Face Constituting Theory

ROBERT B. ARUNDALE
University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA

Relationships with others are fundamental to human existence, and people create them
as they connect with and separate from other people in everyday talk and action. Con-
necting with and separating from others is a productive understanding of what has long
been known as “face,” so that Face Constituting Theory (FCT) is an account of how
human beings create relationships as they use language in social interaction.
Goffman introduced western scholars to the Chinese concept of face in 1955, and
since then researchers across the social sciences have used the concept productively
in examining person-to-person interaction. Goffman defined face as the image that a
social actor understands other social actors attribute to him or her, or in other words,
as one’s public self-image in a given social situation (Arundale, 2009). In 1978 Brown
and Levinson (1987) drew on Goffman’s analysis, redefining face as one’s social wants
for approval by others and for autonomy from them, and used face as the basis for their
widely known explanation of politeness phenomena in using language. Over the years
leading to the turn of the century, research on politeness expanded greatly, alternative
theories were proposed, and critiques became widespread. Eelen’s (2001) wide-ranging
critique of nine politeness theories was central in the thorough rethinking of polite-
ness theory and research that evolved over the first decade of the 21st century. Among
the many outcomes of that reexamination was a broadening of research to encom-
pass impoliteness, the development of new theories to explain politeness, impoliteness,
and face, and the acknowledgment of disconnects between scholars’ culture-general
theorizing and participants’ culture-specific understandings of face. In view of these
developments, Kádár and Haugh (2013) argue that understanding politeness phenom-
ena in all their complex manifestations requires reconceptualizing politeness as situated
social practice.
In the attention devoted to politeness and impoliteness since the late 1970s, the con-
cept of face was either overlooked, or treated as synonymous with politeness. Haugh
(2013) represents other scholars in arguing that the process of creating and maintain-
ing face in human interaction has been understudied, and that it needs to be exam-
ined in its own right, independent of politeness phenomena. Research on politeness
and face that is sensitive to their many and varied culture-specific interpretations has
made apparent how Goffman’s framing as an individual’s public self-image is bound by
cultural assumptions prevalent in North America, and central and northern Europe.
Other understandings of face as a property of singular persons are similarly bound, as
are the theories of politeness built upon them. Much of the world’s population outside
these western cultures talks about face on a daily basis as something inseparable from

The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, First Edition.

Karen Tracy (General Editor), Cornelia Ilie and Todd Sandel (Associate Editors).
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi094
2 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y

relationships with other persons, that relational basis having been largely overlooked
in theorizing face. FCT (Arundale, 2010a) conceptualizes face separately from polite-
ness, and frames it not only as a relational phenomenon, sensitive to culture-specific
construals, but also as an interactional phenomenon, arising as persons use language in
everyday communication.
FCT is a theory of language use in social interaction that is doubly informed by theory
and research on human communication (Arundale, 2006). The theory’s understand-
ing of the dynamics of human relationships draws upon relational dialectics theory
(Baxter & Montgomery, 1996), which is firmly grounded in a long tradition of research
in interpersonal communication (Arundale, 2010b). In addition, FCT’s understanding
of human interaction rests on the Conjoint Co-constituting Model of Communica-
tion (CCMC), which is a recent theoretical model informed both by system-based and
social-constructionist theorizing in human communication, as well as by research in
conversation analysis (Arundale, 2010a).
The CCMC explains human interaction in face-to-face talk and conduct in a manner
entirely consistent with the constitutive metamodel of communication, a metamodel
that Craig (1999) argues is central to the communicational perspective on social reality,
or in other words, to the perspective that communication is the primary, constitutive
social process. Because FCT is framed within the CCMC, it addresses Brown and Levin-
son’s (1987, p. 48) important, but overlooked critique that their own theory of politeness
is not well equipped to explain the emergent properties of human interaction that “tran-
scend the characteristics of the individuals that jointly produce it.” Understanding how
one explains emergent properties like relating and face requires, first, sketching the
CCMC, and second, developing FCT within that framework as a distinct conceptu-
alization of face with multiple prospects for continuing research.

