FACE-THREATENING ACTS IN

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

SE – Cross-Cultural Pragmatics
SS 2009
Ao.Univ.-Prof.Dr. Ulrike Jessner-Schmid

Franz Burgmann
Matr.Nr.: 9617155
Stkz.: C190 406 344
Table of Contents

1. Introduction............................................................................................................................ 3

2. Definitions..............................................................................................................................4

2.1 Politeness......................................................................................................................... 4

2.1.2 Strategies of Politeness............................................................................................ 4

2.1.2.1 Positive Politeness........................................................................................... 5

2.1.2.2 Negative Politeness.......................................................................................... 5

2.1.2.3 Off-record Politeness....................................................................................... 6

2.2 Face................................................................................................................................. 6

2.2.1 Positive Face............................................................................................................ 7

2.2.2 Negative Face.......................................................................................................... 8

2.3 Face-threatening Acts...................................................................................................... 8

2.3.1 Different Strategies................................................................................................ 10

3. Learner Language................................................................................................................ 12

3.1 Communicative Competence........................................................................................ 12

3.2 Pragmatic Failure.......................................................................................................... 13

4. Requests............................................................................................................................... 14

5. Apologies............................................................................................................................. 16

6. Refusals................................................................................................................................ 18

7. Conclusion........................................................................................................................... 20

Bibliography........................................................................................................................... 21

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1. Introduction

All the time when people talk they do not only exchange information or negotiate meanings

but to a great extend their conversation is also about establishing or renegotiating their

personal relationships. That is where politeness comes into play and where it affects the way

people talk to each other and behave according to the degree of politeness used by their

communication partners. Directly connected with politeness in speech acts is the notion of

face-threatening acts, which are speech acts that threaten the face of the hearer or of the

speaker. In general people try to minimize such face-threatening acts. They are not always

successful in achieving their aim and this becomes even more difficult for language learners.

This is what this paper is about: face-threatening acts in second language acquisition.

The aim of this paper is to give an overview over face-threatening acts in apologies, refusals,

and requests. In doing so, a connection is being made with face-threatening acts in

combination with second language acquisition. Together with face-threatening acts different

strategies will be discussed. The paper is also dealing with the basic theories and definitions

connected with face-threatening acts, namely politeness theory with its notions of positive

and negative face. In the second part of the paper face-threatening acts in requests, apologies

and refusals will be discussed. The paper is also going into more detail regarding the above-

mentioned assumption about the difficulties learners have with minimizing face-threatening

acts.

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2. Definitions

2.1 Politeness

Talking about politeness involves talking about face and face-threatening acts as well. While

these two notions might become clear within the next paragraphs, the concepts of face and

face-threatening acts are being defined more elaborately in the following chapters.

Politeness is about saving the speaker's and the communication partner's face. According to

Verschueren (1999: 45), politeness “has become a cover term in pragmatics for whatever

choices are made in language use in relation to the need to preserve people’s face in general,

i.e. their public self-image.”. Brown and Levinson (1987: 91) define the use of politeness in

connection with speech acts as “face-risk minimization”.

Brown and Levinson (1999: 1) also describe politeness as a means to “make communication

between aggressive parties possible”. According to Johnstone (2002: 124), politeness “refers

to all the ways in which speakers adapt (or decide not to adapt) to the fact that their

interlocutors, actual or imagined, have human needs like their own”. In general it could be

stated that politeness strategies are being used by the speaker to avoid to embarrassing

themselves and the hearer with the intention not to threaten each other's face.

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2.1.2 Strategies of Politeness

Apart from maximum politeness, which means not performing the face-threatening act at all,

and minimum politeness (bald on-record), Brown and Levinson (1999: 2) distinguish three

main strategies of politeness. Maximum politeness is about the avoidance of the face-

threatening act at all, e.g., somebody does not ask their debtor to return them their money, but

just wait until they get their money back. The bald on-record strategy, on the other side, does

not provide any effort to avoid or reduce the face-threatening act, e.g., “Give me that!” or

“Help!”. While the bald on-record strategy might seem adequate in a case of emergency

(Help!), in most other cases people might feel uncomfortable with this strategy, to say the

least.

