Face Threatening Acts FTAs Politeness Strategy

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a. Face Threatening Acts FTAs

Face is defined as an individuals self esteem. It has two aspects, namely negative and positive face. Negative face is the desire to be unimpeded in ones actions and positive face is the desire in some respects to be approved of. 5 When we interact with others in society, it is necessary to keep ones own face or to avoid threatening anothers face. In order to avoid these face-threatening acts abbreviated as FTAs, we try to employ politeness strategies in our interactions. Brown and Levinson classify different kinds of such politeness strategies used according to the ways we react to FTAs. They also point out that the determinants of the kinds of politeness strategies used are the following three sociological factors: the relative power of the hearer over the speaker, the social distance between the speaker and the hearer, and the ranking of the imposition in doing the face-threatening act. 6 When a face-threatening act is involved in our interaction, we make a decision whether or not we should execute it. If we decide to do it, we can either do it directly, i.e. on record by Brown and Levinsons term, or do it off record, which means it is done indirectly. If we do it without paying any consideration to the hearer, we do it baldly. If we try to reduce the face-threatening effect to the hearer, we use either positive politeness or negative politeness. Positive politeness means that the speaker tries to save the hearers positive face by reducing the distance between them. By negative politeness, on the other hand, the speaker tries to keep the hearers negative face by valuing the hearers personal territory. 5 Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987. p.13 6 Ibid p.15-16 6

b. Politeness Strategy

Politeness strategies, developed by Brown and Levinson, have function as a redressive action to Face Threatening Acts FTA. Choosing them depend on how risky S wants to redress H’s wants. Simply, the more an act threatens H’s face, the more S will want to choose a higher-numbered strategy. This by virtue of the fact that the strategies afford payoffs of increasingly minimize risk. There are five politeness based on Brown and Levinson’s theory, they are: 1 Bald on Record, 2 Positive Politeness, 3 Negative Politeness, 4 Off Record, 5 Don’t Do the FTAs.

D. RESEARCH FINDINGS