The Conjoint Co-constituting Model of Communication

As the core principle of the CCMC, the Adjacent Placement Principle captures the
insight that the process of placing a next utterance and/or behavior adjacent to a prior
one is the glue that binds together the unfolding sequence of human experience in
general, and of utterances in everyday talk and conduct in particular. The sequential
interpreting principle is grounded in research in conversation analysis that reveals
how a participant links an initially tentative or provisional interpretation of another’s
current utterance with his or her provisional interpretation of the prior utterance,
to form an interpretation of that prior utterance that is viable or operative as the
basis for designing a next utterance. The recipient design principle is grounded in
conversation-analytic findings regarding how participants design their next utterance
in view not only of their operative interpretations of prior utterances, but also of their
expectations for how others will interpret and respond to that utterance (Arundale,
2010a). The CCMC departs from other models of communication in framing all three
principles from the participant’s perspective.
Together the three principles explain how participants constitute turn-taking, action,
and meaning in everyday talk. As it is used here, “constituting” is a cover term for
 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y 3

three more specific processes that need to be distinguished: autonomous constituting

at the cognitive and emotional level, independent co-constituting in observing inter-
action, and conjoint co-constituting in engaged interaction. Human beings are cog-
nitively and emotionally autonomous because their interpretations of utterances and
behaviors are uniquely their own and inaccessible to others. However, this does not
imply that those interpretations are independent from those of others. As participants
continually place utterances adjacent to one another in sequence, what is initially the
interactional achieving of the participant’s independent operative interpretations across
a pair of utterances, becomes the conjoint co-constituting of the participant’s interde-
pendent operative interpretations across a triad of utterances. The CCMC’s explanation
of communication as the participants’ conjoint co-constituting of autonomous, yet fully
entwined operative interpretations of a given utterance departs markedly from common
understandings of communication as information transmission (Craig, 1999), or as an
independent encoder producing an output that becomes an input for an independent
decoder (Arundale, 2013).
An example will help clarify these concepts. Marty and Loes’s conversation “occurs
in a research organization just after the beginning of the year. Loes is the receptionist
and keeper of supplies; Marty is a visiting researcher” (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1321).

(1) Schegloff (1992, p. 1321)

1 MARTY: Loes, do you have a calendar,
2 LOES: Yeah ((reaches for her desk calendar))
3 MARTY: Do you have one that hangs on the wall?
4 LOES: Oh, you want one.
5 MARTY: Yeah

Taking the perspective of the participants, Marty forms an interpretation of his own
utterance in line 1 as he designs it for Loes to interpret, but his interpretation is at this
instant provisional because he has no evidence regarding how she understands it. As
recipient, Loes forms an autonomous interpretation of Marty’s line 1 as he produces it,
and she attributes her interpretation to Marty as his interpretation in designing it. Her
interpretation of Marty’s line 1 is likewise provisional at this point because she has no
evidence regarding how the interpretation she attributes to Marty corresponds with his
interpretation of it. Marty appears to design line 1 expecting that Loes will interpret it
as a yes/no interrogative (a YNI), and as a request for “a calendar.” YNIs and requests
normatively afford a small range of relevant next conversational actions.
Loes’s utterance in line 2 is central to constituting because it provides Marty with
evidence of how she has interpreted his line 1. Loes appears to design her utterance
expecting that Marty will interpret her “Yeah” as relevant to a YNI, and her nonver-
bal providing of her desk calendar as relevant to a request for a calendar. Marty now
assesses whether Loes’s utterance falls within the range of relevant next actions. In this
instance it does, and Marty has confirmation that Loes has taken line 1 to be both an
affirmative answer and an offer of her desk calendar. At this point Marty’s interpretation
of his line 1 becomes operative because he has evidence of how Loes has interpreted it,
and together they have interactionally achieved Marty’s modified interpretation of the
4 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y

