What are face threats?

People in all cultures have an awareness of self-image, or “face”, as they communicate. A “face-threatening act” (FTA) is one that would make someone possibly lose face, or damage it in some way. …

What are examples of face threatening?

Face Threatening Acts.

How are face threatening acts related to speech?

Yule (1996, p. 61) argues “If a speaker says something that represents a threat to another individual’s expectation of self-image, it is described as a face threatening act.” When speakers do speech acts that threaten the self-image of others then this called face threatening acts.

Is there such thing as a face threatening act?

According to Brown and Levinson (1987:25), face-threatening acts may threaten either the speaker’s face or the hearer’s face, and they may threaten either positive face or negative face. Everything we say or do potentially threatens face. Even asking somebody for the time is a face-threatening act (FTA).

Which is true about face threatening acts and politeness?

Face Threatening Acts and Politeness 18:10 4.3. Power and Distance Cross-culturally 13:25 4.4. Pragmatic Control Principle 7:26 [SOUND] [MUSIC] Not all speech acts are the same. In fact, there was such a concept that was formulated by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson.

Do you threaten negative face or positive face?

All of these actions, by requiring the hearer to take action and response, threaten negative face. If you’re going to do them at all and want to be someone with tact and social skill, you have to do them politely. That is, if you want to do them and not threaten face.

Can a face threatening act be verbal or paraverbal?

Face threatening acts can be verbal (using words/language), paraverbal (conveyed in the characteristics of speech such as tone, inflection, etc.), or non-verbal (facial expression, etc.). Based on the terms of conversation in social interactions, face-threatening acts are at times inevitable.