Showing papers on "Face (sociological concept) published in 2009"

Politeness and in-directness across cultures: A comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian requests

Abstract: This paper provides some (more) insights into cross-cultural variation in speech act realization by analyzing English, German, Polish and Russian requests. It aims to shows that the relationship between indirectness and politeness is interpreted differently across cultures. Hence, the analysis focuses on the difference between direct requests, which have been said to play a central role in Polish and Russian, and conventionally indirect requests, which are the most frequent request type in English and German. It further shows that the examined languages exhibit culture-specific preferences for syntactic and lexical downgraders modifying the illocutionary force of the request and, thus, reducing the threat to the hearer’s face. The requests analyzed in this study have been elicited by means of a discourse completion task and constitute responses to a scenario frequently used in previous request studies, so that the results can be compared with those established for other languages. The strong agreement among languages on the use of conventional indirectness in this scenario allows for testing the restricted applicability of interrogative constructions claimed for the two Slavic languages.

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation

Abstract: Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, told his story?up to a certain point. “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,” he said, “and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” It is precisely this point?that of a people faced with the end of their way of life?that prompts the philosophical and ethical inquiry pursued in Radical Hope. In Jonathan Lear’s view, Plenty Coups’s story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one’s culture might collapse? This is a vulnerability that affects us all?insofar as we are all inhabitants of a civilization, and civilizations are themselves vulnerable to historical forces. How should we live with this vulnerability? Can we make any sense of facing up to such a challenge courageously? Using the available anthropology and history of the Indian tribes during their confinement to reservations, and drawing on philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, Lear explores the story of the Crow Nation at an impasse as it bears upon these questions?and these questions as they bear upon our own place in the world. His book is a deeply revealing, and deeply moving, philosophical inquiry into a peculiar vulnerability that goes to the heart of the human condition.

Who Counts as an American?: The Boundaries of National Identity

Abstract: 1. The need for a social theory of national identity 2. Commitment to the national group 3. The setting of national group boundaries 4. The desire to help the national group 5. Loyalty in the face of criticism 6. Is national identity good or bad? Appendix.

Unmasking the entrepreneur

Abstract: his unique book argues against the ideas of entrepreneurship that prevail in much of business practice as well as in popular and academic representations of the entrepreneur. The authors demonstrate how conceptual and political problems with entrepreneurship work and how they are interconnected. Building on recent critical studies of entrepreneurship, they ask what lies behind the friendly face of the entrepreneur.

The Faces of Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections

Abstract: A Note on Terminology Introduction: The Philosopher's Nightmare Part 1. The Institutional World of Intellectual Disability 1. Twin Brothers: The Idiot and the Institution 2. Gendered Objects, Gendered Subjects 3. Analytic Interlude Part 2. The Philosophical World of Intellectual Disability 4. The Face of Authority 5. The Face of the Beast 6. The Face of Suffering Conclusion: The Face of the Mirror Postscript: Toward a New Philosophical Ethos Notes Selected Bibliography Index

On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures

Abstract: This book investigates how speakers of English, Polish and Russian deal with offensive situations. It reveals culture-specific perceptions of what counts as an apology and what constitutes politeness. It offers a critical discussion of Brown and Levinson's theory and provides counterevidence to the correlation between indirectness and politeness underlying their theory. Their theory is applied to two languages that rely less heavily on indirectness in conveying politeness than does English, and to a speech act that does not become more polite through indirectness. An analysis of the face considerations involved in apologising shows that in contrast to disarming apologies, remedial apologies are mainly directed towards positive face needs, which are crucial for the restoration of social equilibrium and maintenance of relationships. The data show that while English apologies are characterised by a relatively strong focus on both interlocutors’ negative face, Polish apologies display a particular concern for positive face. For Russian speakers, in contrast, apologies seem to involve a lower degree of face threat than they do in the other two languages.

The Origins of Face Processing in Humans: Phylogeny and Ontogeny.

Abstract: Faces are crucial for nonverbal communication in humans and related species. From the first moments of life, newborn infants prefer to look at human faces over almost any other form of stimuli. Since this finding was first observed, there has been much debate regarding the “special” nature of face processing. Researchers have put forward numerous developmental models that attempt to account for this early preference and subsequent maturation of the face processing system. In this article, we review these models and their supporting evidence drawing on literature from developmental, evolutionary, and comparative psychology. We conclude that converging data from these fields strongly suggests that face processing is conducted by a dedicated and complex neural system, is not human specific, and is unlikely to have emerged recently in evolutionary history.