2.1.2.1 Positive Politeness

One of the politeness strategies, according to Brown and Levinson (1999: 2), is positive

politeness. Its aim is to establish a positive relationship between parties and to respect a

person's need to be liked and understood . Positive politeness is usually being used by people

who know each other rather well. This strategy tries to minimise the distance by expressing

friendliness and showing interest in the hearer's need to be respected. A common strategy

connected with positive politeness is the avoidance of disagreement, e.g., “I agree with you,

but don't you think...”

2.1.2.2 Negative Politeness

Negative politeness is about deference, it respects the other person's right to act freely, e.g.,

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by making a request less infringing (Brown & Levinson 1999: 2), e.g. “Could you pass me

the salt, please?” instead of “Pass me the salt!”. The focus for using this strategy is to assume

that the speaker is imposing on the hearer and intruding on them. Negative politeness is often

used when addressing people the speaker is not well acquainted with. Strategies connected

with negative politeness are indirectness, e.g., “I am looking for a pen.” and minimizing the

imposition, e.g., “I just wanted to ask you if I could...”

2.1.2.3 Off-record Politeness

The third strategy is off-record politeness (Brown & Levinson 1999: 2), which is about the

avoidance of direct imposition, e.g., “If I was to go to Italy I would love to buy some wine!”

instead of the apparent request “Could you buy me some wine when you go to Italy?”. In

regard to the former utterance the speaker can always deny a face-threatening intention and

the hearer, on the other side, can choose to miss the intention of the speaker without either

person losing their face. Compared to positive and negative politeness, off-record politeness

can be considered an indirect and careful approach.

2.2 Face

Face can be defined as every person's public self image that they try to protect (Brown &

Levinson 1999: 61-62). According to Tzanne (2000: 189), the notion of face has its origin in

the English community in China and conveyed a meaning of a person's good name and

reputation. The term face, in connection with politeness theory, goes back to the Canadian

sociologist Erving Goffman. According to Goffman (1963: 5), face is “an image of self

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delineated in terms of approved social attributes”. Goffman (1963: 7) argues that the flow of

events produces face and that it is every person's ambition to maintaining their face.

According to Goffman (1963: 9), losing face results in damaging the “internal emotional

support”.

Brown and Levinson (1999: 61) argue that the notion of face is also derived from the English

folk term, “which ties face up with notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or 'losing

face'” (Brown 1999: 61). Brown and Levinson state that face is “emotionally invested”

(Brown & Levinson 1999: 61), that face can be lost, maintained, enhanced and that face is

subject to continuous change. Brown and Levinson (1999: 62) also argue that even though

the notion of face differs throughout different cultures, the social necessity to adjust one's

face in interaction remains the same. Brown and Levinson (1999: 62) distinguish positive

and negative face.

2.2.1 Positive Face

Brown and Levinson (1999: 62) define positive face as "the want of every member that his

wants be desirable to at least some others". According to Brown and Levinson this includes

the desire that the person's self-image is appreciated and approved by others. The following

example is taken from Brown and Levinson (1999: 63): “Ms. B. is a fervent gardener. […]

She is gratified when visitors say 'What lovely roses; I wish ours looked like that! How do

you do it?'”. If the visitors disliked Ms. B.'s roses, they would not appreciate her work, they

would not preserve her positive face. According to Verschueren (1999: 45), positive face is “a

person's need to be treated as equal or insider”. Simplified, it could be said that positive face

refers to one's self-esteem and could be described as the desire to be liked and appreciated

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and that, for instance, one would threaten the positive face by ignoring someone.

2.2.2 Negative Face

Negative face, according to Brown and Levinson (1999: 61), is defined as "the basic claim to

territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction - i.e. the freedom of action and

freedom from imposition" or "the want of every 'competent adult member' that his actions be

unimpeded by others" (Brown: 1999: 62). According to Foley (1997: 273), negative face

refers to one's freedom to act. Simplified, it could be said that negative face is about every

person's claim for autonomy.

