Cover not available
Article published In:
(Im)politeness in Spanish-speaking socio-cultural contexts
Edited by Diana Bravo
[Pragmatics 18:4] 2008
► pp. 681–706

Politeness and other types of facework

Communicative and social meaning in a television panel discussion

TV-panel discussions constitute a communicative genre with specific features concerning the situational context, the communicative goals, the roles played by the participants and the acts that are carried out in the interaction. In the Spanish TV-debate Cada día, discourse is characterized as semi-institutional because of having both institutional characteristics – due to its mediatic nature – and conversational characteristics. In the communicative exchanges the social situation of the participants is negotiated by communicative acts, that is, facework is realised. Facework concerns the speakers’ wants of face, both the individual face and the group face. In the present article face is described in cultural terms within the general face wants autonomy and affiliation and in accordance with the roles the speakers assume in interaction. In the analysis of an excerpt from the TV-debate Cada día two types of facework are identified: On the one hand politeness, that is, when an attempted balance between the speaker’s and the addressees’ face is aimed at and, on the other hand, self-facework, which appears when only the speaker’s face is focused on. No samples of the third case of facework, impoliteness, are found in this excerpt. The results of the analysis display the relationship between the communicative purposes of this communicative genre (to inform, to entertain and to convince people of political ideas) and the types of facework (politeness, self-facework) that are identified in the analysed data.
Keywords: Roles, Politeness, Media discourse, Face balance, Facework
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 December 2008
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18.4.06her
References (41)
Albelda Marco, Marta (2004) Cortesía en diferentes situaciones comunicativas. La conversación coloquial y la entrevista sociológica semiformal. In D. Bravo and A. Briz (eds.), Pragmática sociocultural: Estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en español. Barcelona: Ariel, pp. 109-134.Google Scholar
Arundale, Robert (2005) Face as relational and interactional: A communicative framework for research on face, facework, and politeness. Journal of Politeness Research 2.2: 193-216.Google Scholar
Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca (2003) Face and politeness: New (insights) or old (concepts). Journal of Pragmatics 351: 1453-1469. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Bernal, María (2005) Hacia una categorización sociopragmática de la cortesía, descortesía y anticortesía en conversaciones españolas de registro coloquial. In D. Bravo (ed.), Estudios de la (des)cortesía en español. Categorías conceptuales y aplicaciones a corpora orales y escritos. Buenos Aires: Dunken, pp. 365-398.Google Scholar
Blas Arroyo, José Luis (2003) ’Perdóneme que se lo diga, pero vuelve usted a faltar a la verdad, señor González’: Form and function of politic verbal behaviour in face-to-face Spanish political debates, Discourse and Society 14.4: 395-423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boretti, Susana (2003) Tests de hábitos sociales y la investigación de la cortesía. In D. Bravo (ed.), Actas del primer Coloquio del Programa Edice. Stockholm: University of Stockholm, pp. 198-210. [URL]Google Scholar
g
Boretti, Susana (2005) ¿Actividad de imagen vs actividad de cortesía? El desarmador como estrategia interaccional. In J. Murillo (ed.), Actas del II Coloquio del Programa EDICE. San José de Costa Rica: University of Costa Rica, pp. 209-220. [URL]Google Scholar
Bravo, Diana (1996) La risa en el regateo: Estudio sobre el estilo comunicativo de negociadores. Stockholm: Institutionen för spanska och portugisiska.Google Scholar
(1998) Face y rol social: Eficiencia comunicativa en encuentros entre hablantes nativos y no nativos de español”. REALE9-10: 11-41.Google Scholar
(1999) ¿Imagen positiva vs. imagen negativa? Pragmática socio-cultural y componentes de face . Oralia 21: 155-184.Google Scholar
(2002) Actos asertivos y cortesía: Imagen del rol en el discurso académico argentino. In M.E. Placencia and D. Bravo (eds.), Actos de habla y cortesía en español. London: Lincom Studies in Pragmatics 51: 141-174.Google Scholar
Briz, Antonio (2004) Cortesía verbal codificada y cortesía verbal interpretada en la conversación. In D. Bravo and A. Briz (eds.), Pragmática sociocultural: Estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en español. Barcelona: Ariel, pp. 67-93.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson (1987) Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, Ron (2001) Self-politeness: A proposal. Journal of Pragmatics 331: 87-106. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Contreras, Josefa (2005): El uso de la cortesía y las sobreposiciones en las conversaciones. Un análisis contrastivo alemán-español. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan (2005) Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link . Journal of Politeness Research 11: 35-72.  BoP DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Kadt, Elizabeth (1998) The concept of face and its applicability to the Zulu language. Journal of Pragmatics 291: 173-191. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1961) Encounters. Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Londres: Allen Lane The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
(1967) Interactional ritual: Essays on facetoface behavior. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Hernández-Flores, Nieves (1999) Politeness ideology in Spanish colloquial conversations: The case of advice. Pragmatics 9.1: 37-49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002) La cortesía en la conversación española de familiares y amigos; la búsqueda del equilibrio entre la imagen del hablante y la imagen del destinatario . Aalborg: Institut for Sprog Internationale Kurturstudier, Aalborg Universitet, vol. 371.Google Scholar
(2004a) La cortesía como la búsqueda del equilibrio de la imagen social. In D. Bravo and A. Briz (eds.), Pragmática sociocultural: Estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en español. Barcelona: Ariel, pp. 95-108.Google Scholar
(2004b) Politeness as ‘face’ enhancement: An analysis of Spanish conversations between friends and family. In R. Márquez Reiter and M.E. Placencia (eds.), Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 265-284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006a) La cortesía como búsqueda del equilibrio de la imagen social: La oscilación de la imagen en un debate televisivo. In J. Murillo (ed.), Actas del II Coloquio del Programa EDICE, San José: Universidad de Costa Rica, pp. 37-52, [URL].Google Scholar
(2006b) Actividades de autoimagen, cortesía y descortesía: Tipos de actividades de imagen en un debate televisivo. In J.L. Blas Arroyo et al.. , (eds.), Discurso y Sociedad: Contribuciones al estudio de la lengua en contexto social . Castellón: Universitat Jaume I1, pp. 637-648.Google Scholar
Ilie, Cornelia (2001) Semi-institutional discourse: The case of talk shows. Journal of Pragmatics 331: 209- 254. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per (1998) Approaching Dialogue. Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A., and Richard J. Watts (2005) Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research 11: 9-33.  BoP DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2007) (Im)politeness and the Spanish media: The case of audience participation debates. In M.E. Placencia and C. García (eds.), Research on Politeness in the Spanish Speaking World. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 145-166.Google Scholar
Luckman, Thomas (1995) Interaction planning and intersubjective adjustment of perspectives by communicatives genres. In E. Goody (ed.), Social intelligence and interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 175-186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meier, Ardith (1995) Passages of Politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 24.4: 391-392. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mao, LuMing Robert (1994) Beyond politeness threory: Face’ revisited and renewed. Journal of Pragmatics 211: 451-486. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murillo Medrano, Jorge (2006) Significados de la cortesía lingüística a a partir de la aplicación de un test de hábitos sociales en Costa Rica. In J. Murillo (ed.), Actas del II Coloquio del Programa EDICE, San José: Universidad de Costa Rica, pp. 116-136, [URL]Google Scholar
Placencia, María Elena (1996) Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua 15.1: 13-34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ruhi, Sükriye (2006) Politeness in compliment responses. Pragmatics 16.1: 43-101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah (1987) Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Ting-Toomey, Stella (1994) (ed.) The challenge of facework. New York: State University of New York.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Tusón Valls, Amparo (1997) Análisis de la conversación. Barcelona: Ariel Practicum.Google Scholar
Watts, Richard J. (1992) Linguistic politeness and politic verbal behaviour: Reconsidering claims for universality”. In R.J. Watts, S. Ide and K. Ehlich (eds.), Politeness in Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 43-69.  BoP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2003) Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Cited by (14)

