the F T A ' is generally unnoticeable in other-politeness, this is not so in self-politeness. Suppose I had intended to reprimand my teenage daughter for a folly. However, after seeing much regret and apology in her eyes when confronting her, I decided that reprimand was no longer needed. Therefore, I withheld my act of reprimanding so as not to damage her positive face. In this case, my daughter may or may not know my original intention. However, if l stepped on someone's toes without apologizing, the absence of the SFTA, apology, would be obvious. This is true of admission (of failure or guilt) as well. In (18), below, a film producer (A) is talking to a female actor (B), who has come to ask A to star her in a film. (18) A: Have you got any tape? B: [Silence] A: OK. I see. Here, B chooses to withhold the SFTA - admission of not having a tape. The absence of the SFTA is clear enough for A to realize that B does not have a tape, as is seen in his second turn. 5 Once again, this is more readily seen in public discourse. Spokespersons and legal representatives have made the utterance 'We have no comments at this time' a standard way of withholding a SFTA: the 'no comments' response is a comment, one that says that 'Things are not going well for us and I don't want to talk about it'. Furthermore, the Vatican did not apologize for its behavior during World War II until recently, and its choice of withholding the SFTA was apparently motivated by sellpoliteness. The same can be said about the Japanese government's decision not to apologize and not to admit guilt to Asian countries for its behavior during World War II. This illustrates the importance of self-politeness as well as the importance of this superstrategy: in both cases, the self-face loss was estimated as high enough for both bodies to adopt the 'Withhold the SPTA' strategy.

7. Concluding remarks In this paper, I have argued that self-politeness, a hitherto neglected topic, should be given attention and have proposed a model of self-politeness within B & L ' s framework. In the remaining paragraphs, I will discuss how the proposed model is related to other issues of politeness. 5 I agree with a referee of Journal of Pragmatics that the withholding of SP-TAin this case is only verbal. For, from the perspective of conversation analysis, B's longer-than-expected silence reveals her admission of failure.

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First, about the relationship between self-politeness and other-politeness. The current model is an addition to B&L's theory. In other words, it is meant to fill a void left by B&L so that the theory of politeness will be complete. Thus, the theory of politeness becomes a dichotomy: other-politeness and self-politeness. This dichotomy appears to suggest that politeness is either self-oriented or otheroriented. However, this is intended to be more of an analytical tool than a dogmatic picture of reality. On the one hand, there are cases where it is not difficult to determine if the speaker's utterance is motivated by other-politeness or by self-politeness. On the other hand, there are cases in which the distinction between the two is not at all clear. The use of euphemisms is a case in point: they are used not only for the sake of self-politeness, but also for the sake of other-politeness, since the direct naming of certain realities will damage the positive politeness of the hearer as well. The reason for the complexity in distinguishing other-politeness and self-politeness is not hard to find: it resides in the multifacetedness of speech acts regarding their potential damage to face. As I have indicated earlier, some speech acts primarily threaten other-face, some primarily threaten self-face, and others threaten both. The strategies that speakers choose, which are based on the face threats of these acts, therefore, will have corresponding effects. Viewed thus, the relationship between other-politeness and self-politeness becomes a continuum. At one end of the continuum are cases in which other-politeness is the primary motivation; at the other end, self-politeness is the primary motivation. In between will be various points that indicate the different degrees of importance of the two motivations. Second, about the opposite of self-politeness. In his work on impoliteness, Culpeper (1996) proposes that to be impolite is to do the opposite of B&L's superstrategies: his model has five superstrategies, respectively corresponding to those of B&L. His Superstrategy 2, Positive impoliteness, for example, is "the use of strategies designed to damage the addressee's positive face wants" (1996: 356), which is the direct opposite of B&L's positive politeness. Since Culpeper's work is based on B&L's theory of other-politeness, his concept of impoliteness is also other-oriented: it is clear that, by 'impolite', he means impolite to other, not to self. In the same vein, the opposite of self-politeness is impoliteness to self, not to other. However, there is at least one way to breach self-politeness so as to be impolite to other: to use Superstrategy 4, withhold the SFTA, when the SFTA is called for in a given situation. A person who does not apologize for stepping on someone else's toes or for dialing a wrong telephone number in the middle of the night will be seen, as she is indeed seen in at least the American culture, as impolite to her addressee. Lastly, I submit that, since B&L's theory claims universality, the present model of self-politeness is also meant to be universal. However, such universality lies only at the highest level: the level of basic claims and the level of superstrategies. Specifically, I assert that in every language, there are speech acts that are inherently selfface threatening, that speakers of a language will make efforts to minimize the potential threat of these SFTA's, that the ways available to them for such an end are subsumed under the four superstrategies proposed here, and that their choice of the

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superstrategies is influenced by the degree to which self-face is threatened by other and the degree to which the S F T A threatens self-face. Cultures will differ in two aspects regarding self-politeness. First, although the factors that influence s p e a k e r s ' choices o f strategies as listed in (7) are s u p p o s e d to be present in all cultures, cultures will give different weights to each o f these factors. Confrontationality, for instance, m a y very well have different degrees o f self-face threat in different cultures. Similarly, regarding the severity o f the S F I ' A (Factor 2.A), the same S F T A will have different degrees of severity across cultures: to admit that one cannot a n s w e r a question raised by a student m a y be m o r e o f a threat to selfface in one culture than another. This will result in different degrees o f estimate o f self-face loss, thus leading to selections o f different strategies. Second, a particular strategy will be v a l u e d differently across cultures as well. T a k e Output Strategy 7 o f W i t h Redress: Be modest, for e x a m p l e . S o m e cultures, such as J a p a n e s e and Chinese, value m o d e s t y more than others, such as the A m e r i can culture. A s a result, when r e s p o n d i n g to c o m p l i m e n t s , A m e r i c a n s ( W o l f son, 1983) accept the c o m p l i m e n t readily and express their thanks to the c o m p l i m e n t e r s while the Japanese (Leech, 1983) and the Chinese (Chen, 1993b) t y p i c a l l y reject the c o m p l i m e n t and h u m b l e themselves.

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Rong Chen, Associate Professor of English at CSUSB, is interested in pragmatics, discourse analysis, stylistics, English linguistics, and Chinese linguistics. He has published more than twenty papers in professional journals in these areas.