action and the meaning of his line 1 within the particular circumstances of this con-
versation. Importantly, unlike Marty’s interpretation of line 1, Loes’s interpretation of it
remains provisional at the instant she completes her line 2. Making an offer in uptake to
a request normally affords next actions such as accepting the offer, or verbally or visibly
acknowledging it.
Marty’s utterance in line 3 is equally central to constituting because it provides Loes
with evidence of how he has interpreted her line 2. Marty appears to design line 3
expecting Loes to interpret it as a YNI regarding her access to a wall calendar. Loes
now assesses whether Marty’s line 3 is a next action relevant to her line 2. In this case it
is not, but it provides Loes with evidence for modifying her interpretation of her own
line 2—Marty likely interpreted line 2 as a relevant uptake to a request to look at her
desk calendar, but he was probably requesting that she provide him with a wall calendar.
At this point Marty and Loes have interactionally achieved Loes’s modified interpreta-
tion of her line 2, so that her interpretation of it becomes operative. Lastly, and equally
central to constituting, Loes’s operative interpretation of her own line 2 provides her
with evidence that Marty’s line 1 was likely a request for a wall calendar, not a desk
calendar, modifying her still provisional interpretation of Marty’s line 1 so that it too
becomes operative. At the point line 3 is complete, Marty and Loes have conjointly co-
constituted their operative interpretations of his utterance 1. Loes appears to design her
utterance in line 4 to voice the change in her interpretation of Marty’s initial request,
and he immediately confirms that change in line 5.
In other words, as speaker of the first utterance, Marty needs only Loes’s second
utterance to provide the evidence he needs to confirm or to modify his provisional
interpretation of it so that it becomes operative for him. But as recipient of the first
utterance, Loes must await Marty’s third utterance to obtain the evidence she needs
to confirm or to modify her provisional interpretations not only of her second utter-
ance, but also in turn of Marty’s first utterance, so that both become operative for her.
Conjoint co-constituting is the process through which both the speaker and the recipi-
ent(s) achieve operative interpretations of any given utterance. It is an ongoing process
that takes place over successive, overlapping triads of utterances. As each triad of utter-
ances unfolds, the participant’s autonomous operative interpretations of each successive
utterance become entwined with those of the other participant.
In the framework of the CCMC, the participant’s entwined operative interpretations
are understood as emergent, conjoint, and collaborative outcomes, arising in a unitary,
interdependent system comprised of two or more participants. These outcomes exhibit
nonsummative properties like turn-taking and the sequential, interactional achieving of
conversational action. The nonsummative properties of a unitary social system are not
simply the aggregate or the sum of the properties of the singular individuals that com-
prise it, just as common salt has nonsummative, emergent properties that are not simply
the aggregate or the sum of the properties of sodium and chlorine. In the framework of
information transmission and of encoding/decoding models, participants are concep-
tualized as singular, independent systems, copresent but separate from one another. In
such models, participants’ interpretations are seen as interleaved, but as exhibiting only
individually generated and hence summative properties, as in the problematic assump-
tion that a speaker’s utterance “conveys” a message that causes an effect on a hearer. Both
 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y 5

formally and in practice, nonsummative explanations of communication (and other

social phenomena) encompass summative explanations. However, summative expla-
nations formally cannot and, in practice, do not explain nonsummative phenomena.
In response to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) critique, the CCMC is well equipped to
explain human interaction in terms of emergent properties that transcend the proper-
ties of the individuals who conjointly constitute it.
The distinct conceptualizations of the CCMC have important methodological
implications. Because the explanation of conjoint co-constituting is framed from the
participant’s perspective, the data and evidence generated in research must reflect
the participant’s perspective on turn-taking, action, and meaning (Arundale, 2010a).
Because the CCMC conceptualizes communication as a nonsummative, systemic
phenomenon, the primary unit of analysis must be dyads or groups, as opposed to
individuals, and the data gathered must be adequate to support researcher inter-
pretations in terms of the emergent, nonsummative properties of interaction. These
implications lead to a key principle for research on turn-taking, action, and meaning
in interaction: Analysts must not only construct an argument that the analyst’s under-
standings of the participants’ interpretations are consonant with the participants’ own
interpretations of turn-taking, action, and meaning, but also ground that argument
in the interpretations the participants display to one another (and hence to analysts)
in constituting a sequence of talk and conduct. The means for constructing and
grounding such arguments have at present been most fully developed in conversation
analysis.