New methods, old problems: A sceptical view of innovation in qualitative research

Abstract: Qualitative research has to market itself aggressively, both because academic publishers face more pressures to sell books, and because of the competitive funding climate where one often has to demonstrate methodological innovation as a condition for obtaining a grant. This article considers how social theorists have understood the issue of `newness' and the pursuit of innovation as a cultural problem. It explores the issue in qualitative research through examining how we accomplish and recognize `newness' in the texts we read and produce as academics, which include publisher's catalogues and grant applications, and through considering technological advances such as internet ethnography and video analysis.

Impoliteness and identity in the American news media: The “Culture Wars”

Abstract: Abstract This paper argues that identity theory can be a useful analytical tool for the scholar of relational work (Locher and Watts, Journal of Politeness Research 1: 9–13, 2005). By focusing on current news interviews broadcast in the USA, it shows how impoliteness is inextricably linked to the (co)construction of the identity of the hosts, the guests and the audience of an emergent “new” news genre; news as confrontation (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, The “new” news in America: emergence of a genre, 2007, International Review of Pragmatics, forthcoming). Impoliteness is defined as a negative identity practice (Bucholtz, Language in Society, 28: 203–223, 1999) used by the hosts to position themselves within their own community of practice. Applying Anton and Peterson's (Communication Studies, 54: 103–419, 2003) model of subject positions, an alternative definition is proposed that posits that impoliteness – and confrontation – may ensue when there is a mismatch between self asserted subject positions, i. e., the positions we temporarily choose to assume, and other asserted subject positions, i. e., the positions that others impose on us. By challenging our self asserted subject positions, the view of the world that comes along with them is questioned as well. Impoliteness is also used to forge the collective identity of one of the factions, here identified with the target audience of shows included in the study, currently waging the “Culture Wars”. This metaphor has long been used to claim that political conflict within the USA is due to a conflict between “traditional” and “progressive” values.

Leaders of men: women ‘managing’ in construction

Abstract: Although women’s experience of working in management has been studied extensively, the particular challenges they face in this role within male-dominated professions merits further attention.This a...

Making sense through face: Identity and social interaction in a consultancy task force

Abstract: In this article we investigate the dynamic connection between individual and social processes of sensemaking in the context of group-based interaction. Drawing on Goffman’s theory of face-to-face behaviour, we develop two main arguments. First, the grounding of identity underlying group-based interaction typically involves repeated face games during which participants attempt to influence the patterns of interaction while maintaining a coherent image of self. Second, face games generate an ‘interaction order’ that has structuring properties and is therefore central to the social construction of sense within a group setting. We illustrate our contribution through an empirical study of face games and sensemaking within a consultancy task force. The study shows that the co-presence of participants during group-based interaction is in itself an occasion for sensemaking as it enacts language-based controversies that require composition through shared construction of meaning. In addition, our findings highlight...

Myth 15: High-Ability Students Don’t Face Problems and Challenges

Abstract: One rationale for failure to address the needs of high-ability students in schools is that highability students do not need special services because they do not face any special problems or challenges. A more extreme corollary of this attitude is the notion that high ability is so protective that students with high ability do not face problems or challenges that other students do, or that they will be successful in life no matter what they experience in school. This myth is closely related to the myth that high-ability students do not have unique social and/or emotional needs (see Myth 17). Peterson argues persuasively in Myth 17 that gifted students face many problems and challenges in the social/emotional realm. Here, the focus is on whether high-ability students face problems and challenges in developing their talents. Myths 15 and 17 should be read together to get a complete picture of the problems and challenges that highability students face.

Leadership and the Ethics of Care

Abstract: The job of a leader includes caring for others, or taking responsibility for them. All leaders face the challenge of how to be both ethical and effective in their work. This paper focuses on the requirement that leaders be present to care for their followers in times of crisis. It examines the story of Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burns. This is a tale that has been repeated in various forms by ancient historians and modern writers. The fact that the story gets repeated through the ages tells us about the kind of care that people expect from their leaders.

Understanding Distress The Role of Face Concern Among Chinese Americans, European Americans, Hong Kong Chinese, and Mainland Chinese

Abstract: To explore the cultural mechanisms underlying the distress experience among Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese, Chinese Americans, and European Americans, this investigation examined the role of face concern in psychological distress through a series of studies in both college students and community samples. Face concern refers to one's concern over maintaining or enhancing one's social position and worth that are earned through the fulfillment of specific social roles. Study 1 confirmed the single-factor structure of face concern among Chinese Americans and European Americans. Face concern was significantly and positively related to distress above and beyond age, gender, and ethnicity. Study 2 deconstructed face concern into a two-factor model among Hong Kong Chinese and Mainland Chinese university students (self-face and other-face) with discriminant predictive power. In Study 3, the two-factor model of face concern was further supported in the community samples of Hong Kong Chinese and Mainland Chinese. Se...

To Mother or Matter: Can Women Do Both?