Cited by 14 other publications

Sifianou, Maria & Angeliki Tzanne
2021. Face, Facework and Face-Threatening Acts. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 249 ff. DOI logo
Blitvich, Pilar Garcés-Conejos & Patricia Bou-Franch
2019. Emic Conceptualizations of Face (Imagen) in Peninsular Spanish. In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness, ► pp. 301 ff. DOI logo
Figueras Bates, Carolina
2019. Razonamiento y Vigilancia Epistémica: Una Explicación Relevantista de los Evidencialespor lo vistoyse ve que. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics 7:1 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
García Vizcaíno, María José
2017. When ‘Holy cow!’ becomes a team loyalty marker: translating fútbol across cultures. Perspectives 25:1 ► pp. 120 ff. DOI logo
O’Driscoll, Jim
2017. Face and (Im)politeness. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ► pp. 89 ff. DOI logo
Solberg, Janne
2017. Logic of Accounting: The Case of Reporting Previous Options in Norwegian Activation Encounters. Discourse Processes 54:7 ► pp. 545 ff. DOI logo
Tracy, Karen
2017. Facework and (Im)politeness in Political Exchanges. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ► pp. 739 ff. DOI logo
Badarneh, Muhammad A.
2016. Proverbial rhetorical questions in colloquial Jordanian Arabic. Folia Linguistica 50:1 DOI logo
Ihasz, Peter L., Timothy H. Van & Victor V. Kryssanov
2015. 2015 International Conference on Culture and Computing (Culture Computing), ► pp. 64 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Jiayi & Helen Spencer-Oatey
2015. The gains and losses of face in ongoing intercultural interaction: A case study of Chinese participant perspectives. Journal of Pragmatics 89 ► pp. 50 ff. DOI logo
Goethals, Patrick & Babette Blancke
2013. Un estudio exploratorio de las convenciones discursivas en el parlamento europeo: los agradecimientos en español, francés y neerlandés. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas 8:0 DOI logo
Sifianou, Maria
2012. Disagreements, face and politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 44:12 ► pp. 1554 ff. DOI logo
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus & Patricia Bou-Franch
2010. A genre approach to impoliteness1 in a Spanish television talk show: Evidence from corpus-based analysis, questionnaires and focus groups. Intercultural Pragmatics 7:4 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.