Face constituting theory

Human beings are embedded in relationships with other human beings across the
full span of their lives. Out of this embedding arise both human sociality and human
individuality, in that what is uniquely social about human beings emerges from and
is dependent upon individuals in nexus, just as what is unique about each individual
is formed in and is dependent upon the nexus that is the social (Arundale, 2010b).
The individual and the social in human life comprise a yin and yang dialectic. As
in the familiar visual metaphor, they are two coexisting but opposing phenomena,
each containing aspects of the other and at points becoming the other phenomenon.
Common explanations of relationship in terms of the properties of the individual per-
sons who comprise them are inconsistent with the individual/social dialectic because
they treat the properties of social entities as the sum of the properties of independent
individuals. Explanations of relationship consistent with the individual/social dialectic
conceptualize the characteristics of social entities as nonsummative properties of
interdependent individuals.
Five decades of research on interpersonal communication have shown that the
relationships fundamental to human existence are complex, multifaceted phenomena
(Arundale, 2010b). In their comprehensive, critical examination of that research,
Baxter and Montgomery (1996) argue that as persons engage in interaction, their
6 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y

forming and sustaining of a relationship—their relating—can be described produc-

tively using three yin and yang dialectics. Relating involves both openness with and
closedness from one’s partner, both stability and change in the relationship, as well
as both connectedness with the other and separateness from them. These pairs of
opposing terms identify not personal needs or wants, but rather properties, conditions,
or states evinced in the interpersonal relationship that two or more persons create or
recreate as they interact. The relational dialectics are “owned” by the dyad or group,
experienced by the individuals, and continually enacted in interaction. Baxter and
Montgomery adduce a range of empirical evidence for each of the dialectics, across
quite different types of relationship. Among these three, the dialectic of connectedness
and separateness is fundamental to relating because no human relationship exists
except as two separate individuals constituting some form of connection between
them. The connectedness and separateness dialectic is fundamental, as well, because
it is integral with the individual/social dialectic: Constituting connection between
individuals generates human sociality, while constituting separation within the social
generates human individuality.
The dialectic of connection and separation is the core dialectic in human relating, but
it is also a productive reconceptualization of face in that it addresses two problematic
issues. First, Arundale (2009, 2010a) argues that scholars have uniformly conceptual-
ized face in terms of individually centered attributes, as for example, public self-image
(Goffman, 1955), social wants (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and social or relational iden-
tity (Locher, 2008; Spencer-Oatey, 2007). These understandings all privilege the indi-
vidual side of the individual/social dialectic at the expense of the social side. Second,
although Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 13) contributed the key insight that across
cultures face could be seen to involve two “core ideas,” in framing these ideas as an
individual’s social wants for approval and for autonomy they posited a dualism firmly
rooted in North American, and central and northern European understandings that the
singular individual is the fundamental analytical unit of human society.
Explaining the process of constituting face as the process of connecting and sepa-
rating in relating to others addresses both of these issues. First, because the dialectic
of connection and separation is integral with the individual/social dialectic it privi-
leges neither side of that dialectic at the expense of the other. Second, because the core
ideas of face are understood as a dialectic of connection and separation in relationships,
FCT not only addresses the restrictive entailments of dualistic framings (cf. Baxter &
Montgomery, 1996), but also provides a more culture-general understanding that rela-
tionships are the fundamental analytical unit of human society. Ethnographic research
in other cultures supports FCT’s understanding of face in terms of relational connec-
tion and separation, as apparent for example in dialectics of approval and autonomy
in the United States of America, uchi and tachiba in Japan, confianza and respeto in
Mexico, and confianza and self-affirmation in Spain (Arundale, 2006, 2010a). Follow-
ing Baxter and Montgomery (1996), these culture-specific understandings are arguably
alternative “voicings” of the dialectic of connection and separation, which implies that
prior to using the dialectic in research in a given community of practice, one must
undertake or employ ethnographically informed research to establish how persons in
 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y 7

that community interpret the push and pull of connecting and separating in relating
to others.
One final consideration links human relating to human interaction as understood in
terms of the CCMC. Constituting relationships with others is embedded in constituting
turn-taking, action, and meaning because turn-taking, action, and meaning cannot take
shape except as two or more persons place themselves in relation to one another. More
specifically, all human interaction takes place between individuals, who in interacting
create or recreate the unitary social system that is the relationship between them. That
implies that participants cannot constitute relational connection and separation except
as they constitute turn-taking, action, and meaning in interaction, nor can they consti-
tute turn-taking, action, and meaning without also constituting relational connection
and separation. Although interpretations of relating and face are integral with interpre-
tations of turn-taking, action, and meaning, each comprises a distinct type or order of
interpreting (Arundale, 2010a).
FCT draws these understandings of human relating and face together in four key
assumptions.