2.3 Face-threatening Acts

When people interact, they run the risk of threatening or even damaging the face of the

people involved, this action is called a face-threatening act. According to Verschueren (1999:

45), a face-threatening act is “any act that puts face wants at risk is a face-threatening act or

FTA.”. Brown and Levinson (1987: 65) define face-threatening acts as follows: “certain

kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face, namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to

the face wants of the addressee and/or the speaker. By 'act' we have in mind what is intended

to be done by a verbal or non-verbal communication, just as one or more 'speech acts' can be

assigned to an utterance.”. Face-threatening acts can be distinguished according to whether

they threaten a person's self-worth, thus their positive face and therefore their autonomy. To

make this distinction clear, the four possible combinations are listed below. The following

examples are adopted from Brown and Levinson (1987: 65f.):

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Threats to H's negative face :
(i) acts that suggest that H will have to do some future act. A, and consequently put pressure
on H to actually do (or refrain from doing) A:
(a) orders, requests
(b) suggestions, advice
(c) remindings
(d) threats, warnings, dares

(ii) acts that suggest some positive future act on the part of S towards H which consequently
put pressure on H to accept (or reject) and might therefore lead to H incurring a debt:
(a) offers
(b) promises
(iii) acts that suggest some desire on the part of S towards H or H's goods which may put
pressure on H either to protect the object of S's desire or to give it to S:
(a) compliments, expressions of envy or admiration
(b) expressions of strong negative emotions toward H (e.g. hatred, anger, lust).

Threats to H's positive face

When S indicates that they do not care about or are indifferent to H's feelings, H's positive
face wants can be threatened. For example (still closely following B&L 1987: 66f.):
(I) acts that suggest that S has a negative opinion of some aspcct(s) of H's positive face:
(a) expressions of disapproval, criticism, ridicule, complaints, reprimands,
accusations, insults
(b) contradictions, disagreements, challenges
(ii) acts that suggest that S doesn't care about H's positive face:
(a) expressions of violent emotions
(b) irreverence, mention of taboo subjects
(c) bringing bad news about H or good news about S
(d) raising dangerously emotional or divisive topics
(e) blatant non-cooperation
(f) misuse of terms of address.

Threats to S's negative face

(a) expressing thanks
(b) accepting H's thanks or apology

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 (c) excuses
(d) accepting offers
(e) ignoring H's faux pas
(f) unwilling promises.

Threats to S's positive face

(a) apologizing
(b) accepting a compliment
(c) breakdown of physical control over body
(d) self-humiliation, self-contradiction, acting stupid
(e) confessing, admitting guilt or responsibility
(f) emotion leakage, non-control of laughter or tears.

Brown and Levinson (1987: 76) have even developed a mathematical function to compute

the weightiness of the face-threatening act, it goes like this: W x =DS , H P  H , S R x

. W x stands for the number that evaluates the weightiness of the face-threatening act.

D S , H  measures the social distance between the speaker (S) and the hearer (H),

P  H , S  measures the power the hearer has over the speaker and R x expresses the

degree of the face-threatening act according to the specific culture. While such a

mathematical function might seem to limited a method to quantify the degree of a face-

threatening act, it nevertheless gives a comprehensible means of estimating the degree of a

face-threatening act.

2.3.1 Different Strategies

Brown and Levinsons's (1987: 68) claim that every “rational agent” is inclined to avoid face

threatening is a comprehensible statement. By trying to avoid the face-threatening act, the

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agent takes into consideration three wants: “(a) the want to communicate the content of the

face-threatening act, (b) the want to be efficient or urgent, and (c) the want to maintain the

hearer's face to any degree” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 68). Unless the want to communicate

the content of the face-threatening act is greater than the want to maintain the hearer's face,

the speaker tries to minimize the face-threatening act (Brown & Levinson: 1987: 68).

The following schema (Fig. 1.) shows the possible set of actions (Brown and

Levinson 1987: 69):

To go on-record means that the intention of the speaker is entirely clear to the participants,

without any ambiguity. To go off-record, on the contrary, means that the actor's intention is

not clear, e.g., if I say “I have no idea on how to do my homework!” my intention could be to

just let the hearer know about my feelings, but I could also be addressing the hearer's

negative face with the hidden desire for help. According to Brown and Levinson (1987: 69)

do linguistic realizations of off-record strategies include “metaphor and irony, rhetorical

questions, understatement, tautologies, all kinds of hints as to what a speaker wants or means

to communicate, without doing so directly, so that the meaning is to some degree negotiable”.

