Goffman – the concepts of “Face” (roughly equivalent to ‘role identity’) and “Line” (roughly, the actions you take to support your role identity)

Guiding questions for Assignment 1A 1. Goffman introduces us to the concepts of “Face” (roughly equivalent to ‘role identity’) and “Line” (roughly, the actions you take to support your role identity), in an attempt to explain how the social organization of interpersonal communication works. Does this mean anyone can claim any face they want? Given Goffman’s writing, what do you think limits the choice of faces for each of us? 2. In Goffman, the “rule of considerateness” and the “rule of self respect” combined mean that we are invested in the maintenance of both our own and other’s faces. Describe one of your “faces” and the “face” of someone else that you help maintain and how. 3. Schegloff’s analysis of the conversation between Nick and Debbie tells us that much of what we do when we communicate is accomplish actions, rather than transmit information. “Guess what?” isn’t a serious request for you to guess something but rather a conversational action we might call a “pre-announcement.” It tells the other person, “hey I have something to tell you, give me permission to go ahead.” Other conversational actions might be “promises” or “threats.” Try to think of an example of some speech that accomplishes another action, rather than transmit information, and tell us what action the speech accomplishes. This might be as simple as something like “guess what?” Reference: • schegloff-the_omnirelevance_of_action-short.pdf (287.294 KB) • goffman-face.pdf (486.701 KB) Guiding questions for Assignment 1B 1. Brown & Levinson tell us about two types of threats to face or “Face Threatening Acts (FTAs),” negative and positive. They further tell us that certain speech acts like “orders” are intrinsic threats to face. In what situations might you get to perform FTAs without having to use politeness? What factors might be involved in a situation where you don’t have to use politeness? Another way of asking this would be to say “with whom do you use politeness and whom do you not in your life and why?” 2. You need to ask a good friend for a ride to the airport, which will likely require him to take the morning off of work. Using Brown & Levinson’s chart on p. 69 determine what you would most likely do when asking this friend for a ride and why. For instance, would you make the request “on record with redressive action and negative politeness,” “off record,” or “on record with no redress,” or something else? Give an example of what you would actually say. 3. Look at the transcript in the folder of readings for 5/24. This should look familiar. The man in the transcript is going to ask the woman for a ride to work, but he doesn’t come right out and ask for this. Discuss the politeness strategies the man seems to use to make his request (his Face Threatening Act) with specific reference to the conversation. In the reading above, Brown and Levinson write about an idea they call “positive” and “negative” face. Many students often associate this with something like “positive” and “negative” face, though this is NOT what B&L mean, it was just a bad choice of labels. Think of the word “positive” and “negative” more like the charge of an electron or terminals on a battery. It does NOT mean that positive face is good and negative face is bad, it simply describes two sides of the same coin, two different kinds or types of what B&L call “face wants”. Keep this in mind as you read the article and look for the actual definitions of these terms that B&L provide in the article. Reference: