Levinson's Theory Of Politeness Analysis

One of the theoretical and empirical books and articles pertaining to linguistic politeness, and the perception of face has been published in the last decades. Traditionally, politeness has been studied on the basis of ordinary conversation. However, it has drawn attention to its role within workplace and institutional contexts. In addition to that, it has been devoted to an overview and basic comparison of theoretical accounts of politeness, concentrating on the presentation of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness, which represents the main theoretical framework. Within this approach, as well as in Leech’s model, politeness is preserved as an essential principle regulating communication towards non-conflict management of interpersonal relationships. Even from common use of the notion, it is obvious that politeness does not have a quite unequivocal moral value. Although, it is predominantly associated with an agreeable and considerate kind of behavior, and thus has a positive value, at the same time, it carry negative connotations of insincere motives, which resulted from the tension between sincere beliefs and what is considered

For Fraser (1990), Brown and Levinson’s theory shows the face-saving view, bridging to Goffman (1967) notion of face in which it ties face up with notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or ‘losing face’. Someway, the face is understood as something that is emotionally invested, and that cannot lose but also maintained. They also mentioned that every individual has two types of face, positive and negative. According to them, positive face is the individual’s desire that one’s wants should be appreciated in social interaction and in contrast, negative face is the individual’s desire for freedom of action and freedom from