According to researchers, face is an important possession carried by individuals into interactions with others. Face has been studied in diverse areas such as: politeness, compliance gaining, emotional discourse, negotiations, face-negotiation theory, and conflict. Perhaps because of its value, face can be vulnerable during conflict situations. Facework behaviors are the communicative strategies that people use during conflicts to protect face (theirs or others), threaten others' face, and to avoid or resolve conflicts. So far, studies about facework behaviors have focused on face-to-face interactions. Preliminary studies have shown: a. facework behaviors may affect the outcomes of online discussion teams, b. sex may play a role in the relationship between facework behaviors and online discussion outcomes, and c. conflicts among online discussion team members may influence discussion outcomes. This research explores more completely the role that facework behaviors play during conflicts, their influence on online discussion outcomes, and the role that sex plays in these matters. Data gathered from surveys and transcripts of participants' online discussion postings show that facework behaviors: a. influence conflict levels, b. influence the outcomes of the online discussion teams, and c. play a moderating role on the relationship between conflicts and online discussion outcomes. They also indicate that sex plays a moderating role in these relationships. Moreover, this study shows that the typology of facework behaviors, originally developed to describe face-related aspects of face-to-face interactions, has value in understanding online discussions.

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The objective of this study, based on the theories of Facework (Goffman 1967) and Politeness (Brown & Levinson 1978, 1987), is to observe and establish a classification of mitigating strategies used by two groups of friends to express and deal with disagreement and criticism in French. After a critical review of the development of sociopragmatics and of essential notions for the analysis of interactions, the concept of mitigation is presented, including mitigation used in the context of disagreement and criticism. The fieldwork and the transcription process and new conventions are then presented and discussed. For the analysis, three episodes from recordings of naturally-occurring conversations between friends were selected and transcribed. The data were analysed and classified in context with a view to defining both the pragmatic functions of the various mitigators and how they tend to be used by the speakers. The results of the analysis have allowed us to establish a classification of micro-mitigating-strategies within macro-strategies, and to show that speakers were able to mitigate disagreement and criticism, in order of descending frequency, by converging towards the interlocutor, by using modalised forms, by using a didactic, clarificatory speech style, but also by realising a "décrochage énonciatif" (enunciation disconnection) and trying to avoid or minimise the Face Threatening Acts. These observations contribute to the study of mitigating disagreement and criticism among friends, provide initial evidence of a considerable variation in the use of mitigating strategies in conversational French and call for further analysis of this type of conversation in order to determine to what extent these uses of mitigators result from a social behaviour specific to this type of interactional situation or speech acts.

No description available.

Expressions of identity are increasingly occurring in online communication as a variety of social media have emerged. People establish and manage identities online, and experience challenges when changing their online image. Widows experience this challenge in a dramatic fashion, especially when they begin to date and reveal new relationships online. The purpose of this study was to examine the expressions of facework in the online writings of widows regarding their new romantic relationships. This illuminated the ways in which one population, young widow bloggers, deals with the challenge of online identity management. A systematic thematic analysis was conducted to describe how posts on widow blogs address the positive face needs of remarrying widows. This study discovered evidence of preventive facework, face threats and face attacks, and corrective facework used in online blogs written by widows.

The present study investigates the use of hedging devices in the readers’ comment section of the newspaper The Guardian Online. Two comment sections were chosen for the contrastive study: ‘Politics’ in the subsection ‘Comment is free’ and the series ‘Problem solved’ in the subsection ‘Life and style’. The corpus-based analysis of the frequency of hedges has revealed that the incidence of hedging devices in comments on personal issues is higher (by 19.2%) than on political articles. Three of the most frequently occurring hedging devices, namely, might, SEEM and I (don’t) think underwent further contextual analysis: the utterances containing these items were classified according to their illocutionary force, applying Bach’s (2003) classification of illocutionary acts. The most commonly hedged speech act types, characteristic of each section, were revealed.  Subsequently, an attempt was made to account for these findings from the perspective of ‘face’ and ‘facework’ as represented by Brown and Levinson (1987), Lim and Bowers (1991), MacGeorge, Lichtman and Pressey (2002), Ting-Toomey and Kurogi (1998). Since hedging is considered to be an effective strategy in minimizing ‘threats’ to the face of the addressee, it has  been possible to conclude that in discussions of personal issues participants are more concerned to ‘save’ the addressee’s face than in the case of political matters where the comment writers’ ‘self-face seems to be in the forefront.

Scholars have described conflict tactics as a means to engage or avoid a conflict, and face tactics as a means of face-saving by way of defense or restoration. While theories of conflict and face flourish, few researchers have sought an explanation of conflict themes within the field of nursing or examined how nurses display face-saving tactics within their conflict interactions. The goal of this study is to identify the connection of these concepts through a qualitative analysis of conflict stories compiled from interviews with licensed floor-nurses. The data is analyzed two ways: first, as conflict themes in stories about nurses’ floor/shift work; and secondly, as communicative face tactics used in conjunction with conflict styles as viewed through a nurses’ conflict-interaction. The study identified three outcomes. From the analysis of conflict stories, an updated and extended view of conflict themes in nursing is developed. Specific face tactics surfaced within certain conflict themes supporting the concept that face tactics can directly affect the outcome of a conflict interaction. And lastly, the discovery of new restorative and defensive face tactics not previously identified in research literature. The implications for theory and practical application are also discussed, as is the proposed direction for future research. / text

