FACE CONCEPT IN THE CATEGORY OF POLITENESS

Abstract

In this article we will look at the phenomenon of politeness, focusing on one framework for analysing different forms and levels of politeness and we will set out to explore some of the most influential theories of politeness that are crucial reading for those new to the area.. We will explore the usefulness of distinguishing between the politeness that we use among friends and with people we are less familiar with. This distinction will be useful because the kind of attention close friends pay to each other and the nature of our long-term relationships with each other are very different from the kind of attention we have been taught to pay to people with whom we have more restricted relationships and with whom we are less well acquainted. This article will show how different forms of politeness attend to different social needs, and we will illustrate this by looking at examples of the different forms that requests and apologies can take. We will then consider the way in which frameworks of politeness have been applied to other fields, such as workplace interaction and intercultural communication. The article also considers some critiques of the most commonly used theory of politeness, and highlights some of the directions in which these critiques might help to advance work on politeness in the future.