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On culture, face and politeness. Again!

Research October 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2653.0001

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Maria Sifianou
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Revised version of a paper presented at the First International Symposium Communication
across Cultures: Face and Interaction (CC2013FACE), 26-27 April 2013, Institute of English,
University of Silesia, Poland.

Maria Sifianou
Faculty of English Studies,
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

ON CULTURE, FACE AND POLITENESS. AGAIN

1. Introduction

For years, the concept of face has played a central role in explaining politeness and
impoliteness phenomena. Among other consequences, this confluence has led to attempts at
analysing face in terms of frameworks that have been developed for politeness. However,
recently there has been a growing consensus towards disentangling face from politeness
research since face involves issues broader than politeness (see, e.g., Haugh & Bargiela-
Chiappini, 2010; ODriscoll, 2011a, b; Haugh, 2013; Garcs-Conejos Blitvich, 2013;
Arundale, 2013a).
The quest for exploring face on its own right has followed from the discursive turn within
politeness research. Among its various effects, this turn has triggered a distinction between
politeness1 (lay conceptualisations) and politeness2 (theoretical constructs) (see, e.g., Eelen,
2001; Watts, 2003) and by extension Face1 and Face2 (see, e.g., ODriscoll, 1996;
Terkourafi, 2010). Within this framework, most researchers agree that both im/politeness and
face are interactive phenomena and thus lay conceptualisations of politeness and by extension
of face necessitate special attention. Interestingly, while politeness was relegated to being a
culturally-specific concept, face retained a strong universal position (see, e.g. ODriscoll,
2011a: 18; Andr, 2013: 78). However, face and politeness are different kinds of concepts, the
understanding of which probably necessitates different frameworks. Untangling face from
im/politeness in research is, to my mind, a necessary first step because if face and politeness
are researched independently, we may be able to understand their meanings better and see
their possible connections with fresh eyes.

Drawing on data from Greek, I will try to substantiate my contentions that:

x face is a relational phenomenon but not necessarily an interactional one;

x it makes sense to talk about face as an individual possession (with group repercussions),
and as a pre-existing (though not static) entity with enduring aspects;

x the association between face and politeness may not be as strong as has been assumed.

I will start with a brief exposition of the concept of face and proceed with its
conceptualisation in Greek, realizing that emic conceptualisations of face should inform but
 2

not constrain the theorisation of the concept (see, e.g., Watts, 2003:9; Haugh, 2012: 118, 125;
Haugh, 2013).

2. The concept of face

As is well known, Brown and Levinson (1978/1987) have posited the notion of face as
fundamental to our understanding of the expression of politeness, drawing on Goffmans
(1955/1972) notion of face, along with its English folk perceptions which link face with
notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or losing face. However, these folk notions
seem to be absent from their exposition, as they have proceeded to develop instead a theory of
face-threatening acts affecting primarily the addressees face. Brown and Levinsons (1987:
66) frequently quoted definition is that face is the public self-image that every member
wants to claim for himself, consisting of two interrelated albeit somewhat conflicting
aspects: positive face refers to the desire to be appreciated and approved of by at least some
others and negative face refers to the desire to be free from impositions.
However, in most languages, face is a polysemous word based on various metaphorical
and metonymic meaning extensions. As the face is one of the most significant parts of the
human body, its meaning has extended from the physical object it signifies to the whole
human being, including physical and non-physical aspects. Moreover, the physical face
provides access to ones psychological states, feelings and emotions, and to ones character
and behaviour (Yu, 2001; Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2010; Marmaridou, 2011). It is thus not
surprising, that at a very early stage, Brown and Levinsons dichotomous conceptualisation of
face was criticised as too narrow, ethnocentric and individualistic (see, e.g., Watts, Ide, and
Ehlich, 1992; Werkhofer, 1992; Matsumoto, 1988; Mao, 1994; Eelen, 2001; Bargiela-
Chiappini, 2003; Watts, 2003; Mills, 2003), and thus inapplicable in many societies.
It is fair to add at this point that face for Brown and Levinson (1987: 13) is not just an
individuals claimed self-image but rather an image attributed by interactants to one another
and subject of much cultural elaboration. However, despite such commitments, which entail
the social attribution of face in actual interactions, Brown and Levinson have focused on
other-face concerns through the mitigation of face-threatening acts. One problem with such a
conceptualisation of face is that it ignores self-face concerns. Moreover, face is present
throughout interactions and not only when face-threatening acts are likely to emerge (see, e.g.,
ODriscoll, 2007), as it is diffusely located in the flow of events in the encounter (Goffman,
1955/1972: 320). 1
In addition to being present throughout an interaction, face may also involve issues
beyond any specific encounter. This was initially acknowledged by Werkhofer (1992: 176),
who argued that face is not only connected to the narrow here and now but also to
processes that may go on over longer stretches of time. More recent research on folk or emic
conceptualisations of face reveals that face is often seen as enduring across interactions
unless otherwise challenged (see Haugh and Bargiela-Chiappini, 2010: 2073). A lucid
illustration of this durable nature of face is provided by Haugh (2010: 13), who discusses an
example of a footballer, who said in an interview: The loss awoke us. We had to save face
after such a defeat, arguing that in this specific instance, and in sporting contexts more