1 The individual/social dialectic is a theoretically and empirically defensible, culture-

general understanding of human individuality and sociality.
2 The dialectic of connection and separation is integral with the individual/social
dialectic and has demonstrable theoretical and empirical value as the fundamental
dialectic in human relating.
3 The dialectic of connection and separation is a viable conceptualization of the phe-
nomena indexed by the term “face,” with demonstrable theoretical and empirical
value in understanding such phenomena.
4 The processes of constituting turns, conversational actions, meanings, and relation-
ship are distinct aspects of the process of constituting a sequence of verbal and
visible interaction, but are integral with one another in that constituting one impli-
cates constituting the others.

If one accepts these four assumptions, then FCT is a direct extension of the CCMC
to encompass the constituting of connection and separation, or the constituting of
face, as the fundamental process in human relating. Because FCT is framed within the
CCMC face is understood as an emergent, nonsummative outcome in a social system
of two or more interdependent individuals, not as a summative, individually centered
outcome of two or more separate systems comprised of independent individuals. Face
is endogenous to social interaction, not exogenous to it. Because FCT conceptualizes
face as the dialectic of connection and separation, it offers a framing of the core
ideas of face that is more culture-general than the restrictive dualism of approval and
autonomy.
A researcher employs FCT in examining face in interaction by examining particu-
lar, situated instances of everyday talk and conduct. The first step in doing so involves
using the evidence available in both the situation and the interaction itself in arguing
8 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y

that in this particular instance, certain turns at talk, conversational actions, or mean-
ings that the participants constitute can be linked to or “articulated with” interpre-
tations of relational connection and/or separation (Arundale, 2010a). Some linkages
are common, but they cannot be taken for granted. They must be argued in each case
because they may shift, as when one person is engaged in self-deprecation. In Marty
and Loes’s particular conversation in Excerpt 1, responding to YNIs in a manner that
conforms to the constraints they impose on recipients articulates with interpretations
of connection, while resisting those constraints articulates with separation. In addition,
initiating repair on conversational trouble introduced by another participant articulates
with relational separation, while initiating repair on trouble one has introduced by one-
self is linked to relational connection The second step in examining face in interaction
involves analyzing how the participants constitute turns, actions, and meanings, and
in view of the articulations one has established, analyzing how in constituting turns,
actions, and meanings they are also constituting both relational connection and sep-
aration. Given the CCMC’s framing from the participant’s perspective, however, the
analyst’s understanding of constituting face is not sufficient. The third key step in exam-
ining face is the analyst’s use of the evidence that the participants display to one another
of their interpretations to argue not only that they are oriented to constituting face as
the analyst understands that constituting, but also that their doing so is consequential
in shaping the trajectory of their conversation.
Consider this brief sketch of the facework in Excerpt 1. Loes’s second position
response conforms to all of the constraints on her uptake brought into play by Marty’s
first position YNI. That conforming articulates with connection in this situation,
and her utterance both interactionally achieves Marty’s operative interpretation of
connection, and affords his accepting or acknowledging in third position. Marty does
not want a desk calendar, however, and the normal sequential expectation is that he
would initiate a repair in third position that corrects Loes’s interpretation (Schegloff,
1992). That repair would articulate with separation, against the background of the
connection they have just achieved. Instead, Marty designs a third position YNI that
repeats his first, and that adds a mention of a wall calendar. In doing so, Marty is
arguably orienting to avoiding relational separation by designing an utterance that
enables them to conjointly co-constitute connection (or at least not separation) for
his first position utterance. Importantly, Marty’s third utterance is consequential in
affording Loes’s fourth position self-repair of the trouble she introduced in second
position. That repair enables their conjointly co-constituting a modified interpretation
of her second position utterance that articulates with connection between them.
Interestingly, Loes’s fourth position repair violates all of the constraints on responding
to YNIs, so that as they conjointly co-constitute connection, she simultaneously assets
some measure of independence and hence separation in her relationship with Marty.
A detailed analysis can be found in Arundale (2010a).
Face is the dynamic constituting of interpretations of connection with and sep-
aration from others, in the dynamic constituting of interpretations of turn, action,
and meaning. Interpretations of connection arise together with interpretations of
separation, not independently. One pole may at times become more apparent amidst
the contingencies of interaction, but both are always implicated because they comprise
 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y 9

