Grices Maxims And Brown & Levinson Face Theory

Grices Maxims

Listeners and speakers must speak cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. The cooperative principle describes how effective communication in conversation is achieved in common social situations. Grice's Maxims describe how we should interact with one another. There are four maxims that we tend to follow, however some of them can be broken. These are:

1. The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
   
2. The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
   
3. The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
   
4. The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

The Gricean Maxims are a way to explain the link between utterances and what is understood from them.

Brown & Levinson Politeness Theory

Politeness is described a the social norm, or a set of prescriptive social 'rules'. Many linguists have aimed to research politness, including, Brown and Levinson (1987). The developed the 'Face theory' based on the principles of our desire to be liked and to not be imposed upon. It is the first important that we understand the concept of 'face'. 'Face' is defined as the public self image. 

There are 3 'faces' that we tend to fallback on during a conversation. These are:

Positive Face :) : This is where we try to be appreciated and liked.

Negative Face :( : Where we desire to have freedom and not be imposed upon by others.

FTA (Face Threatening Act): Is where we produce an act which is deliberately made to threaten the face of others.

To be polite we must: 

>Be contextually appropriate.

>Follow social and cultural Norms.

>Be socially positive by addressing the face needs.

In order to save face, we must:

>Bald on record: Where we must not attempt to minimise the face threat. Examples:

• Instances in which threat minimizing does not occur

• Great urgency or desperation

Watch out!

• Speaking as if great efficiency is necessary

Hear me out:...

• Task-oriented

Pass me the hammer.

• Little or no desire to maintain someone's face

Don't forget to clean the blinds!

• Doing the face-threatening act is in the interest of the hearer

Your headlights are on!

• Instances in which the threat is minimized implicitly

• Welcomes

Come in.

• Offers

Leave it, I'll clean up later.

Eat!

>Positive Politeness: Where we show the value of someone so minimising the threat to a positive face.They are used to make the hearer feel good about himself, his interests or possessions, and are most usually used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well. In addition to hedging and attempts to avoid conflict, some strategies of positive politeness include statements of friendship, solidarity, compliments, and the following examples from Brown and Levinson:

• Attend to H’s interests, needs, wants

You look sad. Can I do anything?

• Use solidarity in-group identity markers

Heh, mate, can you lend me a dollar?

• Be optimistic

I’ll just come along, if you don’t mind.

• Include both speaker (S) and hearer (H) in activity

If we help each other, I guess, we’ll both sink or swim in this course.

• Offer or promise

If you wash the dishes, I’ll vacuum the floor.

• Exaggerate interest in H and his interests

That’s a nice haircut you got; where did you get it?

• Avoid Disagreement

Yes, it’s rather long; not short certainly.

• Joke

Wow, that’s a whopper!

>Negative Politeness: Is where we don't impede on someone so minimising the threat to a negative face. Some examples are below:

• Be indirect

Would you know where Oxford Street is?

• Use hedges or questions

Perhaps, he might have taken it, maybe.

Could you please pass the rice?

• Be pessimistic

You couldn’t find your way to lending me a thousand dollars, could you?

So I suppose some help is out of the question, then?

• Minimize the imposition

It’s not too much out of your way, just a couple of blocks.

• Use obviating structures, like nominalizations, passives, or statements of general rules

I hope offense will not be taken.

Visitors sign the ledger.

Spitting will not be tolerated.

• Apologize

I’m sorry; it’s a lot to ask, but can you lend me a thousand dollars?

• Use plural pronouns

We regret to inform you.

>Off record: Where we are being indirect/ change the subject. This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to be imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, it’s getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so.

>Withhold: Where we don't perform an Face Threatening Act (FTA)

• Speaker avoids offending Hearer at all
• Speaker also fails to achieve his desired communication

What is 'Face'? 

Face is the public self image that every adult tries to protect. Ten years later, Brown characterized positive face by desires to be liked, admired, ratified, and related to positively, noting that one would threaten positive face by ignoring someone. At the same time, she characterized negative face by the desire not to be imposed upon, noting that negative face could be impinged upon by imposing on someone. Positive Face refers to one's self-esteem, while negative face refers to one's freedom to act. The two aspects of face are the basic wants in any social interaction, and so during any social interaction, cooperation is needed amongst the  participants to maintain each other's faces.

What are the pay-offs to using the 'Face theory'?

In deciding which strategy to use, the speaker runs through the individual payoffs of each strategy.^[3]

• Bald on record

• enlists public pressure
• S gets credit for honesty, outspokenness which avoids the danger of seeming manipulative
• S avoids danger of being misunderstood

• Positive Politeness

• minimizes threatening aspect by assuring that S considers to be of the same kind with H

• criticism may lose much of its sting if done in a way that asserts mutual friendship

• when S includes himself equally as a participant in the request or offer, it may lessen the potential for face-threatening act debt

• “Let’s get on with dinner” to a husband in front of the TV

• Negative Politeness

• Helps avoid future debt by keeping social distance and not getting too familiar with the addressee
• pays respect or deference by assuming that you may be intruding on the hearer in return for the face-threatening act.

• "I don't mean to bother you, but can I ask a quick question?"

• Off record

• get credit for being tactful, non-coercive
• avoid responsibility for the potentially face-damaging interpretation
• give the addressee an opportunity to seem to care for S because it tests H's feelings towards S

• If S wants H to close the window, he may say "It's cold in here." If H answers "I'll go close the window" then he is responding to this potentially threatening act by giving a “gift” to the original speaker and therefore S avoids the potential threat of ordering H around and H gets credit for being generous or cooperative

• Don’t Do the face-threatening act.

• S avoids offending H at all
• S also fails to achieve his desired communication
• no overt examples exist