Abstract: Despite a burgeoning interest in the interface between work and relationships, and its origins in feminist thought, crucial aspects of women’s experiences have remained invisible in the face of mai...

Being polite while fulfilling different discourse functions in online classroom discussions

Abstract: Using a discourse analytic qualitative approach, we investigated the naturally-occurring discourse that arose as part of two kinds of regular course activities, synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated discussions. The messages contributed by members of a graduate course were analyzed for the kind of discourse functions and the kind of politeness strategies they displayed. Results indicated that synchronous CMD afforded more information seeking, information providing, and social comments than asynchronous CMD. Asynchronous discussions were slightly more likely to allow for such functions as discussion generating, experience sharing, idea explanation, and self-evaluation functions than synchronous discussions. Proportionately the two modes were similar in how politeness was expressed. Finally, in relating politeness and function, we found more politeness indicators when students were posting messages with such functions as positive evaluation and group conversation management, functions that carried the potential for face threat, and the least politeness associated with messages serving the function of experience sharing.

The Evolutionary Social Psychology of Off-Record Indirect Speech Acts *

Abstract: 1. The evolutionary social psychology of off-record indirect speech actsIndirect speech is the phenomenon in which a speaker says something he doesn't literally mean, knowing that the hearer will interpret it as he intended:Would you like to come up and see my etchings? [a sexual comeon].If you could pass the salt, that would be great [a polite request].Nice house you got there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it [a threat].We're counting on you to show leadership in our Campaign for the Future [a solicitation of a donation].Gee, officer, I was wondering whether there might be some way we could take care of the ticket here [a bribe].These "off-record indirect speech acts" have long been a major topic in pragmatics, and they have considerable practical importance as well, including an understanding rhetoric, negotiation and diplomacy, and the prosecution of extortion, bribery, and sexual harassment. They also pose important questions about our nature as social beings. This paper, adapted from a book which uses semantics and pragmatics as a window into human nature (Pinker 2007), uses indirect speech as a window into human social relationships. In doing so it seeks to augments the current understanding of indirect speech with ideas from game theory, evolutionary psychology, and social psychology.Intuitively, the explanation for indirect speech seems obvious: we use it to escape embarrassment, avoid awkwardness, save face, or reduce social tension. But as with many aspects of the mind, the danger with commonsense explanations is that we are trying to explain a puzzle by appealing to intuitions that themselves need an explanation. In this case, we need to know what "face" is, and why we have emotions like embarrassment, tension, and shame that trade in it. Ideally, those enigmas will be explained in terms of the inherent problems faced by social agents who exchange information.2. Background: Conversational maxims and the theory of politenessAny analysis of indirect speech must begin with Grice's Cooperative Principle and the theory of conversational maxims and conversational implicature that flows from it (Grice 1975). Grice proposed that conversation has a rationality of its own, rooted in the needs of partners to cooperate to get their messages across. Speakers tacitly adhere to a Cooperative Principle, tailoring their utterances to the momentary purpose and direction of the conversation. That requires monitoring the knowledge and expectations of one's interlocutor and anticipating her reaction to one's words. (Keeping with convention, I will refer to the generic speaker as a "he" and the generic hearer as a "she.") Grice famously fleshed out the principle in his four conversational "maxims," quantity (say no more or less than is required), quality (be truthful), manner (be clear and orderly), and relevance (be relevant), which are commandments that people tacitly follow to further the conversation efficiently. Indirect speech may be explained by the way the maxims are observed in the breach. Speakers often flout them, counting on their listeners to interpret their intent in a way that would make it consistent with the Cooperative Principle after all. That's why, Grice noted, we would interpret a review that described a singer as "producing a series of notes" as negative rather than factual. The reviewer intentionally violated the maxim of Manner (he was not succinct); readers assume he was providing the kind of information they seek in a review; the readers conclude that the reviewer was implicating that the performance was substandard. Grice called this line of reasoning a conversational implicature.Grice came to conversation from the bloodless world of logic and said little about why people bother to implicate their meanings rather than just blurting them out. We discover the answer when we remember that people are not just in the business of downloading information into each other's heads but are social animals concerned with the impressions they make. …

Peacebuilding and Political Hybridity in East Timor

Abstract: Peacebuilding works toward the restoration or reconstitution of political community, in the most fundamental and inclusive sense, in the face of a legacy or the ongoing reality of violent conflict....