a yin and yang dialectic. A moment’s reflection will make this complex, shifting,
dialectical push and pull of connection and separation apparent in one’s own relating
with others in everyday interaction.

A distinct conceptualization of face

FCT does not employ face threat as a central organizing concept as in Goffman’s (1955)
and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theories. Instead, it provides a model that explains the
full range of human facework from outright threat, through maintenance in stasis (no
change in face), to outright face support. Face stasis and support have not previously
been theorized, and comprise new foci for research (Arundale, 2010a). FCT does not
theorize politeness, although in conceptualizing face as social practice it implies that any
new theory of politeness based on face must do likewise, following Kádár and Haugh
(2013). FCT does not provide a simple approach to finding face and relating in language
use in social interaction. The theory’s distinct conceptual framework and epistemolog-
ical assumptions (Arundale, 2010a) afford and constrain not only one’s choice among
methods for generating evidence capable of supporting or falsifying understandings
in terms of the theory, but also the development of new methods (Arundale, 2013).
Using only certain of FCT’s concepts, or using inconsistent methods, is to underutilize
or overgeneralize FCT.
Theories are viable, or not, only in relation to other theories. Continuing in-depth
studies of face and relating in specific instances of talk/conduct will provide additional
empirical evidence of FCT’s viability. Because in principle no conversational resource
or practice is excluded from interpretation in terms of constituting face and doing
relating, continuing research needs to consider the full range of resources and practices
in conversation. And because FCT argues that relational connection and separation is
a second-order, culture-general conceptualization of face, continuing research needs to
investigate new cultural communities of practice, together with their first-order, emic
conceptualizations of face (Haugh, 2013). All theories have strengths and weaknesses,
conceptual entailments, and limits to the scope of their application, and these will
become more fully defined in research employing FCT.
FCT addresses a key question: How do participants constitute face in everyday talk?
The response is a theory that is more complex than prior theories. The CCMC is more
complex than the encoding/decoding or information transmission models that underlie
other theories, and FCT’s conceptualization of face and of relating is more complex than
that of other framings, as are its affordances and constraints in conducting research.
Such complexity demands justifications, the most important being that FCT explains
the phenomena addressed in prior theories of face, together with new and important
phenomena, within a theory that understands face not as a summative, individually cen-
tered attribute, but as a nonsummative, relational phenomenon conjointly constituted
in using language in everyday social interaction.

SEE ALSO: Conversation Analysis, Applied; Conversation Analysis, Overview; Edi-

tor’s Introduction; Ethnomethodology; Face; Impoliteness; Politeness Theory; Polite-
ness Theory, Cultural Approaches.
10 F A C E C O N S T I T U T I N G TH E O R Y

References

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action (pp. 33–54). London, UK: Equinox.
Arundale, R. B. (2010a). Constituting face in conversation: Face, facework, and interactional
achievement. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2078–2105. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.021
Arundale, R. B. (2010b). Relating. In M. A. Locher & S. L. Graham (Eds.), Interpersonal prag-
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Further reading

Chang, W. M., & Haugh, M. (2011). Strategic embarrassment and face threatening in business
interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(12), 2948–2963. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.009
Haugh, M. (2010). Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8),
2106–2119. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.018
Krippendorff, K. (2009). On communicating: Otherness, meaning, and information (Fernando
Bermejo, Ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Robert B. Arundale is professor emeritus of communication at the University of

Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. His research focuses on issues in language
pragmatics as they relate to understanding language use in face-to-face interpersonal
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communication, with particular attention to developing theory that is informed by

research in conversation analysis. Related research interests include communication
theory. He is the author of numerous journal articles addressing research on change
over time, Gricean pragmatics, models of human communication, as well as face and
relationship in interpersonal interaction.