1
Brown and Levinson (1987: 233) note but do not elaborate on this diffuseness by suggesting the notion of
face-threatening intention (instead of FTA), which covers conversational sequences made up of a number
of turns.
 3

generally, face refers to the reputation of the team and its collective honour, bringing also
historicity into play since this reputation has been established over a number of seasons.
Interestingly, this enduring aspect of face has been noted by Goffman (1955/1972: 320), who
says that in order for someone to maintain face in the current situation, s/he must have
abstained from certain acts in the past that would be difficult to face up to later (cf.
ODriscoll, 1996: 6). This understanding does not necessarily contradict the discursive co-
construction of face but highlights the argument that what is co-constructed on the spot also
draws from prior encounters and socio-cultural resources available to interlocutors (see, e.g.,
Mills, 2003: 83; Arundale, 2006; Haugh, 2007). In order to act at any moment, interlocutors
employ the socio-historical knowledge they possess, and evaluate which aspects of their
multifaceted face are relevant to the current situation.
Recent research on politeness has witnessed a shift towards a discursive, evaluative
approach involving the contested distinction between first- and second-order politeness (as
already mentioned) a distinction that has been extended to face (ODriscoll, 1996;
Terkourafi, 2010). This bifurcation has led some scholars to search for a universal construct,
associated with psychological processes of identity construction (Andr, 2013: 78) and others
to argue that face is not given but negotiated between interlocutors as they interact in specific
contexts, and should thus be analysed from the participants perspective rather than from the
analysts (Arundale, 2010: 8). 2 Eelen (2001: 132) further distinguishes between two sides to
first-order notions of politeness: an action-related side (expressive and classificatory
politeness1), and a conceptual side (metapragmatic politeness1). The former relates to the
way politeness manifests itself in interactions, and the latter to lay assessments how people
talk about politeness. Since such views have been extended to face, it is important to note here
that there are differences between face and politeness. Verbal and non-verbal actions may be
evaluated by their performer or by others as polite or impolite in situ or at a later point. The
presence of related tokens (e.g., rude, im/polite) in an interaction may point to evaluation
through metalinguistic comments (Watts, 2003: 2). On the other hand, the many different
metaphorical and metonymic extensions of face are used in daily interactions for self- and
other-evaluation, or in self-reflection, but they are not normally part of metalinguistic
comments (cf. Haugh, 2010). Thus the discursive struggle over the value of terms like
politeness does not apply to face in any straightforward way. Unlike politeness, facework is
not behaviour that is typically talked about and thus not amenable to discursive struggle. This
observation has important consequences for the object of our investigation. Moreover,
although the entries in good dictionaries can provide information on the precise meanings and
use of collocations including face, related entries will be inadequate for understanding what
politeness is all about.

3. The concept of face in Greek

The concept of face in Greek exhibits a great variety of metonymic and metaphorical
extensions (Marmaridou, 2011). My own understanding is based on dictionary entries and a
collection of examples drawn from daily interactions, television, newspapers, popular
magazines, the internet and corpora (Sketch Engine/GkWaC

2
Even Brown and Levinson (1987: 14) themselves see a need for more in the way of ethnographic
descriptions of the way in which people articulate face notions.
 4

http://www.sketchengine.co.uk). The dataset includes 236 instances of collocations of related