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Brown and Levinson (1987: 69) classify on-record actions into those with and those without

redressive action. 'With redressive action' is being defined as action that minimizes the face

threat. Doing an act without redressive action, or baldly, means doing it “in the most direct,

clear, unambiguous and concise way possible” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 69). On the other

side, redressive action, according to whether the positive of the negative face of the hearer is

addressed, is subdivided into positive and negative politeness. These aspects of politeness

have already been dealt with earlier.

3. Learner Language

3.1 Communicative Competence

Communicative competence is necessary to perform illocutionary acts (Ellis 1994: 165).

Canale and Swain (1980: 29) define communicative competence as a combination of

grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic

competence. Grammatical competence is about the “knowledge of lexical items and of rules

of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics, and phonology” (Canale & Swain

1980: 29). Discourse competence is defined as the ability to connect sentences in discourse

and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterances. Strategic competence is about

“the verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action to

compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or due to

insufficient competence” (Canale & Swain 1980: 30).

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Sociolinguistic competence is about the involving of knowledge of the sociocultural rules of

language and of discourse (Canale & Swain 1980: 30). According to Ming-Chung (2006: 1),

for non-native speakers “the misunderstandings they are often faced with in the cross-cultural

realization of communicative acts usually arise from their failure in appropriate use of

pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence.”.

According to Canale (1983: 7), sociolinguistic competence “addresses the extent to which

utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts

depending on contextual factors such as status of participants, purposes of the interaction,

and norms or conventions of interaction". Canale (1980: 29) stresses that sociolinguistic

competence has two aspects: appropriateness of meaning and appropriateness of form.

Appropriateness of meaning is about the degree that communicative functions like

commands or questions, attitudes like politeness, and ideas are considered acceptable in a

particular situation. Appropriateness of form refers to how acceptably, in terms of

grammatical form and style, a particular set of words expresses a communicative function.

3.2 Pragmatic Failure

Thomas (1983: 91) has given the notation 'pragmatic failure' to “the inability to

understand 'what is meant by what is said'”. Thomas (1983: 91) distinguishes the

areas of sociopragmatic failure and pragmalinguistic failure. A sociopragmatic failure

occurs when the speaker does not perform the illocutionary act which is required by a

given situation, i.e., fails in regard to appropriateness of meaning. A pragmalinguistic

failure takes place when the speaker uses the right speech act but fails to perform

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the right linguistic means, i.e., fails regarding to appropriateness of form.

An example for a sociopragmatic failure is being taken from Holmes and Brown (1987: 526):

A native speaker of English pays a Chinese student a compliment: “You speak excellent

English!”. The Chinese students declines it directly with “no, my English is very poor” which

may provoke the feeling that the compliment-giver has a poor judgement. An example for a

pragmalinguistic failure, also being taken from Holmes and Brown (1987: 526), is the

following misunderstanding: A: “You've lost a lot of weight. What have you been doing?” B:

“Thank you. I've started jogging regularly and it seems to work.” A: “You shouldn't overdo it.

You are looking quite thin.”.

4. Requests

A request is an action of the speaker in order to accomplish that the hearer performs an action

or stops performing an action. Ellis (1994: 167) summarizes the illocutionary aspects of

requests as follows: the speaker wishes the hearer to perform the request and does not believe

the hearer will perform the act without the request. Ellis (1994: 168) distinguishes eight

different levels of directness in requests, they are listed in table 4.1 below. Requests can be

encoded from the speaker's perspective, e.g., “Give me the book.”, from the hearer's

perspective, e.g., “Could you give me the book?”, from a joint perspective, e.g., “Let's read a

book.” or from an impersonal perspective, e.g., “It would be nice to read a book.”. Requests

are 'inherently imposing', therefore they are face-threatening. (Ellis 1994: 167-168).

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Table 4.1 shows the eight levels of directness in requests (Ellis 1994: 168)

Level of directness Strategy Example

Direct 1 Mood-derivable You shut up.
2 Performative 1 am telling you to shut up. 1
3 Hedged performative would like to ask you to shut up.
4 Locution-derivable 1 want you to shut up.
Conventionally 5 Suggestory formula Let's play a game.
indirect 6 Query-preparatory Can you draw a horse for
me?
Non-conventionally 7 Strong hint This game is boring. We've been
playing this game for over an
indirect 8 Mild hint hour now.