Face, identity and interactional goals

Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that the effective study of face needs to take an identity perspective that is action-oriented. This is important because it will help us understand the face concerns that emerge dynamically in interaction as significant to the interlocutors. Much work in face and politeness theory takes an a priori approach to face sensitivity. Brown and Levinson (1987), for example, argue that certain speech acts are intrinsically face-threatening to either the speaker or the hearer, and Leech (2005) maintains that some types of illocutionary goals, such as requests or criticism of a hearer, compete or are at odds with the social goal of maintaining good communicative relations. In this chapter, I argue that such an a priori approach ignores the dynamic aspect of people’s face sensitivities. Furthermore, much work in face and politeness theory has focused on the face concerns of the hearer and has paid less attention to those of the speaker. In this chapter, I argue that a speaker’s own face concerns may emerge as crucially important in authentic interaction, and that a speaker’s self-presentational concerns thus need to be incorporated into the study of face and given equal weighting to those of the hearer.

From Body to Meaning in Culture: Papers on cognitive semantic studies of Chinese

Abstract: 1. Preface 2. Section 1. Bodily experience in feeling and thinking 3. Chapter 1. Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese 4. Chapter 2. Body and emotion: Body parts in Chinese expression of emotion 5. Chapter 3. Synesthetic metaphor: A cognitive perspective 6. Chapter 4. Chinese metaphors of thinking 7. Section 2. External body parts in conceptualization 8. Chapter 5. The bodily dimension of meaning in Chinese: What do we do and mean with "hands"? 9. Chapter 6. Figurative uses of finger and palm in Chinese and English 10. Chapter 7. What does our face mean to us? 11. Chapter 8. The eyes for sight and mind 12. Chapter 9. Speech organs and linguistic activity and function 13. Section 3. Internal body organs in conceptualization 14. Chapter 10. Metaphor, body, and culture: The Chinese understanding of gallbladder and courage 15. Chapter 11. Heart and cognition in ancient Chinese philosophy 16. Chapter 12. The Chinese conceptualization of the heart and its cultural context: Implications for second language learning 17. Index

The Binding Tie: Chinese Intergenerational Relations in Modern Singapore

Abstract: Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has become the most trade-intensive economy in the world and the richest country in Southeast Asia. This transformation has been accompanied by the emergence of a deep generational divide. More complex than simple disparities of education or changes in income and consumption patterns, this growing gulf encompasses language, religion, and social memory. The Binding Tie explores how expectations and obligations between generations are being challenged, reworked, and reaffirmed in the face of far-reaching societal change. The family remains a pivotal feature of Singaporean society and the primary unit of support. The author focuses on the middle generation, caught between elderly parents who grew up speaking dialect and their own children who speak English and Mandarin. In analyzing the forces that bind these generations together, she deploys the idea of an intergenerational “contract,” which serves as a metaphor for customary obligations and expectations. She convincingly examines the many different levels at which the contract operates within Singaporean families and offers striking examples of the meaningful ways in which intergenerational support and transactions are performed, resisted, and renegotiated. Her rich material, drawn from ethnographic fieldwork among middle-class Chinese, provides insights into the complex interplay of fragmenting and integrating forces. The Binding Tie makes a critical contribution to the study of intergenerational relations in modern, rapidly changing societies and conveys a vivid and nuanced picture of the challenges Singaporean families face in today’s hypermodern world. It will be of interest to researchers and students in a range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, Asian studies, demography, development studies, and family studies. (Less)

Practical Suggestions to Accommodate the Needs of Muslim Students on Campus

Abstract: We provide a brief overview of Muslim college students and the issues they face on campus. Specific practical suggestions are given on what student affairs professionals can do to combat hostility toward Islamic religious groups through the use of dialogue and to create safe spaces for Muslim students to engage in spiritual exploration.

Humor theory and the fear of being laughed at

Abstract: Abstract Systematic empirical research into the extent to which individuals in different societies fear being laughed at is new and has implications for humor theory. Humor theorists such as Hobbes and Bergson implicitly assume that such fears were generally at a high level and both Hobbes' superiority theory of laughter and Bergson's view of it as a social corrective depend on this assumption. They purport to be general theories but are in fact the product of the particular societies in which those philosophers' lived and whose mores they took for granted. However, we can use their work to generate hypotheses that can in the future be tested against the comparative empirical data now being produced. In particular we should pay attention is the social variables of shame, face, etiquette and embarrassment on the one hand, and hierarchy, status divisions and power on the other, as probably having explanatory power.

Culture, Positive and Negative Face Threats, and Apology Intentions

Abstract: This study investigated cultural differences in apology intentions moderated by the threatened face type and the relationship between interactants. With Chinese and U.S. undergraduate participants, this study revealed that (a) offending acts were more face-threatening toward a stranger than toward a friend; (b) apology intention was stronger for a stranger than for a friend; (c) for threatening negative face, Americans had stronger apology intentions than did Chinese, whereas for threatening positive face, Chinese had stronger apology intentions than did Americans; (d) situational variations in negative and positive face threats significantly related to apology intentions; and (e) Americans' apology intention, compared with Chinese, was more strongly related to amount of negative face threat in each act.