terms (see also Sifianou, 2011). It should be noted that such examples are not very common
and occur mostly in informal interactions.
Greek has more than one term for face. In addition to (prsopo), the Greek
word for face, there is the more colloquial (mtra), a borrowing from the Italian
mutria. Very briefly, (prsopo) has a wider range of meanings because, in addition
to its literal meaning as the front part of the head, it can also be used figuratively for the front
part of buildings or even abstract concepts (e.g., poverty has face). It can also be used to
refer to the person as a whole, including a specific personality, character or behaviour and to
the identity of an individual (e.g., He showed his true face, The face of the authors of
many old texts remains unknown, Very little is known about the face of the victim).
Besides, it encompasses a sense of the social image of an individual or the group they belong
to. It is in this last sense that (prsopo) can be used interchangeably with
(mtra) in certain expressions, such as / I dont
have face to see anybody or / ;
With what face will you speak to him after what has happened?. On the other hand,
(mtra) has a wider collocational range of expressions denoting emotions, and thus it is more
relevant to interpersonal interaction. It is ones which may either fall down (
/ ), implying embarrassment or shame, or dropped intentionally (
/), implying self-inflicted humiliation.
In addition to these two lexical items, (mtopo) and its informal variant
(ktelo) forehead, at the top of the human body and the site of the mind, are also used in
related expressions. For instance, one can say / / /
I want / have my forehead clean / high to express desire for or possession of integrity
and honour (see also Hirschon, 2001; Koutsantoni, 2007: 103). Here again the informal
variant is the predominant lexeme. 3 These lexical items can be used to refer to the physical
part of the body but are also used metaphorically and reflect emotions and significant values
for the construal of the social person (cf. Ruhi & Ik-Gler, 2007 on yz in Turkish, and
Haugh, 2007 on kao in Japanese).
As noted previously, in Greek ones face may either fall down or be intentionally
dropped. Ones face may fall down because of a prior act against their values that leads to
negative emotions which may be then verbalized. On the other hand, one may decide to drop
ones face and perform an act they consider humiliating if other concerns are seen as more
significant than face ones. Dropping ones face may require courage and self-confidence,
derived mostly from assumed personal integrity. It is this collocation which best exemplifies
the fact that face is relational but not necessarily interactional. However, it is relational in the
very specific sense of approaching the other in order to protect an existing relationship. On
the other hand, it is hard to see any interactional aspect of face in such collocations since they
are typically used in recountings of prior actions or in anticipation of future actions. For
instance, in a TV magazine agony column, the writer describes his problems with his ex-wife,
saying that whenever they had a dispute and she would not speak to him for long periods, he
was always the one to drop his face and approach her in order to find a way out. More
specifically, one drops ones face consciously after calculating the pros and cons of a
prospective action, whereas ones face falls down typically by accident. Ones face may fall
down for various reasons, such as a violation of social conventions or an admission of a

3
There is also (mori from the Venetian muro) and (ftsa, from the Italian faccia) among
others.
 5

mistake or wrongdoing by the speaker, or a related other, which results in some kind of
discomfort.
he result of assumed broader infractions is assessed with idiomatic expressions like
/ / , lit. I dont have face to see / speak to him,
or / I dont have face to appear in society. In
other words, if somebody feels that they or related others have behaved in an inappropriate
way, they may then feel they have no face and can no longer face other people (cf. Yu,
2001). These are also evaluative judgements made by individuals, mostly in relation to
themselves or in reference to third parties. Producers of such utterances express their
embarrassment and/or shame for inappropriate behaviour in the past which renders future
contact or interaction difficult. Such examples illustrate my contention that one is normally
understood to enter an interaction already possessing some kind of face, which may either fall
down accidentally or may be dropped intentionally under certain conditions. Interestingly,
such expressions may also be used in cases in which the speaker is not responsible for the
regrettable situation. External factors beyond ones control may require someone to behave in
a way which goes against their values. For instance, a man explaining his dire financial
situation wonders with what face can I look at my family members? since his salary was
below the poverty line and could not provide them with the essentials, something he
perceived as his duty.
It is of note that the collocation I have face is rare in Greek, which may indicate that
having face is taken for granted, and when it is used it refers to having integrity typically
related to financial solvency. Expressions involving having face mostly refer to its absence,
in negative or interrogative constructions. Both the negative I
dont have face to see him and the interrogative ; with what face to
see him? point to the absence of face, both being negative self-evaluations.
It transpires from the above discussion that most Greek collocations involving face (in
the sense considered here) relate to the idea of lacking rather than having face. In other words,
ones verbal involvement with ones own or somebody elses face tends to be negative (cf.
Ruhi, 2010; Andr, 2013). This is also evidenced by the fact that there are no collocations
referring to maintaining, giving, enhancing or saving face. Face is maintained or saved
probably by implication, that is, by following the social conventions people have internalised
from the resources available in their society. Such actions are not lexicalised, which may
indicate that they are not as salient as losing face.