Ellis (1994: 168) argues that requests “have received considerable attention in SLA research

[…] They call for considerable linguistic expertise on the part of the learner, they differ

cross-linguistically in interesting ways and they are often realized by means of clearly

identifiable formulas.”. According to Ellis (1994: 168), in the focus of enquiry has been

whether L2 learners are able to use polite and less polite forms correctly. Not surprisingly do

advanced learners generally seem to have fewer problems with that distinction.

On the other side, Ellis (1994: 171) argues that various studies come to the conclusion, that

advanced learners speakers “appear to develop a greater sensitivity to the use of politeness

strategies in requesting than is evident in native speakers.”. Ellis (1994: 171) comes to the

conclusion that advanced learners are not only able to perceive the distinctions in politeness

strategies in requests, but that they tend to become over-sensitive to them, whereas low-level

learners tend to have problems selecting request strategies that are appropriate for a specific

situation.

First mentioned by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1986: 177) is the so called “waffle

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phenomenon”. Kasper and Blum-Kulka define this phenomenon as “proficiency-dependent,

being strongest at an intermediate stage when learners possess the linguistic means to say as

much as they wish, yet at the same time feel more of a need to be explicit about their

communicative goals and the reasoning behind them.” (Kasper & Blum-Kulka 1993: 9). As

the name of the phenomenon already suggests, do advanced learners tend to produce longer

requests than native speakers (Blum-Kulka &Olsthain 1986: 177). According to Ellis (1994:

172) this is partially due to the over-suppliance of politeness markers and a desire to play it

safe by making the request as transparent as possible.

5. Apologies

Apologies differ from requests inasmuch as that they impose on the speaker rather than the

hearer (Ellis 1994: 174). Another difference reveals a study by Olshtain (1989: 171). In this

study Olshtain investigated the strategies for apologizing by speakers of four different

languages: Hebrew, Australian English, Canadian French, and German. Olshtain (1989: 171)

comes to the following conclusion: “we have good reason to expect that, given the same

social factors, the same contextual factors, and the same level of offence, different languages

will realize apologies in very similar ways”. This conclusion reveals that apologetic

strategies, in contrast to strategies regarding requests, are similar around the world. This

leads to the assumption that L2 learners should not have problems with apologizing, since

they can adopt their L1 strategies. Ellis (1994: 175) argues, though, that this is not so, as

learners seem to have problems with strategies in this speech act. Ellis (1994: 176) argues,

that the “lack of the necessary L2 proficiency” prevents the transfer from the L1.

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The list below shows the five strategies for apologies adopted from Olshtain and Cohen

(1983: 22-23):

1. An expression of an apology
a) An expression of regret, e.g., “I'm sorry.”
b) An offer of apology, e.g., "I apologize"
c) A request for forgiveness, e.g., "Excuse me.”
2. An explanation or account of the situation, e.g.. "The bus was late."
3. An acknowledgement of responsibility
a) Accepting the blame, e.g.. "It is my fault."
b) Expressing self-deficiency, e.g., "I was confused."
c) Recognizing the other person as deserving apology, e.g.. "You are right!”
d) Expressing lack of intent, e.g.. "I didn' t mean to"
4. An offer of repair, e.g.. "I'll pay for the broken vase."
5. A promise of forbearance, e.g.. "It won't happen again."

Four factors have been found to be decisive for learner's quality of apologies. According to

Ellis, “L2 learners' performance of apologies is influenced by a number of factors: (1) the

learners' level of linguistic proficiency, (2) their L1, (3) their perception of the universality or

language specificity of how to apologize, and (4) the nature of the specific apology

situation.” (Ellis 1994: 176). According to Olshtain and Cohen (1989: 62-64) the error

resulting from lack of linguistic competence can be classified into three types: (1) overt

errors, e.g., Situation: bumping into a woman in the way. 'I'm very sorry but what can I do? It

can't be stopped.', (2) covert errors, e.g., apology for forgetting a meeting: 'I really very sorry.