The globalization of the English language has rendered both positive and negative impacts to countries around the world. With the ever-increasing pervasiveness of the English language, many non-native-English-speaking (NNES hereafter) people and countries have shown growing interests in teaching and learning English. Some governments of these NNES countries have decided to implement “English” as a mandatory school subject into their compulsory curriculum in order to “connect with the world” and/or to increase their nation’s international image. However, in these NNES countries, English often does not hold official capacity and is taught as a foreign language (EFL). Although English (language) education can bring positive changes to a nation, it is not free of problems. Essentially, English education influences many NNES countries and their citizens in sociocultural, economic, and educational arenas. Some scholars, such as Tsuda (2008), assert that the “problems” and impacts are inseparable from “English language hegemony.” My country of origin, Taiwan, is one of the EFL and NNES countries that implements English education in our nation’s compulsory education. In recent decades, communicative-based English educational approaches have received great support from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. In an EFL setting, such as that in Taiwan, the said educational approaches have complicated English education even further. In particular, the communicative-based approaches focus on teaching and practicing English oral proficiency, which average Taiwanese citizens do not need in their daily lives. Many Taiwanese people experience identity struggles and self-esteem issues because of their less-than-desirable English oral proficiency. In addition to Taiwanese, native-English-speaking (NES) teachers who are recruited to teach English in Taiwan are an integral part of the Taiwanese English education. As a Taiwanese citizen and an intercultural communication scholar, I recognize the intricate complexity of Taiwanese English education and am compelled to examine it in this dissertation as it has not received much attention in the discipline of Communication Studies. In this dissertation, I employ Identity Management Theory (IMT) (Cupach & Imahori, 1993; Imahori & Cupach, 2005) as the primary theoretical framework to examine Taiwanese English education. Particularly, I utilize IMT to study the identity construction and management (such as identity freezing), facework strategies, and intercultural relationship development among NES teachers, Taiwanese English teachers, and Taiwanese students. To carry out this research, I employ critical complete-member ethnography (CCME) (Toyosaki, 2011) as the central research methodology, because I see myself as a complete-member researcher with my research participants. I share complete-memberships with them in nuanced, complex, and contextual manners. Methodologically, CCME entails ethnography of communication, autoethnography, and critical ethnography; all are informative of my data collection methods, including ethnographic participant observation, ethnographic interview, and autoethnographic journaling inside and outside of English classes at different Taiwanese universities. These three methods helped me gather rich data for this research. To analyze and discuss the data, I employed thematic analysis (Owen, 1984) and critical examinations of consensual and conflictual theorization (Fiske, 1991; Toyosaki, 2011). Both methods render complex findings. In particular, the analysis and discussion reveal and explain (a) how the research participants manage cultural identities through marking scope, salience, and intensity with different English educational participants, (b) how they apply facework strategies to cope with identity freezing experiences, and (c) how they establish and maintain intercultural relationships with other English educational participants as they transition across different relational phases of their relationships. I deliver the findings thematically in an analytical and narrative-like manner, as I layer and weave together the field notes, the interview responses, and my autoethnographic journaling. Ultimately, I argue that English hegemony has glocalized in Taiwanese English education and is manifested through research participants’ identity management politics and their intercultural relationships. Essentially, my research shows that identity management politics is inseparable from the power differentials and inequalities imbued in Taiwanese English education. Voluntarily and/or involuntarily, the research participants and I have normalized English hegemony, embodied its presence in our knowledge production and consumption, and given English/Western ideologies consent to dominate our communicative choices, our (sub)consciousness, and our intercultural relationships. Aside from perpetuating English hegemony, I have also observed resistance against the said hegemonic impacts inside and outside of the English classrooms. In a power-laden intercultural communication context, such as Taiwanese English education, critical analyses and examinations play essential roles in revealing the identity management politics and power differentials embedded in the (mythically) “innocent” English classrooms. I further recognize how this research serves as an example to other EFL and NNES countries. In due course, I conclude that my research makes contributions to the scholarships of intercultural communication and to English education in Taiwan and beyond.

The purpose of this dissertation is to improve the racial conditions of USAmerican education and to highlight how racial politics influence the facework practices of Black male teachers, their perceptions of and responses to face threats, and how the classroom, as a context, shapes perceptions and issues of face, facework, and face threat. I utilized identity management theory to examine how Black male teachers construct facework and face threat within the classroom. Additionally, I used semi-structured respondent interviewing and grounded theory as my method and analytical method (respectively) to complete my study. Using key concepts, such as positive face, negative face, face threat, and identity freezing, I concluded that perceptions of racism and racial stereotypes that are sometimes contingent on their gender identity impact how they constructed positive and negative face. Additionally, racism and racial stereotypes shaped which facework strategies the interview participants utilized, what they considered face threatening situations, how they responded to face threatening situations, and what they considered identity freezing situations. Overall, their constructions of facework and face threat were utilized to avoid stereotypes that depicted them as angry and incompetent. Considering the positive potential of this study, I concluded with how this research can help administrators and colleagues to improve the education system for Black male teachers.

This study sought to conceptualize forgiveness-granting communication as a facework phenomenon through utilizing the concepts of face concerns, degree of face loss, and facework strategies. Participants from public speaking courses (N = 248) completed a self-report survey questionnaire asking them to recall a recent forgiveness episode. Statistical analyses were conducted to discover the relationship between face and forgiveness-granting communication. The results of this study indicated the following important findings: (a) the greater one’s self-face concern, the less likely one’s forgiveness-granting communication is to be direct; (b) self-face concern positively predicted conditional forgiveness-granting communication; (c) degree of face loss was a positive predictor of non-expressive forgiveness-granting communication; and (d) facework strategies were the best predictors of forgiveness-granting communication. This study revealed face as a useful theoretical paradigm for understanding forgiveness-granting communication. Although the sample was fairly homogenous and three scales had undesirable reliabilities, this study has provided greater understanding of both the role of face within the forgiveness process and how communicators choose certain strategies to grant forgiveness. Based on this study, future directions were also discussed.