3.1. Data analysis

When using collocations including face, Greeks mostly talk about themselves and their
emotions. These include feelings of embarrassment, shame or guilt, which are negative
emotions, that may or may not be voiced. The presence of an audience and the possibility of
negative comments may exacerbate such emotions (Ho et al. 2004). In other words, face is on
display when in the presence of others (Holtgraves, 2002: 38), and if one loses face, one may
feel bad about how one may be seen by others (Culpeper, 2011: 25). The present data lend
further support to what I have argued elsewhere (Sifianou, 2011), namely that in Greek face is
mostly understood as a personal possession 4 constructed on the basis of approved social

4
Further evidence that face is conceptualised as an individuals possession is provided by expressions like
he took/picked up his face and left, which means that one leaves an
interaction or a place feeling embarrassed or shamefaced.
 6

attributes (Watts, 2005: xxix) or of norms and values that individuals assume to exist in
society (Mills, 2003: 63), and should be followed. I will now proceed with the discussion of
some examples from my data.
In one instance, a blogger wrote that she had sent an icon of the Virgin Mary as a
wedding present. When she saw the wedding pictures two weeks later and realized that it was
a civil wedding and that both the bride and the groom were Moslems, she said my face fell
down to have sent such a present. Another blogger was seeking advice on an unhealthy plant
and said my face fell down when I saw what I had bought but I had done so late one evening
and I was sort of hypnotised. Such examples signify that individuals conceptualise face as a
possession which is affected by their own acts. Whatever the resulting feelings are, they are
experienced in private, in interaction only with oneself and in possible anticipation of what
others might think of one if they found out. In other words, these are self-evaluative
judgements which may emerge even in the absence of criticism by others who may have
witnessed the event (cf. Ho et al. 2004: 70). Such self-assessments may never be voiced; or
they may be recounted in reporting an event. But recounts are a different type of event with
different self-presentational aims and a different audience (cf. Ruhi, 2010: 166). These
examples illustrate Spencer-Oateys (2011: 3575) suggestion that any discomfort resulting
from an act may be the outcome of self-reflection and not necessarily the outcome of
negotiation between participants in an interaction. Spencer-Oatey (2011: 3575) also suggests
that the ensuing discomfort may be the result of empathy with someone else, a point which is
also supported by my data. For instance, a lady described how depressed she felt after her
third unsuccessful attempt at in vitro fertilisation, and added that her face fell down when
she heard stories of other people having very serious health problems.
In addition to being constructed as an individuals possession, face may also be
interactional, that is, it may emerge in interaction. For instance, in one case, a mother explains
that her face fell down when the nursery school teacher asked her if she had brought extra
clothes for her 3-year-old son in case they needed to change him. Since she had not, the
question probably made her feel inadequate in the eyes of the teacher. In such instances, face
may be co-constructed in specific interactions, but on the basis of specific resources that an
individual has developed through socio-situational experience. We can easily imagine that
some other mother would have been unaffected by such a query, an issue which makes the
analysts task very difficult. The potential for face damage is related to the degree of
sensitivity of the face component at issue (Culpeper, 2011: 202).
As I hope has become clear, face is relational, and has individual, interactional and
collective aspects, 5 reflecting Spencer-Oateys (2007: 644) suggestion that, in cognitive
terms, face relates to the notion of self-image, which includes individual, relational and
collective construals of self, and is perceived as a more global and long-term construal (see
Lim, 2010) akin to identity (Garcs-Conejos Blitvich, 2013). So, in Greek, face is not
understood as simply an image co-constructed in specific encounters but as something that
extends beyond any of them.

4. Discussion and concluding remarks

5
In Greek, face can be associated both with individuals and with groups an individual belongs to, such as
their close and extended family, their workgroup, even their perceived nationality group. Due to space
limitations, I cannot expand on this (but see Sifianou, 2011). The relative priority of group face obviously
depends on the degree to which the individual identifies with a specific group, but the very existence of
group face indicates that face cannot merely be a construct of any current interaction.
 7

In this paper, I have attempted to explore the concept of face through the use of a number of
related expressions in Greek. To this end, I looked at metaphors used in face-to-face and
internet interactions which include the term face, and I also consulted dictionary entries.
Even though there are numerous collocational possibilities, I concentrated on those which
relate to the human being as a whole who experiences negative emotions such as shame and
embarrassment, and either verbalises or self-reflects on them. This account is by no means
exhaustive because that would require a lengthy project and an extensive corpus, which is
unavailable.