I just forgot. I fell asleep. Understand.', and (3) faulty realization of a semantic formula, e.g.,

after forgetting a meeting: 'I think I can make another meeting with you.'.

Ellis (1994: 178) comes to the conclusion that “both the learners' general level of linguistic

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proficiency and the socio-cultural norms of their L1 influence how they apologize in an L2.”.

Ellis (1994: 178) argues hat learners have difficulties how to decide on whether they are too

concise or they may be too verbose. Transfer, Ellis (1994: 178) adds, is not surprisingly

likely to happen when learners try to be close with the sociocultural norms of their native

culture.

In this context fits in a study which examined whether men and women apologize differently.

The gender survey carried out by Holmes (1995: 379-380) investigated differences in

apologies between male and female actors. The most outstanding differences are that women

used significantly more apologies than men did, that women used most apologies for the

hearers of equal power, while men made the most apologies to people of different status.

Finally did the survey show that women used most apologies for female friends whereas men

apologized most often to socially distant women.

6. Refusals

Refusals are, along with requests and apologies, further face-threatening acts. Refusals, like

requests and unlike apologies, impose more on the hearer than on the speaker and therefore

require a high level of pragmatic competence (Ellis 1994: 178). According to Ellis (1994:

179), refusals occur on various illocutionary acts like on invitations, offers and requests.

Table 6.1 shows semantic formulas used in refusals, taken from Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-

Weltz (1990: 57).

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Type Semantic formula Example
Direct 1 Performative I refuse.
2 Non-performative statement I can't.
Indirect 3 Statement of regret I'm sorry.
4 Wish I wish! could help you.
5 Excuse, reason, explanation I have a headache.
6 Statement of alternative I'd prefer to...
7 Set condition for past or future acceptance If you'd asked me earlier I'd have...
8 Promise of future acceptance I'll do it next time.
9 Statement of principle I never do business with friends.
10 Statement of philosophy One can't be too careful.
11 Attempt to dissuade interlocutor I won't be any fun tonight.
12 Acceptance that functions as refusal Well, maybe.
13 Avoidance (e.g. silence or hedging) I'm not sure.
Table 6.1: semantic formulas in refusals (Beebe et al. 1990: 57)

Ellis (1994: 181) states that there are only few studies, none of them longitudinal, about L2

refusals . Ellis (1994: 179) refers to a study by Beebe and Takahashi from the year 1993 who

examined the English language skills of fifteen Japanese learners of English and fifteen

native speakers of American English. This survey comes to the conclusion that in comparison

to the native Americans the Japanese learners apologized much more, were less direct and

less explicit and that they tried to reduce the face-threatening act more than the native

Americans did. Japanese Excuses tended to be less specific and more formal than those of the

native Americans and there strategies were more power-oriented, whereas those of the native

Americans had their focus on solidarity.

Another survey by Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990: 76) showed that due to their

higher language proficiency, socio-cultural transfer was more frequent for advanced Japanese

learners than Japanese learner's with less proficiency, e.g., a Japanese learner made the

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following refusal to an invitation to a party: “'I am very delighted and honoured to be asked

to attend the party, but...'”.

7. Conclusion

In the course of this paper politeness theory with its strategies, namely positive, negative, and

off-record politeness have been discussed. The paper dealt with the notion of face in the

context of politeness theory and its distinctions 'positive face' and the related notion of self-

worth and the 'negative face' of a person, or their autonomy. A major point has been face-

threatening acts with the risks communication partners run of threatening the other's face or

even their own. In this context distinctions between the threats for the positive and the

negative face of both the speaker and the hearer have been made. The paper has also outlined

different strategies regarding face-threatening acts covering both off-record and on-record

actions, the latter with and without redressive action.

A short insight into learner language, namely communicative competence with the focus on

sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic errors lead to the chapters about requests,

apologies, and refusals. It has been argued that it are not only the low proficiency learners

who tend to have difficulties with adopting to L2 strategies, but that even advanced learners

are affected by the socio-cultural transfer from their L1. As the example of the Japanese

learners has shown, higher proficiency can enable the speaker to even increase the cultural

transfer. This example does distinctly illustrate the extensive impact of interference.

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