Erving Goffman - Face needs

Erving Goffman was a sociologist who used the interactions of people to explain  society. Goffman wrote about face needs in conjunction to daily life. Goffman claims that as humans, we all appear to care about how other perceive us – we all create an image we want others to see which can change from situation to situation.  If someone ‘loses face’ then they have degraded their self-image. However, to maintain face, people are taking a line whilst in a social situation. (A line is the speech and actions which someone does during the interaction and how the person at hand understands the situation.) There are two different types of faces, a positive and negative face.

Positive - This is associated with feeling appreciated and valued.

Negative - This is the desire to feel independent and not imposed upon.

Brown and Levinson build upon this concept to explain Politeness – they believe that politeness is universal. This is known as a ‘super maxim’ in that people are aware of others personal/face needs in conversation.

Positive politeness addresses positive face concerns and Negative politeness addresses negative face concerns. When someone threatens another person's face, they are committing a face threatening act.

Deixis - These are words or phrases that can’t be understood without additional context.

Personal deixis - I/ME/YOU

Spatial deixis - Here, there, left, right

Temporal deixis - now, then, today, tomorrow.