Politeness Theory - Face-threatening Acts

Face-threatening Acts

According to Brown and Levinson, positive and negative face exist universally in human culture. In social interactions, face-threatening acts are at times inevitable based on the terms of the conversation. A face threatening act is an act that inherently damages the face of the addressee or the speaker by acting in opposition to the wants and desires of the other. Most of these acts are verbal; however, they can also be conveyed in the characteristics of speech (such as tone, inflection, etc.) or in non-verbal forms of communication. At minimum, there must be at least one of the face threatening acts associated with an utterance. It is also possible to have multiple acts working within a single utterance.