From the above discussion, three issues emerge:

First, face in Greek seems to be conceptualized as a taken-for-granted, personal property

which one should uphold in life and thus in interactions, but which one may decide to drop in
specific instances. Being conceptualised as an individuals possession, face seems to exist
outside actual interactions as well as within them. The discomfort resulting from ones face
falling down may be an outcome not only of participating in an interaction but also of self-
reflection, or as a consequence of empathy (Spencer-Oatey, 2011). Obviously, self-reflection
and empathy presuppose an awareness of the co-existence of social beings. Thus, face is
understood as relational but not exclusively interactional. The terms relational and
interactional have been variously and sometimes interchangeably used, but what I mean here
by relational is something very broad in comparison to interactional, namely that as social
beings we live in relation to others, and that our acts, thoughts and conduct make sense in this
context (cf. Terkourafi, 2010).
Face is interactional, but given that face is not seen as an exclusive property of the
emergent relationship between interactants but also as a property specific to the individuals
involved (Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2011: 239), in established relationships interlocutors
start each interaction taking for granted the kind of face that has been constructed over prior
social contacts. This then means that just as a model which centres on the individual is
inadequate, one that ignores the individual is equally inadequate. Acquainted interlocutors do
not begin negotiating their relationship each time they interact and even unacquainted
interlocutors may make assumptions before they can start an interaction (Scollon and Scollon,
1995: 35). This is the unmarked case where face is addressed but may not become salient;
what Arundale (2010) calls face stasis and sees as a major component of facework. In
Goffmans (1955/1972: 319) words, if the encounter sustains an image of him that he has
long taken for granted, he probably will have few feelings about the matter. In fact, it has
been argued (Garcs-Conejos Blitvich, 2013: 6) that the focus on interactions between
unacquainted others may have backgrounded the enduring aspects of face.
Thus, individuals enter interactions already possessing some kind of face, which means
that they do not construct it completely anew in every interaction. A person may present
themselves or be evaluated as honest or polite in a specific interaction, but attribution of more
permanent qualities, like honesty or integrity, normally develops over more than a single
event. In fact, this enduring core construct may be a constitutive force of interaction. As
Haugh (2010: 12; 2013: 12) suggests, face is not only co-constituted in interactions but is also
constitutive of them. Lim (2010: 264) describes this idea very vividly when he says that face
in Korean is not an emotional rollercoaster which people experience in a single contact but a
lofty tower they build over a lifetime. In my understanding, this is what Goffman (1955/1972:
322) calls social face, which can be his [the persons] most personal possession and the
center of his security and pleasure.
 8

Second, the concept of face in Greek seems to be broader than that in English, and to
share features with cultures such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean (Ervin-Tripp et al. 1995;
Mao, 1994; Haugh, 2007). Like these languages, Greek has more than one term for face
with overlapping functions, and a range of expressions involving the term face. Much as in
East Asian languages, the verbs used in related collocations are those also used for
possessions (e.g., have, fall down, drop). As in East Asian languages, face is also
conceptualised as a collective possession, since one can lose face for wrongdoings of others,
such as family members (Ervin-Tripp et al. 1995). Face expressions in Greek are used in
informal interactions and mainly in the sense of lacking face or losing face but not of
saving face. 6 In relation to English there is disagreement, since for Ervin-Tripp et al. (1995:
45) such expressions are restricted to educated use, whereas they have also been found to be
in use among ordinary speakers mainly in the sense of losing face or saving face (Haugh
and Hinze, 2003: 1597).
Hirschon (2001: 20) sees face and honour in Greek as conceptual equivalents.
Drawing on extant research, she claims that honour in one interpretation is seen as referring
to a persons social reputation, prestige and esteem and is thus externally bestowed. In
another interpretation, it refers to a persons intrinsic worth and to moral integrity and is
thus a moral attribute, inherent in a persons notion of self. This is not very different from
the two aspects of face in Chinese: one which relates to honour and reputation, attributed
to one by others and the other which relates to self-respect or dignity, which is more an
inner feeling (Andr, 2013: 70). Obviously, these are tentative contentions and require further
exploration, especially since very little is known about English emic conceptualisations of
face (but see Yu, 2001).
Third, my data indicates that politeness concerns, even though relevant in some instances,
do not appear to be central in the conceptualisation of face. [E]mic understandings of face1
generally do not underpin emic understandings of politeness1 in many languages (Haugh,
2013: 16). If we reconsider the above examples, it appears that few of such states of
discomfort would be associated with impoliteness. The concern for face did not prompt
behaviour that could be labelled polite, and did not result from acts that could be labelled
impolite. Dropping ones face may even serve politeness concerns, as in the case of a blogger
who wrote that he had dropped his face and apologised to some friends, in order to avoid the
escalation of a conflict and the possible break-down of the relationship. In fact, concern for
face may even engender acts of impoliteness (cf. Hinze, 2012).

