Student No : 50357132
Email : tong_lina@hotmail.com or 50375132@student.cityu.edu.hk
URL : http://www.oocities.org/hk/cherie_lina83/
Reading Critique : Week 3
Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levision, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp.58-84)
Summary :
The first part of FTA represents the threatening acts of the H’s negative face which are the suggestions, promises, compliments and expressions of envy or admiration... And also, the threatening acts of H’s positive face which stand for the expression of disapproval, ridicule, reprimands, accusations, insults, disagreements...
All of these explain that the positive and negative face of the S (speakers) and the H (addressees or hearers) are both threatened by the FTA.
The other part deals with acts offending S’s negative face like expressing thanks, acceptance of H’s thanks or H’s apology, excuses, acceptance of offers, unwilling promises and offers. And also acts injuring S’s positive face. They are interpreting as apologies, acceptance of a compliment, admissions of guilt or responsibility, acting stupid, self-humiliating, non-control of laughter or tears.
There are three wants according to the strategies for doing the FTAs : the want to communicate the content of the FTA, the want to be efficient or urgent and finally, the want to maintain H’s face to any degree. FTA is classified by "on record": means that the act is clear and it expresses the communicative intention. And, "off record" refers to more than one unambiguous intention. Its strategies regroup all sort of techniques to let the speaker wants and means to communicate in a not obvious direct way, kind of implicit, so that the meaning can be negotiable.
Furthermore, the orientation to the positive face of H (his positive self-image that he claims for himself) is called the positive politeness strategies. Whereas, the orientation to partially satisfying the negative face of H is called the negative politeness strategies.
To finish, what we call on record with positive politeness is that the speaker likes himself and wants his wants. Plus, off record with negative politeness is when the speaker can pay respect and deference to the H in return for the FTA.
Critique :
We have a clear and deep understanding of the face threatening acts’ and the politeness strategies’ significance, providing with many examples that support the writers’ opinions.
Relating to one of my experience of interaction, the ones that I consider real good friends always occupy the first place in my life. I always treat them as a part of my family or even more than that. But when you are being too nice, kind and caring to somebody. You would eventually, love to receive that kind of concern in return. But most of the time, I was investing more in the relationship and it’s never reciprocal, which really bothered me. I always ask them for their studies, life, love, family etc… asking them tones of questions. But this kind of events hardly happened to me that’s why I started to blame them for not paying any attention to me, therefore I expected that they’re selfish and they only cared about them and maybe I was an annoying girl in their mind. But in fact, I was totally wrong, the way they show their care and concern is completely the opposite of me. I’m more explicit and they’re more implicit. They are using the independence politeness strategies towards me. They prefer independence for themselves so they expect I am the same as they are that’s why they give me space, they don’t want to be interfered.
Moreover, it might be related the cultural difference, my friends and me were brought up in different cultural environment thus, different ways of communication and behaviour. As I grow up in France, people there are very frank and straighfoward to their friends and the chinese people usually care about their "face", i.e : mian zi.