The above observations raise a number of issues:

It appears that face and politeness are not related to the extent to which it has been previously
assumed; in fact, they are different kinds of concept. Eelen (2001: 33 drawing on Vytgoski)
says that politeness is a spontaneous concept whose conceptualisation depends on personal
experiences in concrete situations, and on the guiding role of parents. This is not the case with
face, which is learnt like other lexical items mostly through hearing it being used; because of
this, it may be more linguistically and culturally specific than politeness. Asking people to
describe acts which lead to face being lost, gained, supported or threatened or, even more
difficult, asking them to define face, may not be fruitful because, unlike politeness, face is not
a concept that is easily defined or one that usually leads to meta-comments. Other terms like

6
In fact, Andr (2013: 71) notes that the expression to save face is a neologism formed in English as the
opposite of lose face.
 9

honour or integrity may be used, but then their link to face may not be very clear (cf.
Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, 2010). This does not mean that there are no invocations of face in
interactions. However, these are not typically metalinguistic comments but rather collocations
chosen instead of other expressions. Thus, face differs as a concept from that of politeness;
facework is a constructed, scientific term, not an item of popular parlance; and both are less
salient to interactants than politeness (ODriscoll, 2011a: 22). If these observations are valid,
it means that it will be harder to construct a universal theory of face than one of politeness,
even though current research seems to be heading in the opposite direction: it is more or less
agreed that a universal theory of politeness is not feasible but there are various interesting
attempts at constructing universal (F2) theories of face (cf. ODriscoll, 2011a; Andr, 2013).
I do not wish to suggest that emic conceptualisations should form the basis of any theory.
However, the collocations frequently used in different communities may offer a window to a
broader understanding of how face is conceptualised and its relationship to other related terms
such as honour and also politeness. Yu (2001) argues that since face expressions are
metaphorical and metonymic extensions of a significant body part (i.e. face) and since
humans of any race have similar bodies, such collocations will be widespread and possibly
universal. However, the metaphors a linguistic community develops in an effort to understand
a phenomenon may both afford and constrain its conceptualization (cf. Arundale, 2013a: 10,
2013b). This then may indicate that we should start with emic understandings, through an
analysis of interactions which include related collocations (see, e.g., Hinze, 2012), before
trying to analyse actual interactions in terms of the facework strategies used. For instance, we
could assume that paying a compliment or offering a gift gives face or even enhances
somebodys face, but it may be risky to attribute such functions to such acts, because a
compliment may be perceived as flattery and gift-giving as an imposition in some contexts.
Subsequent turns may not necessarily reveal how such acts were received. Reactions to
assumed face-threatening acts may range from ignoring the issue to mild challenges and even
confrontations. The choice of a particular reaction will involve individual preferences, the
relational history of the dyad, and the nature of the situation. Understanding how individuals
conceptualise face is, to my mind, a first step before we can embark on attempts to construct a
theory, especially one that aims to be applicable across languages and cultures (Haugh, 2012).
We have to ensure that understanding of concepts is shared between interlocutors and
analysts. Otherwise the analyst may be subconsciously imposing their own understandings on
the data analysed.
Some of us have developed an interest in the concept of face for the most part through
Brown and Levinsons (1978/1987) work, which was based on a modified version of
Goffmans (1955/1972) views inspired by information from Chinese sources. Their influence
is so strong that it may have delimited our understanding of the concept (cf. Hinze, 2012)
which may even be in conflict with our emic conceptualisations. Thus, as Bargiela-Chiappini
(2010: 315) suggests, we should perhaps concentrate more on what emic concepts of face
have in common, and on their common underlying values and norms.

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of the paper that was presented at the CC2013FACE International
Symposium, University of Silesia, Poland (26-27 April 2013). I would like to express my
gratitude to Ewa Bogdanowska-Jakubowska for her kind invitation. I should also record my
special thanks to Eleni Antonopoulou, Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, Jean Hannah, Jim
 10

ODriscoll and Peter Trudgill for their constructive comments and suggestions on an earlier
version of this paper. Needless to say that the usual disclaimers hold.

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